Ruth Bavetta

April 24, 2024

“The New Battery Should Come Tomorrow” by Ruth BavettaPosted by

Ruth Bavetta

THE NEW BATTERY SHOULD COME TOMORROW

Got up this morning thinking about going to see my daughter.
Which led to thinking about the remote for the garage door opener 
which had stopped working when I replaced the battery.
 
Which led to searching online for garage door repairmen. Which led to
wanting to check the remote again before I called a repairman.
 
Which led to getting dressed so I could go outside. Which led to 
remembering to brush my teeth. Which led to discovering my Waterpik 
wasn’t working. Which led to researching online to find out 
what the problem could be. Which led to
 
scrabbling around to find the extra tips that came with the Waterpik 
and figuring out which was which and how to replace the tip. 
 
So with Waterpik repaired I went outside and tried again
to make the garage door opener work. Which led to
my discovering that the little red light in the remote wasn’t on. 
 
Which led me to fiddle with the batteries again. Which led to 
my discovering I had ordered the wrong battery for it. Which led to 
a protracted Amazon session looking for the proper battery 
 
and figuring out which were in stock and would come soon
and didn’t come only in a pack of fifty. 
 
So now I’m exhausted and I’m not going anywhere. 
 

—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024

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Ruth Bavetta: “I write at a messy desk overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Once, it was important to me to make sense of life. Now, I’m convinced that there is no sense-making. There is only what is and what has been. I am human, separate and mortal, and that’s where the poetry comes from. This poem is pretty much an accurate report of an actual morning a couple of years ago. This kind of thing happens with increasing frequency as we age. What can we do but laugh about it?” (web)

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February 1, 2024

“The Fun” by Ruth BavettaPosted by

Ruth Bavetta

THE FUN

was always where I wasn’t,
in the other room, behind the paisley curtains,
on the bigger Ferris wheel,
out in the backyard while I was washing cups.
It was always just before my Currie’s Mile Hi cone
or just after I left the party.
It was while I was leaning over the toilet,
throwing up a bad tuna sandwich
when my boyfriend went out alone and got drunk
with a girl he barely knew
and ended up fuzzy-diced into marrying her.
It was in the sixties, with love and pot
and rainbows over the radio,
while I was bricked under lawns and tricycles
and dirty sheets, scrambled with the eggs, broken
over and over and over again.
Now the sixty turnings belong, not to the century,
but to the mirror,
and I’m still here, waiting for amber earrings.
 

—from Rattle #4, Fall 1995

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Ruth Bavetta: “I was a visual artist for years, until I found I also wanted images that could be painted with words. I wanted to use words, as I used images, to help me make sense of my life. Now, I’ve become convinced that neither words nor images will suffice, because there is no sense-making. There is only what is and what has been. It’s enough to know I am human, separate and mortal, and that’s where I find my poems.” (web)

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August 15, 2019

“Critical Mass” by Ruth BavettaPosted by

Ruth Bavetta

CRITICAL MASS

for Albert Einstein

A friend of mine says she is losing bone mass,
twenty-seven percent of her is suitcased away.
“Gone forever,” she tells me,
to the winds of mother earth,
to swirl and be swirled, dust above the pyramids,
about the plains, above the churning seas,
to become part of the pillages, the battles,
the pogroms and avalanches, part of the cacophony
of congresses and the world’s brazen symphonies,

part even of the tepid water of my bath,
wherein I lie, wishing that I could float forever,
under the protection of its amniotic embrace.
I’d like to pull the water over me,
a warm and soothing blanket
to keep away the noisy fingers of the world.
But I can’t hide, the world will always find me
and I will always find the world.

My friend loses mass, I gain it.
As if it were the golden vapor
rising from a bowl of steaming emeralds,
I breathe it in, absorb it as a fish
absorbs the singing waters.
I enlarge, amplify, extend,
incorporate the overflow.

I absorb the murder weapons, the Rembrandts,
the common doilies, keys and maps,
unto the last, the cusp, the deus ex lawnmower.
I take in all this, expand and swell,
live all the lives that touch my own.
Oh, sorrowful world, is there no end?

—from Rattle #7, Summer 1997

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Ruth Bavetta: “I was a visual artist for years, until I found I also wanted images that could be painted with words. I wanted to use words, as I used images, to help me make sense of my life. Now, I’ve become convinced that neither words nor images will suffice, because there is no sense-making. There is only what is and what has been. It’s enough to know I am human, separate and mortal, and that’s where I find my poems.” (web)

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July 8, 2018

“Heat” by Ruth BavettaPosted by

Ruth Bavetta

HEAT

And sun said,
let there be fire
and there was fire.
And the fire said,
let there be wind.
and the wind was throbbing
and the beast of the flames
pulled taut over the hills,
said naught to the chaparral,
and nil to the coyote.
And the coyote ran.
And the rabbits ran.
And the deer
and the rattlesnake
and the quail ran.
And the wind
sprang from its kiln
and tongue-licked the eaves
and the rafters
and the roof.
And the smoke
was air and the air
was smoke.
The air was our bodies.
It was the shadows
against the sky.

—from Poets Respond
July 8, 2019

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Ruth Bavetta: “Fire season has started with a bang this week.” (web)

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February 18, 2016

“It Won’t Make the News” by Rosemerry TrommerPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2016: Artist’s Choice

 

Painting by Ruth Bavetta
Painting: “Chronicle” by Ruth Bavetta. “It Won’t Make the News” was written by Rosemerry Trommer for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2016, and selected by Bavetta as the Artist’s Choice winner.

[download broadside]

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Rosemerry Trommer

IT WON’T MAKE THE NEWS

What we really need is to gather
in the street and talk to each other.
Any street. Lined with shrubs
or tenements. Paved or dirt
or cobblestone. With orange cones
or with wooden barriers
to set off the block so we can talk,
can talk and listen and watch the day go by.
Some will join us. They will wonder
why we’ve gathered. They’ll
pull out their binoculars
as if there’s something more to see.
There’s always something more to see,
like the way the light comes through the hedge
and makes it more gold than green.
Hey, did you hear that nightingale?
When’s the last time you heard one?
All my life I’ve been too busy. Rushing
from one here to the next. But look
what happens when we gather
in the street and gawk in whatever
direction. We start to become a we—
you, me, the man in the yellow plaid shirt,
the cop, the woman in white tennis shoes.
It does not matter how we vote or
where we’ve been or how much we make
or if we pray, here we are in the same place
on the same day. Not because someone died,
not because someone’s done something wrong.
There is no one to cheer for but us.
We’ll go back to our homes soon enough,
but for now, here we are
doing the most important work,
gathering in the street to notice together
the scent of fall, the warmth of mid-afternoon sun,
the way all our shadows fall the same direction.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2016
Artist’s Choice Winner

[download audio]

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Comment from the artist, Ruth Bavetta: “I liked that the poet didn’t go for the obvious interpretation. And the last line really got to me—a little togetherness means a lot.” (website)

For more information on Rosemerry Trommer, visit her website.

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May 11, 2013

“Elegy for My 1958 Volkswagen” by Ruth BavettaPosted by

Ruth Bavetta

ELEGY FOR MY 1958 VOLKSWAGEN

Beautiful blue beetle,
curved and dumpy, lovely
as a lumpy German mädchen
overly fond of kartoffeln.

Four cylinders chugging
in the rear, it was like being chased
by a busy washing machine.

Air-cooled engine slow
to warm my feet.
I loved how I could tuck it
into tiny San Francisco parking spots.

No gas gauge, just guess
the gas to get you there.
No synchromesh first gear,
no coasting through stop signs.

Small outside, it still thought big.
Record load—seven bags of groceries,
five kids, one friendly neighbor,
two dogs and a pair of bowling shoes.

I sold it. Never realizing
that it prophesied my life—
the inability to pass abruptly,
the slow fade on the long uphill grade.

—from Rattle #38, Winter 2012

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Ruth Bavetta: “I was a visual artist for years, until I found I also wanted images that could be painted with words. I wanted to use words, as I used images, to help me make sense of my life. Now, at the age of 76, I’ve become convinced that neither words nor images will suffice, because there is no sense-making. There is only what is and what has been. It’s enough to know I am human, separate and mortal, and that’s where I find my poems.” (web)

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March 2, 2009

“The Making of History” by Ruth BavettaPosted by

RUTH BAVETTA: “I’ve been a visual artist longer than I’ve been a poet. For years I tried to find a way to integrate my art and my words. It wasn’t until 2005 that they came together when I started to work on the pages of old books, mostly with watercolors and inks, carving poems from the text that I found there.” (website)

Click the image for a larger version:

The Making of History

—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
Tribute to Visual Poetry

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