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Please share your favorite poems here. Heard any poetry news? Let us know. Heard of some new poetry books? Do tell !

Post here about all poetry !

Still I Rise

BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Here is the author reading Still I rise !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo...

Oh, Alias, thank you for this poem at this moment.

You're welcome. It's inspiring.

Poet T.S. Eliot's letters to his muse, Emily Hale, to be unveiled after 60 years

~~~~ The Associated Press

After more than 60 years spent sealed up in a library storage facility, about 1,000 letters written by poet T.S. Eliot to confidante Emily Hale will be unveiled this week, and scholars hope they will reveal the extent of a relationship that's been speculated about for decades.

Many consider Hale to not only be his close friend, but also his muse, and they hope their correspondence will offer insight into the more intimate details about Eliot’s life and work. Students, researchers and scholars can read the letters at Princeton University Library starting Thursday.

“I think it’s perhaps the literary event of the decade,” says Anthony Cuda, an Eliot scholar and director of the T.S. Eliot International Summer School. “I don’t know of anything more awaited or significant. It’s momentous to have these letters coming out.”

Lifelong friends, Hale and Eliot exchanged letters for about 25 years beginning in 1930. The two met in 1912 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but did not rekindle their friendship until 1927. Eliot was already living in England and Hale taught drama at U.S. universities, including Scripps College in California.

In 1956, Hale donated the letters under an agreement they wouldn’t be opened until 50 years after either her or Eliot’s death, whichever came second. Eliot died in 1965. Hale died four years later.

Biographers say Eliot ordered Hale's letters to him be burned.

Emily Hale and poet T.S. Eliot pose in a 1946 family photo in Dorset, Vermont. After more than 60 years of sitting sealed up in a storage facility at Princeton University Library, about 1,000 letters written by Eliot to his confidante Hale will be unveiled, revealing the extent of their relationship, which scholars have speculated about for decades.
Their relationship “must have been incredibly important and their correspondence must have been remarkably intimate for him to be so concerned about the publication,” Cuda says.

T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis in 1888 and gained notoriety as a poet early in life. He was only 26 when “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” became his first professionally published poem.

Eliot's 1939 book of whimsical poetry, “Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats,” was adapted into “Cats," the award-winning musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The play opened in London first in 1981 and then on Broadway the next year. It was then turned into a feature film starring an ensemble cast that includes Judi Dench and James Corden just released in December.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entert...

How interesting— i don’t know much about Eliot but this is intriguing. Thanks for the info.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Wikipedia
Born: January 19, 1809, Boston, MA
Died: October 7, 1849,

The Raven
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Stirring, wild poem! I cherish the idea of placing a party hat on that photo. Happy birthday to a haunted human being.

Mahmoud Darwish: "Think of Others"

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others
(do not forget the pigeon's food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others
(do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others
(those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others
(do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
(those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
(say: “If only I were a candle in the dark").

Alias Reader wrote: "Mahmoud Darwish: "Think of Others"

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others
(do not forget the pigeon's food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others
(do not forget those who seek peace)...."

Nice sentiments!

I like that one, Alias. Thanks for sharing it with us.

"Her courage was her crown and she wore it like a queen.” - Atticus

Love Her Wild---Atticus Poetry

What a lovely statement. Thanks for sharing that, Alias.

I saw this on FB

Bill Moyers

During these trying days of social distancing, self-isolating and quarantines, days rife with fear and anxiety, my colleagues and I thought you might like some company. So each day we will be introducing you to poets we have met over the years. The only contagion they will expose you to is a measure of joy, reflection and meditation brought on by “the best words in the best order.”

Enjoy.
— Bill Moyers

“The Gift”

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy’s palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look at how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
“Metal that will bury me,”
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
“Death visited here!”
I did what a child does
when he’s given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

Watch this full episode from "The Power of the Word" (1989) with more poems read by Li-Young Lee and an interview with Bill Moyers: https://billmoyers.com/content/voices...

About Li-Young Lee

Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His father had been a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, and relocated the family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. In 1959, the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964.

This is what i call a Brilliant Idea! Thank you for sharing this gift, Alias. Tomorrow we will be back in Dallas and i can listen on my computer, as well.

From Bill Moyers

During these trying days of social distancing, self-isolating and quarantines, days rife with fear and anxiety, my colleagues and I thought you might like some company. So each day we will be introducing you to poets we have met over the years. The only contagion they will expose you to is a measure of joy, reflection and meditation brought on by “the best words in the best order.” Enjoy.
— Bill Moyers

Today we celebrate the poetry of Nikki Giovanni. World-renowned poet, commentator, activist, educator, and author of some 30 books for adults and children, Giovanni has been called a “national treasure.”

“Bicycles”

Midnight poems are bicycles
Taking us on safer journeys
Than jets
Quicker journeys
Than walking
But never as beautiful
A journey
As my back
Touching you under the quilt

Midnight poems
Sing a sweet song
Saying everything
Is all right

Everything
Is
Here for us
I reach out
To catch the laughter

The dog thinks
I need a kiss

Bicycles move
With the flow
Of the earth
Like a cloud
So quiet
In the October sky
Like licking ice cream
From a cone
Like knowing you
Will always
Be there

All day long I wait
For the sunset

The first star
The moon rise

I move
To a midnight
Poem
Called
You
Propping
Against
The dangers

Poet Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943. Although she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, she and her sister returned to Knoxville each summer to visit their grandparents. Nikki graduated with honors in history from her grandfather’s alma mater, Fisk University. Since 1987, she has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor. (Bio courtesy of Nikki-Giovanni.com)

“Bicycles” is from her 2010 collection, Bicycles: Love Poems.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...

March 21, 2020

Sad that i missed World Poetry Day. How fitting does that make Moyer's poetry-sharing?

Nikki Giovanni's poems have been companions of mine since the '70s. The above tickles my fancy, too.

I wanted to share a poem i found early last year & intended to share here but forgot. As i found the beginning of the sonnet a bit awkward, at the end i am linking to one person's thoughts on the poem, for those who might like to read further. What struck me on rereading the poem today is that nature speaks to us in many ways and this virus is yet another...


On a Tree Fallen Across a Road
(To hear us talk)

by Robert Frost

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey's end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole

And, tired of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.

An essay on the poem, https://www.marshallyyang.com/eng-220...

Thanks for sharing, deb. Poetry during these times seems soothing to read and think about.

From Bill Moyers

Today we hear from Sherman Alexie with his poem "Ode to Gray" and describes how it was first conceived as a tribute to gray suits — inspired by GQ magazine — but later evolved into a reflection on the gray areas of life.

https://billmoyers.com/segment/sherma...

"Ode to Gray"

Has anybody written an ode to gray?

Well, if not, let me be the first. Let me praise

The charcoal pit, tweed suit, and cloudy x-ray

That reveals, to your amateur dismay,

Nothing you understand. Who has been amazed

Enough to write a breathy love song to gray and gray’s

Nearly imperceptible interplay

With other grays? O, how beautiful the haze

Of charcoal pits, tweed suits, and cloudy x-rays

Of airport luggage. I love the dog day,

The long delay, and existential malaise.

Has anybody written an ode to gray?

If not, then let me proceed without delay.

O, let me construct an army made of clay.

Marching, marching, they will be my ode to gray,

To charcoal pit, tweed suit, and cloudy x-ray.


Sherman Alexie is an award-winning poet, novelist, short-story writer, and filmmaker.

Alexie is such a surprising poet. His work can evoke a variety of emotions. The above had me smiling throughout. Thanks.

— Bill Moyers

Today we hear from former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove with her poem “Daystar.”

She tells Bill: “This poem comes out of a book of poems called Thomas and Beulah. The book tells the story of one couple’s life through most of the 20th century. It’s based upon my maternal grandparents. And what I really wanted to bring to light were those moments in a life which are unremarked upon. The ones that we — that are essential to who we are, but yet we don’t think are quote, unquote, ‘important enough’ to ever relate to anyone else and so they do disappear. …And in this moment Beulah, though in this poem …it’s just a ‘she.’ This is a woman who is caught in the throes of motherhood and wants to get one moment of peace from her children.”

“Daystar”
She wanted a little room for thinking:
but she saw diapers steaming
on the line,

A doll slumped behind the door.
So she lugged a chair behind
the garage to sit out the
children’s naps

Sometimes there were things to watch—
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,
a floating maple leaf.

Other days she stared until she
was assured when she closed
her eyes she’d only see her own
vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best,
before Liza appeared pouting from
the top of the stairs.

And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice?
Why, building a palace.

Later that night when Thomas
rolled over and lurched into her,

She would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour — where she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day


A 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner for her collection Thomas and Beulah, Rita Dove became the youngest and first African American Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant in Poetry in 1993. Her numerous scholarly accomplishments also include serving as a White House Presidential Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar. On February 13, 2012, Dove was honored by President Obama with the 2011 National Medal of Arts.

Watch Bill’s entire interview with Rita Dove: https://billmoyers.com/seg…/rita-dove...

Rita Dove is a splendid poet. This one reminds me of my own children's nap time--those beloved breaks in a day. Thanks, Alias...and Mr. Moyers.

I've been slowly backtracking on Bill Moyer's poetry posts for these days. On March 17 he shared work by a longtime favorite of mine, Lucille Clifton, which i am sharing here. Actually, he shared two, so i will copy & paste both, plus his comments at the end. I hope you enjoy.


Here we present two of her poems.

“homage to my hips”

these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

“won’t you celebrate with me”

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into

a kind of life? had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

“Things don’t fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept.” – Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton, who died in 2010 at the age of 73, learned to love language as a child listening to poems written by her mother, a woman who never finished grade school.

Inheriting that love of language and the spirit of her mom, Lucille Clifton wrote poetry of her own for twenty years before she was actually published. But with her first collections of poems, she quickly gained recognition that just kept growing over time. Over a long and prolific career Clifton published more than 30 books that probed the indignations of slavery, celebrated the day-to-day events of life and community, and chronicled, with frank and poignant sensuality the frailties and pleasures of the human body.

Lucille Clifton was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — in the same year, 1988 — something that had never happened before. In 2000, she received the National Book Award for “Blessing The Boat: New And Selected Poems,” and then in 2007, became the First African American woman to receive The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize — one of American poetry’s most prestigious poetry honors.

Lucille Clifton, “homage to my hips” from Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Watch more of Lucille Clifton in our archive, https://billmoyers.com/guest/lucille-...


https://billmoyers.com/story/a-poem-a...

— Bill Moyers

Today we hear from Mexican poet Octavio Paz as he reads part of his poem, "Trowbridge Street,” translated and read by Eliot Weinberger.

-----

"Trowbridge Street"

Sun throughout the day
Cold throughout the sun
Nobody on the streets
parked cars
Still no snow
but wind wind
A red tree
still burns
in the chilled air
Talking to it I talk to you

I am in a room abandoned by language
you are in another identical room
Or we both are
on a street your glance has depopulated
The world
imperceptibly comes apart
Memory
decayed beneath our feet
I am stopped in the middle of this
unwritten line

Doors open and close by themselves
Air
enters and leaves our house
Air
talks to itself talking to you
Air
nameless in the endless corridor
Who knows who is on the other side?
Air
turns and turns in my empty skull
Air
turns to air everything it touches
Air
with air-fingers scatters everything I say
I am the air you don’t see
I can’t open your eyes
I can’t close the door
The air has turned solid

This hour has the shape of a pause
This pause has your shape
You have the shape of a fountain made
not of water but of time
My pieces bob
at the jet’s tip
what I was……am……still am not
My life is weightless
The past thins out
The future……a little water in your eyes

Now you have a bridge-shape
Our room navigates beneath your arches
From your railing we watch us pass
You ripple with wind…more light than body
The sun on the other band
grows upside down
Its roots buried deep in the sky
We could hide ourselves in its foliage
Build a bonfire with its branches
The day is habitable

The cold has immobilized the world
Space is made of glass

Glass made of air

The lightest sounds build
quick sculptures
Echoes multiply and scatter them
Maybe it will snow

The burning tree quivers

surrounded now by night

Talking to it I talk to you

https://www.facebook.com/moyersandcom...

madrano wrote: "Rita Dove is a splendid poet. This one reminds me of my own children's nap time--those beloved breaks in a day. Thanks, Alias...and Mr. Moyers."

I'm glad you are enjoying the poems. I thought it was a nice respite.

madrano wrote: "I've been slowly backtracking on Bill Moyer's poetry posts for these days. On March 17 he shared work by a longtime favorite of mine, Lucille Clifton, which i am sharing here. Actua..."

Nice. When I read the title of the first poem, I thought that will be me in a few weeks if I don't stop stress eating.

LOL! I like that he included it, although i wonder if you are alone in thinking that thought. Clifton embraced her physical self, which i appreciated in her poetry.

I'm not sure what to think of the Paz poem. I've read it twice today (first time on the website, https://billmoyers.com/spotlight/poet... ). I really like the "Talking to it I talk to you" line but i'm less pleased with it than others, i guess. His images are good, i could practically see the bridge & its reflection.

— Bill Moyers

Today we hear from Adrienne Rich as she reads two of her poems: “What Kind of Times Are These” and “In Those Years.”

“What Kind of Times Are These”

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.

Source: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc. 1995)

“In Those Years”

In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you. We found ourselves reduced to I. And the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible. We were trying to live a personal life, and yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to. But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather. They were headed somewhere else, but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog, where we stood saying,

https://www.facebook.com/moyersandcom...

I must have missed the publication of Dark Fields of the Republic back in the '90s. As a fan of the poetry of Adrienne Rich, it's lucky for me that Moyer is making such introductions.

The first poem above, addressing US history's disappearing the Quakers, is interesting. My own family at the time of the US Revolutionary War was Quaker. The War & decisions to fight tore the family apart. The meeting sites may have disappeared but members of my family remained with the Friends at least through the Civil War.

— Bill Moyers

Today we hear from Wendell Berry as he reads “A Poem on Hope.”

“A Poem on Hope”

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good
and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
of the future, which surely will surprise us,
and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
anymore than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it, as you care for no other place, this
knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth.
It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask
for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land
and your work. Be still and listen to the voices that belong
to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.

Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.
The world is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people while their people
continue in them. When the people make
dark the light within them, the world darkens.


Wendell Berry is a man of the land and one of America’s most influential writers, whose prolific career includes more than forty books of poetry, novels, short stories and essays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ejYA...

madrano wrote: The first poem above, addressing US history's disappearing the Quakers, is interesting. My own family at the time of the US Revolutionary War was Quaker. The War & decisions to fight tore the family apart. The meeting sites may have disappeared but members of my family remained with the Friends at least through the Civil War"

I've always found the history of the Quakers and their beliefs very interesting. I have to see if I can find the title of one of the books I read about them. I think I still have it.

Berry's closing line is perfect, imo. Philosophy for life.

Alias, you probably recall that i have an ancestor who was to be shipped to the West Indies & sold as a slave because, as a Quaker, she worshiped on the wrong Sabbath. She & her brother were tried & found guilty. I share the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier written about her experience,
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cassa...

And i'll note that Whittier liked the name Cassandra better than the name of the actual woman sentenced, which was "Provided". Cassandra Southwick was the name of her mother, however.

Apologies all around to those who have been with Book Nook Cafe for years & are tired of me mentioning this poem here. At least this time i only supplied a link, not copied & pasted the entire long poem! ;-)

Thank you for sharing your family history and the poem deb. I find it fascinating.

Thanks. It's interesting to note that most of my family knew nothing about this until the 1990s! It wasn't handed down and we only learned about it when we discovered a family genealogist who lived in New Jersey & had written about the folks. That's also how we found out we were related to Richard Nixon via his Quaker ancestors, btw. We were quite grateful for the material, as you might imagine.

madrano wrote: That's also how we found out we were related to Richard Nixon via his Quaker ancestors, btw. We were quite grateful for the material, as you might imagine.."

A few years ago I read Being Nixon: A Man Divided by Evan Thomas

It was the best book I read that year. I highly recommend it. I thought it was fair and balanced. It was also very well written.

I remember when you were reading that book. It's on my list when it comes round on my Presidential bio list.

— Bill Moyers

Today we hear from poet Deborah Garrison.

"She Thinks of Him on Her Birthday"
by Deborah Garrison

It's still winter,
and still I don't know you
anymore, and you don't know

me. But this morning I stand
in the kitchen with the illusion,
peeling a clementine. Each piece

snaps like the nickname for a girl,
the tinny bite it was
to be one once. Again I count

your daughters and find myself in the middle,
the waist of the hourglass,
endlessly passed through and passed through

but holding nothing, dismayed
by the grubby February sun
I was born under and the cheap pleasure

it gives the window. Yet I raise the shade
for it, and try not to feel it is wrong
to want spring, to be a season

further from you—not wrong to wish
for a hard rain, a hard wind
like one we sat out in together
or came in from together.

"She Thinks of Him on Her Birthday" by Deborah Garrison, from A Working Girl Can't Win and other poems. © Random House, 1998
A Working Girl Can't Win: And Other Poems by Deborah Garrison

-- Watch Bill's full conversation with Deborah Garrison:
https://billmoyers.com/content/sounds...

— Bill Moyers

Today we hear from Galway Kinnell.

“After Making Love We Hear Footsteps”

For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run – as now, we lie together,
touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears – in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small
he has to screw them on …

and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startlingly muscled body —
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.

-----
Galway Kinnell was an award-winning poet best known for poetry that connects the experiences of daily life to much larger poetic, spiritual, and cultural forces. Often focusing on the claims of nature and society on the individual, Kinnell’s poems explore psychological states in precise and sonorous free verse. Critic Morris Dickstein called Kinnell “one of the true master poets of his generation.” Dickstein added, “there are few others writing today in whose work we feel so strongly the full human presence.” Robert Langbaum observed in the American Poetry Review that “at a time when so many poets are content to be skillful and trivial, [Kinnell] speaks with a big voice about the whole of life.”

Selected Poems (1982), for which Kinnell won the Pulitzer Prize and was co-winner of the National Book Award in 1983, contains works from every period in the poet’s career and was released just shortly before he won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation grant. Almost 20 years after his Selected Poems, Kinnell released the retrospective collection, A New Selected Poems (2001), focusing on Kinnell’s poetry of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Collected Poems of Galway Kinnell--Galway Kinnell

I like that these last two poems share thoughts about relations within a family, giving readers time to consider their own lives.

One thing i really like about this Moyers project is that it has introduced me to a number of new-to-me poets. Lovely. And thanks to you, Alias, for sharing them with us.

I'm glad you are enjoying them, Deb.

:-)

— Bill Moyers

In this clip from Bill Moyers’s interview with Alice Walker, she talks about why meditation is so important to her and the inspiration she receives from primatologist Jane Goodall’s attitude toward her personal appearance and aging. And she reads her poem, “You Too Can Look, Smell, Dress, Act This Way.”

“You Too Can Look, Smell, Dress, Act This Way”

You too can look, smell, dress, act this way. Whenever I notice advertising, how they can tuck away your nipples and suck off your hips, and make you smell like nobody who’s ever lived, I like to think of Jane Goodall. Plain Jane Goodall.

I like to imagine her hunkered down motionless, quiet, observant of wild chimpanzees in the bush. Her gray hair tugged off her honest face — with a rubber band I bet. While she studies the body proud cousins looking for clues about why we are so dissatisfied. Sometimes a person’s name just suits them. Jane. Nothing you can do with Jane except say it. Jane Goodall.

Advertising never seems to reach Jane. Her hips always appear to be just where they always were. Her breasts never strain to declare themselves. Each time she emerges blinking out of the mists, she’s wearing the exact same white blouse and indifferent blue skirt.

She never seems to have heard of a makeup that wasn’t character. If I could sniff Jane Goodall, as her friends the chimpanzees do, I know she would smell just like her name. Like no advertiser’s perfume ever touched her. No surgeon’s shears ever trimmed such ample integrity. She would smell like Earth, air, water, ancient forest, and like no man was ever there.

—https://www.facebook.com/moyersandcom...

What a terrific poem. It conjures up an immediate image of Goodall. Thanks for sharing this one, Alias.

madrano wrote: "What a terrific poem. It conjures up an immediate image of Goodall. Thanks for sharing this one, Alias."

If you do FaceBook, who can follow her

A recent post was:
Celebrate Dr. Goodall's living legacy as scientist, activist and changemaker this Earth Day, April 22nd, with the premiere of 'Jane: The Hope' at 9/8c created in partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute on National Geographic Channel!

Ah, that's quite soon. Thanks for the update, Alias.

Oh! This explains why i have a file from last year titled, "April Poetry". LOL--time to share one. (Thanks for informing us.)

For more info about the following, including a bio of Muriel Rukeyser, the poetic breakdown of the poem, etc, click here
https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/edu...

St. Roach
from The Gates: Poems

For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you,
for that I never touched you, they told me you are filth,
they showed me by every action to despise your kind;
for that I saw my people making war on you,
I could not tell you apart, one from another,
for that in childhood I lived in places clear of you,
for that all the people I knew met you by
crushing you, stamping you to death, they poured boiling
water on you, they flushed you down,
for that I could not tell one from another
only that you were dark, fast on your feet, and slender.
Not like me.
For that I did not know your poems
And that I do not know any of your sayings
And that I cannot speak or read your language
And that I do not sing your songs
And that I do not teach our children
to eat your food
or know your poems
or sing your songs
But that we say you are filthing our food
But that we know you not at all.

Yesterday I looked at one of you for the first time.
You were lighter that the others in color, that was
neither good nor bad.
I was really looking for the first time.
You seemed troubled and witty.

Today I touched one of you for the first time.
You were startled, you ran, you fled away
Fast as a dancer, light, strange, and lovely to the touch.
I reach, I touch, I begin to know you.

madrano wrote: ..St. Roach
from The Gates: Poems

For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you,
for that I never touched you, they told me you are filth,"

Wow ! Thanks for sharing this poem, deb. I've never read it before. And Happy Poetry month to you ! ♥