February

Charles W. Smith, "Wash Day in Jackson Ward"

February

I have so loved black boughs against the sky

I half regret the coming of the spring

With soft leaves blurring that austerity...

Oh wintry Truth! What changes will Love bring?

Nora B. Cunningham

It's so true. Having once adjusted to the minimal, having steeled oneself to the bleak, all the green buds creeping out of the corners are like an ambush to the senses. Unsettling, unnerving, disarming. It is hard to let go of what's familiar.

 

Very Like a Whale

Staffan Wirén

Very Like a Whale

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
thus hinder longevity.
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a
wold on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things.
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple
and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was
actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,
at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian
cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he
had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers
to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of
wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,
from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket
after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of
snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical
blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile. 

Ogden Nash


I don't think I can add anything to that.



 

Lemon

Trisha Hardwick, "Lemons on Silver"

Lemon

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet. 

Pablo Neruda

Neruda! Oh Neruda. You are the alchemist.  Proof that words are alive. Every line ignites the senses. "We open the halves of a miracle.." "The gold of the universe wells to your touch..." 

Nor Is It Written

Kenne Gregoire

Nor Is It Written

Nor is it written that you may not grieve.
There is no rule of joy; long may you dwell
Not smiling yet in that last pain,
On that last supper of the heart.
It is not written that you must take joy
Because not thus again shall you sit down
To ply the mingled banquet
Which the deep larder of illusion shed
Like myth in time grown not astonishing.
Lean to the cloth awhile, and yet awhile,
And even may your eyes caress
Proudly the used abundance.
It is not written in what heart
You may not pass from magic plenty
Into the straitened nowadays.
To each is given secrecy of heart,
To make himself what heart he please
In stirring up from that fond table
To sit him down at this sharp meal.
It shall not here be asked of him
‘What thinks your heart?’
Long may you sorely to yourself upbraid
This truth unwild, this only-bread.
It is not counted what large passions
Your heart in ancient private keeps alive.
To each is given what defeat he will.

Laura Riding

The thing about this poem is its refusal to sugar-coat life. It does me a lot of good, somehow. Naming the bad, looking at it for what it is - a "sharp meal" at the banquet of life. I love that image too, of the circumstances as a meal, as food, a banquet. It implies so many things. That there will be different kinds of meals at different times, that sometimes it will not be good, it will be burnt, or off, or meager, or, in turn, that it might be a feast, abundant, something to savour. The hope at the center of the poem is that you may eat crow for a long time, and you don't have to say its turkey - but in spite of its bad taste, it is feeding you, you are being nourished, and it will change.


 

Sonnet

Concetta Flore

Sonnet

Think, love, how when a starry night of frost

Is ended, and the small, pale winter sun

Shines on the garden trellis, ice-embossed,

And the stiff frozen flower-stalks, every one;

And turns their fine embroideries of ice

Into a loosening silver, skein by skein,

Warming cold leaves and stones, till, in a trice,

The garden smiles, and breathes, and lives again,

And further think, how the poor frozen snail

Creeps out with trembling horn to feel that heat,

And thaws the snowy mildew from his mail,

And stretches with all his length from his retreat:

Will he not praise, with all his heart, the sun?

Then think, at last, I too am such a one.

Conrad Aiken 

"Fine embroideries of ice..." 
"The garden smiles, and breathes, and lives again..."
Just beautiful. The smallest sign of hope, of Spring, lifts our hearts.

from Sonnets to Orpheus

Otto Piltz

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29


Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Rilke

Its hard to make a comment on this. Sometimes the only response is fullness of thought. I will say one thing - that line, "if the world has ceased to hear you", is resonant, so real and true, and the encouragement to both accept ("flow") and withstand ("speak") so necessary. Another "let" poem, and a beautiful example of the strange mix of allowing and asserting.  

Thalassa

Eric Slate, "The Waterwitch"

Thalassa

Put out to sea, my broken comrades
Let the old seaweed crack, the surge
Burgeon, oblivious of the last
Embarkation of feckless men
Let every adverse force converge
Here we must needs embark again.

Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades,
Let each horizon tilt and lurch.
You know the worst, your wills are fickle
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past lives a ruined church
But let your poison be your cure.

Put out to sea, ignoble comrades,
Whose records shall be noble yet
Butting through scarps of moving marble
The narwhal dares us to be free
By a high star our course is set
Our end is life. Put out to sea.

Louis MacNeice 


"Let every adverse force converge/Here we must needs embark again." In one way, this poem is grim - things are against us, we are not what we should be, and we are heartsick...BUT, let's put out to sea, let's go, let's aim for something better. And that last line, that last line gets me - "Our end is life. Put out to sea." Can it be said better?


 

In the Dark

John Salminen, "Chicago River"

In the Dark

God said: Let the dark be dark.

Let the stars shine properly.

And let darkness with no stars

heal the damage caused by the light.

Men said: Let there be light all

 night through, where there is no-one

much or no-one at all, let

the gathered haze from street-lamps,

undying brand-names, full-blaze

unpopulated windows

stain the undersides of clouds

even when the nights are cloudless.

God said: Light itself needs rest.

Some things are best seen, unseen,

in darkness unhindered by

Great Light. Me, for example.

Robin Fulton Macpherson 

Another "let" poem. I like that its the opposite of "Let there be light!" It reminds me of Ecclesiastes - "There's a time for everything." Time for light, and time for darkness. Time to work, and time to rest. The last stanza makes me think of  Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", in which the protagonist comes to what he feels is the epicenter of evil and darkness, and finds the tiniest pinpoint of light there, and feels for the first time the full power of  it. Its the contrasts sometimes, that speak to us most. 

Snowy Night

longdistance, "Snowy Owl Forest"

Snowy Night

Last night, an owl

in the blue dark

tossed

an indeterminate number

of carefully shaped sounds into

the world, in which,

a quarter of a mile away, I happened

to be standing.

I couldn’t tell

which one it was –

the barred or the great-horned

ship of the air –

it was that distant. But, anyway,

aren’t there moments

that are better than knowing something,

and sweeter? Snow was falling,

so much like stars

filling the dark trees

that one could easily imagine

its reason for being was nothing more

than prettiness. I suppose

if this were someone else’s story

they would have insisted on knowing

whatever is knowable – would have hurried

over the fields

to name it – the owl, I mean.

But it’s mine, this poem of the night,

and I just stood there, listening and holding out

my hands to the soft glitter

falling through the air. I love this world,

but not for its answers.

And I wish good luck to the owl,

whatever its name –

and I wish great welcome to the snow,

whatever its severe and comfortless

and beautiful meaning.

Mary Oliver

Such a contradictory poem. "If this were someone else's story they would have...hurried over the fields to name it.." and yet, isn't that exactly what a poem is? Finding words, "names" for things, for emotions and experiences? When she says "It's mine, this poem of the night, and I just stood there, listening and holding out mt hands to the soft glitter falling through the air." I am there too. She may not love this world for its answers, but she finds it so beautiful she can't be silent.

 

Applesauce

Mary Whyte, "Sister Heyward"

Applesauce

I liked how the starry blue lid

of that saucepan lifted and puffed,

then settled back on a thin

hotpad of steam, and the way

her kitchen filled with the warm

wet breath of apples, as if all

the apples were talking at once,

as if they'd come cold and sour

from chores in the orchard,

and were trying to shoulder in

close to the fire. She was too busy

to put in her two cent's worth

talking to apples. Squeezing

her dentures with wrinkly lips,

she had to jingle and stack

the bright brass coins of the lids

and thoughtfully count out

the red rubber rings, then hold

each jar, to see if it was clean,

to a window that looked out

through her back yard into Iowa.

And with every third or fourth jar

she wiped steam from her glasses,

using the hem of her apron,

printed with tiny red sailboats

that dipped along with leaf-green

banners snapping, under puffs

of pale applesauce clouds

scented with cinnamon and cloves,

the only boats under sail

for at least two thousand miles.

Ted Kooser

Cooking is a kind of poetry. And if you have the right ingredients in the poem - a grandmother, apples, (the scent of cooking apples and spices!), the sense of place and home with a hint of exotic travels, the practiced movements of one who works for love (motions that become almost holy by their intent), it's a dance, a rhythm, almost an elemental force. More than a poem by far.