Napped Half the Day
by Kobayashi Issa

Napped half the day;
no one
punished me!
Labels: kc from kc, national poetry month, npm, poetry

:: Eliza Wee 10:25:00 AM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Wednesday, April 14, 2010 ::

when wednesday feels like friday
...it's good to get poems in my inbox.

national poetry month has begun again. and the influx of poetry is less distressing this month. perhaps because she's tended to shorter pieces thus far. perhaps because I often read them on my commute, and they're a lovely distraction. today's selection is a gem. and perfectly timed for a crazy week filled with change and all the excitement/stress that comes with it.

The Dream Keeper
by Langston Hughes

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

Labels: kc from kc, national poetry month, npm, poetry

:: Eliza Wee 8:49:00 AM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Saturday, April 10, 2010 ::

(19)
by e.e. cummings

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

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

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile
Labels: kc from kc, national poetry month, npm, poetry

:: Eliza Wee 1:46:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 ::

You do not have to be good
This is one of my favorite poems of all time (thx to Jill for the reminder). Given that it says everything I could (and better, with craft and elegance), I'll not say much. But everytime I read this poem, I find something new.

Today--from where I stand, now--it's bringing me back to the ordinary flesh and blood that we are. That we aren't some esoteric mind that somehow rises above our lowly animal selves. When we die, it's our bodies that are forever, not our riotous minds. Our bodies are literally immortal--changing and eventually getting absorbed into dirt, plants, sky, water, air--immutable but also always changing.

Of course, all that verbage (and the words below, for that matter) are just products of various thoughts, and therefore necessarily ephemeral, mortal, and may well be undone in the next moment...
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

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.
...

Labels: inspiration, poetry, words

:: ewee 1:49:00 PM [+] :: 1 comments ::
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:: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 ::

Immortal Beloved
[or, inspiration from unlikely, and sometimes cheesy, sources]
Good morning, on July 7

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us -
I can live only wholly with you or not at all -
Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits -
Yes, unhappily it must be so -
You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never -
Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves.
And yet my life in V is now a wretched life -
Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men -
At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection?
My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once-
Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together-
Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell.
Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine
ever mine
ever ours

L.
Labels: poetry

:: ewee 7:13:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Friday, April 20, 2007 ::

The Guest House
by 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.
...

[swamped, fried, and still no time, so a poem for today from miz kc's poetry flood.]
Labels: poetry

:: ewee 4:38:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Wednesday, April 04, 2007 ::

poetry-schmoetry
welcome to poetry month, brought to me mainly by kc-from-kc.

last weekend i was at a memorial service for a close friend's mom, and one of the many moving readings was this poem by Marge Piercy below. the entire service touched me more than i'd expected it would (bad time to forget the tissues!) and it's left me with plenty more good stuff to chew on--including more poems to look up, which seems appropriate for poetry month.

To Be of Use
by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

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 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 worth 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.

found marge piercy's biography interesting and inspiring. not only for her political and "aberrant" behavior, but also for the fact of her having to eke out a living like the rest of us mortals, but continuing to write through it all.
She finds it important to like the routine of daily life in order to survive as a political writer in the long haul. In the past, when she did not have support at home, she has felt as if she were fighting on all fronts at once with no base. One gift Wood [her current husband] has given her is that warm place of support. She is a writer who feels guilty if she is not writing or writing enough.
...
In her poetry, she bears thanks to what she has been given as well as bearing witness to what is withheld from us and what is taken away. Piercy doesn't understand writers who complain about writing, not because it is easy for her but because it is so absorbing that she can imagine nothing more consuming and exciting at which to labor. So long as she can make her living at writing, she will consider herself lucky.

incidentally (or perhaps not incidentally, but speaking of npm), the essay by Charles Bernstein on why npm is bad for poetry is a pretty funny bit of reading. it includes such tidbits as: "This program is intended to promote safe reading experiences and is based on ARF's (Artificial Resuscitation Foundation's) founding principle that safe poetry is the best prophylactic against aesthetic experience." and it certainly sums up my experience of poetry (tho i'm learning...):
Go ahead, don't read any poetry.

You won't be able to understand it anyway:
the best stuff is all over your head.

And there aren't even any commercials to liven up the action.

Anyway, you'll end up with a headache trying to figure out
what the poems are saying because they are saying
NOTHING.

Who needs that.

Better go to the movies.
Labels: marge piercy, npm, poetry

:: ewee 3:25:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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