music-despite-everything

[music-despite-everything]

somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond by e.e. cummings

[music-despite-everything]

Eating Poetry

by Mark Strand

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 bum 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.

[music-despite-everything]

I Have Gone Marking

by Pablo Neruda tr. W.S. Merwin

I have gone marking the atlas of your body with crosses of fire. My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide. In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst. Stories to tell you on the shore of evening, sad and gentle doll, so that you should not be sad. A swan, a tree, something far away and happy. The season of grapes, the ripe and fruitful season. I who lived in a harbour from which I loved you. The solitude crossed with dream and with silence. Penned up between the sea and sadness. Soundless, delirious, between two motionless gondoliers. Between the lips and the voice something goes dying. Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion. The way nets cannot hold water. My toy doll, only a few drops are left trembling. Even so, something sings in these fugitive words. Something sings, something climbs to my ravenous mouth. Oh to be able to celebrate you with all the words of joy. Sing, burn, flee, like a belfry at the hands of a madman. My sad tenderness, what comes over you all at once? When I have reached the most awesome and the coldest summit my heart closes like a nocturnal flower.

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April

by Mary Oliver

I wanted to speak at length about the happiness of my body and the delight of my mind for it was April, a night, a full moon and --

but something in myself or maybe from somewhere other said: not too many words, please, in the muddy shallows the

Frogs are singing.

[music-despite-everything]

Stars

by Louise Glück

I’m awake; I am in the world — I expect no further assurance. No protection, no promise.

Solace of the night sky, the hardly moving face of the clock.

I’m alone — all my riches surround me. I have a bed, a room. I have a bed, a vase of flowers beside it. And a nightlight, a book.

I’m awake; I am safe. The darkness like a shield, the dreams put off, maybe vanished forever.

And the day — the unsatisfying morning that says I am your future, here is your cargo of sorrow:

Do you reject me? Do you mean to send me away because I am not full, in your word, because you see the black shape already implicit?

I will never be banished. I am the light, your personal anguish and humiliation. Do you dare send me away as though you were waiting for something better? There is no better. Only (for a short space) the night sky like a quarantine that sets you apart from your task.

Only (softly, fiercely) the stars shining. Here, in the room, the bedroom. Saying I was brave, I resisted, I set myself on fire.

[music-despite-everything]

                        I kneel into a dream where I                 am good & loved. I am                        good. I am loved. My hands have made some good mistakes. They can always                                                                                make better ones. 

Natalie Wee, “Least of All,” Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines (Amazon / Goodreads)

#natalie wee #least of all

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Once Upon a Poolside by The National

Don't make this any harder Everybody's waiting Walk on's almost over Teenagers on ice Try to keep my distance Talking of forgiveness Once upon a poolside Underneath the lights

What was the worried thing you said to me?

I'll follow you everywhere While you work the room I don't know how you do it Tangerine perfume I'm not doing anyone Any kind of favors Watching airplanes land And sink into the pavement

What was the worried thing you said to me?

I can't keep talking, I can't stop shaking I can't keep track of everything I'm taking Everything is different, why do I feel the same? Am I asking for too much? Can't hear what you're saying

What was the worried thing you said to me? I thought we could make it through anything

This is the closest we've ever been And I have no idea what's happening Is this how this whole thing is gonna end? This is the closest we've ever been

Don't make this any harder Everybody's waiting Walk on's almost over Teenagers on ice Try to keep my distance Talking of forgiveness Once upon a poolside Underneath the lights

What was the worried thing you said to me? I thought we could make it through anything

#the national #once upon a poolside #sad dads #greek theatre #Youtube

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Anne Frank Huis by Andrew Motion

Sir Andrew Motion, born 26 October 1952, UK Poet Laureate 1999-2009.

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Even now, after twice her lifetime of grief And anger in the very place, whoever comes To climb these narrow stairs, discovers how The bookcase slides aside, then walks through Shadow into sunlit rooms, can never help

But break her secrecy again. Just listening Is a kind of guilt: the Westerkirk repeats Itself outside, as if all time worked round Towards her fear, and made each stroke Die down on guarded streets. Imagine it–

Three years of whispering and loneliness And plotting, day by day, the Allied line In Europe with a yellow chalk. What hope She had for ordinary love and interest Survives her here, displayed above the bed

As pictures of her family; some actors; Fashions chosen by Patricia Elizabeth. And those who stoop to seem them find Not only patience missing its reward, But one enduring wish for chances

Like my own: to leave as simply As I do, and walk at ease Up dusty tree-lined avenues, or watch A silent barge come clear of bridges Settling their reflections in the blue canal.

#poetry #poemsociety #poemblr #poems and poetry #poem #anne frank huis #andrew motion #poet laureate

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Campo dei Fiori by Czeslaw Milosz

Czeslaw Milosz, 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004, 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature winner.

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In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori baskets of olives and lemons, cobbles spattered with wine and the wreckage of flowers. Vendors cover the trestles with rose-pink fish; armfuls of dark grapes heaped on peach-down.

On this same square they burned Giordano Bruno. Henchmen kindled the pyre close-pressed by the mob. Before the flames had died the taverns were full again, baskets of olives and lemons again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori in Warsaw by the sky-carousel one clear spring evening to the strains of a carnival tune. The bright melody drowned the salvos from the ghetto wall, and couples were flying high in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning would drift dark kites along and riders on the carousel caught petals in midair. That same hot wind blew open the skirts of the girls and the crowds were laughing on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral that the people of Rome or Warsaw haggle, laugh, make love as they pass by the martyrs' pyres. Someone else will read of the passing of things human, of the oblivion born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only of the loneliness of the dying, of how, when Giordano climbed to his burning he could not find in any human tongue words for mankind, mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine or peddled their white starfish, baskets of olives and lemons they had shouldered to the fair, and he already distanced as if centuries had passed while they paused just a moment for his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely forgotten by the world, our tongue becomes for them the language of an ancient planet. Until, when all is legend and many years have passed, on a new Campo dei Fiori rage will kindle at a poet's word.

Warsaw, 1943

"Campo dei Fiori" from The Collected Poems 1931-1987 by Czeslaw Milosz. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

#poetry #poemsociety #poemblr #poem #poems and poetry #czeslaw milosz #campo dei fiori #david brooks #louis iribarne #the collected poems of czeslaw milosz #the collected poems 1931 to 1987 #warsaw #rome #giordano bruno

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Bagram, Afghanistan, 2002 by Marvin Bell

Marvin Bell, August 1937-December 2020, first Poet Laureate of Iowa

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The interrogation celebrated spikes and cuffs,

the inky blue that invades a blackened eye,

the eyeball that bulges like a radish,

that incarnadine only blood can create.

They asked the young taxi driver questions

he could not answer, and they beat his legs

until he could no longer kneel on their command.

They chained him by the wrists to the ceiling.

They may have admired the human form then,

stretched out, for the soldiers were also athletes

trained to shout in unison and be buddies.

By the time his legs had stiffened, a blood clot

was already tracing a vein into his heart.

They said he was dead when they cut him down,

but he was dead the day they arrested him.

Are they feeding the prisoners gravel now?

To make them skillful orators as they confess?

Here stands Demosthenes in the military court,

unable to form the words “my country.” What

shall we do, we who are at war but are asked

to pretend we are not? Do we need another

naive apologist to crown us with clichés

that would turn the grass brown above a grave?

They called the carcass Mr. Dilawar. They 

believed he was innocent. Their orders were

to step on the necks of the prisoners, to

break their will, to make them say something

in a sleep-deprived delirium of fractures,

rising to the occasion, or, like Mr. Dilawar,

leaving his few possessions and his body.

From Mars Being Red by Marvin Bell. Copyright © 2007 by Marvin Bell. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.

#poetry #poems and poetry #poemblr #poem #poemsociety #demosthenes #marvin bell #bagram #afghanistan #bagram afghanistan 2002 #mr. dilawa #poet laureate

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Kurosawa Champagne by Derrick Brown

Come on, love, You'd sleep much better If you'd just open my letter. When you read sleight of hand in your sweater, Pretend I'm there.

Tonight your body shook, hurling your nightmares back to Cambodia, and your nightgown wisped off into Ursula Minor, and I was left here on earth feeling alone, paranoid about the rapture. Tonight, I think it's safe to say we drank way too much. Should I apologize for the volume in my slobber? Must I apologize for the best dance moves ever? No. I won’t. Booze is my tuition to clown college.

And that night we swerved home on black laughter, Leading from forgettable boxing. I asked you to sleep in the shape of a trench so that I may know shelter. I drew the word surrender in the mist of your breath, Waving a white sheet around your body.

I said, “Dear, in the morning, let me put on your makeup for you. Loading your gems with mascara, and then I'll tell you the truth." I watched black ropes of tears ramble down your face. Lady war paint.

A squad of tiny men rappelled down the snaking lines, And you said: "Oh, thank you for releasing all those fuckers from my life." You have a daily pill case But there are no pills inside. It holds the ashes of people who died the moment they saw you.

And the cinema we built together was to play the greats but we could never afford the power. So instead, in that dark cinema, you just painted pictures of Kurosawa, and I just stared at you like Orson Wells, Getting fat off your style.

You are a movie that keeps exploding. You are Dante’s fireplace. We were so broke I'd pour tap water into your mouth, Burp against your lips so you could have champagne. You loved the champagne.

Sparring in the candlelight, I said to you, "Listen, the mathematical equivalent of a woman's beauty is directly relational to the amount that other women hate her." And you, dear, are hated. A lot.

Your boots are a soundtrack to adultery. Thank God your feet follow the rhythm of loyalty.

I said if this thing kills me, If this feeling… Why don't you slice me open, julienne, Uncurl my veins and fashion myself a noose So I can hold you once more.

Come on, love, In case you missed it. When you dance alone, I feel you twisting. You cut your lip That's why I kissed it. Pretend I'm there.

And it doesn't even, even matter how far away my senses catch you. And it doesn't even, even matter how far away my senses catch you. I hope they cut you. I am your blood. I am your blood. I am your blood. I am your blood.

#poetry #poemsociety #poem #poemblr #poems and poetry #slam poet #slam poetry #slam poem #spoken word #derrick brown #kurosawa champagne #Youtube

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Happy birthday, Adrienne Rich!

Adrienne Cecile Rich, born May 16, 1929, in Baltimore, Maryland, and died March 27, 2012, in Santa Cruz, California, was an American poet, essayist, and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse." Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum," which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.

Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by renowned poet W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Auden went on to write the introduction to the published volume. She famously declined the National Medal of Arts, protesting the vote by House Speaker Newt Gingrich to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, 1963

1

You, once a belle in Shreveport, with henna-colored hair, skin like a peach bud, still have your dresses copied from that time, and play a Chopin prelude called by Cortot: "Delicious recollections float like perfume through the memory." Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumor, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life. Nervy, glowering, your daughter wipes the teaspoons, grows another way. 2 Banging the coffee-pot into the sink she hears the angels chiding, and looks out past the raked gardens to the sloppy sky. Only a week since They said: Have no patience. The next time it was: Be insatiable. Then: Save yourself; others you cannot save. Sometimes she's let the tap stream scald her arm, a match burn to her thumbnail, or held her hand above the kettle's snout right in the woolly steam. They are probably angels, since nothing hurts her anymore, except each morning's grit blowing into her eyes.

3 A thinking woman sleeps with monsters. The beak that grips her, she becomes. And Nature, that sprung-lidded, still commodious steamer-trunk of tempora and mores gets stuffed with it all: the mildewed orange-flowers, the female pills, the terrible breasts of Boadicea beneath flat foxes' heads and orchids. Two handsome women, gripped in argument, each proud, acute, subtle, I hear scream across the cut glass and majolica like Furies cornered from their prey: The argument ad feminam, all the old knives that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours, ma semblable, ma soeur! 4 Knowing themselves too well in one another: their gifts no pure fruition, but a thorn, the prick filed sharp against a hint of scorn... Reading while waiting for the iron to heat, writing, My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun-- in that Amherst pantry while the jellies boil and scum, or, more often, iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird, dusting everything on the whatnot every day of life.

5 Dulce ridens, dulce loquens, she shaves her legs until they gleam like petrified mammoth-tusk. 6 When to her lute Corinna sings neither words nor music are her own; only the long hair dipping over her cheek, only the song of silk against her knees and these adjusted in reflections of an eye. Poised, trembling and unsatisfied, before an unlocked door, that cage of cages, tell us, you bird, you tragical machine-- is this fertillisante douleur? Pinned down by love, for you the only natural action, are you edged more keen to prise the secrets of the vault? has Nature shown her household books to you, daughter-in-law, that her sons never saw?

7 "To have in this uncertain world some stay which cannot be undermined, is of the utmost consequence." Thus wrote a woman, partly brave and partly good, who fought with what she partly understood. Few men about her would or could do more, hence she was labeled harpy, shrew and whore. 8 "You all die at fifteen," said Diderot, and turn part legend, part convention. Still, eyes inaccurately dream behind closed windows blankening with steam. Deliciously, all that we might have been, all that we were--fire, tears, wit, taste, martyred ambition-- stirs like the memory of refused adultery the drained and flagging bosom of our middle years. 9 Not that it is done well, but that it is done at all? Yes, think of the odds! or shrug them off forever. This luxury of the precocious child, Time's precious chronic invalid,-- would we, darlings, resign it if we could? Our blight has been our sinecure: mere talent was enough for us-- glitter in fragments and rough drafts. Sigh no more, ladies. Time is male and in his cups drinks to the fair. Bemused by gallantry, we hear our mediocrities over-praised, indolence read as abnegation, slattern thought styled intuition, every lapse forgiven, our crime only to cast too bold a shadow or smash the mold straight off. For that, solitary confinement, tear gas, attrition shelling. Few applicants for that honor. 10 Well, she's long about her coming, who must be more merciless to herself than history. Her mind full to the wind, I see her plunge breasted and glancing through the currents, taking the light upon her at least as beautiful as any boy or helicopter, poised, still coming, her fine blades making the air wince but her cargo no promise then: delivered palpable ours.

#poetry #poemsociety #poemblr #poems and poetry #poem #adrienne rich #snapshots of a daughter-in-law #santa cruz #yale series of younger poets award #national medal of arts #national endowment for the arts

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Litany by Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,           The crystal goblet and the wine...                 -Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass and the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard, the plums on the counter, or the house of cards. And you are certainly not the pine-scented air. There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge, maybe even the pigeon on the general's head, but you are not even close to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show that you are neither the boots in the corner nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know, speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world, that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star, the evening paper blowing down an alley and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees and the blind woman's tea cup. But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife. You are still the bread and the knife. You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

#poetry #poemsociety #poemblr #poem #poems and poetry #billy collins #jacques crickillon #litany #Youtube

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The Spirit and the Soul by Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert, February 18, 1925 – November 13, 2012, born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, died in Berkeley, CA.

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It should have been the family that lasted. Should have been my sister and my peasant mother. But it was not. They were the affection, not the journey. It could have been my father, but he died too soon. Gelmetti and Gregg and Nogami lasted. It was the newness of me, and the newness after that, and newness again. It was the important love and the serious lust. It was Pittsburgh that lasted. The iron and fog and sooty brick houses. Not Aunt Mince and Pearl, but the black-and-white winters with their girth and geological length of cold. Streets ripped apart by ice and emerging like wounded beasts when the snow finally left in April. Freight trains with their steam locomotives working at night. Summers the size of crusades. When I was a boy, I saw downtown a large camera standing in front of the William Pitt Hotel or pointed at Kaufmann’s Department Store. Usually around midnight, but the people still going by. The camera set slow enough that cars and people left no trace. The crowds in Rome and Tokyo and Manhattan did not last. But the empty streets of Perugia, my two bowls of bean soup on Kos, and Pimpaporn Charionpanith lasted. The plain nakedness of Anna in Denmark remains in me forever. The wet lilacs on Highland Avenue when I was fourteen. Carrying Michiko dead in my arms. It is not about the spirit. The spirit dances, comes and goes. But the soul is nailed to us like lentils and fatty bacon lodged under the ribs. What lasted is what the soul ate. The way a child knows the world by putting it part by part into his mouth. As I tried to gnaw my way into the Lord, working to put my heart against that heart. Lying in the wheat at night, letting the rain after all the dry months have me.

#poetry #poemsociety #poemblr #poems and poetry #poem #jack gilbert #the spirit and the soul #gianna gelmetti #linda gregg #michiko nogami #rome #tokyo #perugia #kos #pimpaporn #charionpanith #denmark #kaufmann's department store #william pitt hotel

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Imagine the Angels of Bread by Martín Espada

Martín Espada, born 7 August 1957 in Brooklyn, NY

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This is the year that squatters evict landlords, gazing like admirals from the rail of the roofdeck or levitating hands in praise of steam in the shower; this is the year that shawled refugees deport judges who stare at the floor and their swollen feet as files are stamped with their destination; this is the year that police revolvers, stove-hot, blister the fingers of raging cops, and nightsticks splinter in their palms; this is the year that darkskinned men lynched a century ago return to sip coffee quietly with the apologizing descendants of their executioners.

This is the year that those who swim the border’s undertow and shiver in boxcars are greeted with trumpets and drums at the first railroad crossing on the other side; this is the year that the hands pulling tomatoes from the vine uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine, the hands canning tomatoes are named in the will that owns the bedlam of the cannery; this is the year that the eyes stinging from the poison that purifies toilets awaken at last to the sight of a rooster-loud hillside, pilgrimage of immigrant birth; this is the year that cockroaches become extinct, that no doctor finds a roach embedded in the ear of an infant; this is the year that the food stamps of adolescent mothers are auctioned like gold doubloons, and no coin is given to buy machetes for the next bouquet of severed heads in coffee plantation country.

If the abolition of slave-manacles began as a vision of hands without manacles, then this is the year; if the shutdown of extermination camps began as imagination of a land without barbed wire or the crematorium, then this is the year; if every rebellion begins with the idea that conquerors on horseback are not many-legged gods, that they too drown if plunged in the river, then this is the year.

So may every humiliated mouth, teeth like desecrated headstones, fill with the angels of bread.

#poetry #poemsociety #poemblr #poems and poetry #poem #martín espada #imagine the angels of bread

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Bad Language by Dan Albergotti

Dan Albergotti is a professor at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. The author of one book of poetry, The Boatloads, and two chapbooks, Charon's Manifest and The Use of the World.

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We fear to speak, and silence coats the night air. So we are dumb, as quiet as the kitchen pans hanging on their cabinet hooks. What words do we even have? The root of fuck is as much to strike as to copulate. And sometimes ravish is to rape. But when you’re ravishing, you’re beautiful. Strikingly beautiful. Other tongues do not help. Try saying “kiss me” on the streets of Paris. God does not help. The Bible is full of prohibition. Thou shalt not, saith the lord. No sounds like know. To know is to understand. In the Bible to know is to fuck. What do you mean when you say no? I think I know. I want to know. Understand me. You’re ravishing. I want to know you. Strike me. Don’t leave me alone with self- knowledge and these rich, fruitless, unspoken words.

#poemsociety #poems and poetry #poemblr #poetry #poem #dan albergotti #coastal carolina university in conway #the boatloads #charon's manifest #the use of the world

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Ten True Things by Miranda July

Photographed here by Emman Montalvan for kinfolk.com. Styling by Rebecca Ramsey.

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One of my favorite artists, Miranda July is an American film director, screenwriter, singer, actress, author, and artist. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital media presentations, and live performance art. She wrote, directed, and starred in the indie film classic Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) and, most recently, wrote and directed Kajillionaire (2020). She grew up in Berkeley, CA, performing at 924 Gilman, a local punk rock club, and went to school at College Prep in Oakland, CA.

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What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again. The day felt like a birthday, our first, and we ourselves were the gifts, to be opened again and again. One thing we did was try on each other's shoes. My shoes were almost twice as big as hers, and this seemed okay. It wasn't just my shoes; it was my feet and all the other parts of my body, too. She held her arm against my arm, and it looked like an embryo next to a child. She said maybe she was still growing, and we pressed our legs against each other's legs, and these, too, were radically different sizes, and our curiosity was blossoming like a rose, we wanted to know, we really wanted to know, all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is. We wanted to strike lightning in dark waters, to see, if only for a second, the entire world that lives down there, the ten million species in amazing colors and patterns; show us life, now. We pressed or stomachs and lips together, and these, too, were different sizes, but my lips were roughly the same size as her ear, and her arm, when wrapped around my waist, felt long and, more important, was warm. We grew still and stared at each other. It seemed incredibly dangerous to look into each other's eyes, but we were doing it. For how long can you behold another person? Before you have to think of yourself again, like dipping the brush back in for more ink. For a very long time; you didn't need to get more ink, there was no reason to get anything else, because she was as good as me, she lived on earth like me, she suffered as I did.

From her collection of stories: No one belongs here more than you.

#prose #miranda july #no one belongs here more than you #ten true things #me and you and everyone we know #kajillionaire #oakland #berkeley