Claude Mckay on Summers in New Hampshire

It's been a long time since I last thought of the lost poetry blog. I was surprised to discover I had posted this summer, although only just. It's funny to also note that the blog carries on without me, racking up hits from old posts. Does it need its initiator at all?

I like this summer poem, even though the season described is so far removed from the heavy, sluggish and humid summer around these parts that it makes me want to move to New Hampshire.

Summer Morn in New Hampshire by Claude McKay

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children's feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth's wet breast.

But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.

Verse of the Day - Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's been some time since I posted on here. It't not that poetry is superflous but there's the small matter of life. But poetry can take you places you want to be again in life such as the half remembered cliffs on a May day.

see this photographer at http://www.flickr.com/photos/alphageek/show/

Afternoon on a Hill - Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing

Under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers

And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds

With quiet eyes,

Watch the wind bow down the grass,

And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show

Up from the town,

I will mark which must be mine,

And then start down!

Ennui by Sylvia Plath

I can relate to Plath's poem as I feel bored today, listless at being part of a factor process that fills space and time because we have always filled time and space. Not with energy and light but with material as dull as heavy gray clay.

And so it goes on.

Ennui by Sylvia Plath
Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.


The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.

Arizona poets - Alberto Rios

The Chair She Sits In - Alberto Rios I’ve heard this thing where, when someone dies, People close up all the holes around the house— The keyholes, the chimney, the windows, Even the mouths of the animals, the dogs and the pigs. It’s so the soul won’t be confused, or tempted. It’s so when the soul comes out of the body it’s been in But that doesn’t work anymore, It won’t simply go into another one And try to make itself at home, Pretending as if nothing happened. There’s no mystery—it’s too much work to move on. It isn’t anybody’s fault. A soul is like any of us. It gets used to things, especially after a long life. The way I sit in my living-room chair, The indentation I have put in it now After so many years—that’s how I understand. It’s my chair, And I know how to sit in it.

Sonia Sachez is named as Philadelphia's poet laureate

It seems every big city and state is getting its own poet laureate these days. Philadelphia has just named Sonia Sanchez, a West Philadelphia resident as its new poet laureate.

According to phillyburbs.com the idea is to create a "powerful means of communication and artistic expression by creating a citywide position for poet laureate."

4 haiku by Sonia Sachez


(for Eugene Redmond)


Blue atom
poet transcribing
our flesh

2.

your quicksilver
words waterfalling in
sweet confession

3.

you have taken down
the morning turned it into
a roar of blackness

4.

your poems…
butterflies fluttering down
to earth.

On the death of Ruth Stone

Ruth Stone has died and I didn't know much about her when she was alive. Except that she was very old.

According to the BBC, her best-known work, including The Solution and Simplicity, came after she turned 70. In 2002, she won the National Book Award for Poetry, for In the Next Galaxy. She was 96 when she died.

Stone's second husband, poet Walter Stone, took his own life in 1959 - the year of her debut - leaving her to bring up three daughters.

Eta Carinae


The snow is coming straight down
Like heavy rain,
The crows protesting—
What do they know?
So the weather patterns change.
The crows, blue jays,
The soggy robins, the gold finches—
Dupes of the weather,
All deceived by the light.
The sun, wobbling and coughing
Along the dust belt;
The entire galaxy
Shuddering with Eta Carinae
Swollen to term.
The super-novae, like Christ,
Come to illuminate the ignorant,
Who can only swallow one another.



Strings


We pop into life the way
Particles pop in and out
Of the continuum.
We are a seething mass
Of probability.
And probably I love you.
The evil of larva
And the evil of stars
Is a formula for the future.
Some bodies can
Thrust their arms into
a flame and be instantly
cured of this world,
while others sicken.
Why think, little brother
Like the moon, spit out like
A broken tooth.
"Oh," groans the world.
The outer planets,
The fizzing sun, here we come
With our luggage.
Look at the clever things
We have made out of
A few building blocks—
O, fabulous continuum.

 

Boredom by Margaret Atwood

Tuesdays can be so dull. The week seems to stretch ahead with little hint of respite in our regimented lives. Wednesday is hump day - perhaps the worst - although one day we will be dead and in our last days we will probably give our right arm for a month of Wednesdays.

Still this circle of the week and the seasons can be claustrophobic. It can trap us in these ever decreasing circles like the rings inside a tree. Freedom is a relative concept, decreed by time, circumstance and wealth. Routine, once familiar and comforting, can also be our jailer.

And now we are trapped in our unbending ways, shuttered off in rooms and kept from the sun. Atwood's poem makes me think of the repetition of the saw and the hard and flat Canadian plains where there are no horizons. And God knows we need something to aim for.

Bored by Margaret Atwood

 All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove, steered, paddled. It
wasn't even boredom, it was looking,
looking hard and up close at the small
details. Myopia. The worn gunwales,
the intricate twill of the seat
cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular
pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans
of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying
bristles on the back of his neck.
Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes
I would. The boring rhythm of doing
things over and over, carrying
the wood, drying
the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what
the animals spend most of their time at,
ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels,
shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed
such things out, and I would look
at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under
the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier
all the time then, although it more often
rained, and more birdsong?
I could hardly wait to get
the hell out of there to
anywhere else. Perhaps though
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored.
Now I would know too much.
Now I would know.