Richard Wilbur’s The House
We had Larry Eisenberg to wake up to every morning. What a prize to us NYT commenters.
1
6 A.M. Thoughts by Dick Davis
As soon as you wake they come blundering in
Like puppies or importunate children;
What was a landscape emerging from mist
Becomes at once a disordered garden.
And the mess they trail with them! Embarrassments,
Anger, lust, fear–in fact the whole pig-pen;
And who’ll clean it up? No hope for sleep now–
Just heave yourself out, make the tea, and give in.
The Golden Years, like Santa Claus, do not exist: I wrestle Short-term memory and lost the drive that kept me on my Toes when I was young; but I am glad that I am still alive. Now, over ninety, I appreciate those Genes my ancestors Passed on to me: my legs keep up with those of my small Dog, my brain still works at full capacity. Assisted living is for Folk that have to struggle to live normally. I need to live Without compliance and restraint, I’d rather die than loose Autonomy. I need a hearing aid and I’m incontinent; yet I am always busy and embrace my shrinking future. But - if I sense
that I am loosing it, I hope to fly to Switzerland where I can choose my death with a contented face.
1
Close to the mirror fading eyes flatter your image even though you wear your radical disguise: brown spots and wrinkles. Fingers stall a moment as you use the comb then wrestle with those buttonholes so unobliging since your bones began to brittle. You reheat some coffee, toast a corn- meal scone, eat half. Your hunger can’t compete with time that masticates unseen. You clear your table; no more feasting on those marinating dreams when days are thinning like your hair.
A broadcast of Brahms’ requiem is mauled by static, forecasts slur into oblivion – you have not been out in days, you need fresh air, look out the window - sun is up, slowly begins to liquidate grayed snow. You rinse the coffeepot, are glad you left the bed unmade when breath turns leaden in your chest. You take your pills, lie down and wait and hope the dreadful heaviness will lift. You wonder: why do you cling to each moment, dread the rest in that unfathomed state you knew before your birth? You almost smile – were you afraid of being, too?
Losing a Language by WS Merwin
A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back
yet the old still remember something that they could say
but they know now that such things are no longer believed
and the young have fewer words
many of the things the words were about
no longer exist
the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree
the verb for I
the children will not repeat
the phrases their parents speak
somebody has persuaded them
that it is better to say everything differently
so that they can be admired somewhere
farther and farther away
where nothing that is here is known
we have little to say to each other
we are wrong and dark
in the eyes of the new owners
the radio is incomprehensible
the day is glass
when there is a voice at the door it is foreign
everywhere instead of a name there is a lie
nobody has seen it happening
nobody remembers
this is what the words were made
to prophesy
here are the extinct feathers
here is the rain we saw
The Little Boy and the Little Man
Said the little boy," Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the little man, " I do that too."
The little boy whispered," I wet my pants."
" I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, " I often cry."
The old man nodded, " So do I."
"But worst of all" said the boy, " it seems
Grown ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of the wrinkled old hand.
" I know what you mean said the little old man."
Shel Silverstein
2
Backt then.....as a child
Back then as a child,I was different
Wore shorts,barefoot
I built a castle
On the banks of the brook.
Later,I ran trough the forest,
My grandpa was looking for me
I was not afraid!
I was invincible then.
Now I know
That I am defeatable, and how!
From a Virus!
We walk howling,trough life!
Encounter people
Without a face.
Who comes later
He turns off the light!
Formaggio
by Louise Glück
The world was whole because it shattered. When it shattered, then we knew what it was.
It never healed itself. But in deep fissures, smaller worlds appeared: it was a good thing human beings made them; human beings know what they need, better than any god.
On Huron Avenue they became a block of stores: they became Fishmonger, Formaggio. Whatever they were sold, they were alike in their function: they were visions of safety. Like a resting place. The salespeople were like parents; they appeared to live there. On the whole, kinder than parents.
Tributaries feeding into a large river. I had many lives. In the provisional world, I stood where the fruit was, flats of cherries, clementines, under Hallie's flowers.
I had many lives. Feeding into a river, the river feeding into a great ocean. If the self becomes invisible has it disappeared?
I thrived. I lived not completely alone, alone but not completely, strangers surging around me.
That's what the sea is: we exist in secret.
I had lives before this, stems of a spray of flowers: they became one thing, held by a ribbon at the center, a ribbon visible under the hand. Above the hand, the branching future, stems ending in flowers. And the gripped fist — that would be the self in the present.
1
Jasmine, by G.Seferis
Whether it's dusk
or dawn's first light
the jasmine stays
always white
1
These two have helped sustain me during these tumultuous times... Here's the first:
The Guardian Angel By Stephen Dunn
Afloat between lives and stale truths,
he realizes
he's never truly protected one soul,
they all die anyway, and what good
is solace,
solace is cheap, The signs are clear:
the drooping wings, the shameless thinking
about utility
and self. It's time to stop.
The guardian angel lives for a month
with other angels,
sings the angelic songs, is reminded
that he doesn't have a human choice
The angel of love
lies down with him, and loving
restores to him his pure heart.
Yet how hard it is
to descend into sadness once more.
When the poor are evicted, he stands
between them
and the bank, but the bank sees nothing
in its way. When the meek are overpowered
he's there, the thin air
through which they fall. Without effect
he keeps getting in the way of insults.
He keeps wrapping
his wings around those in the cold.
Even his lamentations are unheard,
though now,
in for the long haul, trying to live
beyond despair, he believes, he needs
to believe
everything he does takes root, hums
beneath the surfaces of the world.
1
Here's the second:
Coda: Into the Street
Alicia Ostriker
Here comes the sun again
Reminding everyone to rise and shine
So we pour the coffee and hear the news,
We pick up the paper
and sigh like arthritic dogs,
And we might like to blow our exasperated
Brains out, when we think about the world,
Then again we might laugh ourselves silly,
Figure out how to profit by it
Or wonder how to love it anyway,
This is what freedom and consciousness
are for.
As if we are standing on the roof
Of a very tall tower
Looking at the complicated view,
Then taking the elevator,
Going out into the street,
Lucky us.
1
How about reading Denise Levertov's "Beginners."
1
One Art
BY ELIZABETH BISHOP
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
2
Sonnet by Shakespeare
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
3
IMMIGRANT
We're immigrant
to our bodies,
our bodies are immigrant
to the Earth,
the Earth is immigrant
to the space it displaces
in the universal scheme,
immigrants all
to this eternity.
4
The first Green mayor in this country was Larry Robinson of Sebastopol CA, who began every city council meeting with a memorized poem. Ah. He had gatherings, maybe still does, where people recite poems only from heart... no reading.
It is like a muscle, recollection. Here is a short one by David Bean
Beyond the Deep Valley
With the basics covered
and people grounded
in the earth, they arose
culture blossomed as flower
art flourished
as never before
Robots worked
to make things last
fixable things honoring the past
as we farmed in harmony
remapping money
culture unsurpassed
wealth no longer seen as status
but a givingness
that bestowed prestige upon us
1
Hope you are still reading poems.
I just wanted to share something I wrote as a song, but it could be read as a poem. I also have a second verse that maybe deeper than this one.
(Shackles)
Why I still feel shackled
ask me why everyday
a black man's hassled.
Tell me why my sisters
because of their skin,
can't get the job
like white women.
Same skills
same position
whites gets the call
the sisters not mentioned.
Headed home feeling hurt
can't let it show
best not to smirk.
Still she's strong
keep standing strong
walking Gods Earth
like nothing's wrong.
What's going on?
It's rare to see a sister
with nothing wrong.
Time for all that to change
could you please
take off these chains.
Discrimination
unjustified
my skin tone was
born as a crime.
Such a crime shame
a racial shame
to all my black people
I feel your pain.
For many years
still suffering,
a virus more aimed
at the darker skin.
But what's worst
than the virus
is how we're treated
before this virus.
Can't even go for a jog
you're bound to get shot
R.I.P. Ahmad.
1
Stark Raving Mad by Caren Wolfer 2020
Masked marchers side by side
Because one black man had to die
The following nights saw fires fueled
By repressed souls angered and cruel
They shattered glass
They shattered lives
Because no one listens when a black man dies
Where was the mercy when he asked to breathe?
Why didn’t they see his mama when she came to retrieve?
Stark Raving Mad
As crowds shout and plea(d)
And as some officers take a knee
Masked marchers side by side
Fists up.
And we all cry.
Always a favorite:
We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
1
Just got to this finally and love the process you described. It's kind of how I start all my days. Yesterday I found this poem that reflects my conflicted feelings about NYC my hometown as I observe the suffering from upstate where I live with a lot of natural space.
Tale of Two Cities
Sick as it approaches, sick as it departs.
In fall the hulks of burned out houses stand unrazed.
In winter bearded with fire truck ice they stand unrazed.
The ice cream maker, the piano tuner, the ceramist and tile engraver,—
The belovèd craftsmen turn up killed at their work places.
And the river, stingy, greedy, shrinks and enlarges.
And bumper stickers protest how people like it here. The hated city.
And the loved city? Only at a distance can it be loved.
How else do those mean little squares and boulevards sprouting their haystraw weeds
Become the Champs-Elysées and Princes Street, except in memory?
Shadowy byways and alleys, wildflower chain linked lots
Where a lover turned and smiled and did more than kiss,
And corners where small hilarities gathered, teasing,
But singing in unison,—these map happiness.
The hated city. The loved city. The same city.
Credit
Copyright © 2013 by Mark Jarman. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on August 27, 2013.
TWILIGHT
A place consumed with
The scent of passage;
The rhythms of
Former sounds of
Delight and laughter
Left by the door that is
No longer open.
The urn with ribbon
“My daughter’s home!”
Viewed by few
The picture of the girl
Now unveiled.
It is the evening at
The inner sanctum.
Darkness engulfs the
Weeping of the soul.
By VIKTORIA MOSES
1
This article talks about a subject that get you thinking; words are somethings that can have so many meaning in it, and it is one of the biggest things that shows so much emotion in it. With each poem in the article, there is a new emotion that comes to you, reading words that are written in a way you can express yourself bring out the pure passion you feel with each word. One thing about poems is the same poem you read and have an emotion to can cause someone to feel a whole different feeling, even though they have the same words, same stanzas, and same author they can hold such a different experience with every individual.
2
Dear Editors, Thanks for your wonderful daily poem sharing…
In celebration of National Poetry Month, Green Writers Press is featuring a poem a day from the timely (and even more significant during this pandemic) anthology we published last year entitled Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection, edited by poet and educatorJames Crews.
Here is a quote about how Healing the Divide came to be:
“Assembling this anthology of poems about kindness and connection was a work almost entirely of intuition. I somehow just knew that I wanted to arrange the poems alphabetically, and quite early on, I had a sense that I wanted to begin the book with Ellery Akers’s “The Word That Is a Prayer,” about the use of the word Please, and that I wanted to end the anthology with Miller Williams’s shorter piece, “Compassion,” which seemed to encompass exactly what Healing the Divide was trying to say—that it’s best to be kind and compassionate to others, since we have no idea what unseen battles they might still be fighting deep inside. Even though the poems were arranged alphabetically, however, I do feel there’s a rhythm to the book, and each poem feeds fairly logically into the next. As with my own creative work, I’m always trying to achieve a kind of narrative and flow, and how I go about this is not entirely explainable, but readers do seem to pick up on it.”
Worth a look on our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook feeds…
2
Thoughts in Time of Plague
When we set out, we knew
many would die on the way.
And yet, the journey was joyous.
When we made our home, we knew
many would die there. And yet we loved
that house. All the views from its windows
we named “beauty”.
When we went down the road,
the light was different every mile.
What could be behind those mute windows
with sometimes a peering eye, what pleasure
in those almost empty gardens, what unknown work
in the factories, birds in the dense wood?
When dawn came in our bedroom
or we woke too late in the old
shattered kitchen amid food scraps, empty bottles,
didn’t our memory burn deeper? — the same
old scar, flaming anew, shifting, unmoved.
And when we were trembling by the sick
that we loved and feared — so many — was it different?
Whether on the road with nowhere
to lay them down, or in the room with nowhere
else to take them… When we had to watch
the threatened breathing or leave it
to go to work. When we had to hear they had died
without us — was it different? No. No different.
Except that we saw something we always knew
in the dark. Failure was not
and success had never been
the end. The end was care.
— A. F. Moritz, Poet Laureate of Toronto
A snippet from a poem by T.A. Young, "Ether City, Michigan:
We're all groping
With hands and sticks and words
And all we end up finding -
For the duration of a snapshot and a
slug of Jack - is
Each other.
Ain't that something?
2
An Easter palindrome to shake up our Covid-19 despair From Canada to our friends in New York and around the world
https://twitter.com/petermahaffy/status/1249438640792432640/photo/1
2
I have one I would like to share, but it's too many characters long :/
The Optimist
by Anonymous
THE OPTIMIST fell ten stories.
At each window bar
He shouted to his friends:
" All right so far. "
1
"Wild Geese"
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
--Mary Oliver
2
"Arked" by Elisabeth McKetta
An hour before dawn, in virustime, just as the mind begins to compose, he wakes with a nightmare so scary that I don’t feel comfortable sleeping in my bed. So I haul him up the ladder to ours, and to be fair, I haul her too. They are too heavy to haul – too long to rock – but when sleepy, they can be coerced. He sleeps bare, as smooth as a stone, and as still. She clutches soft things, green blanket etcetera, and wears felted pajamas, so I think the world can Velcro to her. She sleeps as if running, her arms spread like a javelin. Their father diagonals a leg across the bed like a log beneath their feet, small boy, taller girl. I close the trapdoor. So there: we four. Arked. The world, or whatever it is, washes around us.
1
Preparing the Estate Sale, by Lynda Hull (1954-1994), from Lynda Hull, Collected Poems. In this frantic time, who pauses to honor and grieve each life lost?
1
I wrote this for my grandson, Owen Eastridge, age 3.
Love in the Time of Covid-19
Rainbow in the window
A sign for children passing by
Hunting for hope
Wanting to cope
Fresh hearts meeting sadness
For the first time
Tender and young
They look up to us
With big eyes round
Brimming with questions
Unanswerable:
What is a germ?
What is a virus?
Will Covid go away?
Why can’t I play?
We stand taller
And square our shoulders
Hoping to transmit
Confidence we don’t feel.
We say, “It’s ok.”
We hear our own words
And want to believe
To trust in our Greater God.
Grasping a dimpled hand
Reassuringly
Then the Secret Code:
Three squeezes for “I love you.”
Squeezing back four
“I love you, too.”
Love is enough.
For now.
Forever.
1
“I wouldn't coax the plant if I were you.
Such watchful nursing may do it harm.
Let the soil rest from so much digging
And wait until it's dry before you water it.
The leaf's inclined to find its own direction;
Give it a chance to seek the sunlight for itself.
Much growth is stunted by too careful prodding,
Too eager tenderness.
The things we love we have to learn to leave alone.”
by Naomi Long Madgett
1
it's a rather long poem but chemical in it's offerings. here's a bit of it - you can google the rest -
get it & feel good by Ntozake Shange
“you cd just take what
he’s got for you
i mean what’s available
cd add up in the long run
if it’s music/ take it
say he’s got good
dishwashing techniques
he cd be a marvelous
masseur/ take it
whatever good there is to
get/ get it & feel good ...
expect nothing by alice walker
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
3
The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
2
"The Fall of Rome," by W. H. Auden
(see esp penultimate stanza)
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
1
The following is by S.A. Nelson; no title.
Life is Nature and fluctuation.
I grab onto the quiet that is there some of the time. I may cling to it like a raft afloat in boundless seas.
As I dry out, I may be emboldened to fashion a sail from downy feathers and bird song. My winged vessel. Hand-crafted freedom.
I feel like nudging me. . . toward what I know not. Like a mother duck pushing downy bottoms to the unfamiliar water. Will it be okay? Will I be able to turn and return? Are my tiny webbed toes good for anything but kissing?
I pray for the end of toil, or what feels like toil. Maybe toil is only good for making toilet paper?
I feel – fleetingly - like wreckage tossed upon the beach. Did anyone recognize me, or know my destination?
What a peaceful way to start the day in such a non-peaceful world. My morning ritual has just been altered.
Gratefully,
EGBowles
@Emmett G Bowles poems hold so much power in them, and they can mean so much to a person. Words hold the ability to change your mood, so reading one small happy quote in the morning before your day starts, you will think about it throughout the day, even in the unexpected moments.
fantastic
Living Ancients
By Matthew Shenoda
For those of us young
healthy
we will face the mourning of our elders.
Bury them beneath
the earth.
And for those of us
who believe the living
ever-live
we will stand by the graves of our teachers
and know that we
like those we've buried
are living ancients.
That Blessed Arrangement
The strangest newspaper item yet:
a man keeping an alligator for a pet.
He claimed she alleviated his anxiety
at home, if not in polite society.
He enjoyed the music when she hissed,
was cheaper than a psychiatrist.
But what his condo manager fears
is when a neighbor disappears.
Friends, over for a shot and a song,
never linger very long.
I ask, "Why not a pup or parakeet?
One can pounce, the other tweet.
Can’t other creatures be of service
addressing your nature to be nervous?"
Gossips could not comprehend
such devotion to his reptilian friend,
her shining claws and sighing snout.
An uncommon marriage I do not doubt.
But as they say, "One person’s meat,
well-done or rare, is another’s mate."
Why should he care what people suppose?
Love may be wiser than anyone knows.
2
GIFT
Czeslaw Milosz
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth i wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
Inn my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue seas and sails.
2
Here's a poem that I wrote after my daily walk in the country the other evening:
Birds
are my companions
of choice
these days.
Serenading me
with their joyful melodies
as I walk
alone
each day.
Unlike my other companion,
public radio,
birds don't sing
about corona virus.
They prefer
bird flu.
Just kidding.
2
William Stafford couldn't have known his words would reach me during a global pandemic, when I'm so often inside, alone, and aware of how many days are passing without touch.
Friends
How far friends are! They forget you,
most days. They have to, I know; but still,
it's lonely just being far and a friend.
I put my hand out—this chair, this table—
so near: touch, that's how to live.
Call up a friend? All right, but the phone
itself is what loves you, warm on your ear,
on your hand. Or, you lift a pen
to write—it's not that far person
but this familiar pen that comforts.
Near things: Friend, here's my hand.
1
Got another one for you- John Donne, poet, Dean of St. Paul's & contemporary of Shakespeare...from one of his sermons:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
1
"An Arundel Tomb", by Philip Larkin. A short poem which ends with the lines
"And to prove our almost instinct almost true
What will survive of us is love."
Take a look at Love and Dread by Rachel Hadas. Amazingly simple (rhyming couplets), amazingly profound and beautiful, and appropriate for these times.
1
From my own work:
Birdwatching
sparrows,
they show up.
sometimes they even sing for you.
2
For the transmuting view of poetry, I love Robert Francis' Onion Fields:
Far inland from the sea the onion fields
Flow as the sea flows level to the sky.
Something blue of the sea is in their green.
Something bright of the sun on little waves
Of water is in the ripple of their leaves.
Stand with me here awhile until the white
Kerchiefs of the weeding women are whitecaps
And the long red barns boats—until there are
Only boats and whitecaps and white clouds
And a blue-green sea off to the blue of sky.
Wind from the onion fields is welcomer
Than any sweetness. We stand and breathe as we stand
On a shore and breathe the saltness of the sea.
1
There are so many ways to voice "carpe diem", to whisper the evanescent, to gaze aloud on the fleeting, knowing it precious. When anxiety and fear seek to form a phalanx against our courage and wisdom to live these days, Jane's Kenyon offers a simple ode to joy for the particular and peculiar gifts of every day, even these.
Otherwise
Jane Kenyon - 1947-1995
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
Jane Kenyon, "Otherwise," from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, graywolfpress.org.
2
Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
-Pablo Neruda
1
The Days to Come
-- Medora C. Addison
Now shall I store my soul with silent beauty,
Beauty of drifting clouds and mountain heights,
Beauty of sun-splashed hills and shadowed forests,
Beauty of dawn and dusk and star-swept nights.
Now shall I fill my heart with quiet music,
Song of the wind across the pine-clad hill,
Song of the rain and, fairer than all music,
Call of the thrush when twilight woods are still.
So shall the days to come be filled with beauty,
Bright with the promise caught from eastern skies;
So shall I see the stars when night is darkest,
Still hear the thrush’s song when music dies.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 1, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
I am the Poet Laureate of Bucks County (PA) and this is one of my favorite poems by Ada Limon. She is a treasure.
Instructions on Not Giving Up
Ada Limón - 1976-
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
2
To my poetry loving friends near and far - we would not be on the comments section of this particular article were we not all fans of good poetry. So please please please - look up the 13 line poem The Night Migrations by Louise Gluck. This poem will stay with me as long as I'm breathing. Timely too.
1
Underneath the stars I'll meet you
Underneath the stars I'll greet you
There beneath the stars I'll leave you
Before you go of your own free will
Go gently
Underneath the stars you met me
Underneath the stars you left me
I wonder if the stars regret me
At least you'll go of your own free will
Go gently
Here beneath the stars I'm landing
And here beneath the stars not ending
Why on earth am I pretending?
I'm here again, the stars befriending
They come and go of their own free will
Go gently
Go gently
Underneath the stars you met me
And Underneath the stars you left me
I wonder if the stars regret me
I'm sure they'd like me if they only met me
They come and go of their own free will
Go gently
Go gently
Go gently
Kate Rusby
1
Night of four moons
and one solitary tree,
with one solitary shadow
and one solitary bird.
I seek in my flesh
marks of your lips.
The spring kisses the wind
without touching it.
I bear the No that you said to me
in the palm of my hand,
as a lemon of wax
almost white.
Night of four moons
and a solitary tree.
On the point of a needle
is my love spinning!
— Federico García Lorca
1
Words. Isles in a stream
of consciousness--
visual, auditory, physical, associative,
subliminal.
Navigating the shoals and depths,
Raising and lowering the sails
to catch the unseen gusts,
keeling my little craft
among and around those florid
or barren cays;
each a key to unlock a presence,
a harbor, oasis, or sheltered bay;
a sanctuary for pirates and thieves
waiting in the dark and hidden
in the foliage of such serenity,
knives and pistols drawn
ready to pierce or shoot down.
And yet, amid such irrational, incoherent
imaginings
the steady, clear waters
from unknown tributaries
callus and carry us
toward an unknown wine-dark sea
restless, until we rest in thee.
Dave Murray
Michigan
I just love this. I also love reading everyone's poetry suggestions. I have too many I love to suggest, but what a wonderful idea!
1
One of the best-KINDNESS by Naomi Shahib Nye.
Whitmans -Tale of Myself and anything from Leaves Of Grass.
Try one or all of the gorgeous poems in the book Poetry of Presence an anthology of mindfulness poems Compiled by Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby R. Wilson.
2
The Last Wolf by Mary Tallmountain
The last wolf hurried toward me
through the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby crowned highrises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless
Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping gait
closer the sounds in the deadly night
through the clutter and rubble of quiet blocks
I hear his voice ascending the hill
and at last his low whine as he came
floor by empty floor to the room
Where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched
He trotted across the floor
he laid his long grey muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered
Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.
11
@Kathy I was so pleased to see this poem by Mary Tallmountain. It is one of my favorites by her. I first discovered her in a Bill Moyers' video series of interviews of poets. I have since then read much of her work. It is sad her life was cut short as she had such a beautiful way with description and sound.
@Kathy Two years on, I discovered your post, and Mary Tallmountain with it. I have been googling several book stores and all her books are either unavailable or prohibitively priced.
If The Last Wolf is anything to go by, why is her work not being reprinted/republished? Please do, somebody.
And thank you for sharing this wonderful poem.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
2
@Margo
It's worth noting that William basically stole the poetic conceit and imagery for this poem from his sister Dorothy who described her daffodils epiphany in one of her journals.
Reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald using his wife Zelda's letters for "Tender is the Night".
In a pair of bios, "The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth" by Frances Wilson and "Zelda" by Nancy Milford, the biographers strongly suggest that the expropriation by William & Scott of original literary material from these intimate women in their lives led to a loss of identity & subsequent mental instability in both Dorothy & Zelda.
Many have read the Milford/Zelda book but the Wilson/Dorothy bio is less-known yet nevertheless highly recommended.
Ms. Wilson's work will prove to be especially breathtaking & illuminating for students & devotees of William's poetry & Dorothy's journals, the latter of which are acutely sensitive, often painfully perspicacious & works of art in their own right - though in raw/inchoate form at times.
2
@Margo
It's worth noting that William basically stole the poetic conceit and imagery for this poem from his sister Dorothy who described her daffodils epiphany in one of her journals.
Reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald using his wife Zelda's letters for "Tender is the Night".
In a pair of bios, "The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth" by Frances Wilson and "Zelda" by Nancy Milford, the biographers strongly suggest that the expropriation by William & Scott of original literary material from these intimate women in their lives contributed to a loss of identity & subsequent mental instability in both Dorothy & Zelda.
In the cases of both women, there were apparently physiological & other psychiatric issues with which they were dealing but the biographers seemed to feel that the theft of their artistic output helped to push them over the edge.
Many have read the Milford/Zelda book but the Wilson/Dorothy bio is less-known yet nevertheless highly recommended.
Ms. Wilson's work will prove to be especially breathtaking & illuminating for students & devotees of William's poetry & Dorothy's journals, the latter of which are acutely sensitive, often painfully perspicacious & works of art in their own right - though in raw/inchoate form at times.
Can't beat Keats's "Ode to Autumn" for sheer lusciousness. Language, language, language!
1
Help make your readers feel and almost taste the point of your stories.....
This Is Just To Say
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
2
To the writers, reporters and editors, I offer a source of inspiration:
Call to the Muses
Fierce guardians
Daughters of Zeus
We open ourselves
to life’s dancing enchantments
Suffuse us with color,
drench us in light,
pour over us
creation’s ambrosia
Send us to shores
of the hero’s journey
Compass new lands
And love’s own hearth
Loose the Beowulf!
Unshackle Dragon’s Teeth!
Let screaming wraiths fly
And groaning specters roam
Listen, too, for low shoots of life
thwarting barren soil
Hear open secrets scuttle like leaves
Find creation in honeyed lands hanging heavy,
with nectar and fruit
Unyielding protectors
Snatch tongues from the ignorant
Succor hearts of innocence
Empty drams of light
Into hearts of darkness
You, who sat with Homer
Sit with us now
Sit and spin yarns, weave sailors’ tales,
strum minstrel stories
Pour inspiration onto me
sticky and sweet with imagination
Put wings to dreams
And dreams to wing
2
“Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.” ― Adam Lindsay Gordon
4
What a lovely practice. I've got a whole folder going called "The Consolations of Poetry" in which I keep poems that offer immediate access to a sense of calm or solace.
I recommend Wislawa Szymborska's "A Word on Statistics" and "Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Lameris. My poetry students really enjoyed when I read them Allen Ginsberg's "Footnote to Howl," recently, too.
Take Care!
1
Frost's Last Stanza
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
@James this poem has a deep meaning to it we all have a path to take and some people take the way they are more familiar with but considering the other path could have been better for them and their future. In the end, you have to choose what path is going to be better for you, and you may end up hurting some close to you, but you will be living a better life for yourself.
1
Ann Hood, novelist, memoirist, and an extraordinary teacher, says that reading a poem, first thing, "opens the portal of language." Does it ever! Reading the submissions here was like walking into a room I'd always hoped to find. Thanks!
1
PHOTOGRAPHY
Margaret McCarthy
To press vision through darkness,
through glass and metal
and push it through that opening
so small
who would have believed there could be a world on the other
side?
The process of casting
sight into silver, the skin of plastic
to be redeemed by water, to cycle
from brilliance to blackness to brilliance -
the mechanics of seeing are everything;
and still the shadow of that cloud escaped me,
that light.
--Margaret McCarthy
From NOTEBOOKS FROM MYSTERY SCHOOL,
Finishing Line Press, 2015
2
Thanks for asking! For starters--
"Large Red Man Reading" by Wallace Stevens
"Bright Star" by Keats
"The DNA Molecule" by May Swenson (such an underrated poet!)
Sonnet 146 of Shakespeare
"Tears in Sleep" by Louise Bogan
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (there is a gorgeous recording of the great man reading this one out there somewhere)
"Neutral Tones" by Thomas Hardy
And I could go on all day and night... Bless you all!
1
Oh for the ability to save this comment thread! What an incredible collection, and beautiful way to start the day.
Hope the Times picks up on several readers' suggestions to publish a daily poem. I feel uplifted in a way I haven't in days.
1
As a family physician in a small town who leads two hospital committees, for several years I have been starting every meeting I run with a poem. For the past week my hospital has asked me to function as the “chief poetry officer” and start the daily corona virus meetings with a poem. Recent selections have included Toilet Paper by Lynn Ungar and We Need One Another by George Odell. This morning I shared one of my favorites, The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry.
1
from the book of poems REMAKING
The Train
Faces, everywhere, faces
Looking down, out the window, sometimes
at the darkness, bodies sway with the motion
Of a life to ponder
Those with others are engaged, many are alone as
The stops count by - doors open, doors close
Taking stock, wondering what anyone is thinking
Expressions, though many may be blank, slips
Hope of the next moment, if only because though
We are with strangers
We are not alone
On the train we board
1
I'd go back to "The Water Cooler" (Paul Muldoon, 2006). I find myself comforted right now by ordinary everyday dramas from more peaceful times. It goes like this:
They’re poisoning the atmosphere
now you and I’ve split
because they’re trying to get something clear.
The mistletoe puts up its mitts
now you and I’ve split.
The black oaks jostle
and the mistletoe puts up its mitts
to vie for the sweet-throated throstle
where the black oaks jostle
over a back fence
and vie for the sweet-throated throstle,
seeming no less tense
over a back fence
than the chestnuts dishing the dirt,
seeming no less tense
than so many introverts,
than the chestnuts dishing the dirt
down by the water cooler.
Like so many introverts,
like all the other carpoolers
down by the water cooler,
they cough up their lungs.
Like all those other carpoolers,
the maples wag their tongues
and cough up their lungs
because they’re trying to get something clear.
The maples wag their tongues.
They’re poisoning the atmosphere.
1
Can't argue with Ray Carver's (huge fan) last line in Mesopotamia: "So much that is mysterious and important is happening out there this morning."
2
Thanks for the lift, NYT, from an old English teacher.
I have this poem posted next to my computer and have been reading it every morning for years. I have also given it to former students and friends who have struggled in one way or another. The last bit, which is literal _and_ metaphorical, speaks to the power of the human spirit.
untitled
by Lucille Clifton
from _The Book of Light_, 1993
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay.
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
2
The Conditional
by Ada Limón
Say tomorrow doesn't come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun's a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
2
Rock and Water
They were a perfect pair.
The boy hunched over near the rocks.
His shadow moving gently on the surface
as if he were stirring the water.
When you looked closer, you could see
that he had something in his hand.
A small silver fish.
He was stroking it. Placing it in the water
in swimming position.
It floated to the surface and lay on its side.
Once, twice.
The sun shone on the side of the fish
and the boy continued.
Nearby another boy stood with a fishing pole
facing the other way.
He was busy and only looked over once in a while.
The boy continued trying to help the fish
by adjusting it in the water, placing it in motion.
Patiently and deliberately, as if placing the last piece
in a puzzle. As if it only needed a little help, a touch.
Once in a while the fish would actually stir on its own
and then it would slip to the surface as if having died again.
Each time the boy seemed more intent
and repeated his stroking, hovering like a guardian
repeating this ritual of patient affection and concern.
It was a very clear day. The water and the light glittered.
I stayed until I couldn’t watch any longer.
Hovering as if to understand.
They were a perfect pair.
The little fish did not know how to go on living.
And the boy did not know how to let it go.
By Jerry Mirskin
3
Only This Morning
In a hundred trillion years—
an actual number
though we can’t begin
to grasp it—the last traces
of our universe will be not
even a memory
with no memory to lament it.
The last dust of the last star
will not drift in the great nothing
out of which everything we love
or imagine eventually comes.
Yet every day, every four hours
around the clock, Debbie prepares
her goat’s-milk mix
for the orphaned filly
who sucks down all three liters of it,
gratefully, it seems,
as if it matters more
than anything in the universe—
and it does—at this moment
while the sun is still
four hours from rising
on the only day that matters.
-- Dan Gerber
1
Whenever I am down or anxious. I read Walt Whitman who embodies exuberant living and hope.
I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
4
A little on the long side but Coleridge's "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison," which he wrote when he had to stay home with a twisted ankle while his friends went out on a long walk, contains these lines:
...sometimes
'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
7
first fig
my candle burns at both ends
it will not last the night
but oh my foes
and ahh my friends
it casts a lovely light
edna st. vincent millay
1892-1950
2
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
or 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.
4
Not every cough’s
Corona, my lord.
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Shrew
2
Valentine for Ernest Mann
Naomi Shihab Nye
You can’t order a poem like you
order a taco
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two,” and expect it to
be handed back to you on a
shiny plate.
Still I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “here’s my
address, write me a poem”,
deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell you a secret instead:
Poems hide. In the bottom
of our shoes, drifting
across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up.
What we have to do is live in a
way that lets us find them.
Once I knew a man who gave his wife two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a
serious man
who lived in a serious way.
Nothing was ugly just because the world
said so.
He really liked those skunks.
So, re-invented them as valentines and they
became beautiful,
at least to him.
And the poems that had been
hiding in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.
Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give
us we find poems.
Check your garage,
the odd sock in your drawer,
the person you almost like,
but not quite.
And let me know.
7
Because he was better known for his brilliant short stories, some Raymond Carver poems.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/raymond-carver#tab-poems
1
Thank you fro this delightful essay.
Please visit the W B Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia
www.wbyeatspoetryprize.com
1
Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy
BY THOMAS LUX
For some semitropical reason
when the rains fall
relentlessly they fall
into swimming pools, these otherwise
bright and scary
arachnids. They can swim
a little, but not for long
and they can’t climb the ladder out.
They usually drown—but
if you want their favor,
if you believe there is justice,
a reward for not loving
the death of ugly
and even dangerous (the eel, hog snake,
rats) creatures, if
you believe these things, then
you would leave a lifebuoy
or two in your swimming pool at night.
And in the morning
you would haul ashore
the huddled, hairy survivors
and escort them
back to the bush, and know,
be assured that at least these saved,
as individuals, would not turn up
again someday
in your hat, drawer,
or the tangled underworld
of your socks, and that even—
when your belief in justice
merges with your belief in dreams—
they may tell the others
in a sign language
four times as subtle
and complicated as man’s
that you are good,
that you love them,
that you would save them again.
Thomas Lux, “Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy” from New and Selected Poems: 1975-1995. Copyright © 1997 by Thomas Lux. Used by the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Source: New and Selected Poems 1975-1995 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997)
"Words no more can tell
When we'll seek the well,
Or pull the oars to distant shores
And know of our good weal."
Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud"
1
The Meadow Mouse - Poem by Theodore Roethke
1
In a shoe box stuffed in an old nylon stocking
Sleeps the baby mouse I found in the meadow,
Where he trembled and shook beneath a stick
Till I caught him up by the tail and brought him in,
Cradled in my hand,
A little quaker, the whole body of him trembling,
His absurd whiskers sticking out like a cartoon-mouse,
His feet like small leaves,
Little lizard-feet,
Whitish and spread wide when he tried to struggle away,
Wriggling like a minuscule puppy.
Now he's eaten his three kinds of cheese and drunk from his
bottle-cap watering-trough--
So much he just lies in one corner,
His tail curled under him, his belly big
As his head; his bat-like ears
Twitching, tilting toward the least sound.
Do I imagine he no longer trembles
When I come close to him?
He seems no longer to tremble.
2
But this morning the shoe-box house on the back porch is empty.
Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? --
To run under the hawk's wing,
Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.
I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,--
All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.
2
Thanks for this. A suggestion:
Lost Original
by Anselm Hollo - 1934-2013
Mr. K said in times of great crudity
it is necessary to be subtle
so please wrap around me
with awkward grace
I may have suffered some Rilke Damage
or do I just have a little trouble
with fantasy tripwires
while engrossed in the sky's lexicon
& hills like purple pachyderms
"there's been a great upsurgence"
said the announcer but I didn't catch
what of & what of where
does it come from where does it go
still asking on down the road
Tony Hoagland, "Two Trains."
1
Times writer, Daniel Slotnik, quotes a piece of the late Molly Brodak’s poem, “In the Morning, Before Anything Bad Happens”. It’s a “day-starter”!
1
My head is filled with plague,
the Black Death and such,
as the Corona roams
insidiously through human blood
it unlocks each cell adroitly
and enters as if it belongs,
though it has only 30 proteins
it warbles a deadly song,
Out of our proteins twenty thousand,
it recruits a few to its cause--
of endless multiplication
until we're finished and it's boss,
but by letting some of us live,
it can hide and carry on,
in bouts to reappear
and reveal its beastly brawn,
merely a wee step ahead,
that's the fate of man,
with microbes as he wars
until he's worn and wan.
Go be a flying monkey
read poetry,
Read Langston Hughes
under a shady tree,
and when you close your eyes
to breathe deep
the jasmine
not there in the breeze
you know you've been uplifted
and you see, smell and feel
what others don't see, smell and feel.
The present is all we have,
the past is a ghost that intrudes
from time to time to haunt,
the future, ravenous for attention,
begs for notice and love,
insubstantial and gaunt.
1
"That the earth is suspended..." by Rosanna Warren
As scilla prinks out, purple, from half-thawed clods
and the cardinal flings his ribbon of song
in two high arcs, then trails the vibrato among the boughs
May unclenches. But not enough.
Buds grip fetal leaves. Each night
scatters frost. On sidewalks we tread on broken sky.
You are sick, and far away. The world is in flux
said Anaximander: worlds are born, appear,
and disappear. We perish, even the gods
fade. Spare me the industrial daffodils
poking through scraps of snow. The season will have
its hard birth, and we will be dragged
into light. For how many years
has that ill corroded your gut? Whirlwinds, typhoons
break out of the cloud, the tearing makes thunder, the crack
against black makes the flash. So natural
philosophy began. You watched glaciers slide
and crash at the tip of the earth, you floated on a rope
into ice crevasses to catch the gleam
and the groan. Ice sculpted the planet
and sculpts it still: you hammered aluminum
into that shape. The stars are a wheel of fire
broken off from earth fire, surrounded by air.
We came from the inlimited, to it we return. So taught
Anaximander of Miletus, who thought we would be destroyed.
Yes. Here's a poem for you. Ireland's Brendan Kennelly's "Begin".
1
Just lovely.
Here’s my suggestion: Louis MacNeice’s “Meeting Point”.
It begins: “Time was away and somewhere else,” which is precisely where I’d like to be right now (I write from Spain: over 20,000 confirmed Covid cases, over 1,000, and counting).
6
Strategy For a Marathon
by Marnie Mueller
I will start
when the gun goes off.
I will run
for five miles.
Feeling good,
I will run
to the tenth mile.
At the tenth
I will say,
Only three more
to the halfway.”
At the halfway mark,
13.1 miles,
I will know
fifteen is in reach.
At fifteen miles
I will say,
‘You’ve run twenty before,
keep going.
At twenty
I will say,
’Run home.”
12
The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
12
Galway Kinnell gave a reading in Brattleboro Vermont in the ‘80s in a former railroad station that I attended. I seldom attended poetry readings. During one poem a baby in the middle of the large crowd began to cry and the mother began awkwardly to attempt to extract herself and the baby out of courtesy, at which point Kinnell stopped reading in the middle of what he was reciting, saying “Oh, don’t take the baby out!,” quickly leafed through his materials, and began another. The baby immediately stopped crying, the mother sat, and we all stared and listened, stupefied and full of wonder.
Never underestimate the power of poetry.
4
I've been reading a poem a day delivered to my inbox from poets.org for several years now. Even though many of the poems are grave and often dark, they are reminder of the important and beautiful world we live in. I look forward to starting my day in this manner. Keep reading poetry. It is good for the soul!
1
I love it. When I need to be inspired or consoled, I often turn to a poem to set the world right again.
1
Impressions
Impressions
left behind
fueling memory
or described
another way
Impressions
on a bed
Side by side
his, mine
Shared for years
in sleep’s company
security, companionship
2
Here's one by Louis Jenkins:
Big Brown Pills
I believe in the big brown pills, they lower cholesterol and
improve digestion. They help prevent cancer and build
brain cells. Plus they just make you feel better overall. I
believe in coffee and beet greens and fish oil, of course,
and red wine, in moderation, and cinnamon. Green tea is
good and black tea, ginseng. I eat my broccoli. Nuts are
very good and dark chocolate, has to be dark, not milk
chocolate. Tomatoes. But I think the big brown pills really
help. I used to believe in the little yellow pills but now I
believe in the big brown pills. I believe that they are much
more effective. I still take the little yellow ones, but I really
believe in the big brown ones.
2
@Cheryl As someone who grew up taking the big brown pills every day (and have taken some little yellow ones too), I know exactly what he means. I hadn't thought of them in decades but the smell and taste flew back into my head as soon as I read that.
1
I didn't trust it for a moment,
the wine of my own poetry,
but I drank it anyway.
It gave me the daring
to take hold of the darkness,
to tear it down,
and cut it into little pieces.
written by Lalla - 14th century mystical poet
2
William Stafford's wonderful poem, "A Ritual to Read to Each Other" seems apposite for this purpose. I have thought of it many times in these troubled times. The poem ends with this: "the signals we give -- yes, or no, or maybe -- /should be clear: the darkness around us is deep."
Thank you for your work.
2
The Secret
BY DENISE LEVERTOV
Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.
I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me
(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even
what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,
the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,
and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that
a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines
in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for
assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
1
I love "Recuerdo" by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It captures the heady excitement of being young and free in the city. We are all remembering and missing those times right now.
12
Joy Harjo - 1951-
Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.
26
@Ed Maxwell
Inuit Song (from "Earth Prayers," ed. E. Roberts & E. Amidon)
And I thought over again
My small adventures
As with a shore-wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And thought I was in danger,
My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.
And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing:
To live to see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.
1
Some of the most powerful poetry comes from working people and speaks to our shared reality. Examples can be found on the website of the Blue Collar Review.
3
Kunitz wrote this is his 90s ...
The Layers
BY STANLEY KUNITZ
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
---
5
What You May Not Know About Frankenstein
By Bill Graeser
Although he had not the hands to crochet, the patience to build birdhouses or the nerve to push a hook through a worm in the hope of pulling a fish from the sea, he did write poems and wrote often and late into the night. Was it pain that made him write? The pain of all those stitches, of shoes that despite their size were still too small? Was it psychological pain of social non-acceptance? Or the electricity that years later still snapped between his fingers?
No, it was simply what his brain wanted to do, the brain they dug up and sowed into his head, it was just grave-robbing luck. At poetry readings, where everyone is welcome, he read his poems sounding like a man who having fallen into a well and cried out for years was now finally being heard.
Like this there are many so-called monsters with poems to share. The same is true of angels, of gangsters, shepherds, anyone who fits words together like body parts, revises, revises again, until magically, beautifully, lightning leaps from the pen and the poem opens its eyes, sits up from the page, staggers into the world, and whether it is seen as monster, or friend, it is alive, every word it says is real and it comes not from the grave, but from the sky.
9
Copperhead
This morning
on the mossy path
that splits
our remnant patch
of wood
we came across
quite suddenly
coiled
where we stood
a fine big copperhead.
Danger
in a common script
scribbled on the ground.
Snake. Here.
Respectfully
we stepped
around
and later said
how much we miss
a world where
what we have
to fear
appears forthright
and clear
as this.
12
"Avenue Road." Okay, it's one of mine, but chortle-worthy.
https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/martin-f-kohn-winter-18/
2
Written for & performed at my son's wedding. Now, in the midst of Covid-19, family scattered in US and Australia, still relevant.
Thanksgiving
For camouflaged leopard frog noses,
holding their breath, so still,
poking out through mats of green algae
at the rocky shore, for the boy who sees
and collects them in a pail
and lets them go leaping
into the green grass again
until they disappear
and the waves clap their hands
on the rocks,
for the bird-singing trees,
for the man who sees the nut-
hatches with his ears,
their skinny little legs and sharp claws
running up the bark tracks,
poking in search of tiny bugs,
and the bright alarm of cedar waxwings
at our passing,
for the wonder of the rattlesnake
on the trail, that understated
rain-stick warning,
for someone to see with
to hear with to remember with
to mourn with
the frogs who are not there
the birds who have fled
the silence of a northern Fall,
give thanks.
For bugs and snakes
and salamanders under rotting logs,
for the frogs who are still there,
give thanks. Give thanks
especially for birds,
loons and merganzers and warblers,
for their sharp-tongued arpeggios and fugues,
singing promises of their return,
give thanks.
3
BALK!
Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens
Everybody
and everything eats
chickens
looks at us and sees
dumplings
mashed potatoes or baked beans
as our silent companions
or maybe a ruffle of feathers
and a wild full belly
without personality
or even individual existence
all of us
attempting to scratch
a meager living
from the hard earth --
all of us
just a meal,
an easy mark,
a tool,
a hand,
a temp,
a consumer,
a sale,
the accursed obstacle
in the road,
collateral damage
or the expendable pin
on a map
of bloody conquest
-- Al Markowitz
2
I think you should read Tracey K. Smith.
"Words no more can tell
When we'll seek the well,
Or pull the oars to distant shores
And know of our good weal."
(Yours truly, 1985.)
"S/he who postpones l/Love lives a short life."
same source, 2019
I suggest asking students to submit poems. You could also start with the Tao, or I Ching.
September 1, 1939 by WH Auden
I begins with:
"I sit in one of the dives on 52nd Street Uncertain and afraid.....
But the last stanza is:
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
6
"What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade" by Brad Aaron Modlin
"The Summer Day" and "When I Am Among the Trees" by Mary Oliver
"Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" by Ross Gay
2
How Do You Lose a Sister?
Martha Donovan
March 2020
First, you love her.
You fight with her.
You stick up for her.
You betray her and vice versa,
Because that’s what kids do.
Then you grow up, your grow apart,
And you grow back together.
You laugh just the way you used to,
And you still love her.
But the stakes are higher because you’re adults.
You tell her that her son molested your daughter.
And then she’s gone.
She didn’t protect her son;
You didn’t protect your daughter;
You still have a lot in common.
1
This is so heartening. You have some Heaney recommendations already, please add this one. And when all this is done with, come to Clare and see for yourselves.
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
and the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
Postscript by Seamus Heaney
5
“Heaven Haven: a Nun Takes the Veil” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
1
The Best of It
Kay Ryan
However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.
2
THE RAILWAY CHILDREN by Seamus Heaney
When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye-level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.
Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.
We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops,
Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesimally scaled
We could stream through the eye of a needle.
2
Thank you for this wonderful idea.
The birdsong and sound of falling stream waters of my backyard are a blessed refuge now, and yet...
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
-- Lines Written in Early Spring, Wordsworth.
2
Anything written by Susan Allison (June 12, 1961-May 15, 2018). She was the inaugural poet laureate (2015-2018) of Middletown, a city of 49,000. Her last two books of poems published posthumously.
2
I wouldn't say that a high-school English teacher is an "unlikely source" for the idea of reading a poem aloud. High-school English teachers are the likely source, in fact, of most people's exposure to poetry.
12
“Choose Something Like A Star” by Robert Frost. Very good for right now. Best wishes.
Susan Allison's poetry is always a breath of fresh air and deep insight into our lives. From "Mockingbird" to "The Good Life," to more recent poems, Ms. Allison brought her beloved Middletown into sharp focus on street corners, down by the riverside, up on Indian Hill, and in countless venues framing a great number of unforgettable characters along America's widest Main St. Only the breadth and depth of her dancing cadences and sharp wit were wider by far.
I whole heartedly recommend hanging out with her poetry, letting it grow rhizomatically up and down the extent of your heartstrings.
2
To brighten your day. Poem by Ann Marie Brown
She stands in the corner in her pink tutu.
Glaring at your classmates
Wondering what to do
Should she dance,
Should she cry,
Throw a tantrum
at mom's goodbye.
The lovely maidens all in a row
First position, second and plie
Up on toe, knees bend, arms unfold
Flapping overhead.
At the barre, then across the wood floor
Leaping slowly, attempting to fly
Landing with a thud
Trying not to cry.
What should she do?
Dressed in pink in her little tutu
What would you do?
After all, she is only two.
1
Almost any of the shorter poems of Billy Collins. My favorites include "Introduction to Poetry," "Oh, My God!" and "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House."
1
GETTING OLD
The Golden Years, like Santa Claus, do not exist:
I wrestle short-term memory and lost the drive
that kept me on my toes when I was young; but I am glad
that I am still alive. Now, over ninety, I appreciate those genes
my ancestors passed on to me: my legs keep up with those of
my small dog, my brain still works at full capacity.
Assisted living is for folk that have to struggle to live normally.
I need to live without compliance and restraints; I’d rather die
than loose autonomy. I need a hearing aid and I’m incontinent
yet I am always busy and embrace my shrinking future.
Should I become aware that I am loosing it, I’ll take a plane
to Basel, Switzerland, with a contented face.
2
Ozymandias
By Shelley
1
There is a place
A small still place
A repose
from the sarcophany;
a muse
within the symphony,
there is a place
There is resolve
hidden it revolves
A solution
to the plithory,
a rescue
from the treachery,
there is resolve.
poem just written by Lorie Zarum
What a nice article. I would recommend reading Seamus Heaney's "Postscript" (or watch him reading it here: https://vimeo.com/73559117). At a time when I'm feeling "neither here nor there," it's nice to be reminded of life's potential to surprise me with its beauty and grace.
Failure by Philip Schultz
Well, one poem in French deserves another. But this is not the whole poem--the first two stanzas I don't remember. The last two I do. Notice the tricky rhyme scheme--the rhymes are identical sounds, but tacked onto different words.
"Les Pas"--by Paul Valery. Describing a woman slowly, deliberately advancing to the bed where she and the poet propose to make love:
"Si de tes levres avancees,
Tu prepares, pour l'apaiser,
A l'habitant des mes pensees,
La nourriture d'un baiser,
Ne hate pas cet acte tendre,
Douceur d'etre et de n'etre pas,
Car j'ai vecu de vous attendre,
Et mon coeur n'etait que vos pas."
"If from your protruding lips, you prepare for the inhabitant of my thoughts (to appease him) the nourishment of a kiss, then do not hasten this tender act--sweetness of being and non-being--for I have lived on waiting for you and my heart was nothing but your footsteps."
Oh the French! That last line (to me) is hauntingly beautiful.
What a good way to begin the day.
Thank you.
3
Why not include us all in this morning lift, with a poem from you each day, before we must face the rest of the news.
Here is a portion of "Life-While-You- Wait" by Wistawa Szymborska.
Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.
I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.
If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).
You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.
6
@Sara L. great suggestion. i hope they take you up on it!
1
Here's a poem by Joan Logghe, former Santa Fe, NM Poet Laureate:
DRESSING DOWN FOR LOVE
Put on your love dress.
Take off your other garments
the ones that cost you most.
Wear your heart out.
Become a transvestite
for love. Dress as a heart.
Establish a municipality
with eyes you meet on the street.
Enter the election for Darling.
Let kindness reign. Put on
no airs. Be plain as feet
which also may carry you away
along the Love Highway.
Hello. What is your name?
I have forgotten. Remind me.
1
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
2
The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
Singularity
(after Stephen Hawking)
Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?
so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—
nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone
pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.
For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you. Remember?
There was no Nature. No
them. No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf or if
the coral reef feels pain. Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;
would that we could wake up to what we were
— when we were ocean and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not
at all — nothing
before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.
Can molecules recall it?
what once was? before anything happened?
No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with
is is is is is
All everything home
Marie Howe
3
Anything by Kay Ryan.
2
The Rapture by Cynthia Huntington (former Poet Laureate of New Hampshire).
https://fourwaybooks.com/site/the-radiant/
Seamus Heaney's "St. Kevin and the Blackbird"
Robinson Jeffers' "Rearmament"
Bob Dylan "Desolation Row"
and Margaret Atwood "The Moment"
and here;s a quotation for you:
“Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart… Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered.” ---John Berger
1
Power
Adrienne Rich
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.
5
May I suggest "Hill Country" by the wonderful former Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith? It will slay you.
2
"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry
"Under One Small Star" by Wislawa Szymborska
4
Three poems I'll share, written by my wife Susan Allison (June 12, 1961-May 15, 2018). She was the inaugural poet laureate (2015-2018) of Middletown, a city of 49,000.
The Good Life
The thing about good living
is that it happens, despite
plotting and planning, it happens
contrary to all devices. It happens
when you are renting the only room
you can afford and you somehow
catch the way the light is coming through
the broken dirty windows.
The door is open
and the wind blows in like balm.
It's warm and you see the colors of the
faded gray frame of the door
against the rust-colored leaves
in the small patch of jungle
down by the alley.
The good life
comes through your eyes
and your ears and your skin
the way a wild animal comes at you
when it is just curious.
(published in Down by the Riverside Ways, Antrim House Books, 2009)
Old Memory
Come feast in the forest
and drink in the glen,
give your feet a rest,
let the brook water cleanse.
May you find a way home from
where ever you roam,
over marsh and ash
like a rolling stone.
Find love where you can,
the parade never ends,
find love where you can.
(published in Poet Laureate of Middletown Proclaimed and Provoked, Ibis Books, 2018)
Unmindfulness
I've been sewn into a dream
today by irritated angels.
I think I should stay
in my room.
(published in Poet Laureate of Middletown Proclaimed and Provoked, Ibis Books, 2018)
54
@Stephan Allison love these. Thank you for sharing.
3
@Stephan Allison
The poems of this poet laureate of my town are highly recommended. Anthony Valerio, author
These poems are exquisite!
Pied Beauty-Gerard Manley Hopkins
Spring is like a perhaps hand -- e.e. cummings
I just subscribed to a poem a day at poets.org. What a great way to start the day.
5
THE WAY IT IS by William Stafford
There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.
(The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems)
Question for contemplation:
For you, what is the thread?
8
For the Anniversary of My Death - W.S. Merwin
1
"Burning the Old Year" by Naomi Shihab Nye
1
"To Noraline" Derek Walcott
"The Great Lover" by Rupert Brooke
The Hippopotamus, by T.S. Eliot
One of my favorites.
THE PATIENCE OF ORDINARY THINGS
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
~ Pat Schneider
8
Some time ago I, a retired cardiologist and Chief Medical Officer of a health system, served as the Lead Faculty for a leadership course. Each Saturday a team of instructors began with a poem that we read to each other in parts.
Here are two, " It is I Who Must Begin" from "Letters to Olga" by Vaclav Havel and "Hopi Elders Speak"-Hopi Elders Prophecy June 2000.
There are many sources for poetry but please consider publishing one daily in the "Times" for us to start our day.
14
@Carl E. heltne I second the suggestion. I add another---please consider hiring a special person to research and publish some genuine good news each day....lest we all perish.---
2
How to Triumph Like a Girl
Ada Limon
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let's be honest, I like
that they're ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don't you want to believe it?
Don't you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it's going to come in first.
4
@M
Zenyatta , she beat em all. Had the race been a few feet longer she'd have beaten Blame too.
So hard to choose! "Lapis Lazuli" by W. B. Yeats; "Adlestrop" by Edward Thomas; Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," "Hyla Brook" by Robert Frost (not to mention all the great suggestions from other commenters, which will keep me going for a long time). Here's one, perhaps less known, that's especially apt if you ever feel jaded or hardened by the myriad conflicts in the world, by Herman Melville: "Shiloh, A Requiem (April, 1862)"
Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh –
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh –
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there –
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve –
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
4
Read "Night Game," sorta about baseball, by C. G. Hanzlicek.
Such a wonderful idea, and so many great poems here.
Two, for you, and forgive me if I lean toward the blue,
Having just lost my best friend of more than 40 years.
Breakfast Song - Elizabeth Bishop
My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue.
I kiss your funny face,
your coffee-flavored mouth.
Last night I slept with you.
Today I love you so
how can I bear to go
(as soon I must, I know)
to bed with ugly death
in that cold, filthy place,
to sleep there without you,
without the easy breath
and nightlong, limblong warmth
I've grown accustomed to?
— Nobody wants to die;
tell me it is a lie!
But no, I know it's true.
It's just the common case;
there's nothing one can do.
My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue
early and instant blue.
And this excerpt from "The Gardener," by John Hall Wheelock, an ode to his deceased father:
When down the nave of your great elms I go
That soar their Gothic arches where the sky,
Nevertheless, with all its stars will show,
Or when the moon of summer, riding high,
Spills through the leaves her light from far away,
I feel we share the secret, you and I.
All these you loved and left. We may not stay
Long with the joy our hearts are set upon:
This is a thing that here you tried to say.
... The truth is on me now that was with you:
How life is sweet, even its very pain,
The years how fleeting and the days how few.
6
@Perfect Gentleman Sending you a hug.
1
This articles warmed my heart. Here is an original poem. You can find more on Instagram @quinnb_poetry
Stories
You know all the
Moving things
Murmur tales that
Would terrify and excite
If only we knew
How to listen.
You cry I am broken
And I am comfortable
And would never dare,
But the world is woven
On a loom
Of broken things and
Each thread will be tested.
We all have felt, at times,
The unrelenting push of bigger wheels
Turning through our lives.
Asking will you trust today,
Knowing what you do
Of how the world treats
Those who would be free.
Will you trust, with both hands,
Those unmerciful hammers
Shaping us
Blow by blow
Into stories needing to be told.
-Quinn Bailey
Midhat Pasha’s Dream
Two ships.
One steaming from the West,
A mighty multi-turreted long barreled bruiser
Of a battle cruiser.
From the East the sultan’s galley proudly glides
With billowing sail, banks of shimmering oars,
Calligraphy and crisply snapping semaphores.
These ships have names.
From the West, The Seven Deadly Virtues.
From the East, The Brain Does Not Wag The Dog.
A Fine Tableau,
Otherwise, nothing Midhat
Did not
Already know.
There Is a Gold Light In Certain Old Paintings
- Donald Justice
3
Love this so much!!! My recommendation is "All People, All Human," the poem at the bottom of this article: https://atd-uk.org/2020/01/15/moraene-roberts-campaigning-with-a-banner-made-of-silk/. Long may your tradition continue.
1
Lola Ridge:
Wall Street at Night
Long vast shapes…
cooled and flushed through with darkness…
Lidless windows
Glazed with a flashy luster
From some little pert café chirping up like a sparrow.
And down among iron guts
Piled silver
Throwing gray spatter of light…
pale without heat…
Like the pallor of dead bodies. (Sun-up 56)
Cottonmouth Country by Louise Gluck
1
A Wife Explains Why She Likes Country
Because those cows in the bottomland are black and white, colors
anyone can understand, even against the green
of the grass, where they glide like yes and no, nothing in between
because in the country, heartache has nowhere to hide,
it’s the Church of Abundant Life, the Alamo,
the hubbub of the hoi polloi, the parallel lines of rail fences,
because I like rodeos more than I like golf,
because there’s something about the sound of mealworms and
leeches and the dream of a double-wide
that reminds me this is America, because of the simple pleasure
of a last chance, because sometimes whiskey
tastes better than wine, because hauling hogs on the road
is as good as it gets when the big bodies are layered like pigs in a cake,
not one layer but two,
because only country has a gun with a full choke and slide guitar
that melts playing it cool into sweaty surrender in one note,
because in country you can smoke forever and it’ll never kill you,
because roadbeds, flatbeds, your bed or mine,
because the package store is right across from the chicken plant
and it sells boiled peanuts, because I’m fixin’ to wear boots to the dance
and make my hair bigger, because no smarty-pants, just easy rhymes,
perfect love, because I’m lost deep within myself and the sad songs call me out,
because even you with your superior aesthetic cried
when Tammy Wynette died,
because my people
came from dirt.
—Barbara Ras
1
William Stafford's
"A Story That Could Be True"
2
Daniel Beatty's "Knock Knock" about a young man's incarcerated father. See it on youtube; you wont forget it.
It is time for another los Alamos
Presently the country is comatose
As the pandemic spread across the land
We need a military plan
The invaders have breached the shore
Citizen hidden behind their door
Coronavirus can decimate the economy
Cutting the life blood a frontal lobotomy
All the best scientist and healthcare officials
Mustered together to devise a protocol
Develop a test and antidote
A vaccine to stop the death tote
A national Emergency must be declare
Its in all of us to do our share
1
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
William Carlos Williams, from "Asphodel, that Greeny Flower"
6
Good News
Layoffs and closures, the economy slows –
Cookies will crumble – that’s just how it goes;
Rich peeps (God love ‘em) have managed their wealth
So their holdings are fine, show blooming good health
Despite market setbacks that buckle our knees
Prompt us to prayer to the Manna God, please
Bring us to even, our heads above water
Yet the virus, my boyos, shows us no quarter;
No respite from losses, and my broker is sick -
Good news a comin’ – let’s hope it comes quick.
5
'Seed' by Paula Meehan
Emerging Market Unicorn
A startup worth $1 billion is rare,
a so-called unicorn.
He hears the whistle of the Wall Street man
and wonders what this latest call might mean.
After centuries on the British Crest,
Christian longings that the mythical
appear and validate a miracle,
must royalty and abbots now make space
for investors and the marketplace?
If equity means owned instead of just,
and interest only means the bankers' kind,
he sees the trend: how this will be the end
of faith, analysts will measure cost
but not the cost of noble hopes once lost.
He snorts. It will be easy to resist
once more the ancient hunger to exist.
John Barr
1
"The Peace of Wild Things"
by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
4
Here's one of my favorites, by Laura Gilpin:
Two-Headed Calf
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.
1
What a wonderful way to begin a meeting! I studied the Verlaine poem in college (many decades ago) and I can still recite it from memory.
A few weeks ago, I wandered into a very local hardware store that specializes in "feed and seed" and was astonished and delighted when, standing at the counter, I looked up and saw the following lines, handwritten, tacked to a weathered wooden beam:
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Yes, there is definitely a place for poetry!
6
@Alix Ingber Chaucer is so apt for these times!
1
Mr. Lacey,
Thanks for this article!
Here are a few suggestions from me.
To make a prairie
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery will do,
If bees be few.
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
Emily Dickinson
I can see that this one might be deeply felt by your staff given the challenges of your work.
Three Things to Remember
As long as your're dancing, you can
break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just
extending the rules.
Sometimes there are no rules.
Mary Oliver
All the best for your morning sessions.
Howard Herring
3
This is the best news I have read all week. No doubt there are many readers who would love to start each day with a poem of your group's choosing. Please consider it.
"Under One Small Star" by Wislawa Szymborska
This is a poem for our time . Szymborska looks at things that we take for granted and shows them in a new light that is revelatory. To read her poems is to experience the thrill of discovery.
3
I direct both the Bowers Writers House at Elizabethtown College and the West Chester University Poetry Center, and kudos to you all for infusing your writing and reading lives with poems. Feel free to reach out to me at either venue for the opportunity for unique collaboration! Oh — and read Mark Strands’ “Dog Poems” from his stunning collection BLIZZARD OF ONE.
2
Two choices.
Eliot, from The Dry Salvages
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: “on whatever sphere of being
The mind of man may be intent
At the time of death”—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
These are by far the most wonderful Comments I've ever read in
the Times.
Couldn't come at a better time.
We need poetry and each other.
11
"The last One," by W.S. Merwin
The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats
4
"Dinosauria, We" by Charles Bukowski
1
Read some baseball poems, especially if the opening games are canceled. If God Invented Baseball is an award winning collection of poems about the game. The author is E. Ethelbert Miller.
2
What a great pleasure to learn that the editorial board of the New York Times starts its day by reading a poem. This is an example worth emulating in the cabinet meetings, board meetings and war rooms. As the World Poetry Day approaches us on 21st March, I propose a Poet Laureate for the Planet at UNESCO, which could modelled on the lines of the Poetry Consultant at the Library of Congress or UK Poet Laureate, and can give the world a poem a day to read and ponder, 365 days a year. Mahatma Gandhi said—“We must be the change we want to see in the world.” Thank you NYT editorial board for being that change and giving poetry the prominence it deserves in our daily lives.
I would like to recommend the NYT editorial board an anthology of Great Indian Poems covering over 3000 years of Indian Poetry from 28 Indian languages, translated into English.
I would like to leave you with some of my haiku from magical Madagascar—
clear sky
filled with stars
—crickets’ cry
sea of innocence
exuding amber light
—lemur’s eyes
yellow flowering weeds
blossoming —
the face of divinity
two Vasa parrots shrill
chasing each other
—mating season
frangipani flower
shining
—five-petaled sun
frangipani flowers
on the floor
—fallen galaxies
standing
below a baobab—
what a blessing!
always ready
for a party
—red fody
incessant beating
of sea waves—
midnight
sea waves—
the ocean breathing,
its vast mouth open
black and white ruffed lemur
looking sad—
what is he thinking ?
Warmly
7
Perhaps the most deeply passionate poem I have ever read.
The Kiss
Stephen Dunn - 1939
She pressed her lips to mind.
—a typo
How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.
She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.
Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?
I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,
defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.
8
Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
5
I won't get the dashes right, so I'll leave them out, but :
Tell all the truth, but tell it slant
Success in circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise.
As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every Man be blind.
[E. Dickinson]
3
"Psalm" by Wislawa Szymborska
"Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!"
A wonderful poem that reminds us that clouds, sands, insects,
birds, stars, etc. cross man-made borders with impunity.
A reminder of our place in the universe.
2
This is wonderful news!
My third grade students love our poetry unit and have written amazing poems. Fewer people are reading poetry, so every venture like this one is promising.
Consider:
Seamus Heaney: "Digging" and "Mid-term Break"
John O' Donohue: "Bennacht"
Michael Longley: "Bookshops"
Mary Oliver: "The World I Live In"
Thank you for this good news to awaken to in these dark times!
2
EARTH YEAR 3030
So many octaves in this region of frequencies remain beyond understanding but everyone knows that nothing prevents heat waves from getting shorter as kilocycles increase. Fossilized skulls pried out of the earth leave questions unanswered though superimposed on reflectors. Virtual training is mandatory and basic: just thinking of walking barefoot through fire will burn the soles of your feet. Genetic change has canceled the physical drive to connect, deleted the concept of death. Brains function and cease to exist according to configuration; only savants have a modem to the continuum where chaos conducts variations.
The irreplaceable Louis Jenkins was a prose poet of rare humor and sly profundity (his the work that the great actor Mark Rylance read as his "acceptance speech" at the Tonys a few years ago). This is from his book "Sea Smoke":
“A Happy Song.”
We know that birds’ singing has to do with territory and breeding rights. Male birds sing to attract females and warn away other males. These songs include threat and intimidation, and perhaps, in the more complicated songs, the insinuation of legal action. It’s the grim business of earning a living in a grim world. Each song has its own subtle sound, the idiosyncracies of its singer. It turns out, though, that the females don’t really value innovation and invention and generally mate with males that sing the most ordinary, traditional tune. There is always, though, some poor sap that doesn’t get it, sitting alone on his branch practicing and polishing his peculiar version until it flows as smoothly as water through the streambed, a happy song that fills us with joy on this first warm day of the year.
2
"I believe we are more pensive every morning. I can tell by the faraway look in colleagues’ eyes ..." would be funny, except I think he means it.
Thank you for this piece today.
I come back to this poem by Wendell Berry often .
The Peace of Wild Things
by
Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
From The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, 1999),
Used here with the author's permission.
8
@Ginger Ryan
I didn't see your entry and recommended this, too. It gives comfort with every reading.
The Everymans LIbrary Poetry Series publishes fine poetry anthologies such as New York Poems and, since you mentioned rhythmic language, Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters, classic and contemporary poems in various rhythms. (Full disclosure, I edited that one).
Thank you for the heartening news that you now start your work by listening to a poem. Here is one written to my daughter that I hope might inspire you as you gather. It reminds us of how much we are formed by the written -- and spoken -- word.
Read to Me
We went so many places, you and I,
Riding there on the sound of my
Voice. You stayed close by my side
Night after night as we sailed the wide
And wordy seas and found our way
Back home at end of story, end of day.
After doing that over many years,
Listening, learning, overcoming fears,
You one day left for your own shores,
Opening to life, closing familiar doors.
5
@Richard Johnson That's beautiful.
1
The Guest House - Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent,
As a guide from beyond.
3
Here's my contribution: a poem I read in the New Yorker several years ago (sadly, too long to publish in the comments here). As poems will do, when I read it I felt like time had stopped and I'd gotten the wind knocked out of me (in a good way).
Washing the Elephant
by Barbara Ras
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/92123/washing-the-elephant
3
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
From The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
L&B&L
1
"Will You" by Carrie Fountain. I read it about once a week just as a reminder.
1
Read this...
I AM TIRED OF OWNING THINGS
I am tired of owning things.
I am tired of having.
I am tired of owning a house which I have to heat in winter
and cool in summer.
I am tired of owning an automobile.
I am tired of driving to places to buy things to have.
I am tired of buying things.
I am tired of buying things to use for my house.
I am tired of owning property,
of having land, of having trees and grass,
of having to drive places to buy things to use
on the grass in the summer and for the snow in the winter.
I am tired of saying, “I own this.”
I am tired of saying, “This is mine.”
I am tired of owning.
I don’t want to own anymore.
I hope there is no such thing as a soul.
I do not want to have a soul.
If I do in fact have a soul, I want to give it away.
I would give it to the devil, if there were a devil.
I would give it away and not ask for anything in return.
I would hand it over no strings attached.
I am tired of owning things.
I am tired of having.
Here, take this.
It is the closest thing to a soul I will ever have.
It is yours.
No strings attached.
8
The Washington 129 anthology has some good stuff - including a very short poem by yours truly.
1
Kindness is always a good way to begin one's day :) ...
"Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye
http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward/preview?u=9e5e4dd4731a9649c1dd1cf58&id=7caee9ba0e
"Small Kindnesses" by Monica Sharman
http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward/preview?u=9e5e4dd4731a9649c1dd1cf58&id=2cfd028654
You also might enjoy this recent podcast from Basecamp that looked at "Poetry at Work" and Poetry at Work Day:
https://rework.fm/poetry-at-work/
Laura L. Barkat
Managing Editor, TweetspeakPoetry.com
2
Many fine poems and poets offered in these comments. Randall Jarrell was one of the best mid-century Americans, remembered by most for his "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner", frequently in high school or college anthologies. Here's a less well known Jarrell poem, an adaptation from Rilke. Shadowy to be sure, but unforgettable. Published 1960.
WASHING THE CORPSE
after Rilke
They had got used to him. But when they brought
The kitchen lamp in, and it was burning
Uneasily in the dark air, the stranger
Was altogether strange. They washed his neck,
And since they had no knowledge of his fate,
They lied till they had put together one,
Always washing. One of them had to cough,
And while she was coughing she left the heavy
Sponge of vinegar on his face. The other
Stopped a minute too, and the drops knocked
From the hard brush, while his dreadful
Cramped hand wanted to demonstrate
To the whole household that he no longer thirsted.
And he did demonstrate it. Coughing shortly,
As if embarrassed, they went back to work
More hurriedly now, so that across the dumb
Pattern of the wallpaper their contorted shadows
Writhed and wallowed as though in a net
Until the washing reached its end.
The night, in the uncurtained window-frame,
Was relentless. And one without a name
Lay clean and naked there, and gave commandments.
This heartens me to no end; as did Joe Biden quoting Seamus Heaney last night. We need poetry for our humanity.
Now do some Audre Lorde and Frank O'Hara!
3
My contribution, with thanks to Ada Limon:
The road wasn’t as hazardous then,
when I’d walk to the steel guardrail,
lean my bendy girl body over, and stare
at the cold creek water. In a wet spring,
the water’d run clear and high, minnows
mouthing the sand and silt, a crawdad
shadowed by the shore’s long reeds.
I could stare for hours, something
always new in each watery wedge—
a bottle top, a man’s black boot, a toad.
Once, a raccoon’s carcass half under
the overpass, half out, slowly decayed
over months. I’d check on him each day,
watching until the white bones of his hand
were totally skinless and seemed to reach
out toward the sun as it hit the water,
showing all five of his sweet tensile fingers
still clinging. I don’t think I worshipped
him, his deadness, but I liked the evidence
of him, how it felt like a job to daily
take note of his shifting into the sand.
1
Try A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford
1
@Patrick
The title of the anthology is A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford (Woodley Press, 2013).
My poem is on page 139.
1
So glad to hear that people now are reading and listening to poetry. Here's one:
Teaching Union
The bridge is a diaphragm of muscle
under it the Rio Bravo flows
backward
dividing time from time.
A knife with a second hand cuts
into air in retrograde motion
Breathe out, using muscles of
that diaphragm to exhale
completely.
You have been on vacation
an awfully long time.
--Victoria Drombosky, Vancouver, B.C. Canada
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
--Wendell Berry
8
Postscript
By Seamus Heaney
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
From THE SPIRIT LEVEL (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996)
6
@Victoria Dawson Thank you! This poem never gets old.
1
Mid-Term Break
By Seamus Heaney
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
2
"To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy (excerpt)
...I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing world doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
"I Try to Waken and Greet the World Once Again" by James Wright
In a pine tree,
A few years away from my window sill,
A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,
On a branch.
I laugh, as I see him abandon himself
To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do
That the branch will not break.
This poem reminds me that even though I may think, in these stressful times, that the whole tree might fall down, I have to believe that it will hold.
4
Writers might appreciate that "to articulate sweet sounds together, Is to work harder than any these ..."
Adam's Curse BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’ ...
3
There is a poem that this Italian poet (Mariangela Gualtieri) just wrote from the quarantined Italy of Corona virus. It's in Italian only. I'm not a translator, nor I asked the author, but I thought it was worth a rough translation for your next meeting :) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QqUrlrS1hJZWc8HJbUVAYyuf0aQidmZy/view?usp=drivesdk
Making the case for poetry in the workplace:
https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2017/04/13/viewpoint-making-the-business-case-for-poetry.html
... and an elegant project that amplifies your initiative:
https://www.thejacobchallenge.com/
If you find yourself Screaming over what you see happening to our world, https://youtu.be/a2EXnPryM-s with Jo Sallins, Tony Vacca, Joe Roderick, John Isaac Sheldon and Paul Richmond - Recorded live, at Hawks and Reed Performing Arts Center
4
I used to post a daily poem in my classroom; students would check it out on their way in or out. This one was a favorite:
Richard Wilbur's "Winter Spring"
A script of trees before the hill
Spells cold, with laden serifs; all the walls
Are battlemented still;
But winter spring is winnowing the air
Of chill, and crawls
Wet-sparkling on the gutters;
Everywhere
Walls wince, and there’s the steal of waters.
Now all this proud royaume
Is Veniced. Through the drift’s mined dome
One sees the rowdy rusted grass,
And we’re amazed as windows stricken bright.
This too-soon spring will pass
Perhaps tonight,
And doubtless it is dangerous to love
This somersault of seasons;
But I am weary of
The winter way of loving things for reasons.
6
Sunday Morning - Wallace Stevens
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,.....
5
Billy Collins, On becoming 10.
1
@Nancy Davis Correction, Poem entitled On Turning 10 ...
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
Billy Collins
2
Or this:
Last night I dreamed you here
and we spoke of many things:
how you have been since I woke last
and my imaginings
that time would bring you near,
more than anything
and how you've been,
how have you been?
2
@Sarah McCarthy is this your own poem? i googled the first line and then the first two lines but could not find it. i like it very much.
1
Oh, this is where you've been, my friends, waiting under desks and slouching around corners before the morning meetings when you will all march out and reveal to the world the gorgeous hearts that are hidden within every news story.
This one must be read, if it has not been already. I cannot believe it hasn't, for its sonorous resonance echos naturally within our souls from generation to generation:
THE SECOND COMING
by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
_____________
Ancient nature reduced to desert is indignant and uncontrollable.
11
This is the most enjoyable article comments I’ve read... maybe anywhere. Thanks to everyone who shared their poems.
This one, by Nina Murray, is my suggestion for the newsroom
soft targets
(On May 5, government forces disperse protests
against President Putin's fourth term)
I cannot help it:
I picture damage
when in crowds
at the check-in line at the airport, say,
a metro station during the rush hour
I project the direction of an imagined blast
shatter the nearest glass in my mind's eye
decompose the scene into carnage
this is also writing: power must
inscribe itself onto a body—
a reporter pulls up his t-shirt
in a cell-phone photo to show the red welt—
a strikethrough mark—left by a whip
wielded by someone dressed up as a Cossack
the singe of contact
is a Rubicon crossed
the broken ribs register on the BBC
the human rights report
one welcomes touch for the memory of it
last week a large horse gently
worked his whiskered lips on my cheek
we are all soft
soft targets
8
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there.”
-William Carlos Williams
I’ll post a poem (perhaps several), and my reactions soon, but this immediately came to mind.
14
From the inimitable Wendell Berry:
"The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer"
https://onbeing.org/poetry/the-contrariness-of-the-mad-farmer/
5
Midnight
by
todd eddy
if
jazz
were a cat
i'd call it
Midnight
'cause that's
when all
the cats
WAIL!
3
Hey Marc:
I’ve always taken my poetry seriously having named my first born son William Geoffrey in honour of the Bard, Blake and Chaucer
Also, I’m an Episcopalian for some 45 years.
A couple of weeks ago at a Celtic service, the rector read Auden’s September 1, 1939 as his homily. I had never been in a service where a poem was the entire sermon.
I’d never read the poem but was simply blown away by it’s searing prescience and its stupefying power.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—-that is all
He know on earth, and all he need to know.”
Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats
1820
3
"I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back."
Naomi Shihab Nye - “Famous”
2
in these dire times, it's best to look back at where we've been
Billy Collins: nostalgia
Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult....
Here's haiku by May Williams Ward of Wellington, Kansas
I stop bees to ask
How a true beeline is made.
Stingers demonstrate.
A N. HOLLYWOOD ENDING
-Went by the emptied
Dutton's Books on Laurel Canyon
& was surprised to see
Bukowski, Spillane, Capote & Wilde
on the sidewalk in front...
looking sad and somewhat bewildered.
-Was that a tear on Charles?
Of course not! Don't be silly!
and just because Mickey
was wiping his nose didn't mean...
-The picture of Oscar Wilde
was one of gloom...
Truman looked devastated.
-The sadness was too heavy;
I turned to go & then I saw them...
thousands of men & women of letters,
led by Shakespeare, Cervantes & Mark Twain,
followed by Dorothy Parker,
e.e. cummings, James Baldwin,
the Bronté sisters, Juan Ramón ∆Jiménez...
-They marched in front in silent protest,
then they were gone.
-The building remains.
3
The Layers
BY STANLEY KUNITZ
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
4
SARA'S SMILE
My heart starts beating
when I think of her name.
It beats even faster when I
think of her husband.
-Lance Jencks
I'm an English teacher in Chicago, currently teaching a poetry unit. Two poems that my students really connected to were "Coca Cola and Coco Frío" by Martín Espada and "Allowables" by Nikki Giovanni. A personal favorite (and classic) is "Birches" by Robert Frost.
1
Here's a little poem for the team to consider some morning, by Robert Bly:
Watering the Horse
How strange to think of giving up all ambition!
Suddenly I see with such clear eyes
The white flake of snow
That has just fallen in the horse's mane.
Cheers,
Douglas Burnet Smith,
Antigonish, Nova Scotia
The Underground by Seamus Heaney
"There we were in the vaulted tunnel running..."
WHY RAGE?
The brightest morning is heavy with night,
Darkness protects the growing embryo.
Why rage against the dying of the light?
Rage will not let you see beyond that height
Where eagles build their nests because they know
The brightest morning is heavy with night.
Your bed is cold; passion has lost its bite.
You hate to diet, feel arthritis grow -
Why rage against the dying of the light?
Even in sunshine shadows claim the right
To let their dim abstractions overflow -
The brightest morning is heavy with night.
Fling your days open! Celebrate or fight,
Follow the lodestar when you see it glow.
Why rage against the dying of the light,
Burn that last candle! Hold your birthright tight
Till grip begins to loosen, then let go!
The brightest morning is heavy with night -
Why rage against the dying of the light?
4
"When a Woman Loves a Man" and "Radio" by David Lehman (both in his "New and Selected" (2013, Scribner)
"The More Loving One" by W. H. Auden ("If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me."
You are onto something important here.
As Frank O'Hara of The New York School said, ..."poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible...and restores their detail; or conversely that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial."
For your readings please consider Sherman Alexie's "Powwow at the End of the World."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47895/the-powwow-at-the-end-of-the-world
5
ee cummings version of everyman seems apt for a newsroom.
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 moon stars 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 wake hope 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 so floating 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
4
By Don Marquis
...We hold by standards, rules and norms.
But when I'm eighty I intend
To turn a fool again for twenty years or so;
Go back to being twenty-five,
Drop cautions and conventions, join some little group
Fantastically rebel and alive,
And resolute, from soup
To nuts; I'll reimburse myself
For all the freak stuff that I've had to keep upon the shelf;
Indulge my crochets, be the friend of man,
And pull the thoughts I've always had to can--
I'm looking forward to a rough, rebellous, unrespectable old age,
Kicking the world uphill
With laughter shrill
And squeals of high-pitched, throaty rage.
2
Life
Flowers bend their bloom
In graceful surrender
To the bursting buds
Imagine You
Great achievers never know
On the day they begin
That greatness will be theirs
Within their own life’s span
They simply do their best
Then continue to improve
Imagine that’s your path in life
Imagine you
Love
Is a force of nature
The highest high, without which
We whither and die.
1
This makes many thoughts...
Ghostology
by Rebecca Lindenberg
The whistler's
inhale,
the white space
between is
and not
or after a question,
a pause. Nothing
isn't song:
a leaf hatching
from its green shell,
frost whorling
across a windshield,
an open door
opening.
1
Fairly topical in these days of COVID-19; previously tweeted by WHO Hand Hygiene, Geneva when earlier version published.
Handwashing 03:47
Ron Louie, MD
At this time of night, my hands
know what to do, stubbornly,
poorly pre-programmed
but compelled and automatic still,
with the cold bracing water
and the glop of scented soap
unable to break their rhythm,
movements purposeful and synchronized,
not just the deep creases of the palms
but the six webs between the eight fingers
counting the thumbs separately
each grabbed by the opposing fist
bent with friction and twisted firmly
then sliding each cupped palm
around the flesh beneath the shortest fingers
surprisingly cooler than anywhere else,
gliding across the dorsal latticeworks, before
moving down to surround each wrist
around and around to a vague spot
they both know, halfway to the elbow,
with an unthinking brushing
of fingerpads and thumbs against ten shorn nails
finally plunging it all
under what is thought to be a glistening absolution
believing that traces of the past can be further diminished
the hands now ready to be dry again, ready to go again
no matter what just finished at 03:44.
[previous version published with editorial mistakes:
JAMA. 2018;319(24):2561. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.0094]
1
Now touch the air softly,
Step gently, one, two,
I'll love you till roses
Are robin's egg blue;
I'll love you till gravel
Is eaten for bread,
And lemons are orange,
And lavender's red.
Now touch the air softly,
Swing gently the broom.
I'll love you till windows
Are all of a room;
And the table is laid,
And the table is bare,
And the ceiling reposes
On bottomless air.
I'll love you till Heaven
Rips the stars from his coat,
And the Moon rows away in
A glass-bottomed boat;
And Orion steps down
Like a diver below,
And Earth is ablaze,
And Ocean aglow.
So touch the air softly,
And swing the broom high.
We will dust the gray mountains,
And sweep the blue sky;
And I'll love you as long
As the furrow the plow,
And However is Ever,
And Ever is Now.
William Jay Smith
2
Given the rise of oligarchies, I would recommend Carolyn Forche's "The Colonel" or "Ourselves or Nothing." And I wish you'd print some of these suggestions!
2
Since you're the National Desk, please look to the robust poetry of the Midwest and north coast. maybe start with James Wright, especially the volumes The Branch Will Not Break and Shall We Gather at the River.
Lying in a Hammock at Wiiliam Duffy's Farm in Pine Island Minnesota would set anyone's day on the right track!
1
WHY RAGE?
The brightest morning is heavy with night,
Night nurses the impending embryo.
Why rage against the dying of the light?
Rage will not let you see beyond that height
Where eagles build their nest because they know
The brightest morning is heavy with night.
Your bed is cold; passion has lost its bite.
You hate to diet, feel arthritis grow -
Why rage against the dying of the light?
Even in sunshine shadows claim the right
To let their dim abstractions overflow.
The brightest morning is heavy with night.
Fling your days open! Celebrate, or fight!
Follow the lodestar when you see it glow.
Why rage against the dying of the light,
Burn that last candle! Hold your birthright tight
Till grip begins to loosen, then let go!
The brightest morning is heavy with night -
Why rage against the dying of the light?
1
Now THIS is what I call good news.
11
The month's passed, but still--this, by James Schuyler:
February
A chimney, breathing a little smoke.
The sun, I can’t see
making a bit of pink
I can’t quite see in the blue.
The pink of five tulips
at five p.m. on the day before March first.
The green of the tulip stems and leaves
like something I can’t remember,
finding a jack-in-the-pulpit
a long time ago and far away.
Why it was December then
and the sun was on the sea
by the temples we’d gone to see.
One green wave moved in the violet sea
like the UN Building on big evenings,
green and wet
while the sky turns violet.
A few almond trees
had a few flowers, like a few snowflakes
out of the blue looking pink in the light.
A gray hush
in which the boxy trucks roll up Second Avenue
into the sky. They’re just
going over the hill.
The green leaves of the tulips on my desk
like grass light on flesh,
and a green-copper steeple
and streaks of cloud beginning to glow.
I can’t get over
how it all works in together
like a woman who just came to her window
and stands there filling it
jogging her baby in her arms.
She’s so far off. Is it the light
that makes the baby pink?
I can see the little fists
and the rocking-horse motion of her breasts.
It’s getting grayer and gold and chilly.
Two dog-size lions face each other
at the corners of a roof.
It’s the yellow dust inside the tulips.
It’s the shape of a tulip.
It’s the water in the drinking glass the tulips are in.
It’s a day like any other.
2
Keep it up Times Insider. It's defintiely showing in the work you do.
But what the hey is this all about:
"I got the idea from an unlikely source: my son’s high school English teacher, Anne Baney."
"unlikely source" !?! This is what English teachers do when they are not required to spend valuable time teaching standardized tests, killing spirits and imagination rather than igniting them.
16
How about having a poem on the front page every day? Not necessarily new ones, but the way you're doing it at your meetings.
17
@Meg Fitch
Great idea! In these times we could all benefit from the beauty of words that convey so much with so few.
2
Rebbe Nachman's Song
Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav used to say:
"Friends, do not despair;
when a difficult time is upon us
our joy must fill the air.
We must not lose our faith in living,
we must not despair...
when a difficult time is upon us,
our joy must fill the air."
3
As a loyal reader, I want to thank you for the amazing work you do! I love your new practice of a daily poem in your department (we did that at my job, but I was an English teacher!), and what a great way to steal a little bit of time for reflection and a fresh perspective before diving into such challenging reporting. It’s hard to choose just one poem to recommend, but this one, by Emily Dickinson, was taped to my computer monitor during my years of working with teenagers. Would love to hear your thoughts about it! Also, l’m buoyed by seeing how many people commented on this piece and love to read poetry.
The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease —and You — beside
The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges —Buckets —do —
The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —
By Emily Dickinson
6
it is a time for precise and intense prose; not a time for poetry, which is by definition ambiguous and reliant more on emotional reverberations than thought
2
@Amalia Negreponti I could not agree more with your definition of poetry. Good poetry demands that you think deeply, and differently, something we need more of in this time.
3
Yes, Amalia, some precise thinking is long overdue. I agree.
While I do enjoy reading poetry -- Yeats, Cavafy, Hopkins -- we need clear headedness, not passion.
Enough of MAGA hats and Bernie Bros. For heaven's sake, where are our statesmen?
1
@Amalia Negreponti Ever tried to write a Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnet? Ever tried to teach one? I promise you, if you were to spend a little time considering the meter, the rhetorical turn known as a volta, the way the particular rhymes schemes are memetic of the arguments of each kind of poem (for instance, an Italian sonnet is best suited to exploring binaries, an English sonnet better for a dialectic), I suspect you would reconsider your position about poetry. The work of good poems is to be precise, intellectual, and rooted in rhetoric. Poems are effective vehicles of thought and argument, precisely because readers are often so taken with the figurative language, the powerful imagery and effective use of the five senses, that they don't realize they're being persuaded, that the poem is making them see the world in a new way.
4
Here's a favorite...
Variation on a Theme by Rilke
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me - a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic - or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
- Denise Levertov
3
Love that you start the meeting with poetry ... let the ideas and writing flow. Here is a poem for consideration at a meeting.
EDWARD HOPPER'S ROOM IN BROOKLYN (1932)
A vase a lamp a chair in a room in Brooklyn—
Metamorphosed by the language of light—
Once were objects in the bright dimension
Of a painter's mind. What arcane trait
Set Hopper apart from the drift of the world-at-large?
What ever-expanding light made him energize
The properties of common things, and charge
The ordinary with greatness? Under the guise
Of vase and lamp and chair, he left it bare—
Illuminated by a light that fell
Enamel-white upon a windowsill.
And objects bright beyond a gilded frame,
Beyond a room in Brooklyn, beyond his time,
Transfigured light until they became monumental.
--David George, SONNETS FROM THE NEW WORLD
Thank you for keeping the truth in the light.
5
speaking of dreams, here is the most powerful anti-war expression i have ever read. it is a Haiku by Basho composed "..at the site of a ruined castle."
The summer grasses---
For many brave warriors
The aftermath of dreams.
3
I LOVE the attention you are giving poetry. And I love the suggestions that readers are contributing. Here is my tribute to poetry:
DEFIANCE
A shelter of sorts,
the sky drips with
all the colors of misery -
even weeds are drab green,
and the mountainous backdrop,
so haughty in its immensity,
does not depart from
the color of stone.
Rust presents itself
among the trash.
Pale pebbles litter
the earth, the ash.
And yet, in the midst
of daily desolation,
of grunge and gloom,
a blooming poem appears
wearing a pair of hot pink pants.
2
I love this. I recommend “Who the Meek Are Not” by Mary Karr; “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith; “From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee.
2
Anything by W.S. Merwin. This one is a good start.
For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
3
I recommend Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.
3
This poem never fails to move me:
Those Winter Sunday’s
By Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
20
Please consider this poem by William Stafford:
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
5
Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
5
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost seems apropos for our times.
2
In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
4
Whatever happens. Whatever
What is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
Galway Kinnell. As perfect as a poem can be. And those three is's knock me out every time.
3
Hank, a neighbor, always requested I read one or two of my poems whenever we shared a meal.
Last year I visited a him in the hospital, during his last in a too-long series of admissions.
He lay in the late evening dark. I asked if he would like to hear some poems that I'd brought along.
No, he said. I'd like to be quiet for a while. Could you just sit and hold my hand.
So I did.
I have been waiting for a poem to come, one about that last hour spent with a good man, a friend, someone who loved words laid down in a specific and surprising order. I guess when I'm done with missing him and can instead see him clear, standing at the next corner, waving, wanting to sit for coffee and a good chat.
8
@maybemd What a beautiful note. Sometimes a moment spent in silence speaks more than a poem - it's nice to be reminded of that.
1
Read this to remember the honor of working for others.
Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden - 1913-1980
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
3
What a lift this article brings, and then to imagine your meetings which will be so full of cause for world-weariness beginning with poems. It is heartening to read each one of the comments here and the many terrific poems. Here's another by A.R. Ammons:
Eyesight
It was May before my
attention came
to spring and
my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've
missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:
don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if
you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain
it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone
1
Many thanks for this wonderful article, and to the people posting such great poems and links which have now filled two pages in my journal. A great way to start today, and hopefully the beginning of a daily habit.
4
friends
so happy to learn that you, like me, (a trauma surgeon) start your day with a poem. Poetry Foundation website has been a treasure trove of discovery for me. Who can beat Thomas Lux's God Particles (in book by the same title), virtually anything by Tony Hoaglund (sadly dead last year) or Jane Hirschfield. The comment box says my comment is to long, but I attempted to paste Tony Hoagland's Bible Study here. You'll have to look it up yourselves!!! (which you should definitely do)
12
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.”
― William Carlos Williams, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower Other Love Poems
40
For the past 5 years, my church has had a Poetry Service. Interspersed with the regular elements of worship service, congregants read poems. It is one of our best attended Sundays each year.
3
That's definitely an inspiring way to start the day! Starting out with a poem or admiring creation even for a few moments before we get to the long list of to-do's for the day helps refresh the mind in more ways than we know.
Here's one from my school days -
The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
6
@Abigail Hart I chose to memorize and recite The Road Not Taken for 8th grade English class—54 years ago! I still love it. Thanks for posting.
1
Years ago we started poetry night with the family. On Sunday evening everyone had to bring a poem to dinner. The kids rolled their eyes. But after a few weeks one of them would exclaim, "It's Sunday. Poetry, right?" My husband and I would look at each other and roll our eyes. We needed to find a poem. We had foreign exchange students living with us. We heard Puskin in Russian, Norwegian poems and German poems. Our children's friends asked to be invited for dinner on Sunday. Anyone invited to dinner, at our house, on a Sunday would ask enthusiastically, I should bring a poem, right? When the kids were out of the house and we moved to the southwest for several years we decided to have a poetry night. Would anyone come? Indeed they all did come with favorite poems, poems they had written, poems they found spur of the minute. You can learn so much about someone from the poem they choose, the poem they love, the poem they have carried for years and share with you. And, they wanted to know, when we were going to do this again?
30
As a former English teacher -- and even before, a "poet-in-the-schools" in Tulsa OK -- I'm delighted to see this sunrise approach to starting a meeting. One could wish more gatherings begin this way. (Though it's peculiar to imagine a president's cabinet meeting starting with the leader dramatically reciting "I heard a fly buzz when I died..." before discussing the Coronavirus.)
Thank you for this reflection. Poetry is not a common national pastime in America, though in some countries poets have motivated populations to rebel for freedom, and to keep their spirits alive and well. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., with all that is despairing, let's "not go gentle into that good night."
15
@SGK Thanks for the laugh (macabre though it is) about the Dickinson poem. What an image!
1
Samurai Song, by Robert Pinsky. Found at the Poetry Foundation here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57103/samurai-song. Try clicking on the red arrow to hear Pinsky recite his poem. He has a remarkable reading voice.
3
My humble suggestion: The Pennycandystore Beyond the El by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I love this poem. I memorized it for an audition at the CBC when they were looking for an announcer. I think it perplexed them but it introduced me to the magic in his poetry. I love that you start your meetings with word magic.
1
Poetry is the history of the human heart. We need to read more of it, especially as we are besieged my fear and bad news every day.
8
Listen to the first poem in Book One of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching in Cantonese, which for me was easier than Mandarin to hear the first time in the mid-1980s. The poem is spare to a fault, if that's possible, and yet elegant, curling back on itself.
1
Sonnet for Ithaca
A little song will sound out fear and hope:
Play out the knots and ease away the rope
To fathom out the depths and rocky floor
To skirt the reefs and safely land to shore.
These are songs for which the Sirens yearn
And steal away to hear at Circe’s court,
Leaving the furious breakers left unsung
And giving pass to those who dare the strait.
These are the songs to calm Charybdis
And assuage the mountainous oceans
Staving impending wreck and castaway
With mystic chants and lyre-played wave-spray charms.
And we the crew that served Odysseus well
Will sound all out in songs we sing and tales we tell.
2
DECEMBER MORNING
Close to the mirror, fading eyes
flatter your image even though
you wear that radical disguise:
brown spots and wrinkles. Fingers stall
a moment as you use the comb,
then wrestle with those buttonholes
so full of malice since your bones
began to brittle. You reheat some coffee,
toast a corn meal scone, eat half.
Your hunger can’t compete with
time which masticates unseen.
You clear the table; no more feasting
on those marinating dreams when
days are thinning like your hair.
A broadcast of Brahms’ requiem
is mauled by static - forecasts slur
into oblivion – you have not
been out in days, you need fresh air,
look out the window - sun is up
slowly begins to liquidate grayed snow.
You rinse the coffeepot - are glad you
left your bed unmade when breath
turns leaden in your chest.
You take your pills, lie down and wait
and hope the dreadful heaviness
will lift. You wonder: why do you
cling to each moment, fear the rest
in that uncharted state you knew
before your birth? You almost smile -
were you afraid of being, too?
18
@Nicole Lieberman
Are you the poet of "December Morning"? I love it.
MANSION by A.R. Ammons
I have already counseled my children to read this poem at my funeral.
7
Anything by Wislawa Szymborska.
17
We all need poetry in our lives. And our lives can be poetry. Here's a poem from a friend of mine.
GARDEN VARIETY
a poem is a weed
until a reader
names it Truth
a reader is a broken
flower
till a poet
binds her stem
with words
and leaves her nodding
in the sun
Copyright Scott Waters, 2020
6
I am departing now,
on this day full of volcanoes,
for the multitude, for life.
Pablo Neruda
2
What a beautiful practice! Offering a suggestion:
Stanley Kunitz' "The Round"
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
the 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.
....
I am so grateful for your work--thanks for reading poems!
Tyler Meier
Executive Director
University of Arizona Poetry Center
poetry.arizona.edu
20
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
^
16
@Ira Weissman Thank you for reminding me of this wonderful Roethke villanelle.
3
I used to have my ninth graders read this one.
A beauty, isn't it?
1
Praying, by Mary Oliver
4
Here's a poem I wrote after reading Bob Woodward's "Fear".
Ego ruins us all.
Sometimes it seems to me saints —
secular, spiritual, saved —
merely those who can push ego aside.
How differently you and I
see the world.
I see strength in love;
for you, softness, failure.
Seeing you sitting at your desk,
on the phone,
making up lies - the good kind, these forgivable -
about the personnel file before you,
telling grieving parents how well-liked their baby was,
how strong a leader he was,
how sorry you were — finally, about something —
how he was a beautiful boy.
That was it, I think:
That you saw someone as human,
that you, too, were human.
What did you see, I imagined,
about that beautiful boy?
Your own child, younger and innocent and noble?
You, not broken, having become something in service to something beyond yourself?
I know: I cannot push my own ego
aside to not judge.
But in that moment my heart opened,
breaking down that wall between us —
and I knew I was a better person
for loving you.
3
MOTHER'S DAY
"Don't look at me like that, what could I do?
You almost burned the house down! Please, don't cry.
I sold the house. Mom, your confusion grew -
You had a stroke - please understand Mom, try!
You almost burned the house down. Please don't cry,
You'll make new friends. Here, you get first-rate care.
You had a stroke. Please understand; Mom, try!
You soil yourself totally unaware!
You'll make new friends here. You get first-rate care,
I'm working Mom! You cannot live with me!
You soil yourself totally unaware -
Mom, you can't function without memory!
I'm working, Mom! No, you can't live with me!
Last week you didn't even know my name.
Mom, you can't function without memory,
You had a stroke! Mom, you are not the same.
Last week you didn't even know my name,
I asked you who am I? You didn't know -
You had a stroke, Mom. You are not the same -
You're in good hands here - time for me to go.
I asked you who am I? You didn't know!
I sold the house, mom; your confusion grew!
You're in good hands here. Time for me to go,
Don't look at me like that! What could I do?"
9
@Nicole Lieberman that was really great!
ALLEGRO, Tomas Tranströmer
After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.
The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.
The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no tax to Caesar.
I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.
I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:
"We do not surrender. But want peace."
The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.
The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.
13
This is exquisite to hear. I can’t imagine how you all manage the stress of your work. Thank you. I’m the poet laureate of Los Angeles, and your article captures precisely how civic an art poetry can be. Thank you. ps keep reading aloud to each other. It clears the room.
My very best,
Robin
14
I think Emily Dickenson's "Hope" Is The Thing With Feathers or Maya Angelou's "Awakening in New York" would be really good, aptly hopeful picks. I would also suggest "A Psalm to Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but it's a bit long.
3
Instructions on Not Giving Up
by Ada Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all.
23
"I got the idea from an unlikely source: my son’s high school English teacher, Anne Baney."
Not sure why Lacey thought this idea came from "an unlikely source."
My 8th-grade English teacher was where my love of literature and writing began.
Anne Baney deserves an apology!
36
As someone who has never quite gotten poetry, I suspect what at least partially accounts for the enjoyment and apparent creativity the Times group is seeing is the break from routine, the relaxation of the need to "be professional," the time to feel and think, plus whatever comes out from the people in the room.
But either or both.
Mark doesn't really tell us about exact connections made between the poetry reading, subsequent discussions, and effect on the editing process or decisions. It would be good to know, even if it's only to put them in a better frame of mind. For instance, does it help an editor who covers one subject understand another's?
So couldn't give any specific suggestions, but here are some topics for which others may have actual poems: silliness (maybe hit this from time to time); people who have been "wrong," as seen by the crowd and the times (not your Times)--only to have been proven right over time; how categories and boxes can mislead; fooling oneself; humility; selflessness; forgiveness; finding the humanity in someone with a very different politics; how courage, patriotism, and being a superhero look in modern times; (kind of like this one) unconventional places and ways for journalists to find story ideas; finding hope that's real in a time when things more and more look like they're going in the wrong direction.
If you can find one, something on you don't have to understand poetry to like the idea of it anyway.
2
I am Kent H.'s wifey of 41 years, Elaine M.N. and I recall how much I enjoyed reading the poem in college on a most sunny day, laughing, as I read it, over and over. I phoned my mother and read it to her!
"This Is Just To Say"
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
So sweet
and so cold
Well, I could dedicate my recommendation to a sunny summer day, remembering the sweetness of so much!
10
Don Hall's great epic poem " The One Day" .
5
As someone for whom memorizing poetry has been a lifeline since November 2016 (most recently W.H. Auden on the death of Yeats), I recommend Poem-a-Day, a free site which sends a poem to subscribers’ In Box every morning — recent, old, long, short..., and often quite delightful!
11
Prose du Transsiberien
Mountains of color rain down
Folds of endless wonder.
It is an evening where new folds
Play in the Jardin du Luxembourg, ball after ball.
Beethoven stands nearby.
The time of coming is like a volcano.
My notebook is bonded leather.
Saint Laurent makes an appearance like a panther.
Names pour out without feathers.
The time of coming is, well, NOW.
I exit my room to strains of La Walse.
The exchange is busy.
We are discalced without blisters without marks.
Prose is prose is prose.
The tv is not running tonight.
Instead a blessing of a thousand nights in one.
The conductor takes up a conducting wand.
Music comes like Lou might sing it.
I forget to count.
Instead poetry issues like a fountain reborn.
1
I have two poems to share
The birthday of the world
BY MARGE PIERCY
On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding
of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.
No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?
How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where
have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke
the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling
my eyes, and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.
7
Dolor
by Theodore Roethke
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paperclip, comma
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
From Collected Poems, published by Faber and Faber
It will be clear from the spelling of this poem’s title that its author is American. I was prompted
Continue
3
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
Are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
Are heading home again.
Wherever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild gees, harsh and exciting-
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
Mary Oliver
20
The title is “Wild Geese”
2
I start each day with the podcast “The Slowdown” by Tracy K Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate from 2017-2019. It’s 5 minutes of poetry and commentary. Lovely!
9
@Michele Prince thank you for this!
1
A little haiku that speaks my truth
Bare feet
Water's edge
Heaven
6
Section III of W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” or the entire poem:
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
Would love to be the fly on the wall at your morning meetings. Enjoy.
19
Manna
Everywhere, everywhere, snow sifting down,
a world becoming white, no more sounds,
no longer possible to find the heart of the day,
the sun is gone, the sky is nowhere, and of all
I wanted in life – so be it – whatever it is
that brought me here, chance, fortune, whatever
blessing each flake of snow is the hint of, I am
grateful, I bear witness, I hold out my arms,
palms up, I know it is impossible to hold
for long what we love of the world, but look
at me, is it foolish, shameful, arrogant to say this,
see how the snow drifts down, look how happy
I am.
"Manna" by Joseph Stroud, from Of This World
4
Morning Worship
I wake and hear it raining.
Were I dead, what would I give
Lazily to lie here,
Like this, and live?...
How shall I praise them:
All the sweet beings
Eternally that outlive
Me and my dying?
Mountains, I mean; wind, water, air;
Grass, and huge trees; clouds, flowers,
And thunder, and night.
Turtles, I mean, and toads; hawks, herons, owls;
Graveyards, and towns, and trout; roads, gardens,
Red berries, and deer.
Lightning, I mean, and eagles; fences; snow;
Sunrise, and ferns; waterfalls, serpents,
Green islands, and sleep.
Horses, I mean; butterflies; whales;
Mosses, and stars; and gravelly
Rivers, and fruit...
Maidens, I mean, and apples; needles; leaves;
Worms, and planets, and clover; whirlwinds, dew;
Bulls, geese—
Stop. Lie still.
You will never be done.
Leave them all there,
Old lover. Live on.
Mark Van Doren, 1957
7
A Blessing
By James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
22
Tree-Sleeping. By Robert Tristram Coffin
When I was small and trees were high
I loved to sleep out nights by the sea
A spruce that held up half the sky
Had boughs like beds where I could lie
So thick the twigs I could not slIde
Through to earth, and at my side
The evening star lay close by me.
The night came over the ocean slow,
A wind came up from nowhere there,
I felt my tree go to and fro
Until my bed was wholly air,
I lay on music grave and deep,
Moved on oceans of holy sleep,
With great stars tangled in my hair.
A sea-bird on a snowy wing
Came down with treble cries,
Alighted on my bed, this thing
Woke me with wide surprise,
Flew off with golden talons curled,
And there on the blue edge of the world
The young sun looked me in the eyes.
Read by author on You Tube
7
Don't Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve, by Adam Zagajewski
Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
Let the radiant thought last in stillness
though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves
Knowledge grows slowly like a wisdom tooth
The stature of a man is still notched
high up on a white door
From far off, the joyful voice of a trumpet
and of a song rolled up like a cat
What passes does't fall into a void
A stoker is still feeding coal into the fire
Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
On a hard dry substance
you have to engrave the truth
3
My favorite:) by Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other"
doesn't make any sense.
7
"Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Here's the last verse:
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, --
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to heaven he flings --
I know why the caged bird sings!
4
The Revenant by Billy Collins
2
Love this article! Thank you! Suggest Pablo Neruda's "Poetry" or Richard Wilbur's "The Writer"
1
Famous
BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
42
Perhaps the World Ends Here
by current U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
https://poets.org/poem/perhaps-world-ends-here
I also recommend the free Poem-a-Day series, which is a new poem emailed to your in-box every morning. It's like the news in poems! Included in the email is a statement by the poet, audio of them reading, and related poems. It's produced by the Academy of American Poets, a national nonprofit organization devoted to making poetry accessible.
https://poets.org/poem-a-day
Thanks for reading and sharing poems, especially as we head towards National Poetry Month in April!
Jennifer Benka
President & Executive Director
Academy of American Poets
New York, NY
21
@Jennifer Benka I love the Poem-a-Day series! What a gift every day.
Don't Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve, by Adam Zagajewski
2
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
Mark Strand
from the PoetryFoundation.org
6
@Z Love this poem. It's called "Eating Poetry."
I saw you there a gorgeous view
Who you were I hadn't a clue
But I crossed the room
My heart beating fearing doom
Your eyes were Kelly green
My little Irish Colleen
I said may I have this dance
I knew it at first glance
You must be Venus the goddess of love
Sent straight to me from above
Your skin felt like velvet
Walking across that room I'll never regret
I thought I loved you then
But real love is I' d do it all over again
2
It is this very thinking that’s behind Gaurav Bhalla’s book, “Awakening A Leader's Soul: Learnings Through Immortal Poems” - a powerful book (and very timely given the chaos in on nation and world today) that sheds new light on leadership with the help of poets, current and past.
Thanks for this article, which illustrates one more reason the NYT morning briefing is the first thing I read!
2
As illustrated here, good poetry can move us to action or reflection with the play of language. This is how poetry can be important in our daily lives, but as importantly, it needs to accessible.
It's interesting to see this piece appear in the Times the same week of Elisa Gabbert's March 3, 2020 "In Defense of Poetic Nonsense...." (book review).
Gabbert opens with:
"Really great poetry is difficult to read. I don’t just mean it’s challenging, though it usually is. I mean it’s hard to make progress.... "
This notion turns off students and casual readers of poetry. Yes, good poetry can be layered with deeper meaning, often only revealed on closer study. But to suggest that great poetry should be difficult is absurd.
Sometimes the music of the language is enough to make us dance. Good poetry says what means but often also means more than it says.
If I want puzzles, I'll hit the crossword (which I never do). If I want poetry, I'll read Wendell Berry or Richard Hague.
6
Each Whitney grandchild - there are 5 aged 9 to 19 - receives the Poem of the Month every month in a stunning gold envelope. Thank you for all these marvelous additions to my store. And my favorite - Summons by Robert Francis.
2
How wonderful! I also start my day with a poem. Currently, I am loving a book of Mary Oliver poems, WHY I WAKE EARLY. I attribute my poem habit to a friend whose mother was an avid reader of poetry, something my friend, who was close to her mother, only learned after her mother's death. This is a failry new morning ritual and marvel at how it inspires a few moments of creative thinking which I hope inspire the rest of my day. When my mother was very sick and at the Brigham in Boston for several months (she is fine) I would visit her daily. Every elevator had a Mary Oliver poem posted above the floor keys. They were incredibly calming and soothing at a very difficult time. I hope this article inspires a movement of more poetry reading.
8
Wislava Szymborska, "The Dinosaur." It is not what you likely expect, and it's wonderful.
Thanks to everyone posting poems. My screen is full of open tabs so I can read them all.
6
There are so many reasons to love the NYT, but this one touches deeply.
A clear image of the meeting came to mind: the chaos of the world and the bustle of the newsroom turned down to a hush while contemplation and communion take centre stage.
As an English teacher who also writes, I share poetry often, in unexpected ways, with my students. Through poetry, we stop time. We roll ideas around like hard candies in the mouth, and savour them. We better understand the other. We become more careful observers. Poetry humanizes.
I am excited, again, for April. Spring will truly be in bloom when my kids can enter the NYT's annual poetry contest.
I can't wait to share this article with my classes.
5
A PRAYER AMONG FRIENDS by John Daniel
Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive
with one another, we live here
in the light of this unlikely world
that isn't ours for long.
May we spend generously the time we are given.
May we enact our responsibilities
as thoroughly as we enjoy
our pleasures. My we see with clarity,
may we seek a vision
that serves all beings, may we honor
the mystery we hold in our hands
the gift of good work
and bear it forth whole, as we
were borne forth by a power we praise
to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.
5
From W.S. Merwin, a past US Poet Laureate who died last year.
For the Anniversary of My Death
By W. S. Merwin
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
22
@maybemd
The first anniversary of Merwin's death will be this month, Sunday the 15th.
What a refreshing article! Here's a little haiku for when things get too crazy:
On the garden path
close your cell phone. Can you hear
the butterfly's song?
9
The world of dew
is the world of dew.
And yet, and yet--
by Issa Kobayashi
I've used poetry at the high school and college level as an essential element of every course. Turn to it at home often too. I credit my father who quoted Gerard Manley Hopkins to us over the dinner table.
6
When I retired from teaching, I requested that I be allowed to read a poem over the public address system at the close of the morning announcements as my farewell after 29 years at that school (and 34 years teaching in NYS). I chose to read Marge Piercy's poem "To Be of Use." Another favorite poem of mine by Jay Leeming, whom Garrison Keillor once featured on NPR, is titled, "Underside." I think both are inspiring poems, suitable for opening your morning meetings. Enjoy!
11
@Eileen Thanks you for "Underside," which I'd never read before and for introducing me to Jay Leeming's poetry.
And a good pick from Marge Piercy's many terrific poems.
May I suggest an inspiration poem: Beginners by Denise Levertov.
3
@Dana Greene
Here's "Beginners" by Denise Levertov:
Beginners
But we have only begun
to love the earth.
We have only begun
to imagine the fullness off life.
How could we tire of hope?
so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?
-we have only begun
to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision
How it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.
…….
Not yet, not yet—
There is too much broken
that must be mended,
too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes….
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
So much is in bud.
Denise Levertov
On Finding Space in Pain
Why is it I can simply sit.
The afternoon away, and knit?
You might be back, I'm so aloof
From hurting as I weave the woof
So Steadily; At this dull pitch
Alive for nothing but the stitch.
Levels there are within, I think,
That woman, be she mad for drink,
Or crushed,-her love were lost to death,-
Or much in pain, or short of breath,
Sinks She to this. And here she sits
And pulls the wool- and knits,- and knits.
by Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
1926
13
There are some very fine poets who are or were journalists. One of my favorites is Tina Kelley, a former NYT writer. Check out her poem "On Leaving the Newsroom," for instance, in her book *Abloom & Awry*. More info here:https://cavankerrypress.org/blog/author-tina-kelley-motherhood-poetry/
2
@David Graham
Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart was a journalist.
I'm a high school English teacher, and I was excited to share this one with my students. It's a bleak one, but we talked about its subtle humor and small bits of optimism.
NOT HORSES
by Natalie Shapero
What I adore is not horses, with their modern
domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore
is a bug that lives only one day, especially if
it’s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or
chemical lake or cop admits to cover-up, a day
when no one thinks of anything else, least of all
that bug. I know how it feels, born as I’ve been
into these rotting times, as into sin. Everybody’s
busy, so distraught they forget to kill me,
and even that won’t keep me alive. I share
my home not with horses, but with a little dog
who sees poorly at dusk and menaces stumps,
makes her muscle known to every statue.
I wish she could have a single day of language,
so that I might reassure her don’t be afraid —
our whole world is dead and so can do you no harm.
11
There was a time--in my lifetime--when the New York Times published a poem on the editorial page nearly every day. I don't want to seem a gloomy old man, but I say, Those were the days.
83
Another suggestion: David Tucker. Here's a poem from his book LATE FOR WORK: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50878/todays-news
2
Thank you for this behind-the-scenes story. I have been using poetry for years when teaching a psychology course on aging. Poetry can help us see in new ways. I would like to recommend Ted Kooser's "That was I" for your meetings. For me it is not strictly about aging; it is about our faulty perceptions of others.
6
Bravo! We need more people honoring the written word in all its forms as a daily practice. Poetry is a doorway that opens wide and invites new thinking in.
19
My favorite poem is a short and sweet one from Sarah Kay titled "Scissors"
When we moved in together--
I noticed,
You keep your scissors in the knife drawer.
I keep mine with the string and tape.
We both know how to hide our sharpest parts,
I just don't always recognize my own weaponry.
26
A poetry suggestion for the season of winter turning into spring: “Oranges” by Gary Soto.
Enjoy!
3
Thanks for sharing. I may have to steal this thoughtful, creative idea and use it with our team.
7
"What I Can Do"
The television has two instruments to control it.
I get confused.
The washer asks me, do you want regular or delicate?
Honestly, I just want clean.
Everything is like that.
I won't even mention cell phones.
I can turn on the light of the lamp beside my chair
where a book is waiting, but that's about it.
Oh yes, and I can strike a match and make fire.
by Mary Oliver
19
I taught high school English early in my career and I started each class too with a poem. One morning reading particularly stands out for student attention and wonder and silence with the following from Kinnell:
DAYBREAK
On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it as slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once they stopped,
and, as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity, they sank down
into the mud; they faded down
into it and lay still; and by the time
pink of sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.
34
I have read your news in detail. As a poetry writer, it seems to me an excellent idea to include a poem reading in your briefing meeting at the early morning in your journalism Office. Congratulations.
8
How about this:
I have a picture on my wall:
Vietnam Memorial at sunrise
The wall reflects precisely
A living world beyond it
Till at the conversion point
Rises the Washington Monument
And all is touched in gold sent
Through space, empty darkness
It seems like but a point
In time now, a monument
Alone, a helicopter caught
In space, a dark figure caught
Free falling, trailing blood
Red as sunset and hard, hard
As stone that morning warms---
To meet a living world again
8
My go-to: "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold. It always speaks to me, whether in the bedroom with two lovers looking at the Channel, or in considering the "ignorant armies" which surround us (and which we are always implicated in, whether we like it or not).
16
A Boat
BY RICHARD BRAUTIGAN
O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.
2
Here are two by Robert Frost that I have always loved and that I have profited from:
DUST OF SNOW
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
and
FROM IRON
Nature within her inmost self divides
To trouble men with having to take sides.
Every word of that last one counts. It's grim, or maybe reconciling.
Roger Lathbury
6
Poetry won't save the world, but it makes the world worth saving.
I'll be sure to share this article with my students.
22
I'd like to recommend "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry.
17
@Jan From the wonderful Scottish Poetry Library website"
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/peace-wild-things-0/
Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost. A perfectly stunning poem.
10
Welcome to the world of right now!
You only need to do the right thing!
This instant we exist
in 13/12 time:
thirteen beats to the measure
and a twelfth note gets one rhyme.
Slow down when you should slow down;
speed up when you should.
Pianissimo if necessary.
Bravo! if you’re good.
May you be in sync with Real Time;
may Real Time guide your beat;
may you find your next riff easily;
this riff is obsolete!
—REAL TOWN: A Joyful Possibility
© 2020 Rosa Burke Perez
4
TO REMEMBER IS A KIND OF HOPE
Yehuda Amichai
The speed of distance between us:
Not that one went away while the other stayed,
but the double speed of two going from each other.
Of the house I destroyed, not even the broken pieces are mine anymore.
And, once, all the words we wanted to say to each other
during our lives were stacked in straight clean heaps
of window frames at a new building site,
while we were still silent.
I don't know what happened to you since,
and whatever happened to me
I don't know how it happened.
To remember is a kind of hope.
4
pick something by Wislawa Szymborska (her anthology is called Map), Mary Oliver (Devotions: selected poems) or Ursula K LeGuin (she wrote poetry, too).
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1996/szymborska/poetry/
10
Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye.
5
I'll limit my suggestions to one:
A PAPERCLIP
is like unto life itself,
any old mystic
tucked up in a bell tower
praying with chapped lips
and shuttered eyes can affirm
the sweet necessity to reach
out in order to be grasped by
something greater so as to
bind the pages of our days
together, the real power
coming from fashioned
curves and redirections, not
brute strength, the gentle tensed
kisses that keep all of us
from flying off the desk, the shelf,
becoming lost in the shuffle,
separated from one another
and blown into the valley below.
Albert Haley
The Cresset, Michaelmas 2015
7
At the risk of being presumptuous, I thought of this poem that highlights how we see the world--or don't.
Seeing Clearly
Being of a certain age
I have long worn glasses
So that I can see
Those lenses
So clear and sharp have eased
My way through my daily life and
Enabled me to see things
As they are
Despite my declining vision
After a lifetime of learning and growing
In a world that I know and understand
I am discovering a need for new lenses once again
To help me explore worlds
That were hidden from me until now
As a White man, what I think of as real, reliable, and true
Is colored by cultures that I do not see
Most of all—my own
What new lenses can I find now and where
In order, once again,
To see?
Tobin Quereau, 2018
5
It would be wonderful if the New York Times printed a poem on the first page everyday. Before we all delved into the grim times we are living through to be reminded first and foremost where our thoughts and minds should actually be. The very first page, not buried in another section. This way it would be noticed and hopefully become a habit and a mainstay in the public consciousness. And on weekends poems submitted by a reader. This way it would provoke folks to try their own hand at scribbling a few lines themselves. We all talk, talk, talk, about making the world a better place, this would be a nice way to begin.
70
@Watchfulbaker
or even if the NYT just printed a poem every day in April, for National Poetry Month.
30
@Watchfulbaker I love this idea!
5
Poem suggestions for National Desk
Langston Hughes:
I, too and a longer poem, Let America be America Again
Unfortunately, his sensitive observations about American society ring as true today as when they were written.
6
Here are some poetry recommendations:
How to Eat a Poem
by Eve Merriam
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Haiku by Basho
The Wild Rose
by Wendell Berry
Vernal Equinox
by Amy Lowell
Dust of Snow
by Robert Frost
Hope is the thing with feathers -
by Emily Dickinson
Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston Hughes
8
Here's one that presents multiple points of view:
Not Waving but Drowning
BY STEVIE SMITH
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
7
A Word on Statistics: Wislawa Szymborska
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.
Ready to help,
if it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.
Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four—well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.
Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.
Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.
Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.
Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.
Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know,
not even approximately.
Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.
Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).
Doubled over in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.
Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three.
Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.
Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.
Wislawa Szymborska, "A Word on Statistics" from Miracle Fair. Copyright © 2002 by Wislawa Szymborska. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
36
prayers and hymns
this morning on awakening
i am no longer asleep
what shifts in the brain
to admit this external reality ?
i jump in the fish pond
do yoga
quietly the cats come to me
seeking breakfast
on other mornings i don’t know
what to do
i don’t recognize
the simple light
the dreams of the night
haunt me
and i forget to realize
that i actually am
breathing
the energy rises
and falls
doesn’t it
It's my own poem : )
2
The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats
3
For years I have been sharing a favorite poem or quotation each weekday morning, hoping that a few sips of wisdom can help us move into the day with insight and inspiration. Maybe you will find some poems that inspire you there? The site is called First Sip! https://afirstsip.blogspot.com/
3
You might enjoy "Ode to the God of Atheists" by Ellen Bass.
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/400/ode-to-the-god-of-atheists
2
A STORY by Czeslaw Milosz ("Now I will tell Meader's story...")
5
One good poem to "jolt your minds" is “Binsey Poplars."
5
@Mary Grady A sublime and imperishable poem.
1
I love this idea! I used to have a weekly poetry reading with my kids. I think it's time to start it again. Below is an idea for the team, and thank you for the work you do taking in the triumphs and tragedies of each day. I hope these verses restore your souls.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44402/the-windhover
3
"Trust" by Thomas R. Smith https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50109/trust-56d22ce3845d0 and "Amor Fati" by Katha Pollitt https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/amor-fati-5/
1
I wrote this today:
There was an old man name of Bernie/who wanted to make a quick journey/to White House terrain/But it was in vain/Since kids thought he rode on a gurney.
Ask around the news dept and you'll find that I can send you something new and original each day.
Here's a poem for your morning, afternoon, and evening:
https://poems.com/poem/consciousness/
CONSCIOUSNESS
I command my car only in German.
I talk with my wife only in English.
I scold our children only in Mandarin.
When I hold our first grader
In my arms, as he falls asleep,
I picture him clutching the dead
Version of me I'll never see.
My daughter—she'll clutch him
Clutching me. My wife I can't
Picture. But she must be there
In the background, breathing
Hard against a tree. When I go,
I'll remember us on vacation, riding
Here in the car, everyone looking
Out the windows, talking at once—
Except me. That's when I close
My eyes, lift my hands just off
The wheel, and try to imagine
A language without the world.
From SPIRITUAL EXERCISES by MARK YAKICH
published by PENGUIN BOOKS
2019
4
"Dutch Interior" by David Lehman
2