Category Poetry

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  • Then Come Back

    Tuesday, April 19, 2016 Books, Poetry, Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

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    “Reading a poem in translation,” wrote Bialek, “is like kissing a woman through a veil”.  Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what’s between the lines, the mysterious implications.”
    ― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

    I read the novel Fugitive Pieces this weekend and it was full of such lovely, lovely words. it was an enook borrowed from the library, but I need to buy my own paper copy. So many beautifully written passages there.

    In the passage above, the author speaks of something I often think about: what’s lost (and sometimes found) in translation.

    Many of my favorite poems and novels weren’t originally written in English. It’s interesting to read different translations by different translators. Sometimes the outcome can vary so much.

    Today on NPR there was a story about  a new book of Pablo Neruda’s “lost” poems.  Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda is presented with the Spanish text, full-color reproductions of handwritten poems, and dynamic English translations.

     

    Crossing the sky I near
    the red ray of your hair.
    Of earth and wheat I am and as I close-in
    your fire kindles itself
    inside me and the rocks
    and flour ignite.
    That’s why my heart
    expands and rises
    into bread for your mouth to devour,
    and my blood is wine poured for you.
    You and I are the land with its fruit.
    Bread, fire, blood and wine
    make up the earthly love that sears.

  • Pathways {Poetry}

    Tuesday, April 5, 2016 Photography, Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

    Understand, I’ll slip quietly
    away from the noisy crowd
    when I see the pale
    stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.

    I’ll pursue solitary pathways
    through the pale twilit meadows,
    with only this one dream:

    You come too.

    -Rainer Maria Rilke

    imageI have a framed copy of this photo hanging in my house. I took this about 7 or 8 years ago at Crown Hill Cemetary.  It was one of my favorite places to wander. It’s an oasis of calm in the middle of the city and its oddly beautiful, or at least it is to me. I’m one who loves to “slip quietly away from the noisy crowd” from time to time. It’s a pleasure I’ve recently re-discovered.

    You come too.

  • I Don’t Want To Be Demure Or Respectable {Poetry}

    Tuesday, March 29, 2016 Photography, Poetry, Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

    I DON’T WANT TO BE DEMURE OR RESPECTABLE

    I don’t want to be demure or respectable.
    I was that way, asleep, for years.
    That way, you forget too many important things.
    How the little stones, even if you can’t hear them, are singing.
    How the river can’t wait to get to the ocean and the sky, it’s been there before.
    What traveling is that!
    It is a joy to imagine such distances.
    I could skip sleep for the next hundred years.
    There is a fire in the lashes of my eyes.
    It doesn’t matter where I am, it could be a small room.
    The glimmer of gold Böhme saw on the kitchen pot
    was missed by everyone else in the house.

    Maybe the fire in my lashes is a reflection of that.
    Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy.
    Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere?
    Listen to me or not, it hardly matters.
    I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish.
    I’m just chattering

    -Mary Oliver

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    Year ago I gave up trying to be wise, demure, or respectable, and I am much happier for it. When I stopped caring so much about what other people think of me, I became much more genuine. I’m not asleep anymore.

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  • Rumi (for Coleman Barks) {Poetry}

    Tuesday, March 22, 2016 Photography, Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

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    When Rumi went into the tavern
    I followed.
    I heard a lot of crazy talk
    and a lot of wise talk.

    But the roses wouldn’t grow in my hair.

    When Rumi left the tavern
    I followed.
    I don’t mean just to pick at
    such a famous fellow.
    Indeed he was rather ridiculous with his
    long beard and his dusty feet.
    But I heard less of the crazy talk and
    a lot more of the wise talk and I was
    hopeful enough to keep listening

    until the day I found myself
    transformed into an entire garden
    of roses.

    – Mary Oliver
    from Blue Horses: Poems

    This poem was dedicated to Coleman Barks, the poet responsible for interpreting many of Rumi’s works, and paying homage to the great Sufi mystic. For those who read poetry as soul food, to have Oliver writing about Rumi is undoubtedly the jewel in the crown. Oliver doesn’t disappoint, speaking words at the heart of every Rumi enthusiast and capturing his effect on readers with an honesty and simplicity that only a Mary Oliver poem can deliver.

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  • Break Your Ropes

    Sunday, March 20, 2016 Books, Poetry, Thinking No tags Permalink

    kabir

     

    To Be A Slave Of Intensity

    Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
    Jump into experience while you are alive!
    Think…and think…while you are alive.
    What you call ‘salvation’ belongs to the time before death.

    If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
    do you think
    ghosts will do it after?

    The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
    Just because the body is rotten –
    that is all fantasy.
    What is found now is found then.
    If you find nothing now,
    you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
    If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

    So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
    Believe in the Great Sound!

    Kabir says this: When the guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
    Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

    Kabir

    Methods are strategies, and strategies do not open the heart’s door. It has to be blown open by a great wind, the wind of love, which is the only thing that will truly carry you away. Kabir tells us to jump, to break your ropes, to plunge into the truth. This is all you can do when you have come to the end of your rope, to the end of all your strategies, and don’t know what else to do. It is a surrender, a falling in; not an act or an initiative, but a willing yielding to what is and has always been.

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  • Dazzle of the Day { Poetry}

    Tuesday, March 15, 2016 Photography, Poetry, Poetry Tuesday Permalink

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    Enough now of the wet eyes of winter.
    Not one single tear.
    Hour by hour, green is beginning,
    the essential season, leaf by leaf,
    until, by spring’s name, we are summoned
    to take part in its joy.

    How wonderful, its eternal openness,
    clean air, the promise of flower,
    the full moon leaving
    its calling card in the foliage,
    men and women trailing from the beach
    with a wet basket of shifting silver.

    Like love, like a medal,
    I welcome it,
    I take it all in,
    from south, from north, from violins,
    from dogs,
    lemons, clay,
    from newly liberated air,
    machines smelling of mystery,
    storm-colored shopping,
    everything I need:
    orange blossoms, string,
    grapes like topazes,
    the whiff of waves.
    I gather it up
    endlessly,
    effortlessly,
    I breathe.

    I dry my shirt in the wind,
    and my opened heart.
    The sky falls
    and falls.
    From my glass,
    I drink
    pure joy.

    ~ Pablo Neruda

    Leave it to Neruda to describe exactly how I feel when spring arrives!  Pure joy.  Yes.  When I was young I had a teacher who said that our blood thinned out in the spring.  That was her way of explaining spring fever.  I do know that I feel different in the spring, and I want to take it all in.

    I took the photo above one spring several years ago.  I love to go exploring and see what gifts are awaiting me.

  • If I Wanted a Boat { Poetry}

    Tuesday, March 8, 2016 Family, Learning, Photography, Poetry, Poetry Tuesday, Thinking No tags Permalink

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    I would want a boat, if I wanted a

    boat, that bounded hard on the waves,

    that didn’t know starboard from port

    and wouldn’t learn, that welcomed

    dolphins and headed straight for the

    whales, that, when rocks were close,

    would slide in for a touch or two,

    that wouldn’t keep land in sight and

    went fast, that leaped into the spray.

    What kind of life is it always to plan

    and do, to promise and finish, to wish

    for the near and the safe? Yes, by the

    heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want

    a boat I couldn’t steer.

    -Mary Oliver

    Each time I try to take control, steering and holding on too tightly, I get lost. It’s so easy to want to steer every moment, every direction in life, to feel safe and secure in where we are headed. Or even, for the more relaxed among us, who steer our life more generally, allowing for a few false starts and leeward winds – to fix our eyes unwaveringly on the distant goal, the aim, the ever-moving target.

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    Meditation is a practice in letting go. In meditation, a thousand things arise, and we let them go Or at least we try to let them go. 😉

    Why practice letting go? Polly Young-Eisendrath made the following point about practicing mindfulness, but it applies to letting go as well:

    “The reason for learning… is not so that you can sit around and meditate. It’s like when you learn to drive a car in a parking lot. It’s not so you can drive that car in parking lots. You learn in the parking lot because it’s a restricted, safe area. When you [meditate] it’s like learning to drive in the parking lot. Then, in time, you take the car out onto the highway…. Practice is cultivated in order to get around in life….”

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  • The Guest House {Poetry}

    Tuesday, March 1, 2016 Learning, Life, Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

     

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    This being human is a guest house.
    Every morning a new arrival.
    A joy, a depression, a meanness,
    some momentary awareness comes
    as an unexpected visitor.
    Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
    who violently sweep your house
    empty of its furniture,
    still, treat each guest honorably.
    He may be clearing you out
    for some new delight.
    The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
    meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
    Be grateful for whatever comes.
    because each has been sent
    as a guide from beyond.
    — Jellaludin Rumi,
    translation by Coleman Barks

    In The Guest House Rumi is telling us that the entirety of human experience is valuable. None of it is to be discounted as unnecessary or even avoidable. All emotions are valid and indeed desirable, even those we wish to evade. One moment is joyful, another is depressing , even unkind thoughts demand attention. Accept and honor them all, he says, because each portends a new state of being. Each is the portal to new awareness. Accepting each state is accepting the entirety of one’s being. The shadow and the light carry equal weight.

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  • Separation {Poetry}

    Tuesday, February 23, 2016 Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

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    Your absence has gone through me
    Like thread through a needle.
    Everything I do is stitched with its color.

    -W. S. Merwin

    In such a brief poem, Merwin captures the relentless associations of being apart from a loved one. They are not only visceral, but tangible. The reverberations of absence refuse to be contained in the mind and forcibly permeate the senses. Merwin’s longing is a synesthetic one, simultaneously visual and palpable. As the needle stitches, it colors as well; it is impossible to separate one from the other.

    W.S. Merwin does not explain longing; his poem merely asserts it. The adorable is what is adorable. Or: I adore you because you are adorable, I love you because I love you. “Separation” is likewise a tautology. It says ‘I miss you because I miss you.’ When I miss you, I do not focus on the variety of reasons behind that sensation, but rather the simple fact: I miss you.

  • The Laughing Heart {Poetry}

    Tuesday, February 9, 2016 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday, Uncategorized No tags Permalink

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    your life is your life
    don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
    be on the watch.
    there are ways out.
    there is light somewhere.
    it may not be much light but
    it beats the darkness.
    be on the watch.
    the gods will offer you chances.
    know them.
    take them.
    you can’t beat death but
    you can beat death in life, sometimes.
    and the more often you learn to do it,
    the more light there will be.
    your life is your life.
    know it while you have it.
    you are marvelous
    the gods wait to delight
    in you.

    — by Charles Bukowski

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  • For Desire {Poetry}

    Tuesday, January 26, 2016 Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

    imageGive me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
    and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
    surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
    or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
    of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
    Give me the lover who yanks open the door
    of his house and presses me to the wall
    in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched
    and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
    and begin their delicious diaspora
    through the cities and small towns of my body.
    To hell with the saints, with martyrs
    of my childhood meant to instruct me
    in the power of endurance and faith,
    to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
    swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
    I want this world. I want to walk into
    the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
    like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
    and I want to resist it. I want to go
    staggering and flailing my way
    through the bars and back rooms,
    through the gleaming hotels and weedy
    lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
    where dogs are let off their leashes
    in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
    other and roll together in the grass, I want to
    lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
    it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
    and put on that little black dress and wait
    for you, yes you, to come over here
    and get down on your knees and tell me
    just how fucking good I look.

    – Kim Addonizio

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  • Shattered Starlight {Poetry}

    Tuesday, January 19, 2016 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

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    She had stars behind each eyelid,
    And a galaxy in her soul,
    That drew people to her endless heart,
    Like the pull of a black hole,
    She was made of earth and fire,
    Of wishes cast on shooting stars,
    She was a brand new solar system,
    Unlike the ones they’d known so far,
    With constellations ever changing,
    No one could memorise her skies,
    And they thought the thing for them to do,
    Was bring her to their size,
    They shrunk the universe within her,
    Told her her vast expanse was wrong,
    That she should make her life much smaller,
    If she wanted to belong,
    As they collapsed her world around her,
    She felt her inner stars grow cold,
    Until her life was far too heavy,
    For her once strong arms to hold,
    You might wonder how it happened,
    But I guess that it makes sense,
    Because a life becomes much heavier,
    When it’s the universe condensed.

    -Erin Hanson

  • Anticipation of Love {Poetry}

    Tuesday, January 12, 2016 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday, Uncategorized No tags Permalink

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    Neither the intimacy of your look, your brow fair as a feast day,
    nor the favor of your body, still mysterious, reserved, and childlike,
    nor what comes to me of your life, settling in words or silence,
    will be so mysterious a gift
    as the sight of your sleep, enfolded
    in the vigil of my arms.
    Virgin again, miraculously, by the absolving power of sleep,
    quiet and luminous like some happy thing recovered by memory,
    you will give me that shore of your life that you yourself do not own.
    Cast up into silence
    I shall discern that ultimate beach of your being
    and see you for the first time, perhaps,
    as God must see you —
    the fiction of Time destroyed,
    free from love, from me.

    -Jorge Luis Borges

  • From Poem after Carlos Drummond de Andrade

    Tuesday, December 29, 2015 Books, Poetry, Poetry Tuesday No tags Permalink

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    Life got its tentacles around you,
    its hooks into your heart,
    and suddenly you come awake as if for the first time, and
    you are standing in a part of the town where the air is
    sweet—your face flushed, your chest thumping, your
    stomach a planet, your heart a planet, your every organ a
    separate planet, all of it a piece though the pieces turn
    separately, O silent indications of the inevitable, as among
    the natural restraints of winter and good sense, life blows
    you apart in her arms.

    -Marvin Bell

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  • Strong Women

    Monday, December 28, 2015 Family, Life, Love, Poetry No tags Permalink

    A beautiful article by Cat O’Connor. To all the strong women I know, love, and admire. Thank you for the inspiration.

    Be patient with a strong woman, it’s worth the effort

    Yes, she is strong.

    That strength born from facing fear, heartache, challenges and countless obstacles along her path; strength awakened as she found her own way through the storms.

    This strength, built over a lifetime, has become something which defines her — a quality others see and admire, a quality available within all women, within everyone. A quality, and yet, also a defense mechanism, a tool for survival.

    Not everyone finds that strength within, not every woman chooses strength as their tool.

    Other women turn in various directions, draw upon various tools, and may, at times along their journey, allow themselves to break.

    Those others are also her.

    Because she is strong, yet in that strength is weakness.

    Her strength came through the cracks of her brokenness. Behind the mask of strength are more masks — masks of fear and doubt, vulnerability and pain, uncertainty and insecurity.

    The strong woman doesn’t always want to be strong. It can be a heavy weight to continually carry.

    Expectations come with this strength, both from within and from the world around her.

    Know that she’s looking at times for a soft space to land; to let go without judgment, without being told she needs to be fixed. Without being condemned or looked down upon.

    Without being made to feel like she’s failed simply for showing another side of herself.

    Be kind to this woman.

    She’s spent so much time and energy working to build herself up, dig herself out and help herself up that sometimes she’s tired. Sometimes she feels weak. Lonely. Spent.

    She’s become so used to wearing her mask of strength, holding herself up and pushing herself forward that it will take tremendous effort to let it go, to drop her guard.

    Protecting her heart and persevering through have become so second nature to her that she may not even realize that letting go, tapping out, and giving in is what she wants and what she truly needs to do.

    An inner struggle arises: I need to be strong, but I’m afraid to be weak. What will happen if I allow someone in? What will people think if I ask for help or let myself go or allow myself to rest?

    The strong woman’s mind runs wild with those demons she’s been standing strong against. Opening up to vulnerability and uncertainty takes a whole new kind of strength — a form of strength that requires letting others in.

    Letting her walls down and allowing herself to be real; it means actually facing the demons, rather than simply building walls around herself to keep them out.

    Please be patient with a strong woman who crosses your path or joins you on the journey. It may not be easy to love her, but it will definitely be worth the effort. That strong woman will love you fiercely, faithfully and unwaveringly.

    Allow her to let go, and be sure to hold her softly as she lands.

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  • Christmas

    Thursday, December 24, 2015 Family, Good Things, Life, Poetry No tags Permalink

    drink the red

    Honestly, I like red wine better, but I’ll drink either one. Best of all is Champagne! I have a great bottle in my wine rack right now, but I won’t be opening it tomorrow because none of my Christmas guest like Champagne. How is this possible? I know my son won’t touch it because he hates anything carbonated. Anyhow, once the bottle is opened, you have to drink it all or it will go flat, and not wanting to waste a $40 bottle, I’d drink it all.  (Also, I adore Champagne!) A glass and a half in, I’d have the giggles. 🙂 Champagne always makes me think of this little ditty by Dorothy Parker:

    “Inventory:

    “Four be the things I am wiser to know:
    Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
    Four be the things I’d been better without:
    Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
    Three be the things I shall never attain:
    Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
    Three be the things I shall have till I die:
    Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.”

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  • Remember, Body {Poetry}

    Tuesday, December 22, 2015 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday, Uncategorized No tags Permalink

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    Remember, body, all of you houses
    not only the path from one room to the next
    the purpling of muscle
    —in veins while you are young
    love remembering, body, how to crouch like glass
    how a doctor told you that pain is the first to return
    watching out the window for snow—the eyes were your eyes
    the love of others, body
    ones who came for you in your smallest houses
    in the winter—sacred hands in January that traced
    the current down your spine
    longing
    remember, body

    -Jessica Durham

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