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Morning Open Thread: What Happened Next? Does Color Modify Poetry? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-10-02
“Rhythm is sound in motion. It is
related to the pulse, the heartbeat,
the way we breathe. It rises and
falls. It takes us into ourselves; it
takes us out of ourselves.”
─ Edward Hirsch
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13 poets born this autumn week,
endings, beginnings, and all the
fragile memories in between
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October 1
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1885 – Louis Untermeyer born in New York City; American poet, anthologist, critic, short story writer, and editor; served as the 14th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1961-1963). His poetry collections include First Love: A Lyric Sequence; These Times; The New Adam; Burning Bush; and A Friend Indeed.
End of the Comedy
by Louis Untermeyer
Eleven o’clock and the curtain falls.
The cold wind tears the strands of illusion;
The delicate music is lost
In the blare of home-going crowds
And a midnight paper.
The night has grown martial
It meets us with blows and disaster.
Even the starts have turned shrapnel,
Fixed in silent explosions.
And here at our door
The moonlight is laid
Like a drawn sword.
“End of the Comedy” appeared in Poetry magazine’s May 1919 issue
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1961 – Deborah A. Miranda born in Los Angeles; American non-fiction writer, essayist, and poet. She is a member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of Northern California. When she was three, her father went to prison, and her mother moved the family to Washington state. Miranda earned her MA and Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington. She became Thomas H. Broadhus professor of English at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where she taught creative writing, with a research interest in Native American culture. Her poetry collections include Raised by Humans; Altar for Broken Things; Indian Cartography; and The Zen of La Llorona.
Our Lady of Perpetual Loss
By Deborah A. Miranda
Maybe all losses before this one are practice:
maybe all grief that comes after her death seems tame.
I wish I knew how to make dying simple,
wish our mother’s last week were not constructed
of clear plastic tubing, IVs, oxygen hiss,
cough medicine, morphine patches, radiation tattoos,
the useless burn on her chest.
I’m still the incurable optimist, she whispers,
you’re still the eternal pessimist.
My sister sleeps on a sofa; our brother, exhausted,
rolls up in a blanket on the hard floor.
Curled in a rented white bed, our mother’s body
races to catch up with her driven, nomadic soul.
Those nights alone, foster care, empty beer bottles
taught us she was always already vanishing.
“Our Lady of Perpetual Loss” from The Zen of La Llorona, © 2005 by Deborah A. Miranda – Salt Publishing
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1975 – Chelsea Rathburn born in Jacksonville, Florida, but raised in Miami; American poet and nonfiction writer. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arkansas, and is director of the creative writing program at Young Harris College in Georgia. In 2019, she was named poet laureate of the state of Georgia. Her poetry collections include Unused Lines; The Shifting Line, which won the 2005 Richard Wilbur Award; A Raft of Grief; and Still Life with Mother and Knife.
Fire Ants
by Chelsea Rathburn
Squatting in the coppery mud of the drainage ditch
behind my cousin’s house, we searched for fish,
saw none. We found a speckled frog instead,
unspooling a long, gelatinous thread
of black eggs in the water. Then fire ants—
my feet a blaze of pain, a fumbling dance,
and fact and memory begin to stutter.
What happened next? What curses did I utter?
And how did I ever get back over the fence?
“Fire Ants” from A Raft of Grief, © 2012 by Chelsea Rathburn –Autumn House Press
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October 2
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1957 – Assotto Saint born as Yves Francois Lubin in Haiti, but moved to New York in 1970; American poet, essayist, lyricist, playwright, performer, and AIDS activist. He danced with the Martha Graham Dance Company (1973-1980) until an injury ended his dance career. Co-founder of the Metamorphisis Theatre, he became a U.S. citizen in 1986. His poetry collections include Stations; Spells of a Voodoo Doll; and Sacred Spells: Collected Works, published posthumously. Assotto Saint died of AIDS at age 36 in June 1994.
The Geography of Poetry
by Assotto Saint
For Ntozake Shange
ntozake shange
i looked you up
among the poets at barnes & noble
but i didn’t find you
walt was there amidst leaves of grass
anne gazed down
her glazed eyes dreamt of rowing mercy
erica posed in her latest erotica
even rod took much space
i searched among ghosts
& those alive
still
i couldn’t find you
i asked the clerk
if he had kept you tied down in boxes
or does he use your books as dart boards
he smirked then shouted “she’s in the black section
in the back”
even literature has its ghettos
stacked amongst langston, nikki, & countee
maya who looked mad
the blues had her bad
zake tell me
did you demand to be segregated
“does color modify poetry”
i asked the manager
he patted me on my head
whispered
“it’s always been this way”
“The Geography of Poetry” from Sacred Spells: Collected Works by Assotto Saint, © 2023 by Assotto Saint – Nightboat Books
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October 3
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1897 – Ruth Muskrat Bronson born on the Delaware Nation Reservation in what was then Indian Territory in the Midwest; first Guidance and Placement Officer (1931-1943) of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, helping Indian students get loans and scholarships, and to find jobs after graduation. As executive secretary of the National Congress of American Indians, she helped force authorities to honor treaties. After her work for the BIA in Washington DC, she became a health education specialist for the Indian Health Service. She wrote books and articles, including, Indians are People Too; The Church in Indian Life; and Shall We Repeat Indian History in Alaska? Her poems mostly appeared in magazines and anthologies.
The Hunter’s Wooing
by Ruth Muskrat Bronson
Come roam the wild hills, my Cherokee Rose,
Come roam the wild hills with me.
We’ll follow the path where the Spavinaw flows,
Dashing wild on its way to the sea,
On its wearisome way to the sea.
We’ll chase the fleet deer from its lair in the woods;
We’ll follow the wolf to his den.
When the sun hides his face, we’ll rest in the woods;
Hid away from the worry of men.
Hid away from the bother of men.
And then we’ll go home, my Cherokee Rose,
Where the Senecas live in the heart of the hills
By the rippling Cowskin, where the Saulchana grows,
We’ll go home to the Coyauga hills,
To the sheltering Coyauga hills.
“The Hunter’s Wooing” originally appeared in University of Oklahoma Magazine, October 1921 issue
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October 4
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1913 – Carrie Allen McCray born in Lynchburg, Virginia, the 9th of 10 children. She remembered childhood in Virginia fondly. However, when McCray was seven, her family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where the family met intimidation and threats from neighbors who were unhappy to have a black family in a white neighborhood. McCray was surrounded by poetry at a young age. James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes were family friends and guests in the family’s home. As an adult, McCray found that these influences helped shape her writing. She published Ajös Means Goodbye in 1966 and continued writing throughout her life, publishing other works, such as the memoir Freedom’s Child: The Life of a Confederate General’s guests in the family’s home. As an adult, McCray found that these influences helped shape her writing. She published Ajös Means Goodbye in 1966 and continued writing throughout her life, publishing other works, such as the memoir Freedom’s Child: The Life of a Confederate General’s Black Daughter. Surprisingly, it wasn’t until age 73 that McCray came to think of herself as a writer. She died in 2008 at age 94.
Strange Patterns
by Carrie Allen McCray
When I was a young child
in Lynchburg, Virginia
I could not ride the
trolley car sitting next
to our white neighbor
But could sit, nestled
close to her under her grape arbor
swinging my feet
eating her scuppernongs
and drinking tall, cold
glasses of lemonade
she offered us on
hot, dry summer days
When I was a young child
moving to Montclair, New Jersey
I could now ride the
trolley car sitting next
to our white neighbor
but did not dare
cross the bitter line
that separated our house
from hers
and she never offered us
tall, cold glasses of lemonade
on hot, dry summer days
”Strange Patterns” appears in Poetry Teacher’s Guide, © 2002 —
published by Core Knowledge Language Arts
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October 5
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1945 – Judith Kerman born in Bayside, Queens, New York; American poet, musician, translator, editor, anthologist, and publisher. Founder in 1978 of Mayapple Press; her poetry collections include Trauma and Recovery; Three Marbles; Aleph, Broken; and Mothering.
In Tornado Weather
by Judith Kerman
wet-ash light
blows across the road
I'm driving with my foot to the floor
sixty miles over flat midwestern highway
driving to hear poetry
the sky ready
to boil over, a lid clamped on
the pressure drops
flattens the landscape further
I watch the horizon for state troopers
think of the wind:
one hundred miles to the west it has
sliced the top off a hospital
smashed two miles of Kalamazoo
nothing anyone will read tonight
is wild enough
© 2019 by Judith Kerman
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1950 – Edward Hirsch born in Chicago; American poet, critic, anthologist; essayist, “Poet’s Choice” columnist for the Washington Post (2002-2005), author of How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. He taught creative writing at the University of Houston (1985-2002). His many poetry collections include: For the Sleep Walkers; Wild Gratitude; Earthly Measures; The Night Parade; The Living Fire; and Stranger By Night.
I Was Never Able To Pray
by Edward Hirsch
Wheel me down to the shore
where the lighthouse was abandoned
and the moon tolls in the rafters.
Let me hear the wind paging through the trees
and see the stars flaring out, one by one,
like the forgotten faces of the dead.
I was never able to pray,
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves
and then stare into the dome
of a sky that never ends
and see my voice sail into the night.
© 2010 by Edward Hirsch
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October 6
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1989 – Jamila Woods born in Chicago; American singer-songwriter, rapper; poet, and Black feminist. She has made three studio albums: HEAVN; Legacy! Legacy!; and Water Made Us.
on naming yourself (a cento)
by Jamila Woods
i caught my breath & called that life
i cannot be comprehended
it is better to write
spit out words into small cans
prepare knives for the cutting
of orange peels and doorways
i arrive at a space that no longer needs
autumn or spring, this forest
of telling each other the truth
where they suck the bones of the alphabet
over a floor of rubble & gravel & ashes
mouths wide open, we drank
we became the forest
drunk with sky
we felt awful after parting
from ourselves
played hide-and-seek
begging to be liked
among the leaves
i turned myself into myself
and was clean water, prayer
love colored with iron and lace
i wrote my name upon the water
i stood proudly at the helm
the names of things
hadn’t had time to stick
another face going under the waves
if you don’t know
who you are
your story cannot be pronounced
i have much to learn
from my errors
day by day i am a student
i step deeper into myself
this is a large voice
when you rise through the dead leaves
we will remember you
© 2022 by Jamilla Woods
A cento (Latin for patchwork) is a collage poem, made up entirely of lines from poems by other poets. This cento is composed of text from 11 poems by the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winners: Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Patti Smith, Angela Jackson, Haki Madhabuti, Sandra Cisneros, Arthur Sze, CAConrad, Sharon Olds, Sonia Sanchez, and Juan Felipe Herrera.
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October 7
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1879 – Joe Hill born as Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden, the third child in a family of nine. When his father, a railway conductor, died at age 41, the family was plunged into poverty. Joel fell seriously ill with glandular tuberculosis, and went through extensive treatment in Stockholm. In 1902, he and his brother Paul emigrated to America. He became an itinerant laborer, moving west from New York City, and was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. He worked on the docks in San Pedro, and in 1910, joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He Americanized his name to Joe Hill, and became a union organizer, enlivening his speeches with his political songs and satiric poems. He hopped freight trains, taking jobs as a laborer as he traveled. In 1913, he began working at the Silver King Mine in Park City, Utah. In January 1914, John A. Morrison, a former police officer, and his son were shot and killed in their grocery store by two armed men, but nothing was stolen. Joe Hill was shot that night, in what he said was an argument over a woman, whom he refused to name, and he resolutely denied any involvement in the killing of the Morrisons. There were four other people treated for bullet wounds that night, and the bullet holes in Hill’s clothes matched his story that he had his hands raised over his head when he was shot, but feeling against union “troublemakers” was running high, and the prosecution produced over a dozen “eyewitnesses” who said Hill resembled one of the killers, including another Morrison son who said when he first saw Hill “That’s not him at all” but later identified Hill as the one who pulled the trigger. The jury took just a few hours to find him guilty. There were national headlines, and Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller, and the Swedish ambassador all appealed for clemency, but Hill’s appeal to the Utah Supreme Court failed, and he was executed in November 1915 at age 36. Among the many new lyrics he wrote for popular tunes of the day are “The Preacher and the Slave,” “The Tramp,” and “There is Power in a Union.”
The Rebel Girl
by Joe Hill
There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world, as everyone knows,
Some are living in beautiful mansions,
And are wearing the finest of clothes
There are blue blooded queens and princesses
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl;
But the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
CHORUS:
To the working class she's a precious pearl.
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the fighting Rebel Boy.
We've had girls before, but we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World.
For it's great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl.
Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor,
And her dress may not be very fine;
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind.
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she'll hurl;
For the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl
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1934 – Amiri Baraka born as Everett LeRoi Jones, black American playwright, poet, social critic, and a major figure in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and ‘70s; best known for his play Dutchman, his poetry collection The Dead Lecturer, and the historical survey Blues People: Negro Music in White America.
Snake Eyes
by Le Roi Jones *
That force is lost
which saped me, spent
in its image, battered, an old brown thing
swept off the streets
where it sucked its
gentle living.
And what is meat
to do, that is driven to its end
by words? The frailest gestures
grown like skirts around breathing.
We take
unholy risks to prove
we are what we cannot be. For instance.
I am not even crazy.
“Snake Eyes” © 1963 by Le Roi Jones (*aka Amiri Baraka), from Poetry magazine’s December 1963 issue
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1948 – Diane Ackerman born, American poet, essayist, and naturalist; her bestseller, A Natural History of the Senses was made into a 1995 PBS series which she hosted. A molecule that is the secretory product from a crocodile was named dianeackerone in her honor. Ackerman is also noted for her delightfully titled books The Moon by Whale Light, and Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales; Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden; and Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day.
Report from the Sonnetarium
by Diane Ackerman
I would not hurt you for the world except
this morning striped roses began to bloom,
it’s day lily season, and the garden’s adept
at weaving colorful threads without a loom.
Shouldn’t I bolt now in summer’s hush
when world is fine enough to fill my heart
and worries whisper through the underbrush,
lower key for a while, not off the charts?
Suppose I make a swift preemptive strike
and leave you first, before our circle’s run?
An old habit, and not one I like,
but I can panic down to my skeleton,
and, dismantled, fret in pentameter,
harboring hope, yet failure’s amateur.
“Report from the Sonnetarium” © 2002 by Diane Ackerman, appeared in Poetry magazine’s June 2002 issue
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1970 – Patricia Colleen Murphy born in Cincinnati, Ohio; American poet and teacher of creative writing and magazine production at Arizona State University. In 2008, she founded ASU’s Superstition Review, an online literary magazine. Murphy won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award for Hemming Flames, which also won the 2017 Milt Kessler Award for Poetry. Her second poetry collection, Bully Love, was published in 2019.
Maybe Your Mother Fell In Love with Fire
by Patricia Colleen Murphy
She’s in the kitchen. She’s at the stove. Smell the gas. The click click click of the pilot. Must she blow to start the flame? The pan down. Your eggs. She stirs them. You see her beautiful back. Her beautiful hair in waves. You hear her laughing. She tells you a joke about horses. A horse walks into a bar. You have always loved her. She plates the eggs. She kisses the back of your head before returning to the sink. The eggs are perfect. They warm your mouth. She hums a tune. She looks out the window to see the leaves climbing the trellis. She tells you about the summer she built it, how small you were, how perfect, how you did everything she asked before she asked it. The eggs are so silky. They are so warm. You turn to thank her but she’s already burning.
“Maybe Your Mother Fell In Love with Fire” from Hemming Flames, © 2016 by Patricia Colleen Murphy – Utah State University Press
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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