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Tag "poet"

Philip Levine our newest Poet Laureate

By: ste!!a
10-08-2011
reading

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
wait­ing at Ford High­land Park. For work
You know what work is — if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
For­get you. This is about wait­ing,
shift­ing from one foot to another.
Feel­ing the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blur­ring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fin­gers,
and of course it’s some­one else’s brother,
nar­rower across the shoul­ders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stub­born­ness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted wait­ing,
to the knowl­edge that some­where ahead
a man is wait­ing who will say, “No,
we’re not hir­ing today,” for any
rea­son he wants. You love your brother,
now sud­denly you can hardly stand
the love flood­ing you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home try­ing to
sleep off a mis­er­able night shift
at Cadil­lac so he can get up
before noon to study his Ger­man.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wag­ner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoul­ders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done some­thing so sim­ple, so obvi­ous,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jeal­ous or even mean
or inca­pable of cry­ing in
the pres­ence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

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Remembering Gil Scott Heron

By: ste!!a
28-05-2011
listening
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Poem Today: Sylvia Plath, The Rival

By: ste!!a
24-02-2011
reading

If the moon smiled, she would resem­ble you.
You leave the same impres­sion
Of some­thing beau­ti­ful, but anni­hi­lat­ing.
Both of you are great light bor­row­ers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,

And your first gift is mak­ing stone out of every­thing.
I wake to a mau­soleum; you are here,
Tick­ing your fin­gers on the mar­ble table, look­ing for cig­a­rettes,
Spite­ful as a woman, but not so ner­vous,
And dying to say some­thing unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her sub­jects,
But in the day­time she is ridicu­lous.
Your dis­sat­is­fac­tions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mail­slot with lov­ing reg­u­lar­ity,
White and blank, expan­sive as car­bon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,
Walk­ing about in Africa maybe, but think­ing of me.

— Sylvia Plath

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Home for Thanksgiving, W.S. Merwin

By: ste!!a
25-11-2010
reading

I bring myself back from the streets that open like long
Silent laughs, and the oth­ers
Spilled into in the way of rivers break­ing up, lit­tered with words,
Crossed by cats and that sort of thing,
From the know­ing wires and the aimed win­dows,
Well this is nice, on the third floor, in back of the bill­board
Which says Now Improved and I know what they mean,
I thread my way in and I sew myself in like money.

Well this is nice with my shoes moored by the bed
And the lights around the bill­board tick­ing on and off like a bea­con,
I have brought myself back like many another crusty
Unbar­bered ves­sel launched with a bot­tle,
From the bare regions of pure hope where
For a great part of the year it scarcely sets at all,
And from the night skies reg­u­larly filled with old movies of my fin­gers,
Weight­less as shad­ows, grop­ing in the sluices,
And from the visions of veins like arter­ies, and
From the months of ply­ing
Between can and can, vacant as a pint in the morn­ing,
While my sex grew into the only tree, a joy­less ever­green,
And the winds played hell with it at night, com­ing as they did
Over at least one thou­sand miles of empti­ness,
Thump­ing as though there were noth­ing but doors, insist­ing
“Come out,” and of course I would have frozen.

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poem today : Naomi Shihab Nye, Negotiations with a Volcano

By: ste!!a
01-11-2010
reading

We will call you “Agua” like the rivers and cool jugs.
We will per­suade the clouds to nes­tle around your neck
so you may sleep late.
We would be happy if you slept for­ever.
We will tend the slopes we plant, singing the songs
our grand­fa­thers taught us before we inher­ited their fear.
We will try not to argue among our­selves.
When the widow demands extra flour, we will pro­vide it,
remem­ber­ing the smell of incense on the day of our Lord.

Please think of us as we are, tiny, with skins that burn eas­ily.
Please notice how we have watered the shrubs around our houses
and trans­planted the pep­pers into neat tin cans.
For­give any anger we feel toward the earth,
when the rains do not come, or they come too much,
and swal­low our corn.
It is not easy to be this small and live in your shadow.

Often while we are eat­ing our evening meal
you cross our rooms like a thief,
touch­ing first the radio and then the loom.
Later our dreams begin catch­ing fire around the edges,
they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.

How can we live like this?
We need to wake and find our shelves intact,
our chil­dren slum­ber­ing in their quilts.
We need dreams the shape of lakes,
with morn­ings in them thick as fish.
Shade us while we cast and hook—
but noth­ing else, noth­ing else.

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poem today : The Art of Disappearing

By: ste!!a
25-08-2010
listening

I was look­ing around for a video for video tues­day. I just couldn’t find some­thing that was right. Life has been so over­whelm­ing lately that I have been look­ing for quiet. Seek­ing the sig­nal through the noise.

Some­times I for­get to lis­ten for the sig­nal and I begin to spin like a top. The clar­ity of my mes­sage becom­ing a blur — until I tum­ble to a stop.

This poem is one that I read dur­ing the times when I search for quiet.

The Art of Dis­ap­pear­ing : Naomi Shi­hab Nye

When they say Don’t I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remem­ber what par­ties are like
before answer­ing.
Some­one telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It’s not that you don’t love them any­more.
You’re try­ing to remem­ber some­thing
too impor­tant to for­get.
Trees. The monastery bell at twi­light.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When some­one rec­og­nizes you in a gro­cery store
nod briefly and become a cab­bage.
When some­one you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feel­ing like a leaf.
Know you could tum­ble any sec­ond.
Then decide what to do with your time.

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poem today : Native Trees, W. S. Merwin

By: ste!!a
06-07-2010
reading

Nei­ther my father nor my mother knew
the names of the trees
where I was born
what is that
I asked and my
father and mother did not
hear they did not look where I pointed
sur­faces of fur­ni­ture held
the atten­tion of their fin­gers
and across the room they could watch
walls they had for­got­ten
where there were no ques­tions
no voices and no shade
Were there trees
where they were chil­dren
where I had not been
I asked
were there trees in those places
where my father and my mother were born
and in that time did

my father and my mother see them

and when they said yes it meant

they did not remember

What were they I asked what were they
but both my father and my mother
said they never knewW. S. Mer­win, “Native Trees” from The Rain in the Trees (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). Copy­right © 1988 by W. S. Mer­win. Reprinted with the per­mis­sion of The Wylie Agency, Inc.

Source: The Rain in the Trees (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988)

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Gil Scott-Heron words that turn you round

By: ste!!a
07-03-2010
listening

Always have loved the work. Glad to see that he has been able to pro­duce some­thing new. Just get­ting acquainted with his new album.

More about his life and career.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott-Heron

Album web­site.
http://gilscottheron.net

from his website :

Gil Scott-Heron (born April 1, 1949) is an Amer­i­can poet, musi­cian, and author known pri­mar­ily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spo­ken word soul per­former and his col­lab­o­ra­tive work with musi­cian Brian Jack­son. His col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts with Jack­son fea­tured a musi­cal fusion of jazz, blues and soul music, as well as lyri­cal con­tent con­cern­ing social and polit­i­cal issues of the time, deliv­ered in both rap­ping and melis­matic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. The music of these albums, most notably Pieces of a Man and Win­ter in Amer­ica in the early 1970s, influ­enced and helped engen­der later African-American music gen­res such as hip hop and neo soul. Scott-Heron’s record­ing work is often asso­ci­ated with black mil­i­tant activism and has received much crit­i­cal acclaim for one of his most well-known com­po­si­tions “The Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tele­vised”. On his influ­ence, All­mu­sic wrote “Scott-Heron’s unique proto-rap style influ­enced a gen­er­a­tion of hip-hop artists”.

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poem today : Sekou Sundiata reading, New American Theater

By: ste!!a
02-03-2010
listening

FYI : The Geral­dine R. Dodge Poetry Fes­ti­val has been can­celed due to eco­nomic pres­sure. Please con­tribute if you can. Just click through to YouTube.

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poem today : It Is a Living Coral, William Carlos Williams

By: ste!!a
20-02-2010
reading

a trou­ble

archaically fet­tered
to produce

E Pluribus Unum an
island

in the sea a Capi­tol
surmounted

by Armed Lib­erty—
painting

sculp­ture strad­dled by
a dome

eight mil­lion pounds
in weight

iron plates con­structed
to expand

and con­tract with
variations

of tem­per­a­ture
the folding

and unfold­ing of a lily.
And Congress

autho­rized and the
Commission

was entrusted was
entrusted!

a sculp­tured group
Mars

in Roman mail plac­ing
a wreath

of lau­rel on the brow
of Washington

Com­merce Min­erva
Thomas

Jef­fer­son John Han­cock
at

the table Mrs. Motte
presenting

Indian burn­ing arrows
to Generals

Mar­ion and Lee to fire
her mansion

and dis­lodge the British—
this scaleless

jum­ble is superb

and accu­rate in its
expression

of the thing they
would destroy—

Bap­tism of Poca–
hontas

with a lit­tle card
hanging

under it to tell
the persons

in the picture.

It climbs

it runs, it is Geo.
Shoup

of Idaho it wears
a beard

it fetches naked
Indian

women from a river
Trumbull

Var­num Hen­der­son
Frances

Willard’s corset is
absurd—

Banks White Colum­bus
stretched

in bed men felling trees

The Hon. Michael
C. Kerr

one­time Speaker of
the House

of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives
Perry

in a row­boat on Lake
Erie

chang­ing ships the
dead

among the wreck­age
sickly green

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