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April 18, 2024: Fourteen, Marie Howe

Fourteen Marie Howe

She is still mine—for another year or so— but she’s already looking past me through the funeral-home door to where the boys have gathered in their dark suits.

--

Also: Hurry, Marie Howe Walking Home, Marie Howe A Little Tooth, Thomas Lux

Today in:

2023: I wanted to be surprised., Jane Hirshfield 2022: Short Talk on Waterproofing, Anne Carson 2021: Cindy Comes To Hear Me Read, Jill McDonough 2020: from This Magic Moment, David Kirby 2019: Poem In Which I Become Wolverine, José Olivarez 2018: In the Beginning God Said Light, Mary Szybist 2017: from Contradictions: Tracking Poems, Adrienne Rich 2016: I Said Yes but I Meant No, Dean Young 2015: Cardinal Cardinal, Stephen Dunn 2014: Ezra Pound’s Proposition, Robert Hass 2013: Wistful sounds like a brand of air freshener, Bob Hicok 2012: Not Getting Closer, Jack Gilbert 2011: Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car, Dan Pagis 2010: The Moss of His Skin, Anne Sexton 2009: It’s This Way, Nazim Hikmet 2008: The Problem With Skin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil 2007: Serenade, Terrance Hayes 2006: The Old Liberators, Robert Hedin 2005: Morning Song, Sylvia Plath

#parenthood #the art of losing #daughters #poetry #national poetry month #marie howe

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April 17, 2024: You Belong to the World, Carrie Fountain

You Belong to the World Carrie Fountain

as do your children, as does your husband. It’s strange even now to understand that you are a mother and a wife, that these gifts were given to you and that you received them, fond as you’ve always been of declining invitations. You belong to the world. The hands that put a peach tree into the earth exactly where the last one died in the freeze belong to the world and will someday feed it again, differently, your body will become food again for something, just as it did so humorously when you became a mother, hungry beings clamoring at your breast, born as they’d been with the bodily passion for survival that is our kind’s one common feature. You belong to the world, animal. Deal with it. Even as the great abstractions come to take you away, the regrets, the distractions, you can at any second come back to the world to which you belong, the world you never left, won’t ever leave, cells forever, forever going through their changes, as they have been since you were less than anything, simple information born inside your own mother’s newborn body, itself made from the stuff your grandmother carried within hers when at twelve she packed her belongings and left the Scottish island she’d known—all she’d ever known—on a ship bound for Ellis Island, carrying within her your mother, you, the great human future that dwells now inside the bodies of your children, the young, who, like you, belong to the world.

--

Also by Carrie Fountain: Will You?

More like this: -> The World Has Need of You, Ellen Bass -> Why I’m Here, Jacqueline Berger -> from Burial, Ross Gay -> Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be, Ross Gay

Today in:

2023: Mammogram Call Back with Ultra Sound, Ellen Bass 2022: Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness, Franny Choi 2021: Weather, Claudia Rankine 2020: The Understudy, Bridget Lowe 2019: Against Dying, Kaveh Akbar 2018: Close Out Sale, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz 2017: Things That Have Changed Since You Died, Laura Kasischke 2016: Percy, Waiting for Ricky, Mary Oliver 2015: My Heart, Kim Addonizio 2014: My Skeleton, Jane Hirshfield 2013: Catch a Body, Oliver Bendorf 2012: No, Mark Doty 2011: from Narrative: Ali, Elizabeth Alexander 2010: Baseball Canto, Lawrence Ferlinghetti 2009: Nothing but winter in my cup, Alice George 2008: Poppies in October, Sylvia Plath 2007: I Imagine The Gods, Jack Gilbert 2006: An Offer Received In This Morning’s Mail, Amy Gerstler 2005: The Last Poem In The World, Hayden Carruth

#how strange it is to be anything at all #motherhood #breastfeeding #poetry #poem #carrie fountain

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April 16, 2024: Love Comes Quietly, Robert Creeley

Love Comes Quietly Robert Creeley

Love comes quietly, finally, drops about me, on me, in the old ways.

What did I know thinking myself able to go alone all the way.

--

Also by Robert Creeley: Oh

Today in:

2023: After Touching You, I Think of Narcissus Drowning, Leila Chatti 2022: Will You?, Carrie Fountain 2021: After Graduate School, Valencia Robin 2020: in lieu of a poem, i’d like to say, Danez Smith 2019: from The Invention of Streetlights 2018: Returning, Tami Haaland 2017: An Ordinary Composure, James L. White 2016: Verge, Mark Doty 2015: Reasons to Survive November, Tony Hoagland 2014: Unhappy Hour, Richard Siken 2013: Just Once, Anne Sexton 2012: Talk, Noelle Kocot 2011: Why They Went, Elizabeth Bradfield 2010: Anxiety, Frank O’Hara 2009: The Continuous Life, Mark Strand 2008: An old story, Bob Hicok 2007: you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar 2006: For the Sisters of the Hotel Dieu, A.M. Klein 2005: Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem, Bob Hicok

#love #short poems #robert creeley #poetry #poem

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April 15, 2024: Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation, Natalie Diaz

Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation Natalie Diaz Angels don’t come to the reservation. Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things. Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing— death. And death eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel fly through this valley ever. Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though— he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical Indian. Sure he had wings, jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops, kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies. Like I said, no Indian I’ve ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel. Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something— Nazarene church holds one every December, organized by Pastor John’s wife. It’s no wonder Pastor John’s son is the angel—everyone knows angels are white. Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians. Remember what happened last time some white god came floating across the ocean? Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups, we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and ’xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens. You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.

--

Another abecedarian!

Also: + The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve, Billy-Ray Belcourt + Anchorage, Joy Harjo + At the Trial of Hamlet, Chicago, 1994, Sherman Alexie

Today in:

2023: Dutch Elm Disease, Valencia Robin 2022: More Bang for Your Buck Running Scared, Brennan Bestwick 2021: Rain, Peter Everwine 2020: Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale, Dan Albergotti 2019: Prayer, Galway Kinnell 2018: Egg, C.G. Hanzlicek 2017: Well Water, Randall Jarrell 2016: For Desire, Kim Addonizio 2015: The Coming of Light, Mark Strand 2014: Flying Low, Stephen Dunn 2013: The Envoy, Jane Hirshfield 2012: Red Wand, Sandra Simonds 2011: Trying to Raise the Dead, Dorianne Laux 2010: Asking for Directions, Linda Gregg 2009: A Blessing, James Wright 2008: New York, New York, David Berman 2007: Waste Land Limericks, Wendy Cope 2006: There Are Two Worlds, Larry Levis 2005: America, Allen Ginsberg

#abecedarian #indigenous / first nations #history #race #poetry #natalie diaz

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April 14, 2024: The Wordsworth Effect, Joyce Sutphen

The Wordsworth Effect Joyce Sutphen

Is when you return to a place and it's not nearly as amazing as you once thought it was,

or when you remember how you felt about something (or someone) but you know you'll never feel that way again.

It's when you notice someone has turned down the volume, and you realize it was you; when you have the

suspicion that you've met the enemy and you are it, or when you get your best ideas from your sister's journal.

Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables you to walk for miles and miles chanting to yourself in iambic pentameter

and to travel through Europe with only a clean shirt, a change of underwear, a notebook and a pen.

And yes: is when you stretch out on your couch and summon up ten thousand daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.

--

Also: Dorothy Wordsworth, Jennifer Chang

Another by Joyce Sutphen: Living in the Body

Today in:

2023: Spring Poem, Colleen O’Connor 2022: Red, Mary Ruefle 2021: Bathing, Allison Seay 2020: A Small Moment, Cornelius Eady 2019: You Meet Someone and Later You Meet Their Dancing and You Have to Start Again, David Welch 2018: Henry Clay’s Mouth, Thomas Lux 2017: When Your Small Form Tumbled into Me, Tracy K. Smith 2016: Eve Recollecting the Garden, Grace Bauer 2015: from I Love A Broad Margin To My Life, Maxine Hong Kingston 2014: Gift, Czeslaw Milosz 2013: This Be The Verse, Philip Larkin 2012: We Did Not Make Ourselves, Michael Dickman 2011: Happiness (3), Jean Valentine 2010: When I Think, Jeanne Marie Beaumont 2009: The Poem, Franz Wright 2008: Morning Poem, Robin Becker 2007: Supple Cord, Naomi Shihab Nye 2006: Wish For a Young Wife, Theodore Roethke 2005: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, Jeffrey McDaniel

#re: wordsworth #memory #writing #travel #poetry #joyce sutphen

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April 13, 2024: Broken Periodic, Maya C. Popa

Broken Periodic Maya C. Popa

No one who has ever had a childhood wants what’s happening. No one who has ever wondered anything: where the rain’s headed in her steel hooves. Questions wrongly put swell like moths under a light. On the streets, everything looks human. You forget certain animals are bloodless injured. You must imagine some other color that means hurt. At night, you sleep with something like your gifts: to anguish and ascribe a language, music. To slice a fig the long way and linger. To grieve for a country. To grieve without a country to grieve.

--

Also by Maya C. Popa: Wound is the Origin of Wonder

Today in:

2023: Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III), Gwendolyn Brooks 2022: We Lived Happily During the War, Ilya Kaminsky 2021: Hurry, Marie Howe 2020: Oh, Robert Creeley 2019: It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine, Morgan Parker 2018: In Two Seconds, Mark Doty 2017: Aubade, Louis MacNeice 2016: Before, Ada Limón 2015: Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt, David Bottoms 2014: Ullapool Bike Ride, Chris Powici 2013: Clothespins, Stuart Dybek 2012: Ghost Story, Matthew Dickman 2011: Graves We Filled Before the Fire, Gabrielle Calvocoressi 2010: On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam, Hayden Carruth 2009: The Bear-Boy of Lithuania, Amy Gerstler 2008: Today’s News, David Tucker 2007: All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann, Leonard Cohen 2006: Gamin, Frank O’Hara 2005: [this is what you love: more people. you remember], D.A. Powell

#who put this brain inside of me? #poetry #poem #national poetry month #grief #maya c. popa

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April 12, 2024: A Small Psalm, Catherine Wing

A Small Psalm Catherine Wing

Sorrow be gone, be a goner, be forsooth un-sooth, make like a suit and beat it, vamoose from the heavy heavy, be out from under the night's crawlspace, call not for another stone, more weight more weight, be extinguished, extinguish, the dark, that which is deep and hollow, that which presses from all sides, that which squeezes your heart into an artichoke-heart jar and forbids it breathe, that which is measured by an unbalanced scale, banish the broken, the unfixable, the shattered, the cried-over, the cursed, the cursers, the curses— curse them, the stone from the stone fruit, let it be fruit, the pit from the pitted, the pock from the pocked, the rot from the rotten, tarry not at the door, jam not the door's jamb, don't look back, throw nothing over your shoulder, not a word, not a word's edge, vowel, consonant, but run out, run out like the end of a cold wind, end of season, and in me be replaced with a breath of light, a jack-o'-lantern, a flood lamp or fuse box, a simple match or I would even take a turn signal, traffic light, if it would beat beat and flash flood like the moon at high tide, let it, let it, let it flare like the firefly, let it spark and flash, kindle and smoke, let it twilight and sunlight, and sunlight and moonlight, and when it is done with its lighting let it fly, will'-o-the-wisp, to heaven.

--

Also: + you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar + Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life], Bruce Smith

Today in:

2023: How to Do Absolutely Nothing, Barbara Kingsolver 2022: Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you., Gabrielle Calvocoressi 2021: I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store, Eve L. Ewing 2020: Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station And a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All its Invisible Fishes, Jane Hirshfield 2019: Flores Woman, Tracy K. Smith 2018: The Universe as Primal Scream, Tracy K. Smith 2017: Soul, David Ferry 2016: Turkeys, Galway Kinnell 2015: He Said Turn Here, Dean Young 2014: I Don’t Miss It, Tracy K. Smith 2013: Hotel Orpheus, Jason Myers 2012: Emily Dickinson’s To-Do List, Andrea Carlisle 2011: Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think, Frank O’Hara 2010: The Impossible Marriage, Donald Hall 2009: The Rider, Naomi Shihab Nye 2008: from Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, John Berryman 2007: This Heavy Craft, P.K. Page 2006: Late Ripeness, Czeslaw Milosz 2005: A Martian Sends A Postcard Home, Craig Raine

#feast on your life #the way it’s night for many miles and then suddenly it's not #sorrow #joy #poem #catherine wing

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April 11, 2024: The Coffin Maker Speaks, Lisa Suhair Majaj

The Coffin Maker Speaks Lisa Suhair Majaj

At first it was shocking—orders flooding in faster than I could meet. I worked through the nights, tried to ignore the sound of planes overhead, reverberations shaking my bones, acid fear, the jagged weeping of those who came to plead my services. I focused on the saw in my hand, burn of blisters, sweet smell of sawdust; hoped that fatigue would push aside my labor's purpose.

Wood fell scarce as the pile of coffins grew. I sent my oldest son to scavenge more but there was scant passage on the bombed out roads And those who could make it through brought food for the living, not planks for the dead. So I economized, cut more carefully than ever, reworked the extra scraps. It helped that so many coffins were child-sized.

I built the boxes well, nailed them strong, loaded them on the waiting trucks, did my job but could do no more. When they urged me to the gravesite— that long grieving gash in earth echoing the sky's torn warplane wound— I turned away, busied myself with my tools. Let others lay the shrouded forms in new-cut wood, lower the lidded boxes one by one: stilled row of toppled dominoes, long line of broken teeth. Let those who can bear it read the Fatiha over the crushed and broken dead. If I am to go on making coffins, Let me sleep without knowledge.

But what sleep have we in this flattened city? My neighbors hung white flags on their cars as they fled. Now they lie still and cold, waiting to occupy my boxes. Tonight I'll pull the white sheet from my window. Better to save it for my shroud.

One day, insha'allah, I'll return to woodwork for the living. I'll build door for every home in town, smooth and strong and solid, that will open quickly in times of danger, let the desperate in for shelter. I'll use oak, cherry, anything but pine.

For now, I do my work. Come to me and I'll build you what you need. Tell me the dimensions, the height or weight, and I'll meet your specifications. But keep the names and ages to yourself. Already my dreams are jagged Let me not wake splintered from my sleep crying for Fatima, Rafik, Soha, Hassan, Dalia, or smoothing a newborn newdead infant's face. Later I too will weep. But if you wish me to house the homeless dead, let me keep my nightmares nameless.

--

Today in:

2023: Running Orders, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha 2022: April, Alex Dimitrov 2021: Dust, Dorianne Laux 2020: VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God, Mary Karr 2019: What I Didn’t Know Before, Ada Limón 2018: History, Jennifer Michael Hecht 2017: from Correspondences, Anne Michaels 2016: Mesilla, Carrie Fountain 2015: Dolores Park, Keetje Kuipers 2014: Finally April and the Birds Are Falling Out of the Air with Joy, Anne Carson 2013: The Flames, Kate Llewellyn 2012: To See My Mother, Sharon Olds 2011: Across a Great Wilderness without You, Keetje Kuipers 2010: Poem About Morning, William Meredith 2009: Death, The Last Visit, Marie Howe 2008: Animals, Frank O’Hara 2007: Johnny Cash in the Afterlife, Bronwen Densmore 2006: Anne Hathaway, Carol Ann Duffy 2005: Sleep Positions, Lola Haskins

#war #death #grief #poetry of witness #lisa suhair majaj

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April 10, 2024: The Winter Palace, Philip Larkin

The Winter Palace Philip Larkin

Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.

I spent my second quarter-century Losing what I had learnt at university.

And refusing to take in what had happened since. Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know. My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

--

Also by Philip Larkin: + This Be The Verse + The Trees, Philip Larkin + Aubade, Philip Larkin

Today in:

2023: On Keeping Pluto a Planet, Greg Beatty 2022: The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve, Billy-Ray Belcourt 2021: Puerto Rico Goes Dark, Juan J. Morales 2020: Winter Psalm, Richard Hoffman 2019: King Kreations, Angel Nafis 2018: Letter to Larry Levis, Matthew Olzmann 2017: Only she who has breast-fed, Vera Pavlova 2016: First Love, Jan Owen 2015: At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School, Sherman Alexie 2014: Boogaloo, Kevin Young 2013: The Fist, Derek Walcott 2012: Turning, W.S. Merwin 2011: Consolation for Tamar, A.E. Stallings 2010: Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, Marty McConnell 2009: Bike Ride with Older Boys, Laura Kasischke 2008: Let’s Move All Things (September), Denver Butson 2007: The Day Flies Off Without Me, John Stammers 2006: A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg 2005: Tortures, Wislawa Szymborska

#age #memory #rhyme #funny #poem #philip larkin

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April 9, 2024: Physical Therapy, Franny Choi

Physical Therapy Franny Choi   Ask, first, what your smallest body parts require to sing again: coconut oil for your hair’s dry ends, camphor for the earlobes, rosehip kneaded into fingertips with fingertips. Grapeseed will feed most hungers of the skin. But if even your bones cry January, dip your sharpest knife in a jar of raw honey. Lather it on your thighs, making circles, making certain not to confuse this ache for that other, the one that keeps pulling you to the earth, the one question you still can’t say out loud. Recite instead the names of trees: sumac, sweet birch, slippery elm. Take your palm to the wild place under your chin and count: vein, artery, chokecherry, weeping willow, until your xacto knife pulse slows, holds. Let your mouth fill with gold, almonds, zinneas. Then: soften.

--

In an abecedarian poem, each line begins with successive letters of the alphabet.

Also: + VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God, Mary Karr + Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, Marty McConnell + Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon

More by Franny Choi: + Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness + The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

Today in:

2023: Come Quickly, Izumi Shikibu 2022: Heretic That I Am, Tomás Q. Morín 2021: The World Has Need of You, Ellen Bass 2020: Annus Mirabilis, R. A. Villanueva 2019: This Page Ripped Out and Rolled into a Ball, Brendan Constantine 2018: Winter Stars, Larry Levis 2017: In That Other Fantasy Where We Live Forever, Wanda Coleman 2016: The cat’s song, Marge Piercy 2015: The Embrace, Mark Doty 2014: No. 6, Charles Bukowski 2013: A Schoolroom in Haiti, Kenneth Koch 2012: Track 5: Summertime, Jericho Brown 2011: Death, Is All, Ana Božičević 2010: Heaven, William Heyen 2009: April in Maine, May Sarton 2008: Making Love to Myself, James L. White 2007: Publication Date, Franz Wright 2006: Living in the Body, Joyce Sutphen 2005: Aberration (The Hubble Space Telescope before repair), Rebecca Elson

#self care #abecedarian #the body #trees #poetry #franny choi

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April 8, 2024: As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse, Billy Collins

As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse Billy Collins

I pick an orange from a wicker basket and place it on the table to represent the sun. Then down at the other end a blue and white marble becomes the earth and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet, open a bottle of wine, then I sit in a ladder-back chair, a benevolent god presiding over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing a homemade canticle of thanks for this perfect little arrangement, for not making the earth too hot or cold not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees and the owl become possible, not to mention the rolling wave, the play of clouds, geese in flight, and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again and give thanks for the trout, the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows, as sun and earth and moon circle one another in their impeccable orbits and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

--

Also: Seeing the Eclipse in Maine, Robert Bly

Enjoy today's eclipse, North America!

More space-related poems.

Today in:

2023: Neither Time Nor Grief is a Flat Circle, Christina Olson 2022: Pippi Longstocking, Sandra Simonds 2021: Waking After the Surgery, Leila Chatti 2020: Gutbucket, Kevin Young 2019: Insomnia, Linda Pastan 2018: How Many Nights, Galway Kinnell 2017: The Little Book of Hand Shadows, Deborah Digges 2016: Now I Pray, Kathy Engel 2015: Why I’m Here, Jacqueline Berger 2014: Snow, Aldo, Kate DiCamillo 2013: from The Escape, Philip Levine 2012: Thirst, Mary Oliver 2011: Getting Away with It, Jack Gilbert 2010: *turning, Annie Guthrie 2009: I Don’t Fear Death, Sandra Beasley 2008: The Dover Bitch, Anthony Hecht 2007: Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl, Dorianne Laux 2006: Up Jumped Spring, Al Young 2005: Old Women in Eliot Poems, David Wright

#billy collins #feast on your life #poetry #national poetry month

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April 7, 2024: The First Line is the Deepest, Kim Addonizio

The First Line is the Deepest Kim Addonizio

I have been one acquainted with the spatula, the slotted, scuffed, Teflon-coated spatula

that lifts a solitary hamburger from pan to plate, acquainted with the vibrator known as the Pocket Rocket

and the dildo that goes by Tex, and I have gone out, a drunken bitch,

in order to ruin what love I was given,

and also I have measured out my life in little pills—Zoloft,

Restoril, Celexa, Xanax.

I have. For I am a poet. And it is my job, my duty to know wherein lies the beauty

of this degraded body, or maybe

it's the degradation in the beautiful body, the ugly me

groping back to my desk to piss on perfection, to lay my kiss

of mortal confusion upon the mouth of infinite wisdom.

My kiss says razors and pain, my kiss says America is charged with the madness

of God. Sundays, too, the soldiers get up early, and put on their fatigues in the blue-

black day. Black milk. Black gold. Texas tea. Into the valley of Halliburton rides the infantry—

Why does one month have to be the cruelest, can't they all be equally cruel? I have seen the best

gamers of your generation, joysticking their M1 tanks through the sewage-filled streets. Whose

world this is I think I know.

--

Poetry nerd extra credit: How many repurposed bits from famous poems can you find? I count 7 and I'm probably missing some!

Also by Kim Addonizio:

+ For Desire + Mermaid Song* + Onset + My Heart

* (Weird fact: this is about her daughter, Aya Cash, who starred in the sitcom You're the Worst. What!)

Today in:

2023: Insha’Allah, Danusha Laméris 2022: To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall, Kim Addonizio 2021: You Mean You Don’t Weep at the Nail Salon?, Elizabeth Acevedo 2020: Let Me Begin Again, Philip Levine 2019: Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi 2018: Siren Song, Margaret Atwood 2017: A Sunset, Ari Banias 2016: Coming, Philip Larkin 2015: The Taxi, Amy Lowell 2014: Winter Sunrise Outside a Café Near Butte, Montana, Joe Hutchison 2013: The Last Night in Mithymna, Linda Gregg 2012: America [Try saying wren], Joseph Lease 2011: Boston, Aaron Smith 2010: How Simile Works, Albert Goldbarth 2009: Crossing Over, William Meredith 2008: The World Wakes Up, Andrew Michael Roberts 2007: Hour, Christian Hawkey 2006: For the Anniversary of My Death, W.S. Merwin 2005: The Last Poem About the Snow Queen, Sandra M. Gilbert

#war #modern life #america #anxiety and depression #kim addonizio

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April 6, 2024: First Birthday, Brad Leithauser

First Birthday Brad Leithauser

You have your one word, which fills you to brimming. It’s what’s first to be done on waking, Often the last at day-dimming: Lunge out an arm fiercely, As though your heart were breaking, Stab a finger at some stray illumination — Lamp, mirror, distant dinner candle — And make your piercing identification,

“‘ight! ‘ight! ‘ight!” Littlest digit, you’ve got the world by the handle. Things must open for you, you take on height, Your sole sound in time reveal itself As might, too, and flight. And fright. Some will be gone. But you will come right.

--

(I love the moment of thinking wait, is this a sonnet? ... it is!)

More like this:

+ The Flames, Kate Llewellyn + This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss + from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell

Today in:

2023: Toad, Norman MacCaig 2022: Antidotes to Fear of Death, Rebecca Elson 2021: Love Poem: Centaur, Donika Kelly 2020: Walking Home, Marie Howe 2019: not an elegy for Mike Brown, Danez Smith 2018: Trillium, Deborah Digges 2017: Good People, W.S. Merwin 2016: Traveling with Guitar, Debra Marquart 2015: Honey, James Wright 2014: For the Dead, Adrienne Rich 2013: Miracle Ice Cream, Adrienne Rich 2012: The Soul Bone, Susan Wood 2011: Pluto, Maggie Dietz 2010: Slant, Stephen Dunn 2009: Distressed Haiku, Donald Hall 2008: Question, May Swenson 2007: Song, Adrienne Rich 2006: Scheherazade, Richard Siken 2005: What the Living Do, Marie Howe

#sonnet #rhyme #small children #parenthood #poetry #brad leithauser #babies

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April 5, 2024: May 5, 2020, John Okrent

May 5, 2020 John Okrent

It is beautiful to be glad to see a person every time you see them, as I was to see Juan, the maintenance man, with whom it was always the same brotherly greeting—each of us thumping a fist over his heart and grinning, as though we shared a joke, or bread. I barely knew him. Evenings in clinic, me finishing my work, him beginning his— fluorescence softening in the early dark. He wasn't even fifty, had four grandchildren, fixed what was broken, cleaned for us, caught the virus, and died on his couch last weekend. And what right have I to write this poem, who will not see him in his uniform of ashes, only remember him, in his Seahawks cap, and far from sick, locking up after me, turning up his music.

--

More like this:

Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry, Jericho Brown

When people say, “we have made it through worse before”, Clint Smith

Today in:

2023: Homeric Hymn, A.E. Stallings 2022: The Mower, Philip Larkin 2021: When people say, “we have made it through worse before”, Clint Smith 2020: Untitled, James Baldwin 2019: To Yahweh, Tina Kelley 2018: from how many of us have them?, Danez Smith 2017: Sad Dictionary, Richard Siken 2016: Lucia, Ravi Shankar 2015: Overjoyed, Ada Limón 2014: Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing, Margaret Atwood 2013: Anniversary, Cecilia Woloch 2012: Poem for Jack Spicer, Matthew Zapruder 2011: Now comes the long blue cold, Mary Oliver 2010: Jackie Robinson, Lucille Clifton 2009: In the Nursing Home, Jane Kenyon 2008: To the Couple Lingering on the Doorstep, Deborah Landau 2007: White Apples, Donald Hall 2006: Late Confession, Gary Soto 2005: Steps, Frank O’Hara

#covid #death #grief #john okrent #poetry

[april-is]

April 4, 2024: Coyotes by the Eliot House, Glyn Maxwell

Coyotes by the Eliot House Glyn Maxwell

Tom I’ve a question and all I have is a question. There are lots of coyotes near this old house you lived in. I didn’t expect them here in the green Northeast. Figured them things of rocks and the high sierras. There goes another one bounding for the bushes. First time, I thought: that’s a dog acting really strangely. But it didn’t turn back for approval or get distracted by an insignificant thing, as a dog will tend to. No it was gone by now, it had made me nervous. They’re the size of a family dog but they’re on their own. Folks round here reassure me there’s no danger unless you attack their cubs so I’ll shelve my plan to attack their cubs, chrissakes. Tom, Tom, apologies, I have loved my time in your house.

Last night at dinner we heard a siren wailing off in the town and all of them started howling, all the coyotes for miles around in the bushes aghast, alerting their young, alarming their old, rising and heightening, matching its pitch and power, one near the blue spinning light in its thrall, uniquely bound by this unpredicted visitation. Then after the siren faded they packed it in. What do they think that is, that demands of them and gets of them their love or their terror or both? What do we poets do when we know it’s nothing? Not for them or against them or about them. Tom, I had to be here to ask that question. I expect I’ll have to be gone before you answer.

--

More animal poems.

More poems responding to T.S. Eliot, my problematic fave:

Waste Land Limericks, Wendy Cope

Old Women in Eliot Poems, David Wright

Today in:

2023: I Know Someone, Mary Oliver 2022: I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense, Danez Smith 2021: In the Morning, Before Anything Bad Happens, Molly Brodak 2020: Interesting Times, Mark Jarman 2019: The accident has occurred, Margaret Atwood 2018: Little snail, Anonymous 2017: Poem for My Son in the Car, Jennifer K. Sweeney 2016: Postcard to Baudelaire, Thomas Lux 2015: What The Dead Tell Us About Charon, Ferryman Of The Dead, Brett Ortler 2014: The Trees, Philip Larkin 2013: A Small, Soul-Colored Thing, Paisley Rekdal 2012: Last Supper, Charles Wright 2011: I Said to Poetry, Alice Walker 2010: Disgraceland, Mary Karr 2009: What To Say To A Bear, Ionna Warwick 2008: In The City of Light, Larry Levis 2007: the mockingbird, Charles Bukowski 2006: Part of Eve’s Discussion, Marie Howe 2005: I thank You God for most this amazing, e.e. cummings

#poem #poetry #re: t.s. eliot #apostrophe #glyn maxwell

[april-is]

April 3, 2024: Positivity, D.A. Powell

Positivity D.A. Powell

“Anyway, it isn’t forever,” Chris said, “eventually you’re dead.” And we laughed

Besides, everything is better now. Not us but implants, blenders, children, heart attacks. There’s never been a better time to be alive than when you are. If you are. Black-throated blue warbler says chewchewchewchewchewww drawing the last chew out like a sucking drainpipe to say he has mated and is satisfied. Say what you will about that. His joy is uncontainable

and yet it has a form, a measure, to make it clear he’s not upset or feeling anxious. And if he’s bragging, well, it’s no shame to brag that you’re happy.

Honeybees cavorting on the goldenrod are working toward a common goal they’ll never see achieved. They lay down the walls of their cathedral of honeycomb and will not cope the spire, busy in the present task, trusting that the work continues. I’d like to write a children’s book called everybody dies. Upbeat, of course, and pragmatic. You only got so many days. Don’t think about death; when you’re ready, death will think about you. Go out tonight with your friends, like Chris, who went out big or not at all. Have a ball. Plan ahead.

--

Hear the poet read this aloud.

also by D.A. Powell (shared in year 1 of this project!): [this is what you love: more people. you remember]

More like this:

Overjoyed, Ada Limón

you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar

Today in:

2023: Picture This, Jiordan Castle 2022: Alba, Madeleine Cravens 2021: July, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz 2020: Poem Beginning With A Retweet, Maggie Smith 2019: Waiting for Happiness, Nomi Stone 2018: United, Naomi Shihab Nye 2017: If You Are Over Staying Woke, Morgan Parker 2016: High School Senior, Sharon Olds 2015: Dog in Bed, Joyce Sidman 2014: Persephone Writes to Her Mother, Tara Mae Mulroy 2013: Hook, James Wright 2012: How to Build an Owl, Kathleen Lynch 2011: Expecting, Kevin Young 2010: The Choir, Luke Kennard 2009: I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone, Stephen Dunn 2008: Visible World, Richard Siken 2007: Anywhere Else, Maggie Dietz 2006: After Work, Richard Jones 2005: The Sheep-Child, James Dickey

#death #joy #poem #national poetry month #feast on your life #d.a. powell #birds

[april-is]

April 2, 2024: from Understory, Craig Santos Perez

from Understory Craig Santos Perez

(to my wife, nālani and our 7-month old daughter, kai)

kai cries from teething—

how do new parents

comfort a child in

pain, bullied in school,

shot by a drunk

APEC agent? #justicefor

-kollinelderts— nālani gently

massages kai's gums with

her fingers— how do

we wipe away tear-

gas and blood? provide

shelter from snipers? disarm

occupying armies? #freepalestine—

nālani sings to kai

a song about the

Hawaiian alphabet— what dreams

will echo inside detention

centers and cross teething

borders to soothe the

thousands of children atop

la bestia? #unaccompanied—

nālani rubs kai's back

warm with coconut oil—

how do we hold

violence at arm's length

when raising [our] hands

up is no longer

a universal sign of

surrender? #black livesmatter—

kai finally falls asleep

in nālani's cradling arms,

skin to skin against

the news— when do

we tell our daughter

there's no safe place

for us to breathe #...

--

More like this:

+ Good Bones, Maggie Smith + Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew, Ross Gay + not an elegy for Mike Brown, Danez Smith & the first poem below:

Today in...

2023: The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Franny Choi 2022: For the Journalists Who Write About Ukraine, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach 2021: For My Friends, in Reply to a Question, Safia Elhillo 2020: The Conditional, Ada Limón 2019: Dorothy Wordsworth, Jennifer Chang 2018: A Small Needful Fact, Ross Gay 2017: What We Need, David Budbill 2016: Husky Boys’ Dickies, Jill McDonough 2015: Why Some Girls Love Horses, Paisley Rekdal 2014: The Fox, Faith Shearin 2013: You Can’t Have It All, Barbara Ras 2012: Road Trip, Kurt Brown 2011: Onset, Kim Addonizio 2010: February, Margaret Atwood 2009: Domestic, Carl Phillips 2008: A Birthday, W.S. Merwin 2007: Words for Love, Ted Berrigan 2006: At the Trial of Hamlet, Chicago, 1994, Sherman Alexie 2005: The Waking, Theodore Roethke

#parenthood #poetry #black lives matter #race #social justice #immigration #who put this brain inside of me? #indigenous / first nations