Storyteller of the Week

 Martin Willitts, Jr

 

 

From left Martin Willitts, Jr., his mother, father, brother and sister

Martin Willitts, Jr is a retired Librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He was nominated for 17 Pushcart and 13 Best of the Net awards. Winner of the 2012 Big River Poetry Review’s William K. Hathaway Award; 2013 Bill Holm Witness Poetry Contest; 2013 “Trees” Poetry Contest; 2014 Broadsided award; 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, November 2016, Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December, 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. He won a Central New York Individual Artist Award and provided "Poetry on The Bus" which had 48 poems in local buses including 20 bi-lingual poems from 7 different languages.

His 24 chapbooks include "Falling In and Out of Love" (Pudding House Publications, 2005), “Lowering Nets of Light” (Pudding House Publications, 2007), “The Garden of French Horns” (Pudding House Publications, 2008), “Baskets of Tomorrow” (Flutter Press, 2009), “The Girl Who Sang Forth Horses” (Pudding House Publications, 2010), “Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for Cezanne” (Finishing Line Press, 2010), “Why Women Are A Ribbon Around A Bomb” (Last Automat, 2011), “Protest, Petition, Write, Speak: Matilda Joslyn Gage Poems” (Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, 2011), “Secrets No One Wants To Talk About” (Dos Madres Press, 2011), “How to Find Peace” (Kattywompus Press, 2012), “Playing The Pauses In The Absence Of Stars” (Main Street Rag, 2012), “No Special Favors” (Green Fuse Press, 2012), “The Constellations of Memory and Forgiveness” (Seven Circles Press, web book, 2014), “A Is For Aorta” (Kind of Hurricane Press, e-book, 2014), “Pablo Neruda’s Garden” (Finishing Line Pres, 2014), National Chapbook Contest winning “William Blake, Not Blessed Angel But Restless Man” (Red Ochre Press, 2014), "Swimming in the Ladle of Stars" (Kattywompus Press,2014),“City Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2014), “The Way Things Used To Be” (Writing Knights Press, 2014), “Late All Night Sessions with Charlie “the Bird” Parker and the Members of Birdland, in Take-Three” (A Kind Of a Hurricane Press, 2015), “The Burnt-Over District” (e-book, Icarus Books, 2015), and “Martin Willitts Jr Greatest Hits” (Kattywompus Press, 2016), Turtle Island Editor’s Choice Award for his chapbook, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2016), “Nasturtiums in Snow Understand Green Is Coming” (Foothills Press, 2018), “You Enter, and it All Falls Apart” (Flutter Press, 2019), “Nothing Stays Here Long” (Red Wolf Press, 2023).

His 22 full-length books include "The Secret Language of the Universe" (March Street Press, 2006);  “The Hummingbird” (March Street Press, 2009); “The Heart Knows, Simply, What It Needs: Poems based on Emily Dickinson, her life and poetry” (Aldrich Press, 2012); “Art is an Impression of What an Artist Sees” (Edgar and Lenore Publishing House, 2013); National Ecological Award winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth Press, 2013); “Before Anything, There Was Mystery” (Flutter Press, 2014); “Irises, the Lightning Conductor For Van Gogh's Illness” (Aldrich Press, 2014); “God Is Not Amused with What You Are Doing in Her Name” (Aldrich Press, 2015); “How to Be Silent” (FutureCycle Press, 2016); “Dylan Thomas and the Writer’s Shed” (FutureCycle Press, 2017); “Three Ages of Women” (Deerbrook Editions, 2017);  “The Uncertain Lover” (Dos Madres Press, 2018); “News from the Slow Country” (Aldrich Press, 2019); “Coming Home Celebration” (FutureCycle Press, 2019); 2019 Blue Light Award winner “The Temporary World”; “Unexpected” (Duck Lake Books, 2020); “Unfolding of Love” (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2020);“Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “Meditations on Thomas Cole’s Paintings” (Aldrich Press, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World” (Flowstone Press, 2023); “Ethereal Flowers” (Still Point Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023).

He is an editor for Comstock Review, and judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Competition.   

     

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Martin Willitts, Jr. is one of my favorite storytellers because he makes me a participant in his poems, he has a signature style and even though we didn’t personally connect until late last year I felt like I already knew him through his poetry.

 I relate to Martin’s stories even though we had different upbringings and life experiences.

“I did not grow up Amish,” Martin told me, “but I spent every summer on my grandparents' Amish farm. The rest of year I lived in Syracuse, NY, and played classical music when I was a child of jazz when I was older. I was an example of the city mouse/county mouse story."

 Like me, Martin is untrained as a poet.

 “I started writing poetry in 1974, and my first poem was also my first published poem in 1974. I had three chapbooks to 1980, and I stopped writing in 1984 when my son was born,” Martin said.

 “In 2001, I was asked to submit some poems to a 9/1/1 anthology. I have been writing and publishing ever since. In short, I write because I am compelled to write. I write different styles and themes including Ekphrastic poems, nature and ecology poems, anti-war poems (I was a field medic in Vietnam), music (I play classical and jazz), and other subjects".

 “I am currently working (the first four poems will be in a collection about hearing/not hearing/silence/ loss) and tinkering on many different collections, because I keep changing my mind about which poems, the order of poems, and how to tighten the collection. I can write very short poems or extremely long poems. The first poem is a two-page poem, but my longest published poem was 32-pages. Many of my books are out of print, but some are listed on Amazon.”

 I am proud to publish these poems by Martin.

 

 

Gifts My Father Gave Me

1.

I grew up shouting at my hearing-loss father,
who read my lips, saw my tongue placement,
and watched my exaggerated
expressions of certain vowels,
the explosion of consonants. I learned the way
of silence and noise from him.

My father never could recall the connection
of sound to object, before a war wound made sound watery,
silence closing off his ears.

My father struggled to hear,
straining his better ear towards the direction
he thought sound arrived.
Even then, he heard absolutely nothing.
Not even my mother’s sweet nothings.

He needed tangible words he could feel with his fingers.

I’d get red in the face, screaming to be heard.
Often, he’d blink, noticing my mouth
moving like goldfish in a glass tank.

The only time he tried hearing aids,
he complained about the static feedback,
the kind I heard adjusting a radio knob
as I searched for a station while in the car.

He tried being sneaky, turning off the hearing aid
whenever my mother berated him.
She’d yell, balling her fists like ear plugs.

Years later, I still hear the faint rumbling of arguments,
the lightning strike of hard words,
the slow quiet when a storm gives in.

2.

My father taught me about the wide silences between conversation
and not speaking, the gaps when hemming and hawing
try to formulate the next proper word to say.

He discovered sounds of white noise,
electric feedback from touching a microphone,
or the decibels of pitch broken and scattering.

Oh, how I wish he had tried harder to listen.
I tried sign language, but he wasn’t interested.
He never seemed to want to hear what I said.

3.

When my father died, quietly,
I started packing away his clothes.

I felt like I was erasing him.

I went through a ritual for the dead;
pick up, clean up, tidy up the messes.

I found my father’s hearing aid,
the unused, unopened battery for the device.

That sneaky, son-of-a-gun.

I never told my mother.


How Death Works

I was not present for either of my parents’ death.
Death knows how to be inconvenient.

My near-deaf father was assigned six months to live,
but he never could reach that goal.
He never heard his demise coming.

My mother went quicker — a flicker, and gone.
The last time she saw me her dementia had her beat.
She confused me with my father. I played along.
By then, there was no reasoning with her.
She died as quick as a brushstroke.

When someone brings an aching bucket of bad news,
every word has shock value.
Words can’t sponge up the sorrow.

I had a friend die on April First.
At first, I thought the phone was a prank,
some cruel April Fool’s joke. It wasn’t.
We were young and foolish, and all of a sudden —
because that’s how death works —
we weren’t going to shoot basketballs anymore.

My father left behind his inheritance of loud ties
not even Goodwill wanted to accept.
My mother doubted her own existence,
until she didn’t. When my friend died,
I wanted to shoot the basketball backboard,
but didn’t.

I’m getting better at eulogies.
They say practice make perfect.


Fishing with My Son

I purchased a tackle box, lures with silver hooks,
reel with line, and a box of large worms,
called nightcrawlers, as big as my fingers.

Our lines whooshed-zipped as quiet as dragonflies
in perfect rainbow arches.
Hooks sank noiselessly,
bobbins plopped up.

We waited for fish that never bit,
while mosquitoes zzzzed near our ears.

It was the kind of day I always wanted with my son:
alone,
shouldering nearer,
waiting for the tug
of fish or sentences of acceptance.

Nothing said or heard,
brief soft noises,
one tentative verb at a time.

I did not have words to talk to him then.
Silence held us close.

All that mattered was
one day with my son,
not needing to say anything,
when every unspoken moment spoke for itself,
no need to explain,

not knowing it would be the last time together.



The Prodigal Son

I keep burying my son, over and over again
in my mind, but my heart won’t let me.
(What’s the cost-benefit of love? Potential loss.)

By now, you might be wondering why I say this
when I don’t know if he is alive.
(We used to live in the same city; now I’m unsure.)

When I tell myself he will not contact me,
my heart grinds at my grief.
(My heart sent me to the hospital for grief many times.)

I keep thinking of the song, Love Hurts.
I curse the person who said pain makes us stronger.
(Why does my heart feel like a phone that never rings?)

My heart cross examines me:
why is my son so belligerent about not talking to me?
(Am I writing about him or me?)

He could at least call me. Can’t he?
Talk is cheap and even then, it costs too much.
(His silence becomes a can opener prying open my heart.)

I pace the floors of many questions.
I keep trying to bury my son, over and over.
(I can’t complete the task; it’s too painful.)

I have to admit he’s never coming back.
I can’t. His ghost (my hope) haunts me.
(Why does hope refuse to speak, too?)

My heart, my pain, won’t stop carrying a shovel,
won’t stop surrendering to hopelessness.
(I have a heartless longing, such heartbreaking shards.)

It rains inside me. Several umbrellas open against such loss,
rain splinting me into so many versions of dark excuses.
(I send out ravens from my heart carrying my distress.)


Wooing Season

It is a quiet day, chores finished ahead of time,
a wait-and-see-what’s-next day.
Grandfather considers taking Grandmother
out for wooing season.

A familiar Amish buggy arrives.
I unhitch the black horse.

I normally take care of the horse.

My uncle’s husband usually gets down first,
a proper Amish man with severe practical clothes,
bushy half-beard and righteous whiskers.
He helps my uncle, in his black bonnet, black
homespun dress, and black women’s boots,
down from the buggy.

My uncle’s husband greets me,
How art thou, Brother, but his blue eyes
follow my uncle, lovingly.

My silent Grandfather leads my uncle’s husband
to show him how I bent my first pair of horseshoes.
It’s Grandfather’s way of humbly being proud.

My set-in-stone-in-her-ways Grandmother
takes my uncle to the house to share pie secrets.

Later, my uncle reappears with Grandmother,
bits of flour on his Amish half-beard.
He sees his husband, and his heart fills with joy.

Afterwards, I hitch the buggy
for my grandparents for their wooing season