Dialogues - poems we love

After Reading Peterson's Guide

2012-02-14T10:09:00.001-05:00

After Reading Peterson's Guide

I used to call them
Morning Doves, those birds
with breasts the rosy color
of dawn who coo us awake
as if to say love…
love…in the morning.

But when the book said
Mourning Doves instead
I noticed their ash-gray feathers,
like shadows
on the underside
of love.

When the Dark Angel comes
let him fold us in wings
as soft as these birds’,
though the speckled egg
hidden deep in his nest

Is death.

Linda Pastan

From Bright Wings, an anthology of poems about birds, edited by Billy Collins

e. e. cummings - anyone lived in a pretty how town

2012-02-02T09:17:00.001-05:00

anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

spring summer autumn winter

he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)

cared for anyone not at all

they sowed their isn't they reaped their same sun moonstars rain

children guessed(but only a few

and down they forgot as up they grew

autumn winter spring summer)

that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf

she laughed his joy she cried his grief

bird by snow and stir by still

anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones

laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wakehope and then)they said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon

(and only the snow can begin to explain

how children are apt to forget to remember with up sofloating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess

(and noone stooped to kiss his face)

busy folk buried them side by side

little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep

and more by more they dream their sleep

noone and anyone earth by april

wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)

summer autumn winter spring

reaped their sowing and went their came

sun moon stars rain

e.e. cummings

MCMXIV

2012-01-30T07:54:00.005-05:00

MCMXIV

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--
And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Going To Heaven

2012-01-29T09:23:00.001-05:00

Going to Heaven by Emily Dickinson

Going to heaven!
I don't know when,
Pray do not ask me how,--
Indeed, I'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven!--
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the shepherd's arm!

Perhaps you're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to the two I lost!
The smallest "robe" will fit me,
And just a bit of "crown";
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.

I'm glad I don't believe it,
For it would stop my breath,
And I'd like to look a little more
At such a curious earth!
I am glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the mighty autumn afternoon
I left them in the ground.

"Going to Heaven" by Emily Dickinson. Public domain.

The Beautiful Sandwich

2012-01-26T11:38:00.002-05:00

The Beautiful Sandwich by Brad Ricca (Makes me hungry just to read this one!)

She could always make
the most beautiful sandwich.
Laced swiss cheese: sliced
crossways, folded once.
Ham in rolls like sleeping bags.
Turkey piled like shirts.
Tarragon. Oregano. Pepper.
Herb dill mayonnaise the color of
skin. On top: the thin, wandering line of
mustard
like a contour on a map
in a thin, flat drawer.
Or a single, lost vein.
The poppyseeds hold on,
for now.

Placed on a plate like isolated
driftwood
or a large, solemn head.
The spilled chips in yellow piles
are like the strange coins
of tall, awkward islanders.
The thin dill pickle: their boat
slides into
the green-sour sea.

Thanks to The Writers Almanac -- "The Beautiful Sandwich" by Brad Ricca, from American Mastodon. © Black Lawrence Press, 2011.

The Scholar Gypsy - Matthew Arnold

2012-01-19T18:41:00.001-05:00

Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
   Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
     No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
   Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
     Nor the cropped herbage shoot another head.
       But when the fields are still,
   And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,
     And only the white sheep are sometimes seen
     Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanched green.
   Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest!

Here, where the reaper was at work of late--
   In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
     His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse,
   And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
     Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use--
       Here will I sit and wait,
   While to my ear from uplands far away
     The bleating of the folded flocks is borne,
     With distant cries of reapers in the corn--
   All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screened is this nook o'er the high, half-reaped field,
   And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be.
     Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,
   And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
     Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep;
       And air-swept lindens yield
   Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
     Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
     And bower me from the August sun with shade;
   And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book--
   Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!
     The story of the Oxford scholar poor,
   Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
     Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
       One summer morn forsook
   His friends, and went to learn the gypsy lore,
     And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,
     And came, as most men deemed, to little good,
   But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country-lanes,
   Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,
     Met him, and of his way of life enquired;
   Whereat he answered, that the gypsy crew,
     His mates, had arts to rule as they desired
       The workings of men's brains,
   And they can bind them to what thoughts they will.
     "And I," he said, "the secret of their art,
     When fully learn'd, will to the world impart;
   But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill."

This said, he left them, and returned no more.--
   But rumors hung about the countryside,
     That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray,
   Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,
     In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,
       The same the gypsies wore.
   Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring;
     At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,
     On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frocked boors
   Had found him seated at their entering,

But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.
   And I myself seem half to know thy looks,
     And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;
   And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks
     I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place;
       Or in my boat I lie
   Moored to the cool bank in the summer-heats,
     'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,
     And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills,
   And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats.

For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground!
   Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe,
     Returning home on summer nights, have met
   Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,
     Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
       As the punt's rope chops round;
   And leaning backward in a pensive dream,
     And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
     Plucked in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers,
   And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream.

And then they land, and thou art seen no more!--
   Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come
     To dance around the Fyfield elm in May,
   Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam,
     Or cross a stile into the public way.
       Oft thou hast given them store
   Of flowers--the frail-leafed, white anemone,
     Dark bluebells drenched with dews of summer eves,
     And purple orchises with spotted leaves--
   But none hath words she can report of thee.

And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay time's here
   In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,
     Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass
   Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames,
     To bathe in the abandoned lasher pass,
       Have often passed thee near
   Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown;
     Mark'd thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare,
     Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air--
   But, when they came from bathing, thou wast gone!

At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills,
   Where at her open door the housewife darns,
     Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate
   To watch the threshers in the mossy barns.
     Children, who early range these slopes and late
       For cresses from the rills,
   Have known thee eying, all an April day,
     The springing pasture and the feeding kine;
     And marked thee, when the stars come out and shine,
   Through the long dewy grass move slow away.

In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood--
   Where most the gypsies by the turf-edged way
     Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see
   With scarlet patches tagged and shreds of grey,
     Above the forest ground called Thessaly--
       The blackbird, picking food,
   Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all;
     So often has he known thee past him stray,
     Rapt, twirling in thy hand a withered spray,
   And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill
   Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,
     Have I not passed thee on the wooden bridge,
   Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,
     Thy face tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge?
       And thou has climbed the hill,
   And gained the white brow of the Cumner range;
     Turned once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,
     The line of festal light in Christ Church hall--
   Then sought thy straw in some sequestered grange.

But what--I dream! Two hundred years are flown
   Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls,
     And the grave Glanvill did the tale inscribe
   That thou wert wandered from the studious walls
     To learn strange arts, and join a gypsy tribe;
       And thou from earth art gone
   Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid--
     Some country nook, where o'er thy unknown grave
     Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave,
   Under a dark, red-fruited yew-tree's shade.

--No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours!
   For what wears out the life of mortal men?
     'Tis that from change to change their being rolls;
   'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,
     Exhaust the energy of strongest souls
       And numb the elastic powers.
   Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,
     And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,
     To the just-pausing Genius we remit
   Our worn-out life, and are--what we have been.

Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so?
   Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire;
     Else wert thou long since numbered with the dead!
   Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire!
     The generations of thy peers are fled,
       And we ourselves shall go;
   But thou possessest an immortal lot,
     And we imagine thee exempt from age
     And living as thou liv'st on Glanvill's page,
   Because thou hadst--what we, alas! have not.

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers
   Fresh, undiverted to the world without,
     Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;
   Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,
     Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.
       O life unlike to ours!
   Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,
     Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
     And each half lives a hundred different lives;
   Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
   Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
     Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed,
   Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
     Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled;
       For whom each year we see
   Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
     Who hesitate and falter life away,
     And lose tomorrow the ground won today--
   Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

Yes, we await it!--but it still delays,
   And then we suffer! and amongst us one,
     Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly
   His seat upon the intellectual throne;
     And all his store of sad experience he
       Lays bare of wretched days;
   Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs,
     And how the dying spark of hope was fed,
     And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,
   And all his hourly varied anodynes.

This for our wisest! and we others pine,
   And wish the long unhappy dream would end,
     And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear;
   With close-lipped patience for our only friend,
     Sad patience, too near neighbor to despair--
       But none has hope like thine!
   Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,
     Roaming the countryside, a truant boy,
     Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,
   And every doubt long blown by time away.

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
   And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
     Before this strange disease of modern life,
   With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
     Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife--
       Fly hence, our contact fear!
   Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!
     Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern
     From her false friend's approach in Hades turn,
   Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
   Still clutching the inviolable shade,
     With a free, onward impulse brushing through,
   By night, the silvered branches of the glade--
     Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue,
       On some mild pastoral slope
   Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales
     Freshen thy flowers as in former years
     With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,
   From the dark dingles, to the nightingales!

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
   For strong the infection of our mental strife,
     Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;
   And we should win thee from thy own fair life,
     Like us distracted, and like us unblest.
       Soon, soon thy cheer would die,
   Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers,
     And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made;
     And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,
   Fade and grow old at last, and die like ours.

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!
   --As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,
     Descried at sunrise an emerging prow
   Lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily,
     The fringes of a southward-facing brow
       Among the Aegean Isles;
   And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,
     Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
     Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine--
   And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young light-hearted masters of the waves--
   And snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail;
     And day and night held on indignantly
   O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
     Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,
       To where the Atlantic raves
   Outside the western straits; and unbent sails
     There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,
     Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;
   And on the beach undid his corded bales.

This poem is featured in the 2011 TV drama Endeavour

Rest by Richard Jones

2012-01-18T09:37:00.003-05:00

Rest - Thanks to the Writers Almanac

It's so late I could cut my lights
and drive the next fifty miles
of empty interstate
by starlight,
flying along in a dream,
countryside alive with shapes and shadows,
but exit ramps lined
with eighteen wheelers
and truckers sleeping in their cabs
make me consider pulling into a rest stop
and closing my eyes. I've done it before,
parking next to a family sleeping in a Chevy,
mom and dad up front, three kids in the back,
the windows slightly misted by the sleepers' breath.
But instead of resting, I'd smoke a cigarette,
play the radio low, and keep watch over
the wayfarers in the car next to me,
a strange paternal concern
and compassion for their well being
rising up inside me.
This was before
I had children of my own,
and had felt the sharp edge of love
and anxiety whenever I tiptoed
into darkened rooms of sleep
to study the small, peaceful faces
of my beloved darlings. Now,
the fatherly feelings are so strong
the snoring truckers are lucky
I'm not standing on the running board,
tapping on the window,
asking, Is everything okay?
But it is. Everything's fine.
The trucks are all together, sleeping
on the gravel shoulders of exit ramps,
and the crowded rest stop I'm driving by
is a perfect oasis in the moonlight.
The way I see it, I've got a second wind
and on the radio an all-night country station.
Nothing for me to do on this road
but drive and give thanks:
I'll be home by dawn.

"Rest." by Richard Jones, from The Correct Spelling and Exact Meaning. © Copper Canyon Press, 2010.

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude By Percy Bysshe Shelley

2012-01-10T09:40:00.001-05:00

From Alastor; or, The Spirit of SolitudeBy Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is a woe too "deep for tears," when all

Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,

Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves

Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,

The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;

But pale despair and cold tranquillity,

Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,

Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

My Papa’s Waltz By Theodore Roethke

2012-01-09T07:45:00.002-05:00

My Papa’s Waltz - By Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother’s countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt.

Winter Thanks

2012-01-02T11:12:00.002-05:00

Winter Thanks by Marcus Jackson

To the furnace—tall, steel rectangle
containing a flawless flame.
                     To heat

gliding through ducts, our babies
asleep like bundled opal.
                     Praise

every furry grain of every
warm hour, praise each
                     deflection of frost,

praise the fluent veins, praise
the repair person, trudging
                     in a Carhartt coat

to dig for leaky lines, praise
the equator, where snow
                     is a stranger,

praise the eminent sun
for letting us orbs buzz around it
                     like younger brothers,

praise the shooter's pistol
for silencing its fire by
                     reason of a chilly chamber

praise our ancestors who shuddered
through winters, bunched
                     on stark bunks,

praise the owed money
becoming postponed by a lender
                     who won't wait

much longer in the icy wind,
praise the neon antifreeze
                     in our Chevrolet radiator,

and praise the kettle whistle,
imitating an important train,
                     delivering us

these steam-brimmed sips of tea.

"Winter Thanks" by Marcus Jackson, from Neighborhood Register. © Cavan Kerry Press, 2011. Reprinted with permission. - Thanks to the Writers Almanac

The Clock

2012-01-01T10:59:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year! - The Clock

by Dennis O'Driscoll

With only one story to tell, the clock strikes
a monotonous note, irrespective of how
musical the bell, how gilded the chimes
its timely conclusions report through.
Time literally on hands, it informs you
to your face exactly where you stand
in relation to your aspirations, stacks up
the odds against your long-term prospects,
leaves your hopes and expectations checked.
Keeping track of time to the last second, it gives
the lie to all small talk about your reputedly
youthful looks, sees through the subterfuge
of dyed hair, exposes the stark truth beneath
the massaged evidence of smooth skin.

"The Clock" by Dennis O'Driscoll, from Reality Check. © Copper Canyon Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T08:11:00.002-05:00

53 by E. E. Cummings

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
for even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

Shoveling Snow

2011-12-15T12:54:00.003-05:00

Shoveling Snow by Kirsten Dierking

If day after day I was caught inside
this muffle and hush

I would notice how birches
move with a lovely hum of spirits,

how falling snow is a privacy
warm as the space for sleeping,

how radiant snow is a dream
like leaving behind the body

and rising into that luminous place
where sometimes you meet

the people you've lost. How
silver branches scrawl their names

in tangled script against the white.
How the curves and cheekbones

of all my loved ones appear
in the polished marble of drifts.

Thanks to The Writers Almanac

Duino Elegies - Rilke

2011-12-04T10:29:00.001-05:00

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers?
Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the
emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight

Today is the birthday of poet Rainer Maria Rilke (books by this author), born in Prague (1875). He was a delicate boy, born prematurely. The year before he was born, his mother had given birth to a girl who died after a week, and she wanted her son to fill that place. Rainer's given name was René, and his mother dressed him in dresses, braided his hair, and treated him like a girl. Later, he wrote, "I think my mother played with me as though I were a big doll." But his mother also encouraged him to read and write poetry, and made him copy out verses before he even knew how to read. He made a career as a poet by seducing a series of rich noblewomen who would support him while he wrote his books. One princess let him live for a while in her Castle Duino near Trieste, a medieval castle with fortified walls and an ancient square tower. Rilke's room had a view of the gulf of Trieste, which he loved. In a letter from his room he wrote, "I am looking out into the empty sea-space, directly into the universe, you might say." It was during the winter of 1912, alone in the castle, that Rilke later said he heard the voice of an angel speaking to him about the meaning of life and death, and he started a poem that began with the lines, "And if I cried, who'd listen to me in those angelic / orders? Even if one of them suddenly held me / to his heart, I'd vanish in his overwhelming / presence. Because beauty's nothing but the start of terror we can hardly bear, / and we adore it because of the serene scorn / it could kill us with. Every angel's terrifying."

Hear My Prayer, O Lord...

2011-11-27T07:58:00.001-05:00

Hear My Prayer, O Lord... by Barbara Hamby

Hear my prayer, O Lord, though all I do all day is watch
old black-and-white movies on TV. Speak to me
through William Powell or Myrna Loy, solve the mystery
of my sloth. Show me the way to take a walk or catch
a cold, anything but read another exposé
of the Kennedys. Teach me to sing or at least play
the piano. For ten years I took lessons, and all
I learned was to hate Bach. Shake me up or down. Call
me names. Break my ears with AC/DC—I deserve far
worse. Rebuke me in front of my ersatz friends. Who cares?
They don't like me much anyway. Make me fat in lieu
of thin. Give me a break or don't. I'm a hundred million
molecules in search of an author. If that's you, thank you
for my skin. Without it I'd be in worse shape than I'm in.

"Hear My Prayer, O Lord..." by Barbara Hamby, from All-Night Lingo Tango. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. Reprinted with permission - Thanks to The Writers Almanac

RIP - Ruth Stone

2011-11-24T09:30:00.001-05:00

Ruth Stone has died 11/24/2011

Good Advice

Here is not exactly here
because it passed by there
two seconds ago;
where it will not come back.
Although you adjust to this-
it's nothing, you say,
just the way it is.
How poor we are,
with all this running
through our fingers.
"Here," says the Devil,
"Eat. It's Paradise."

********************************

Relatives

Grandma lives in this town;
in fact all over this town.
Granpa's dead.
Uncle Heery's brain-dead,
and them aunts! Well!
It's grandma you have to contend with.
She's here - she's there!
She works in the fast food hangout.
She's doing school lunches.
She's the crossing guard at the school corner.
She's the librarian's assistant.
She's part-time in the real estate office.
She's stuffing envelopes.
She gets up at three A.M.
to go to the screw factory;
and at night she's at the business school
taking a course in computer science.
Now you take this next town.
Grandpa's laid out in the cemetery
and grandma's gone wild and bought a bus ticket
to Disneyland.
Uncle Bimbo's been laid up for ten years
and them aunts
are all cashiers in ladies' clothing
and grandma couldn't stand the sight of them
washing their hands and their hair
and their panty hose.
"It's Marine World for me" grandma says.

Copyright © 1997 by Ruth Stone. First published in Prairie Schooner 71:1 (Spring 1997)

2011-11-21T10:12:00.001-05:00

Turkeys by Mary Mackey

One November
a week before Thanksgiving
the Ohio river froze
and my great uncles
put on their coats
and drove the turkeys
across the ice
to Rosiclare
where they sold them
for enough to buy
my grandmother
a Christmas doll
with blue china eyes

I like to think
of the sound of
two hundred turkey feet
running across to Illinois
on their way
to the platter
the scrape of their nails
and my great uncles
in their homespun leggings
calling out gee and haw and git
to them as if they
were mules

I like to think of the Ohio
at that moment
the clear cold sky
the green river sleeping
under the ice
before the land got stripped
and the farm got sold
and the water turned the color
of whiskey
and all the uncles
lay down
and never got up again

I like to think of the world
before some genius invented
turkeys with pop-up plastic
thermometers
in their breasts
idiot birds
with no wildness left in them
turkeys that couldn't run the river
to save their souls

"Turkeys" by Mary Mackey, from Breaking the Fever. © Marsh Hawk Press, 2006. Reprinted with permission.

In The Secular Night

2011-11-18T07:59:00.001-05:00

In the Secular Night by Margaret Atwood

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.

Now, forty years later, things have changed,
and it's baby lima beans.
It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.
You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn't now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone's been run over.
The century grinds on.

"In the Secular Night" by Margaret Atwood, from Morning in the Burned House. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.- Thanks to NPR

Falling Leaves and Early Snow

2011-11-15T07:43:00.001-05:00

Falling Leaves and Early Snow by Kenneth Rexroth

In the years to come they will say,
"They fell like the leaves
In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine
November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.

In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.
"Falling Leaves and Early Snow" by Kenneth Rexroth, from The Collected Shorter Poems. © New Directions Publishing Corporations, 2003

2011-11-14T07:38:00.001-05:00

The Return of the Subjunctive by Tamara Madison

Oh, the Subjunctive,May it make its bold return!
May it ride back proud
In liveried coach,
May its two fine horses snort
And paw the ground,
And, escorted by its staunch
Attendants If and Whether,
May it descend in velvet cloak
And black-gloved hand
The lacquered steps of hope
And happenstance.
May it fix upon us its deep
Uncertain gaze!
I shall be there to greet it
Though my company
Be small and moody.
I shall beg it stay
And may its presence give
Some respite from the steely glare
Of Indicative, a mantle to shield us
From Passive's clammy chill.
May it light again the land
Between the world that was
And is, and that which still might be,
And may we tread again desire's
Leaf-dappled path
Of possibility.

"The Return of the Subjunctive" by Tamara Madison, from Wild Domestic. © Pearl Editions, 2011. Reprinted with permission

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself

2011-10-29T07:55:00.003-04:00

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself, by Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

"Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself," by Barbara Crooker, from Radiance. © Word Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission

What She Craved

2011-10-22T08:23:00.001-04:00

What she craved by Marge Piercy

My mother sugared grapefruit;
my father salted it.
My mother sugared cantaloupe;
my father salted it.

My mother put sugar and lemon
on leaf lettuce from her garden;
two heaping teaspoonfuls into
her milky coffee, with cake.

Her teeth rotted out and were
yanked from her bleeding jaws
by a cheap sadist downtown.
Still she craved sweetness.

In a life with too much that
was bitter, tear soaked salty,
sour as unspoken grief,
sugar was her comfort

a little sweetness in the mouth
lingering like an infrequent kiss.;
sugar was the friend kept her clock
ticking through running down days.

"What she craved" by Marge Piercy, from The Art of Blessing the Day. © Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Reprinted with permission

From Out The Cave

2011-10-18T07:58:00.001-04:00

From Out the Cave by Joyce Sutphen
(Thanks to The Writers Almanac)

When you have been
at war with yourself
for so many years that
you have forgotten why,
when you have been driving
for hours and only
gradually begin to realize
that you have lost the way,
when you have cut
hastily into the fabric,
when you have signed
papers in distraction,
when it has been centuries
since you watched the sun set
or the rain fall, and the clouds,
drifting overhead, pass as flat
as anything on a postcard;
when, in the midst of these
everyday nightmares, you
understand that you could
wake up,
you could turn
and go back
to the last thing you
remember doing
with your whole heart:
that passionate kiss,
the brilliant drop of love
rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,
then you wake,
you stumble from your cave,
blinking in the sun,
naming every shadow
as it slips.

"From Out the Cave" by Joyce Sutphen, from Straight Out of View. © Beacon Press, 1995. Reprinted with permission

"Jane" by George Bilgere.

2011-10-09T10:20:00.002-04:00

Jane by George Bilgere

Jane, the old woman across the street,
is lugging big black trash bags to the curb.
It's snowing hard, and the bags are turning white,
gradually disappearing in the storm.

Jane is getting ready to put her house on the market
and move into a home of some sort. A facility.
She's just too old to keep the place going anymore,
and as we chat about this on the sidewalk
I'm thinking, I'm so glad this isn't going to happen to me.

It seems like a terrible fate, to drag out your trash bags
and then head for a facility somewhere.
And all the worse to be old in a facility. But then,
that's the whole reason you go there in the first place.

But the great thing about being me, I'm thinking,
as I continue my morning walk around the block,
is that I'm not going to a facility of any sort.

That's for other people. I intend to go on
pretty much as I always have, enjoying life,
taking my morning walk, then coffee
and the newspaper, music and a good book.
Europe vaguely in the summers.
Then another year just like this one, on and on,
ad infinitum.

Why change this? I have no intention of doing so.
What Jane is doing—growing old,
taking out her ominous black trash bags
to vanish terribly in the snow, getting ready
for someone to drive her to the facility—

that may be her idea of the future (which I totally respect),
but it certainly isn't mine.

"Jane" by George Bilgere.

2011-10-07T09:33:00.000-04:00

The Barefoot Boy- John Greenleaf Whittier

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim`s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy, -
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, - the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye, -
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood`s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor`s rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee`s morning chase,
Of the wild-flower`s time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole`s nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape`s clusters shine;
Of the black wasp`s cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy, -
Blessings on the barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood`s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O`er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs` orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt`s for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

Reverie and Invocation

2011-09-28T10:20:00.002-04:00

Thanks to The Writers Almanac - Reverie and Invocationby William Carlos Williams

Whether the rain comes down
or there be sunny days
the sleets of January or the haze
of autumn afternoons, when
we dream of our youth our gaze
grows mellow, wise man or fool,
we were young, the future
beckoned us.

Now we grow old and grey
and all we knew is forgotten
there comes alive in
the ash of today, memory! a god
who revives us! the apple trees
we climbed as a boy
the caress on our necks of
a summer breeze.

Come back and give us
those days when passion drove us
to break every rule.
We weren't bad, but good!
May our preachers find us
the courage still to sin so
and win so! and win so!
a life everlasting.

"Reverie and Invocation" by William Carlos Williams, from Collected Poems. © New Directions, 1962. Reprinted with permission

Stop All The Clocks

2011-09-20T09:43:00.000-04:00

For my brother ---

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

By W. H. Auden
4 Weddings and a Funeral Video link - John Hannah

Love Poem

2011-09-18T11:31:00.001-04:00

by Paul Zimmer

In southern France live two old horses,
High in the foothills, not even French,
But English, retired steeplechasers
Brought across to accept an old age
Of ambling together in the Pyrenees
.At times they whinny and kick
At one another with impatience,
But they have grown to love each other.

In time the gelding grows ill
And is taken away for treatment.
The mare pines, pokes at her food,
Dallies on her rides until the other
Comes home.
She is in her stall
When the trailer rumbles
Through the gate into the field,
And she sings with impatience
Until her door is opened.
Then full
Of sound and speed, in need of
Each other, they entwine their necks,
Rub muzzles, bumping flanks
To embrace in their own way.
Together they prance to
The choicest pasture,
Standing together and apart,
To be glad until
They can no longer be glad.

Heaven

2011-09-03T10:12:00.002-04:00

by Patrick Phillips

It will be the past
and we'll live there together.

Not as it was to live
but as it is remembered.

It will be the past.
We'll all go back together.

Everyone we ever loved,
and lost, and must remember.

It will be the past.
And it will last forever.

"Heaven" by Patrick Phillips, from Boy. © The University of Georgia Press, 2008.

September

2011-08-31T08:18:00.002-04:00

September

by Linda Pastan

it rained in my sleep
and in the morning the fields were wet

I dreamed of artillery
of the thunder of horses

in the morning the fields were strewn
with twigs and leaves

as if after a battle
or a sudden journey

I went to sleep in the summer
I dreamed of rain

in the morning the fields were wet
and it was autumn

"September" by Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.

She Comes Not When Noon Is On The Roses

2011-08-24T16:46:00.001-04:00

SHE COMES NOT WHEN NOON IS ON THE ROSES
By Herbert Trench

She comes not when Noon is on the roses--
Too bright is Day.
She comes not to the Soul till it reposes
From work and play.

But when Night is on the hills, and the great Voices
Roll in from Sea,
By starlight and by candlelight and dreamlight
She comes to me.

See my site for A Month in The Country

Charm - Rupert Brooke

2011-08-24T11:32:00.000-04:00

In darkness the loud sea makes moan;

And earth is shaken, and all evils creep

About her ways.

Oh, now to know you sleep!

Out of the whirling blinding moil, alone,

Out of the slow grim fight,

One thought to wing -- to you, asleep,

In some cool room that's open to the night

Lying half-forward, breathing quietly,

One white hand on the white

Unrumpled sheet, and the ever-moving hair

Quiet and still at length! . . .

Your magic and your beauty and your strength,

Like hills at noon or sunlight on a tree,

Sleeping prevail in earth and air.

In the sweet gloom above the brown and white

Night benedictions hover; and the winds of night

Move gently round the room, and watch you there.

And through the dreadful hours

The trees and waters and the hills have kept

The sacred vigil while you slept,

And lay a way of dew and flowers

Where your feet, your morning feet, shall tread.

And still the darkness ebbs about your bed.

Quiet, and strange, and loving-kind, you sleep.

And holy joy about the earth is shed;

And holiness upon the deep.

Ode to Solitude

2011-08-24T11:28:00.002-04:00

Alexander Pope,1688-1744.

ODE ON SOLITUDE

Happy the man,whose wish and care

A few paternalacres bound,

In his ownground.

Whose herds withmilk, whose fields with bread,

Whose flockssupply him with attire,

Whose trees insummer yield him shade,

In winter fire.

Blest, who canunconcern'dly find

Hours, days, andyears slide soft away,

In health ofbody, peace of mind,

Quiet by day,

Sound sleep bynight; study and ease,

Together mixt;sweet recreation;

And innocence,which most does please

With meditation.

Thus let melive, unseen, unknown,

Thus unlamentedlet me die,

Steal from theworld, and not a stone

Tell where Ilie.

Read by Ruth on the death of Roz on the BBC's Spooks

The Night Journey - Rupert Brooke

2011-08-21T08:50:00.001-04:00

The Night Journey - Rupert Brooke

HANDS and lit faces eddy to a line;
The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies.
Beyond the great-swung arc o’ the roof, divine,
Night, smoky-scarv’d, with thousand coloured eyes

Glares the imperious mystery of the way.
Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train
Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway,
Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again.…

As a man, caught by some great hour, will rise,
Slow-limbed, to meet the light or find his love;
And, breathing long, with staring sightless eyes,
Hands out, head back, agape and silent, move

Sure as a flood, smooth as a vast wind blowing;
And, gathering power and purpose as he goes,
Unstumbling, unreluctant, strong, unknowing,
Borne by a will not his, that lifts, that grows,

Sweep out to darkness, triumphing in his goal,
Out of the fire, out of the little room.…
—There is an end appointed, O my soul!
Crimson and green the signals burn; the gloom

Is hung with steam’s far-blowing livid streamers.
Lost into God, as lights in light, we fly,
Grown one with will, end-drunken huddled dreamers.
The white lights roar. The sounds of the world die.

And lips and laughter are forgotten things.
Speed sharpens; grows. Into the night, and on,
The strength and splendour of our purpose swings.
The lamps fade; and the stars. We are alone.

The Ordinary Weather of Summer

2011-08-16T07:49:00.004-04:00

The Ordinary Weather of Summer (The Writer's Almanac)
by Linda Pastan

In the ordinary weather of summer
with storms rumbling from west to east
like so many freight trains hauling
their cargo of heat and rain,
the dogs sprawl on the back steps, panting,
insects assemble at every window,
and we quarrel again, bombarding
each other with small grievances,
our tempers flashing on and off
in bursts of heat lightning.
In the cooler air of morning,
we drink our coffee amicably enough
and walk down to the sea
which seems to tremble with meaning
and into which we plunge again and again.
The days continue hot.
At dusk the shadows are as blue
as the lips of the children stained
with berries or with the chill
of too much swimming.
So we move another summer closer
to our last summer together—
a time as real and implacable as the sea
out of which we come walking
on wobbly legs as if for the first time,
drying ourselves with rough towels,
shaking the water out of our blinded eyes.

"The Ordinary Weather of Summer" by Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998. © W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.

When Summer's Night Is Ending

2011-08-15T07:42:00.004-04:00

XXXIX (from Last Poems) - A.E. Housman
(Ed Note: For My Brother)

When summer's end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset
Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
That looked to Wales away
And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven
The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
And hushed the countryside,
But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall
In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
And darkness hard at hand,
And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy
The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
Breathed from beyond the snows,
And I had hope of those.

They came and were and are not
And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
That ever can ensue
Must now be worse and few.

So here's an end of roaming
On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
For summer's parting sighs,
And then the heart replies.

2011-08-14T09:00:00.002-04:00

Custer -by David Shumate

He is a hard one to write a poem about. Like Napolean.
Hannibal. Genghis Khan. Already so large in history. To do it
right, I have to sit down with him. At a place of his own
choosing. Probably a steakhouse. We take a table in a corner.
But people still recognize him, come up and slap him on the
back, say how much they enjoyed studying about him in school
and ask for his autograph. After he eats, he leans back and
lights up a cigar and asks me what I want to know. Notebook in
hand, I suggest that we start with the Little Big Horn and work
our way back. But I realize I have offended him. That he
would rather take it the other way around. So he rants on
about the Civil War, the way west, the loyalty of good soldiers
and now and then twists his long yellow hair with his fingers.
But when he gets to the part about Sitting Bull, about Crazy
Horse, he develops a twitch above his right eye, raises his
finger for the waiter, excuses himself and goes to the restroom
while I sit there along the bluffs with the entire Sioux nation,
awaiting his return.

"Custer" by David Shumate, from High Water Mark. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004. Reprinted with permission.

Philip Larkin - Poet Laureate

2011-08-10T07:30:00.002-04:00

"HE WOULD NEVER USE ONE WORD WHERE NONE WOULD DO"

If you said "Nice day," he would look up
at the three clouds riding overhead,
nod at each, and go back to doing what-
ever he was doing or not doing.
If you asked for a smoke or a light,
he'd hand you whatever he found
in his pockets: a jackknife, a hankie --
usually unsoiled -- a dollar bill,
a subway token. Once he gave me
half the sandwich he was eating
at the little outdoor restaurant
on La Guardia Place. I remember
a single sparrow was perched on the back
of his chair, and when he held out
a piece of bread on his open palm,
the bird snatched it up and went back to
its place without even a thank you,
one hard eye staring at my bad eye
as though I were next. That was in May
of '97, spring had come late,
but the sun warmed both of us for hours
while silence prevailed, if you can call
the blaring of taxi horns and the trucks
fighting for parking and the kids on skates
streaming past silence. My friend Frankie
was such a comfort to me that year,
the year of the crisis. He would turn
up his great dark head just going gray
until his eyes met mine, and that was all
I needed to go on talking nonsense
as he sat patiently waiting me out,
the bird staring over his shoulder.
"Silence is silver," my Zaydee had said,
getting it wrong and right, just as he said
"Water is thicker than blood," thinking
this made him a real American.
Frankie was already American,
being half German, half Indian.
Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words. [bolding mine]

The Round

2011-08-06T10:52:00.002-04:00

The Round - by Stanley Kunitz - Thanks to NPR

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
and still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
"Light splashed..."

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.

"The Round" by Stanley Kunitz, from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz. © W.W. Norton, 2000. Reprinted with permission

Rylance recites Walking Through A Wall - This year's Tonys

2011-07-30T09:39:00.005-04:00

More Jenkins/Rylance. Acceptance speech this year's Tonys, turns again to another poem by Wisconsin poet Louis Jenkins Walking Through A Wall

Mark Rylance accepts his Tony - 2008

2011-07-30T09:30:00.001-04:00

The speech is a poem by the Poet Louis Jenkins

My Own Heart

2011-07-28T07:55:00.002-04:00

The Writers Almanac: My Own Heart
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

Today is the birthday of English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844) (books by this author), born in Stratford, Essex. He won a poetry prize in grammar school and then received a grant to study at Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied Classics and continued to write poetry. His academic record was outstanding, earning him the approbation of one of his masters, who called him "the star of Balliol." While he was at Oxford, Hopkins (who had been raised in the Anglican Church) converted to Roman Catholicism. His experience was so profound that he decided to become a Jesuit priest in 1868, and he burned all his poetry, feeling it was not befitting his profession as a clergyman. He did continue to keep a journal, however, and in 1875, he returned to poetry. He was living in Wales, and found its landscape and its language inspirational. When five Franciscan nuns died in a shipwreck, he was moved to write a long poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland. Once he was ordained in 1877, he worked as a parish priest in the slums of Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow. He lived in Dublin from 1884 until his death of typhoid fever in 1889. Overworked, exhausted, and unwell, he wasn't happy there, and his poetry reflects his unhappiness. Called the "terrible sonnets," they show the poet's struggles with spiritual and artistic matters. Most of his poetry wasn't published in his lifetime, and it was so innovative that most people who did get to read it didn't understand it. As he wrote in a letter to Burns, "No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness ..." But it influenced such 20th-century poets as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Charles Wright

Toward Paris

2011-07-24T09:16:00.003-04:00

The Writers Almanac : Toward Paris [ed note: I know how he feels] - by Peter Makuck

My first time on the night train
I couldn't sleep

With expectation, the lucky
Shapes of houses wrapped in dream—

Trees slowed, then creaked to a stop.
4:00 a.m. under country stars.

Lower the window: new air,
A deserted dirt road and

A peasant pedaling away,
A wand-like loaf in his hand,

Tail-light growing weak
Red in the dark, as if his work

Was to bring fresh light
To woods and fields. He did,

Keeping me there at that
Balanced blue hour even later

In the Sainte Chappelle,
The blur of the Louvre and after.

The daisy follows soft the sun

2011-07-11T10:21:00.000-04:00

The daisy follows soft the sun
by Emily Dickinson

The daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
"Because, sir, love is sweet!"

We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
We nearer steal to Thee, —
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night's possibility!
"The daisy follows soft the sun..." by Emily Dickinson. Public domain

Josh Ritter

2011-06-28T07:34:00.001-04:00

Lyrics | Thin Blue Flame lyrics

The Barefoot Boy - John Greenleaf Whittier

2011-06-26T09:30:00.004-04:00

No one reads Whittier any more, but he was a favorite of my youth. A copy of the painting by Winslow Homer hangs above my bed.

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,—
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art,—the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,—
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood’s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee’s morning chase,
Of the wild-flower’s time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole’s nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;
Of the black wasp’s cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,—
Blessings on the barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O’er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt’s for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

Flying - Philip F Deaver

2011-06-18T11:07:00.000-04:00

Flying - From the Writer's Almanac

I have a flying dream,
have since I was a kid.
In it, I remember suddenly
how to fly, something
for some reason I've forgotten;
by getting to a certain place
in my mind, I'm able simply to rise.
I go up only about sixty or seventy feet,
but that's high enough to look down on
my house, the one I grew up in,
in Tuscola, look down on it
and the trees of the neighborhood;
it's high enough to watch my father
from above as he leaves for work,
to see my mother as she gathers grapes
from the backyard arbor,
to see my sister in her pretty dress,
pulling all her friends in our wagon
down the long, new sidewalks,
to see our many dogs over the years—
high enough to see the blur of childhood,
to put my quiet shadow over all of us
early on. In the dream it's a summer's day
and I might sometimes also
be the one looking up, squinting hard
and seeing way high above
birds moving, black spots against the blue

Under The Waterfall

2011-06-06T07:36:00.000-04:00

Under the Waterfall- By Thomas Hardy

"Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from the thickening shroud of grey.
Hence the only prime
And real love-rhyme
That I know by heart
And that leaves no smart,
Is the purl of a little valley fall
About three spans wide and two spans tall
Over a table of solid rock
And into a scoop of the self-same block;
The purl of a runlet that never ceases
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
With a hollow, boiling voice it speaks
And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks."
"And why gives this the only prime
Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?
And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?"
"Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
Though where precisely none ever has known,
Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
And by now with its smoothness opalised,
Is a drinking-glass:
For, down that pass,
My love and I
Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,
In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet's rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I thrust my arm below
Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe
From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass we used, and the cascade's rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.
"By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours,
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turn therefrom sipped lovers' wine.

During the Assassinations

2011-06-05T09:57:00.000-04:00

During the Assassinations by Maxine Kumin

I took the cello to its lesson,
the cheerleader to the gym.
I was a sixties soccer mom

and when the bassoon needed
double reeds to suck on
I scoured Boston.

I bought red knee-highs for the cheerleader.
Skirts wide enough to straddle
the cello onstage.

Cacophony of warm-up, then
the oboe's A, every
good boy does fine, football

games with fake pompoms
siss-boom-ba and after,
gropings under the grandstands.

I went where I was called to go.
I clapped, I comforted.
I kept my eyes on Huntley and Brinkley.

During the assassinations
I marched with other soccer moms.
I carried lemons in case of tear gas.

I have a dream became my dream.
I stood all night
on the steps of the Pentagon.

With each new death
I added my grief
To the grief of millions

but always her pink suit
on the flat trunk of the limousine
and in her hand a piece of his skull.

"During the Assassinations" by Maxine Kumin, from Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2010

Now I Become Myself

2011-06-04T09:27:00.000-04:00

Now I Become Myself by May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

"Now I Become Myself" by May Sarton, from Collected Poems 1930-1993. © W.W. Norton, 1993

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

2011-05-31T08:02:00.000-04:00

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night by Walt Whitman
Thanks to The Writers Almanac

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night;
When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,
One look I but gave which your dear eyes return'd with a look I shall never forget,
One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach'd up as you lay on the ground,
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle,
Till late in the night reliev'd to the place at last again I made my way,
Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses,
(never again on earth responding,)
Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind,
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field spreading,
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night,
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed,
Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands,
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade—not a tear,
not a word,
Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier,
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole,
Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death,
I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again,)
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear'd,
My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well his form,
Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet,
And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug
grave I deposited,
Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim,
Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten'd,
I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket,
And buried him where he fell.

"Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night" by Walt Whitman. Public domain.

Goosefeathers

2011-05-20T07:37:00.003-04:00

Goosefeathers by Donald Hall
(Thanks to The Writers Almanac)

When I was twelve I sat by myself in the steamliner
with a shoebox of sandwiches and deviled eggs
my mother made, and ate everything right away
as the train headed north by the Sound where trestles
of derelict trolley lines roosted nations of seagulls.
From South Station I took a taxi across Boston
to a shabby, black locomotive with coal car
that pulled two rickety coaches. It puffed past
long lines of empty commuter trains, past
suburbs thick with houses, past the milltowns
of Lawrence and Lowell, until the track curved
into New Hampshire's pastures of Holstein cattle.
My grandfather waited in his overalls at the depot
with horse and buggy to carry me to the farmhouse,
to fricasseed chicken, corn on the cob, and potatoes.
At nine o'clock, after shutting up the chickens
from skunk and fox, we sat by the cabinet radio
for Gabriel Heatter booming news of the war.
I slept through the night on my goosefeather bed.

"Goosefeathers" by Donald Hall, from The Back Chamber. © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

Jamaica

2011-05-15T09:34:00.000-04:00

Thanks to The Writers Almanac -- Jamaica by Michael Lind

In Jamaica, no grief's allowed.
There the rooftops are smile-white and the terrace pools,
          chairs and shirts are horizon-blue;
laughter's greener and song blacker than dragonflies;
          talk's resilient as hammock string.
Sorrow, though, has a home anywhere people are.
          From the suitcases tourists bring
it will wriggle and slip. It will be swept ashore,
          gripping branches a storm broke off.
I've not visited that island, and yet I'm sure,
          even there in Jamaica, on
afternoons when the blank porcelain dazzle breaks
          into chips on a million waves,
lizardlike on a wall sadness will blink and crawl.

"Jamaica" by Michael Lind, from Parallel Lives. © Etruscan Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission

Being a Little Well

2011-05-14T07:56:00.003-04:00

Being a Little Well - By Brian Aldiss

Couldn't you be a little well
For a little while longer?
Oh how I love your presence
And your virtue
If you could be just a little stronger
Would that hurt you?
All fair things perish, we know,
Yet death is a horrid surprise –
Just to see you so low
It rips my heart in two.
Tears burst unprompted from my eyes
Is there nothing I can do?
No, there's nothing I can do.
Just for a little while
Be a little well, love, if you can
Grant me that lovely smile.
I promise I'll smile too.
As I hold your frail hand, I'll
Hold back the chill that will befall.
Can't you be a little well at all?

from Mortal Morning, published by Flambard Press (£12.99). - Thanks to The Guardian

Daffodils

2011-04-19T07:55:00.002-04:00

Daffodils by May Swenson

Yellow telephones
in a row in the garden
are ringing,
shrill with light.

Old-fashioned spring
brings earliest models out
each April the same,
naïve and classical.

Look into the yolk-
colored mouthpieces
alert with echoes.
Say hello to time.

"Daffodils" by May Swenson, from Nature: Poems Old and New. © Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

2011-04-17T10:48:00.000-04:00

Keeping Things Whole By Mark Strand

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

God Says Yes To Me

2011-04-17T07:38:00.000-04:00

God Says Yes To Me by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

"God Says Yes To Me" by Kaylin Haught, from The Palm of Your Hand. © Tilbury House Publishers, 1995.

Mockingbirds

2011-04-16T20:28:00.003-04:00

by Mary Oliver

This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing
the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing
better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.
In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door
to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,
but gods.
It is my favorite story--
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give
but their willingness
to be attentive--
but for this alone
the gods loved them
and blessed them--
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water
from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,
and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down--
but still they asked for nothing
but the difficult life
which they had already.
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.

Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning--
whatever it was I said
I would be doing--
I was standing
at the edge of the field--
I was hurrying
through my own soul,
opening its dark doors--
I was leaning out;
I was listening.

2011-04-16T20:16:00.002-04:00

" A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."

--John Keats

About A Boy Stirring Jam

2011-04-08T11:09:00.000-04:00

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,
Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan
Plum magma’s bubbles blather.
For someone who can’t grasp the whole
There’s salvation in the remembered detail.
What, back then, did I know about that?
The real, hard as a diamond,
Was to happen in the indefinable
Future, and everything seemed
Only a sign of what was to come. How naïve.
Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin
And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.

— janusz szuber

Dance Me to the End of Love

2011-04-07T23:19:00.002-04:00

by Leonard Cohen

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on

Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

I started early, took my dog

2011-04-07T16:35:00.001-04:00

I started Early – Took my Dog By Emily Dickinson

I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –

And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – upon the Sands

But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Boddice – too –

And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve –
And then – I started – too –

And He – He followed – close behind –
I felt His Silver Heel
Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –

Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –

Title used by Kate Atkinson for her new novel, "Started Early, Took My Dog"

The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon

2011-04-04T10:55:00.000-04:00

From Knopf's poem a day:

The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon by David Young

Someone was reading in the back,
two travelers had gone somewhere,
maybe to Chicago,

a boy was out walking, muffled up,
alert on the frozen creek,
a sauce was simmering on the stove.

Birds outside at the feeder
threw themselves softly
from branch to branch.

Suddenly I did not want my life
to be any different.
I was where I needed to be.

The birds swirled in the dusk.
The boy came back from the creek.
The dead were holding us up

the way the ice held him,
helping us breathe the way
air helps snowflakes swirl and fall.

And the sadness felt just right,
like a still and moving wave
on which the sun shone brilliantly

A Cristobel La Motte poem - from the novel Possession

2011-04-01T08:10:00.001-04:00

A Cristobel La Motte poem - from the novel Possession by A.S. Byatt:

Gloves lie together
Limp and calm
Finger to finger
Palm to palm
With whitest tissue
To embalm
In these quiet cases
With hands creep
With supple stretchings
Out of sleep
Fingers clasp fingers
Troth to keep

—C.LaMotte

Article: On Possession - By A.S.Byatt

And that made me think of this scene from The Age Of Innocence

His Good Felt Hat

2011-03-27T10:24:00.000-04:00

His Good Felt Hat by Bruce Taylor

All dogs and children awaiting
his flat ascending steps
up the steepest hill
for miles around,
hunched over, hands deep
into the jingle of his pockets

full of keys and key chain,
change purse, small change,
clean hanky, subway tokens, Tums
and Lifesavers or better yet,

Chicklets, or cough-drops, or gum
he'd give some to any grandchild
who could spell his word for the day
or who had learned another verse
from Proverbs or the Psalms

with his good felt hat in his hand
and his jacket folded neatly
over the other shoulder,
and his always white shirt
and his pin for perfect attendance
in the too wide lapel
of his second best suit

and his braces, belt
with initialed buckle,
vest, vest-chain, fob,
collar-stays, tie-pin,
cuff-links, Parker pen
and pencil set, glasses case,
address book and billfold

and if it was a Sunday
his best blue suit
and his bible, the small one,
and a white boutonniere
for his mother who was dead
and the envelopes for the offering.

"His Good Felt Hat" by Bruce Taylor, from Pity the World. © Plain View Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission.

Forgetfulness

2011-03-22T08:05:00.000-04:00

I may have posted this one sometime earlier, but it is worth repeating:

Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

"Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins. Used with permission of the poet. (buy now)

The Writers Almanac 3-20-11

2011-03-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

From The Writers Almanac:

Her life was plain, her death
a common death—a girl
sewn into the watery shroud
of pneumonia. She was only
another Mary, there
in Illinois, and it was only
another April—the buds
of the honeysuckle folded
in prayer. Forgotten eyes,
forgotten smile, the cowlick
in her hair forgotten;
everything gone. Yet for
seventy years her grave
gave off the scent of roses.

"A Ghost Story" by Ted Kooser, from Weather Central. © The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Prayer for our daughters

2011-03-17T08:10:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the Writers Almanac:

Prayer for Our Daughters by Mark Jarman

May they never be lonely at parties
Or wait for mail from people they haven't written
Or still in middle age ask God for favors
Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.

May hatred be like a habit they never developed
And can't see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking.
If they forget themselves, may it be in music
Or the kind of prayer that makes a garden of thinking.

May they enter the coming century
Like swans under a bridge into enchantment
And take with them enough of this century
To assure their grandchildren it really happened.

May they find a place to love, without nostalgia
For some place else that they can never go back to.
And may they find themselves, as we have found them,
Complete at each stage of their lives, each part they add to.

May they be themselves, long after we've stopped watching.
May they return from every kind of suffering
(Except the last, which doesn't bear repeating)
And be themselves again, both blessed and blessing.

"Prayer for Our Daughters" by Mark Jarman, from Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

The Beatles

2011-03-13T10:39:00.000-04:00

The Beatles by Dorianne Laux

I never really understood why The Beatles
broke up, the whole
Yoko Ono thing seemed an excuse
for something deeper.
Sure, she was an irritation
with her helium screech, her skimpy
leatherette skirts, those tinted ovoid glasses
eclipsing half her face.

                                 But come on, Hey Jude
was putting caviar on the table, not to mention
those glittering lines of cocaine. Beatle music
was playing for moats dug out with a fleet
of backhoes circling the stadium-sized perimeters
of four manicured estates. Why Don't We
Do It In the Road was backing up traffic
around the amphitheaters of the industrial world.
Yoko's avant-garde art projects and op-art
outfits were nothing against the shiploads of lucre
I'm Fixing a Hole and Here Comes the Sun
were bringing in.
                                 So why did they do it?
They had wives, kids, ex-wives, mortgages,
thoroughbreds and waist-coated butlers, lithe
young assistants power-lunching with publicists
in Paris, Rome. And they must have loved
one another almost as much as John
loved Yoko, brothers from the ghetto,
their shaggy heads touching
above the grand piano, their voices
straining toward perfect harmony.

                                 Maybe they arrived
at a place where nothing seemed real. A field
bigger than love or greed or jealousy.
An open space
where nothing is enough.

"The Beatles" by Dorianne Laux, from The Book of Men. © W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Sonnet - I am in need of music

2011-03-08T10:12:00.002-05:00

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

Elizabeth Bishop

From Committed To Memory by John Hollander

Remembered today because of a book review on memory, Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer in the NY Times

If The Owl Calls Again

2011-03-05T09:30:00.001-05:00

If the owl calls again:

at dusk
from the island in the river,
and it's not too cold,

I'll wait for the moon
to rise,
then take wing and glide
to meet him.

We will not speak,
but hooded against the frost
soar above
the alder flats, searching
with tawny eyes.

And then we'll sit
in the shadowy spruce
and pick the bones
of careless mice,

while the long moon drifts
toward Asia
and the river mutters
in its icy bed.

And when the morning climbs
the limbs
we'll part without a sound,

fulfilled, floating
homeward as
the cold world awakens.

John Haines

Perfection, Perfection

2011-02-27T10:55:00.000-05:00

Perfection, Perfection by Kilian McDonnell

("I will walk the way of perfection." Psalm 101:2)

I have had it with perfection.
I have packed my bags,
I am out of here.
Gone.

As certain as rain
will make you wet,
perfection will do you
in.

It droppeth not as dew
upon the summer grass
to give liberty and green
joy.

Perfection straineth out
the quality of mercy,
withers rapture at its
birth.

Before the battle is half begun,
cold probity thinks
it can't be won, concedes the
war.

I've handed in my notice,
given back my keys,
signed my severance check, I
quit.

Hints I could have taken:
Even the perfect chiseled form of
Michelangelo's radiant David
squints,

the Venus de Milo
has no arms,
the Liberty Bell is
cracked.

"Perfection, Perfection" by Kilian McDonnell, from Swift, Lord, You Are Not. © Saint John's University Press, 2003.

2011-02-24T16:32:00.002-05:00

why some people be

mad at me sometimes

they ask me to remember

but they want me to remember

their memories

and i keep on remembering

mine.

Lucille Clifton

The Blind Old Man

2011-02-16T08:06:00.000-05:00

Thanks to The Writers Almanac: The Blind Old Man by Robert Bly

I don't know why so much sweetness hovers around us.
Nor why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoons,
Nor why the earth mutters so much about its children.

We'll never know why the snow falls through the night,
Nor how the heron stretches her long legs,
Nor why we feel so abandoned in the morning.

We have never understood how birds manage to fly,
Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,
Nor how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.

We don't know why the rain falls so long.
The ditchdigger turns up one shovel after another.
The herons go on stitching the heavens together.

We've never heard about the day we were conceived
Nor the doctor who helped us to be born,
Nor that blind old man who decides when we will die.

It's hard to understand why the sun rises,
And why our children are mostly fond of us,
And why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoon.

The Best Thing I Did

2011-02-11T09:52:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the Writers Almanac: The Best Thing I Did by Ron Padgett

The best thing I did
for my mother
was to outlive her

for which I deserve
no credit

though it makes me glad
that she didn't have
to see me die

Like most people
(I suppose)
I feel I should
have done more
for her

Like what?
I wasn't such a bad son

I would have wanted
to have loved her as much
as she loved me
but I couldn't
I had a life a son of my own
a wife and my youth that kept going on
maybe too long

And now I love her more
and more

so that perhaps
when I die
our love will be the same

though I seriously doubt
my heart can ever be
as big as hers

"The Best Thing I Did" by Ron Padgett, from How Long. © Coffee House Press, 2011.

The Death Deal

2011-02-10T11:50:00.001-05:00

Thanks to The Writers Almanac -- The Death Deal by Ron Padgett

Ever since that moment
when it first occurred
to me that I would die
(like everyone on earth!)
I struggled against
this eventuality, but
never thought of
how I'd die, exactly,
until around thirty
I made a mental list:
hit by car, shot
in head by random ricochet,
crushed beneath boulder,
victim of gas explosion,
head banged hard
in fall from ladder,
vaporized in plane crash,
dwindling away with cancer,
and so on. I tried to think
of which I'd take
if given the choice,
and came up time
and again with He died
in his sleep.
Now that I'm officially old,
though deep inside not
old officially or otherwise,
I'm oddly almost cheered
by the thought
that I might find out
in the not too distant future.
Now for lunch.

"The Death Deal" by Ron Padgett, from How Long. © Coffee House Press, 2011.

Northwest Passage

2011-02-09T19:16:00.006-05:00

Northwest Passage

That faint line in the dark

might be the shore

of some heretofore unknown

small hour.

This fir-scent on the wind

must be the forests

of the unheard of month

between July and August.

-- James Richardson

For Valentine's Day

2011-02-09T11:01:00.002-05:00

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Wm Shakespeare

In Praise of a Teacher

2011-02-09T07:55:00.001-05:00

In Praise of a Teacher by Nikki Giovanni

The reason Miss Delaney was my favorite teacher, not just my
favorite English teacher, is that she would let me read any book I
wanted and would allow me to report on it. I had the pleasure of
reading The Scapegoat as well as We the Living as well as Silver Spoon (which was about a whole bunch of rich folk who were
unhappy), and Defender of the Damned, which was about
Clarence Darrow, which led me into Native Son because the real
case was defended by Darrow though in Native Son he got the
chair despite the fact that Darrow never lost a client to the chair
including Leopold and Loeb who killed Bobby Frank. Native Son
led me to Eight Men and all the rest of Richard Wright but I
preferred Langston Hughes at that time and Gwendolyn Brooks
and I did reports on both of them. I always loved English because
whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories
that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a
history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we
think we are; English is much more a story of who we really are.
It was, after all, Miss Delaney who introduced the class to My
candle burns at both ends; /It will not last the night; /But, ah, my
foes, and, oh, my friends— /It gives a lovely light. And I thought
YES. Poetry is the main line. English is the train.

"In Praise of a Teacher" by Nikki Giovanni, from Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea. © Harper Perennial, 2002.

First Night Floor Is Deck

2011-02-05T11:11:00.000-05:00

For Chris: First Night Floor is Deck by Victor W. Pearn

Nomenclature
in the Marine Corps:
hat is a cover,
bathroom is a head,
Drill Instructor is a DI,
and we have become ladies.

Thoughts swirling
in your brain,
you have lived through
a worse nightmare
than you ever
dreamed possible.

You asked for it.
You enlisted.
This is temporary.
This will pass.
What is the best way to survive?
Go through with it. You will make it.

If you can call two hours sleep
a night. That first night
calm, silent, peaceful,
your eyes close, mind slows,
then you hear Gabriel
sounding his trumpet.

"First Night Floor is Deck" by Victor W. Pearn, from Devil Dogs and Jarheads. © Busca, Inc, 2003

Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom

2011-02-02T11:02:00.001-05:00

Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom
by Dorothy Parker

Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend—
Bed awaits me at the end.

Though I go in pride and strength,
I'll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I'm bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall—
I'm a fool to rise at all!

"Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom" by Dorothy Parker, from The Poetry & Short Stories of Dorothy Parker. © The Modern Library, 1994. Reprinted with permission

Somewhere in the World

2011-01-24T10:35:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in the World by Linda Pastan

Somewhere in the world
something is happening
which will make its slow way here.

A cold front will come to destroy
the camellias, or perhaps it will be
a heat wave to scorch them.

A virus will move without passport
or papers to find me as I shake
a hand or kiss a cheek.

Somewhere a small quarrel
has begun, a few overheated words
ignite a conflagration,

and the smell of smoke
is on its way;
the smell of war.

Wherever I go I knock on wood—
on tabletops or tree trunks.
I rinse my hands over and over again;

I scan the newspapers
and invent alarm codes which are not
my husband's birthdate or my own.

But somewhere something is happening
against which there is no planning, only
those two aging conspirators, Hope and Luck.

"Somewhere in the World" by Linda Pastan, from Traveling Light. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. Reprinted with permission

What We All Once Were

2011-01-22T10:39:00.000-05:00

What We All Once Were - Christopher Murphy (For the Warner, Stampul, Seibel and Murphy Families)

Because they're beautiful (ALL of them)
Because they make life bearable.
Because they're innocent
And because they're not.

Because they laugh without sadness,
Because their faces are unmarked by sneers.
Because they run for no reason,
Because they jump on you
Without guilt
While you're sleeping.

Because they make you tired ( a good tired)
Because they pick you up.
Because they'll throw a block at your head
Out of love.
Because they'll hug a porcupine
Given half a chance.

Because they really sleep,
Because their dreams are vivid
And unknowable.
Because their faces are tatooed with food,
And because they're beautiful (ALL of them)

One of Mine - 1985

2011-01-20T15:15:00.000-05:00

Morning sun dancing on the table,
Bright now that autumn's come.

It's quiet here. So good to be
In the kitchen this September,
With bread baking in the oven.

Warm yeast odors fill the room,
The kettle sings in happiness,
Nothing bad can happen
When a person's baking bread.

1985

January 2011

2011-01-20T11:33:00.003-05:00

January 2011

I watch with jaundiced eyes
The melancholy days of winter
I am so soul-weary
Of the gray, the dirty white,
The sameness of the landscape.

The sounds of January
Fill the air -
snow plows, shovels,
Moaning winds,
The crunch of tires on crusty snow.

Tomorrow more snow will fall
It will bring momentary whiteness
To bleak January days.
But will soon turn again
To gray and dirty white.

I long for one glimpse
of crocus purple,
of daffodil yellow,
But I know in my soul
The wait will be long

And soul-weary.

Mary Murphy

Zero Holding

2011-01-11T17:00:00.000-05:00

Zero Holding by Robyn Sarah

I grow to like the bare
trees and the snow, the bones and fur
of winter. Even the greyness
of the nunneries, they are so grey,
walled all around with grey stones —
and the snow piled up on ledges
of wall and sill, those grey
planes for holding snow: this is how
it will be, months now, all so still,
sunk in itself, only the cold alive,
vibrant, like a wire — and all the
busy chimneys — their ghost-breath,
a rumour of lives warmed within,
rising, rising, and blowing away.

"Zero Holding," by Robyn Sarah, from The Touchstone. © House of Anansi Press, 1992.

We met at the end of the party - Philip Larkin

2011-01-08T11:35:00.000-05:00

We met at the end of the party
When all the drinks were dead
And all the glasses dirty:
'Have this that's left', you said.
We walked through the last of summer,
When shadows reached long and blue
Across days that were growing shorter:
You said: 'There's autumn too'.
Always for you what's finished
Is nothing, and what survives
Cancels the failed, the famished,
As if we had fresh lives
From that night on, and just living
Could make me unaware
Of June, and the guests arriving,
And I not there.

Philip Larkin - Slate.com

15

2011-01-01T10:31:00.002-05:00

From The Writers' Almanac: 15 -- by Charles Wright

You still love the ones you loved
back when you loved them—books.
Records, and people.
Nothing much changes in the glittering rooms of the heart,
Only the dark spaces half-reclaimed.
And then not much,
An image, a line. sometimes a song.

Car doors slam, and slam again, next door.
Snow nibbles away at the edges of the dark ground.
The sudden memory of fur coats,
erotic and pungent,
On college girls in the backseats of cars, at Christmas,
Bourgeois Americana, the middle 1950s,
Appalachia downtown.

And where were we going? Nowhere.
Someone's house, the club, a movie?
See the pyramids along the Nile,
WKPT, I'm itching like a man on a fizzy tree.
It didn't matter.
Martin Karant was spinning them out,
and the fur was so soft.

"15" by Charles Wright, from Littlefoot. © Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

Noel

2010-12-21T16:52:00.000-05:00

Noël by Anne Porter

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they're cut down
And brought into our houses

When clustered sparks
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night
In ordinary windows

We hear and sing
The customary carols

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common

But there are carols
That carry phrases
Of the haunting music
Of the other world
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet's message

Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies

Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices

They look at us
With their clear eyes
And ask the piercing questions
God alone can answer.

"Noël" by Anne Porter, from Living Things

Happy Birthday, Emily!

2010-12-10T07:53:00.001-05:00

Emily Dickinson's To-Do List by Andrea Carlisle

Monday
Figure out what to wear—white dress?
Put hair in bun
Bake gingerbread for Sue
Peer out window at passersby
Write poem
Hide poem

Tuesday
White dress? Off-white dress?
Feed cats
Chat with Lavinia
Work in garden
Letter to T.W.H.

Wednesday
White dress or what?
Eavesdrop on visitors from behind door
Write poem
Hide poem

Thursday
Try on new white dress
Gardening—watch out for narrow fellows in grass!
Gingerbread, cakes, treats
Poems: Write and hide them

Friday
Embroider sash for white dress
Write poetry
Water flowers on windowsill
Hide everything

"Emily Dickinson's To-Do List" by Andrea Carlisle. Used with permission of the author.

*********************************
New Biography -Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds

“Northumbrian Sequence IV” - By Kathleen Raine

2010-12-02T12:28:00.000-05:00

“Northumbrian Sequence IV” - By Kathleen Raine
Let in the wind,
Let in the rain,
Let in the moors tonight,

The storm beats on my window-pane,
Night stands at my bed-foot,
Let in the fear,
Let in the pain,
Let in the trees that toss and groan,
Let in the north tonight.

Let in the nameless formless power
That beats upon my door,
Let in the ice, let in the snow,
The banshee howling on the moor,
The bracken-bush on the bleak hillside,
Let in the dead tonight.

The whistling ghost behind the dyke,
The dead that rot in the mire,
Let in the thronging ancestors,
The unfilled desire,
Let in the wraith of the dead earl,
Let in the dead tonight.

Let in the cold,
Let in the wet,
Let in the loneliness,
Let in the quick,
Let in the dead,
Let in the unpeopled skies.

Oh how can virgin fingers weave
A covering for the void,
How can my fearful heart conceive
Gigantic solitude?
How can a house so small contain
A company so great?
Let in the dark,
Let in the dead,
Let in your love tonight.

Let in the snow that numbs the grave,
Let in the acorn-tree,
The mountain stream and mountain stone,
Let in the bitter sea.

Fearful is my virgin heart
And frail my virgin form,
And must I then take pity on
The raging of the storm
That rose up from the great abyss
Before the earth was made,
That pours the stars in cataracts
And shakes this violent world?

Let in the fire,
Let in the power,
Let in the invading might.

Gentle must my fingers be
And pitiful my heart
Since I must bind in human form
A living power so great,
A living impulse great and wild
That cries about my house
With all the violence of desire
Desiring this my peace.

Pitiful my heart must hold
The lonely stars at rest,
Have pity on the raven’s cry,
The torrent and the eagle’s wing,
The icy water of the tarn
And on the biting blast.

Let in the wound,
Let in the pain,
Let in your child tonight. *

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Amen.

God's Grandeur

2010-11-21T18:00:00.002-05:00

God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Last four lines are among my favorite lines of poetry. One of the most comfortable descriptions of God ever written.

In The Bus

2010-11-21T14:29:00.001-05:00

In the Bus by Grace Paley

Somewhere between Greenfield and Holyoke
snow became rain
and a child passed through me
as a person moves through mist
as the moon moves through
a dense cloud at night
as though I were cloud or mist
a child passed through me

On the highway that lies
across miles of stubble
and tobacco barns our bus speeding
speeding disordered the slanty rain
and a girl with no name      naked
wearing the last nakedness of
childhood breathed in me
                   once    no
                   once    two breaths
a sigh    she whispered    Hey you
begin again
                      Again?
again     again    you'll see
it's easy    begin again    long ago

"In the Bus" by Grace Paley, from Begin Again Collected Poems. © Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. Reprinted with permission.

It’s Sunday Morning in Early November

2010-11-13T10:30:00.000-05:00

Thanks to The Writer's Almanac -- It’s Sunday Morning in Early November by
Philip Schultz
and there are a lot of leaves already.
I could rake and get a head start.
The boy's summer toys need to be put
in the basement. I could clean it out
or fix the broken storm window.
When Eli gets home from Sunday school,
I could take him fishing. I don't fish
but I could learn to. I could show him
how much fun it is. We don't do as much
as we used to do. And my wife, there's
so much I haven't told her lately,
about how quickly my soul is aging,
how it feels like a basement I keep filling
with everything I'm tired of surviving.
I could take a walk with my wife and try
to explain the ghosts I can't stop speaking to.
Or I could read all those books piling up
about the beginning of the end of understanding...
Meanwhile, it's such a beautiful morning,
the changing colors, the hypnotic light.
I could sit by the window watching the leaves,
which seem to know exactly how to fall
from one moment to the next. Or I could lose
everything and have to begin over again.

"It's Sunday Morning in Early November" by Philip Schultz, from The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems. © Houghton Mifflin, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

That Evening

2010-11-11T16:28:00.000-05:00

That Evening by Ken Hada

that evening

   after the service
   after the casket

was lowered into red dirt
dirt which he had plowed
and planted

   I sat with her
   in the house

a house that would never be
the same, the house of grandkids
and trophies from prize quilts
and blue-ribbon jams from
county fairs

   and she spoke some
   and I spoke some

I was not yet eighteen
He was sixty five

   so my thoughts
   too few memories

the shotgun he bought for me
at auction, catching a big bass
on his cane pole, sitting on his lap
at sunrise, hearing growls about
harvest and calves, hay, tractors
and fences

   now it would all change
   we both knew that

as we sat holding our differing
grief, it would all change

   some for the better
   but not all

sundown and death – too obvious
to construct – that first night
was hard, but she was hard too

   and she teaches me
   to live on

for thirty more years (and counting)
that evening still alive in me –
a lesson in grief

   believe it, bear it
   bury it

Ode on Solitude

2010-10-31T15:37:00.002-04:00

How happy he, who free from care

The rage of courts, and noise of towns;
Contented breathes his native air,
In his own grounds.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide swift away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie. -- Alexander Pope

My Father's Gren Flannel Shirt

2010-10-20T09:16:00.000-04:00

My Father's Green Flannel Shirt by Andrea Hollander Budy

He wore it when he mowed the grass, walked the dog,
lounged with the Sunday papers. Whether
it was his favorite, I'm not sure, the way
I'm not sure if he cared for me
more than for my brother. When I was a child,
he would pull me aside sometimes
and tell me a secret – perhaps about his sister
or one of the brothers he wasn't speaking to,
a few times about my mother, whom I knew he loved –
but always something that nagged at him.

Afterwards he would tell me not to tell anyone,
then walk away whistling the way
Alec Guinness, in The Bridge on the River Kwai,
walked away whistling when they let him out
of solitary confinement, as if he knew
something wonderful and important
and no one could scare it out of him.
Sometimes at dinner, my father would whistle
that same tune. And wink at me.

How I loved being in cahoots with him. Loved
feeling chosen, being the one selected to receive.
I took each secret into me and kept it.

"My Father's Green Flannel Shirt" by Andrea Hollander Budy from Woman in the Painting. © Autumn House Press, 2006.

Angles of a Landscape: Perspective on Emily Dickinson,

2010-10-18T19:02:00.000-04:00

On Punctuation by Elizabeth Austen

2010-10-15T13:57:00.002-04:00

On Punctuation by Elizabeth Austen

not for me the dogma of the period
preaching order and a sure conclusion
and no not for me the prissy
formality or tight-lipped fence
of the colon and as for the semi-
colon call it what it is
a period slumming
with the commas
a poser at the bar
feigning liberation with one hand
tightening the leash with the other
oh give me the headlong run-on
fragment dangling its feet
over the edge give me the sly
comma with its come-hither
wave teasing all the characters
on either side give me ellipses
not just a gang of periods
a trail of possibilities
or give me the sweet interrupting dash
the running leaping joining dash all the voices
gleeing out over one another
oh if I must
punctuate
give me the YIPPEE
of the exclamation point
give me give me the curling
cupping curve mounting the period
with voluptuous uncertainty

"On Punctuation" by Elizabeth Austen, from The Girl Who Goes Alone. © Floating Bridge Press, 2010.

e.e cummings

2010-10-14T12:26:00.000-04:00

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

e.e. cummings

He was born Edward Estlin Cummings in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1894), who penned nearly 3,000 poems, a couple of autobiographical novels, and several essays and plays.

He majored in classics at Harvard, gave a controversial graduation speech on modern art, worked for a mail-order bookseller, got bored, and volunteered along with his college writer friend John Dos Passos for an ambulance corps serving in France during World War I. It was in 1917, and partly to entertain himself and see what the censors would do, he wrote provocative letters espousing anti-war views and professing not to hate those enemy Germans. The French censors intercepted the letters and put him in a military detention camp on suspicion of espionage.

He got out of jail because his dad was well-connected, and came home a few months later, just in time for Christmas that year. He was promptly drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to infantry training camp. About five years later, in 1922, he published The Enormous Room, an autobiographical novel in which he made fun of the prison guards and sympathized with his fellow inmates at the camp. One biographer noted: "Cummings' account of his imprisonment was oddly cheerful in tone and freewheeling in style. He depicted his internment camp stay as a period of inner growth." He was only 28 years old when the book was published, and the book made him famous.

He published a few volumes of poetry and took a job as a traveling correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine. In the afternoons he painted and in the evenings he wrote, a routine he kept up for the rest of his life.