FALL IN LOVE WITH A POEM TODAY!



"There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either." ~
Robert Graves



Monday, November 28, 2011

MARJORY WENTWORTH'S NEW BOOK!

South Carolina Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth has co-written another nonfiction book, released at the end of September.

Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights
by
Juan Méndez and Marjory Wentworth "is an incisive look across the most pressing human rights issues of our time, how they have evolved, and how effective action can be taken to address them."

Having read her poetry and her children's book, Shackles, I know this must be an exceptional offering.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Seasons

Here's one of two poems I wrote for a competition that involved interpreting an interesting black and white photograph:  An autumn scene, trees nearly bare;  the centerpiece was a swimming pool with leaves floating on water's surface; the pool is encircled by empty white chaise lounges.  


We were sun-happy at Solstice
as the parade of Summer days
began, days hotter than dog’s
breath begging
deliverance of night. 
We soothed our passion
in the cooling water here.

Like Dervishes we spun
ourselves into Summer,
spinning out into the world,
spinning until mirages
of foreverness appeared
before our thirsty eyes.

But the Equinox brought reason,
sobering us for the season
of reflection, has us looking
at reality
through a sharper lens.

The trees have shrugged off
their leaves, stripping us
of our own green foolishness,
leading us to solid ground,
planting our feet firmly in it.

Autumn rules now,
leading us toward
the dark caves
of Winter
where we will fold
into the warm blanket
of our softer selves
and delve into mysteries
beyond summer’s reach.

And one day we will answer
the robin’s songful appeal
for our return to a world
where sap is rising
and green shoots
beckon.
We will inhale
the fragrance
of possibility,
anticipating
the gifts
of a new season.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Poetry In-Service for Tidelands Volunteers

What a delight to spend a Tuesday morning with volunteers at Tidelands Hospice, reading poems and encouraging the use of poetry.   It was a joy and an honor to be in the company of these impressive women and their amazing leader, Ellna Silver.  They each have the Poetry Peddler's respect and admiration for who they are and what they do.

                                           
Volunteers and The Poetry Peddler with  Ellna Silver behind the camera.
 October 18, 2011 -  Bravo and shine on, y'all!

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Sharing the Power of Poetry

The Poetry Peddler soon will be taking poetry to some Hospice volunteers, hoping they will choose to share poems with clients, families, staff, and other volunteers.  Maybe with their own families.

I will tell them the story of my friend Cathy.  She had cancer and was weary from fighting it.  I sensed she was ready to leave the physical world.

Her husband called to ask another mutual friend and me to visit Cathy at their home.  Not long before our visit, I thought of taking a few poems along, and I followed the impulse.  I took Mary Oliver's Wild Geese, another poem or two I'm not remembering at the moment, and my poem, Snow Lesson.   I had written the poem with Cathy in mind on a rare snowy day in the South Carolina Lowcountry.  It's a poem about letting go.

When we arrived, it was obvious that Cathy was extremely weak.  I felt she was glad we were sitting at her bedside, but she was not up to conversation.  We said a few things that required minimal to no response, and I covered her hand with mine for a little while.  Then I told her I'd brought a few poems  if she'd like me to read them.  She affirmed the idea with a nod, and I began to read.  As I read,  her face began to relax; there was the hint of a smile, and her breathing seemed easier.    

When it felt like the right time to go.  I said I would come back, but that next time maybe I would leave the poems at home.  She made a great effort to speak, managing a barely-audible whisper:
Bring. poems

Two days later Cathy left this world.  The visit that day was something I treasured.  I was glad to have seen her and glad to have taken the poems.  It had felt like the right thing to do, sharing on a deep level that demanded no back and forth.  The poems created a peaceful intimacy; they "said it all" for us,  reader and listeners.  I hope the Hospice volunteers and staff will want share poems with clients who want to listen.  And I hope these generous volunteers who give so much to others will be able to give themselves the gift of poetry.
                                                                   

                                      

Tuesday, August 16, 2011


                                                               

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Sunday, July 24, 2011

   For My Mother in  Search of Her Self 

You boarded the train  -- how many years ago?
Wearing big beads to cover up the War
And a high pompadour for courage.
A child then, you carried within you
Another child down the miles of track,
Unquestioning love leading you
Through the howling nighttime
Taking hope along like a box lunch
To ward off hunger,
Shorten the hours
Until the train made a last lurching stop.

Through dirt-streaked windows
The rest of your life
Waited at the gate,
A promise in uniform
Strong and smiling,
Offering part of himself,
wanting all of you.

Today you travel in daylight,
Your eyes wide with remembering.
You play Robin Hood without a fuss,
Taking back things
That were always yours.
You cradle hope in a photo album
To ward off lonely hours,
Make the moments count.

[Note: This poem appeared in the August 2011 edition of Purple Pros, a publication of the Southeastern Writers Association.]

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

       

Monday, March 21, 2011

Love Letter to a Poetryphobe

I know.  I know.  You can think of a thousand things you'd rather do than read or listen to poems.  Your eyes glaze over and you realize you could use a nap.  Now.

Or you find yourself heading into an anxiety flashback, to the day your Seventh Grade teacher called on you to recite a long poem that made no sense.  Probably still doesn't.  You had a week to memorize it.  Hands clammy, face flushed with shame, you made your way to the front of the classroom.  Never again.

Easy...deep breaths.  Nobody's asking you to memorize or perform today.  You don't need to interpret or analyze a poem for a passing grade.   You don't have to do anything here.   As one of my all-time favorite poets, Mary Oliver, says in Wild Geese (in New and Selected Poems):
                           
                               You do not have to be good.
                               You do not have to walk on your knees
                                for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
                           
There's great comfort for me in that.  Mary Oliver's poems are so earthy and so real,  accessible to even the least academic among us.  That's one of many things that endear her to me.  She meets me where I live every time.  I always feel things when I read a Mary Oliver poem.  And I don't ruin those feelings by grilling myself on what she must have meant by this or that.  I do pause to marvel at some of her perfectly simple, perfectly perfect words.  I believe you would, too.  It's really hard to write with her precision and make it look easy.  

You would have a hard time not liking the rest of Wild Geese.   If you like it, I'll bet you'd also enjoy Ms. Oliver's The Ponds, The Sun, Alligator Poem, and The Journey.  You're bound to like something about all of them.  And you needn't know what the "something" is.  You only have to read it.  Prowl around freely in Mary Oliver's work and see what your own "soft animal" loves.

I was delighted by something A. E. Houseman said about poetry and meaning:  "Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out....Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure."    And pleasure is what most poetry offers.   Why would we want to spoil that pleasure by struggling to find a message?  It's a poem, not a fortune cookie.  If it speaks to you, you will get your "message" and you don't need to worry about whether it's "the" message!

In addition to pleasure, poems offer us opportunities to feel empathy and hope and pain and connection.  And so many other things you will discover for yourself.  But we don't have to identify those things or analyze them.  Unless we want to do that.  For me, experiencing a poem is enough. Experiencing a poem is giving myself to it by opening my heart and mind and suspending judgment.  I surrender to the poem and allow it to take me wherever it's going.

I like some poems better than others; some don't appeal to me at all.  Just as certain foods, films, and works of art are especially captivating, some poems reach out and grab me by the heart or the throat.  And they become favorites.  This can happen only when we don't freeze like a rabbit in fear of "getting it wrong."  There is no way to get it wrong if it moves you in any way at all.  If it makes you smile.  Or nod in agreement or feel a pang of sorrow or a flash of anger.    Or if you like the sounds it makes when you read it aloud or you like the way the poem moves, its rhythm.  Whatever you take from any poetry experience is enough.  Enough!

Bet you'd enjoy Pablo Neruda's "Ode to my Socks" and Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," too.
If you decide to give them a read, come back and let me know how you liked them, would you?

Meanwhile, I will post a few poems of my own. 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII




















                     

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

                                    You

          If from a mist over some foreign sea
            you spiral your Self into being,
            or in a field of daisies dance into life
            on the four leaves of a green clover
            or come from the bones of a great silver fish
            or as a raindrop falling
            on a place long rainless,
            whether you appear as liquid light
            in the eyes of an old man
            or emerge from a deep river bed,
            red clay kissing your fingers,
            whether from a mother’s soft belly
            or the belly of a huge round ship,
            I would know you
                though I might not read the text of your face
            I would surely know you.
   
            If in centuries beyond this time
            you take birth
                whatever body, whatever circumstance,
                whether in this place or far away,
                through a door hidden altogether from me,
            I will know you are here         or there,
            back
                beyond names, beyond language,
                beyond the shadows of reason.
   
            I will know
                and once again my heart will be glad
                you are.     
                            Fantasy

            Sometimes I’m consumed 
            with excitement
            sometimes with fear
            at the thought
            you might appear
            on my doorstep
                        whisk me away


                        to Paris
                        or Bali
                        or
                        the Days Inn across town


           on your lunch break
           with soggy sandwiches
           in a brown bag.





"Fantasy" was first published in Petigru Review.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Robert Bly has said he likes to write one bad poem before breakfast each morning.

   
One Bad Poem


Bare feet beg to levitate
above the cold floor
this bone-chiller
of a morning.
Heating unit quit
in the night, no warning.
Indoor breezes,
marsh ghosts gathering
for a reunion.


The heating people
will call back
soon.
Speed-dressing in bulky layers
I smile
at feeling like a sausage.


I have a special talent
for cheering myself up,
a true gift
when life delivers
unwelcome surprises,
little ones
like a cold morning
with no heat.


Some big ones are harder
but I find a way,
after tears and some time,
to rebound to the sound
of my own
laughter.
On Eunice Shriver's Passing

The fine wood grain is clear
in the digitized perfection
of cable TV,
a flowerless casket
borne by adult children
of Eunice Kennedy Shriver,
esteemed humanitarian,
passionate woman,
and “Mummy” to the
five pall bearers.


The strength of their love
might have been magic enough
to breathe her back into this world,
yet they were letting her go
as no doubt she taught them to do,
the handsome quintet speaking in praise
of intimate connection to her,
of Eunice as mother,
nineteen grandchildren
offering sweet goodbyes.
She had needed no frills,
no adornment, was
as she was, statement and blessing.
What more can a mother want
than to be wholly who she is
and still loved, indeed cherished,
by her children? Held blameless
in death.


Eunice Shriver talked
with her grownup children
every day
sometimes more than once.
They exchanged the gift
of giving a mighty damn
about one another.


They did not refer one another
to Facebook or a web site; they
spoke, voice to voice, heart to heart.


When my lively presence
is no more, when even
my essence no longer lingers,
what will you see?


Perhaps a frightened young woman
whistling through the graveyard
of lost innocence,
determined to do her best by you.


Will you ever see courage
in the woman’s risk--
believing hope over history--
trying even harder
to bring enough love
to make the marriage work
a second time?
To give you both mother and father
at a dinner table
and ...


Will you realize my mistake
was not leaving the marriage
but re-entering it
in the first place,
wanting it so much for you?
I know it was hard for you.
I know.


I believe Eunice understood
that a woman must nourish
her own spirit
first, keep it alive--
only that brings wholeness.


May you know wholeness.
May you know joy in marriage.
May your paternal love
flourish, far from the mine fields
of resentment.

                    ~  August 15, 2009
          Calendar Girl  

Coming out of sleep’s silky peace
as first light floods the sky,
her heart races into wakefulness.
She moves quickly
through morning rituals,
making a check-mark
on the calendar
for today, April 7.  She
is grateful for spring.


Someone is coming today
to hear her story.
She will tell them
it wasn’t something she had
thought of, not for a minute,
giving up the scholarship
to care for her mother;
she never meant to give up
everything,
only school for a while.


This is the best place
she has slept lately,
this concrete loading dock
where so far she has been
undisturbed by the police.
We criminalize poverty
in America.
Where had she heard that?


Like most days she walks
to the library downtown,
searches for work on the internet,
hopes whatever she is reading
hasn’t been checked out.
She squirreled Jane Austen
once, in the wrong section.
Book-hiding is her only crime.


She sees elegant women
stepping out of Main Street condos,
women who need long mirrors
to convince them
they’re worthy of being seen.
They look fine.


Later, down by the river, she is
interviewed under the bridge.
“What do you want?  What do you hope for?”
To get a job....go back to school...
To understand.
Most of all, to understand.


Posted on a girder,
the calendar is on her side,
turning time
into neat squares
she can manage.

from Lake Luna

Tank

What’s the old fellow
up to this morning
resting himself so near
the big cypress?
Would a gator
need his back scratched
I wonder...

He stares me down
then glides away
leaving his wake
of superiority.



IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII


The Weight of Blood

Red clouds
in the lake
this June morning,
a mystery,
with sky reflecting
only blue and white.
It's not sunset after all.

I stare from upstairs window
as turtle heads poke
through water surface.
Do they understand
the red cloud?
Are they turtle-talking
about it?
A young gator, motionless
and mostly eyes,
studies
thick grasses
along the bank.

It could be blood, I think,
these red clouds beyond my binoculars;
I push the thought away,
not wanting it to be blood.

But what else?
And why not?
Can I possibly believe
that all life is secure in this lake,
because I wish it so,
that it’s all here
in its silky serenity
for the sole purpose
of filling
the holes in my heart?

I wish I'd inherited
the denial gene
all the others got.

Is blood heavier than water?
I learned from porch tales
and small-town gossip
that it’s thicker.

Never interested
in cold facts or science,
the exactitude of things,
I don’t know the weight
of blood, factually speaking.
I can tell you from experience
that it’s heavier than it should be.

Much heavier.

[The Weight of Blood was published in Pluff Mud Mag, a literary journal for Lowcountry poets and writers,  February 2011.]


Dreaming Change 2008
 

paper fragments swirl
on the Denver pavement,
unearned prizes
laid at my feet
by an August breeze.

lover of words
and clean sidewalks,
i bend to the
smudged inkjet words,
gathering
paper shards,
chasing one scrap
down
until I have them
all,
shaking my head
at my fool self
all the while.

at a coffee shop
i read what I can,
placing each scrap on the
cool tabletop, knowing
this puzzle
has too many
pieces missing.

promise we need to keep...
now... history teaches us...
God bless... as one... the world
coming to our shores...
change .... need now ... destiny,,,
not...the time for...small plans...

why do I squander time,
study these words as if
they are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
there’s a list to make,
and calls,
all because i have to do
something to help.
something.

nearly eight years now
this madness,
this country I have loved,
faded almost
beyond memory.

why do i keep forgetting
to breathe?

my former self
stirred itself awake once
in this dark time
to make a sorry sign
with bright markers,
to march to the state capitol.



that windy day i could breathe,
could feel the fire of life
blazing through my blood
as i folded myself
into a sea
of righteous energy,

very much alive
when the reporter
asked why i was there and
later on the front page
just beneath the fold
i said
“If we invade Iraq,
we become the terrorists.”

and you know they
did anyway, said it
wouldn’t take long,
we would be liberators
greeted with flowers,
it was not about oil at all.
there would be
few casualties. maybe none.

there is nothing casual about
death.

you know how it went.

so long in this tunnel
seeing no light
no light
until now
maybe,
maybe.

afraid to look straight into it
or the light could disappear
and then what to do
with all the hurt
what to do
with more pain?

enough pain will smother
courage and all the other
noble things.

once i was asked this:
beyond the food-shelter-water-air
of survival
what could you not live without?

hope.

so i call on St. Anthony,
retriever of things lost:
Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony
take a look around,
something’s lost
that must be found.

fingering the scraps now
in my left pocket, I square
shoulders and sit up straight,
wondering if
St. Anthony has heard.

under my handbag,
a scrap of white,
clinging
to its leather life raft,
all the words
clear:

...the love of my life, Michelle.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Monday, February 7, 2011

         Remembrance

Driving south in steady rain
one day past Thanksgiving,
I'm splashed by passing
trucks on the old highway,
grateful to be far
from interstate madness.


A crusty red pickup
pulls off pavement
into tall, drenched
grass;
hitched to the truck is
a flat, open trailer,
optimism in metal.


He’s a hunter
hoping for a deer.


Weary from a lifetime
of judging, I’ve sworn off.
It’s not my job
to judge.






Instead, I remember a doe
I met one day in the foothills
who didn’t run away
at the sight of me.
There was more majesty in her
neck than in an entire human--
elegant, trusting, strong.


She is with me now, her
eyes knowing things mine
will never see.
I still feel her tenderness.


She was not afraid.


No Pulitzer or Nobel
could have meant
more than the honor
of her trust
that day,
blessing
and benediction
in a cathedral
where one need not bow
to the Creator
nor offer sacrifice
to know Divine
gifts in the ragged
reality of humanness.