(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Morning Open Thread: A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-10-09
The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly
to those who don't go to a war, and even
more to those whom the war is making
enormously wealthy. It's always so. – Louis-Ferdinand Celine,
French author and physician ________________________
Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post
with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic
for the day's posting. We support our community,
invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful,
respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a
feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule.
So grab your cuppa, and join in.
___________________________
13 poets born this week,
writers from age 4 to 84,
and every age in between
______________________
October 8
______________________
1910 – Hilda Conkling born in New York state, daughter of a poet mother and an English professor father who died when she was four years old. Hilda composed most of her poetry between ages four and fourteen. She never wrote them down herself –instead, they came out in conversation with her mother, who wrote down Hilda's words either in the moment, or from memory later, then she’d read the lines back to Hilda, who corrected any deviation from her original words. As Hilda grew up, her mother stopped recording the poems, but Hilda apparently didn’t write down any for herself. Nature was the theme of many of her poems, and they appeared in several magazines. They were also published in three collections: Poems by a Little Girl; Shoes of the Wind; and Silverhorn. She died at age 75 in June 1986.
Dandelion
by Hilda Conkling
Little soldier with the golden helmet,
What are you guarding on my lawn?
You with your green gun
And your yellow beard,
Why do you stand so stiff?
There is only the grass to fight!
“Dandelion” from Poems by a Little Girl, by Hilda Conkling – Kessinger Publishing, 2010 reprint
___________________________
1958 – Neile Graham born in Winnipeg, Canada; Canadian poet and scholar; a program administrator in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington in Seattle, and also runs the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her poetry collections include Seven Robins; Spells for Clear Vision; and The Walk She Takes.
The Goddess of Real Things
by Neile Graham
I’m an apple. I’m a stone.
Something rounded by the sun, fed by it. Created from it, worn by time.
Made by bees and rain. By pressure and fire.
Honey. Lava.
I think I’m alone on a tree full of multiple selves, in a box, on a shelf.
Alone in a million million that footfalls crash into on the beach.
That sound: crunch, a clash.
What I’m capable of: I am good with spices. I can skip across water.
I’m the core rotting. I’m the one rock cracked along the shore.
Falling into broken cells. Split and rubbing along.
Meanwhile, here I am, everywhere in you. Bruising you.
I’m the apple seed you swallow. The stone in your shoe.
“The Goddess of Real Things”– © 2023 by Neile Graham – appeared in Polar Starlight, an online magazine, in September 2023
___________________________
1964 – Vasyl Makhno born in western Ukraine; Ukrainian poet, essayist, and translator. In 2000, he moved to New York City. He has published nine collections of poetry, including Thread and Selected New York Poems and Winter Letters: & Other Poems, which are in English. His book The House in Baiting Hollow is a collection of short stories.
From Mariupol
by Vasyl Makno
To survive a night in Mariupol
Under the cracked cupola of sky
Beneath the shattered building
In this life on another shore
Who could have known what would happen in March
And who would not survive it?
With these sloping fields
With those whose time is due for childbirth
Who held on with the last of their strength
Smells of blood and smells of urine
The mother-to-be is placed on a stretcher
Paramedic, carry her somewhere
Go on, carry her, round as the globe
Shelling is all around … with every
Step, she hears the fruit of her womb grow
Dim … and she is also floating аway
And the earth recedes and the blood ebbs …
So why are you silent, Paramedic?
Are you stunned by the strikes? The shelling?
Where is this mother and where is this son?
You are also trembling for under their helmets
“they truly have no shame”
And you have exhausted your strength
Our dead have no shame
I will shout in all directions
Speak not of shame to the enemy
They have killed a mother and son
Assaulted clinics and hospitals
And you … well, scurry alongside the buildings
Run, paramedic, along the street
The veins on your neck are throbbing
Carry on, maybe your rescue will succeed
Of this birthing mother and her son
For his first bath …
If I am rushing you — forgive me
– translated from Ukrainian by Luba Gawur
“From Mariupol” © 2022 by Vasyl Makhno
______________________
October 9
______________________
1924 – Jane Cooper born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but raised in Jacksonville, Florida; American poet, essayist, and teacher. In 1950, Cooper joined the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College where, with author and poet Grace Paley, and later with poet Muriel Rukeyser, she developed and enhanced its writing program. She suffered from a primary immune deficiency, and didn’t publish her first book of poetry, The Weather of Six Mornings, until 1969. Her other collections include Maps & Windows; Scaffolding: New and Selected Poems; and Green Notebook, Winter Road. She died in October 2007 at age 83.
Rent
by Jane Cooper
If you want my apartment, sleep in it
but let's have a clear understanding:
the books are still free agents.
If the rocking chair's arms surround you
they can also let you go,
they can shape the air like a body.
I don't want your rent, I want
a radiance of attention
like the candle's flame when we eat,
I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us—
Not a roof but a field of stars.
“Rent” from Scaffolding: Selected Poems, © 1993 by Jane Cooper – Tilbury House
___________________________
1940 – John Lennon born as John Winston Lennon in Liverpool England; English songwriter, singer, musician and peace activist. He was a founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles, one of the most successful bands in music history. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney produced hit after hit. Lennon as writer or co-writer had 25 number-one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. After the Beatles broke up in April 1970, he recorded over 150 songs as a solo artist. He was murdered in December 1980 at age 40.
“Working Class Hero” was on his Plastic Ono Band album, released in December 1970.
Working Class Hero
by John Lennon
As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
'Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
CHORUS:
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
'Til you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
CHORUS
When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function, you're so full of fear
CHORUS
Keep you doped with religion, and sex, and T.V.
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
CHORUS
There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
CHORUS
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
“Working Class Hero” © 1970 by John Lennon – © 2009 by Sony/ATV Music
______________________
October 10
______________________
1964 – Nick Carbo born in Legazpi, Philippines; Filipino-American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and anthologist. Best known for his poetry collection Secret Asian Man, which won the Asian American Writers Workshop’s Readers Choice Award. Other poetry books include Running Amok, El Grupo McDonald’s, and Andalusian Dawn, for which he won the 2005 Calatagan Award from the Philippine American Writers & Artists.
The Filipino Politician
by Nick Carbo
When he finds his wife in bed with another man—
The conservative politician feels an ache in his stomach,
remembers the longanisa and the tapa he had for breakfast.
He doesn't know whether to get the doctor or Cardinal Sin
on the phone. He calls one of his bodyguards, tells him
to shoot the man and then, his wife. He takes his .38 magnum
from his brief case, shoots his bodyguard in the back.
The liberal politician pours himself a glass of Courvoisier,
remembers a passage from an Anais Nin story.
He is suddenly the one they call the Basque. He removes
his Dior tie, his Armani shirt, his Calvin Klein boxer shorts.
He puts on a black beret, whispers, tres jolie, tres jolie,
que bonito, muy grande my petite amore. He joins them
in bed, begins his caresses on the man's calves,
kisses his way up the man's thighs.
The communist politician does not call his wife a puta,
nor does he challenge the man to a duel with balisong knives.
He stays calm, takes out a book of poems by Mao Tse Tung.
Inspired, he decides to advance the Revolution.
He takes a taxi to Roxas Boulevard, he begins to curse
and throw rocks at the American Embassy.
“The Filipino Politician” from Epithalamion, © 2022 by Nick Carbo – Miliflores Publishing
______________________
October 11
______________________
1897 – Joseph Auslander born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American poet, anthologist, translator, and novelist. He graduated from Harvard in 1917, and attended the Sorbonne in Paris (1921-1922). He was married to poet Audrey Wurdemann in 1932. Auslander was the first to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1937-1941) – the title was changed to Poet Laureate Consultant in 1985, and is now commonly referred to as U.S. Poet Laureate. He is best-known for The Unconquerables, a collection of poems published in 1943, addressed to the German-occupied countries of Europe. His other collections include Sunrise Trumpets; Letters to Women; More than Bread; Riders at the Gate; and The Islanders. Auslander died of a heart attack at age 67 in June 1965.
Home-Bound
by Joseph Auslander
The moon is a wavering rim where one fish slips,
The water makes a quietness of sound;
Night is an anchoring of many ships
Home-bound.
There are strange tunnelers in the dark, and whirs
Of wings that die, and hairy spiders spin
The silence into nets, and tenanters
Move softly in.
I step on shadows riding through the grass,
And feel the night lean cool against my face;
And challenged by the sentinel of space,
I pass.
“Homebound” from More Than Bread, © 1936 by Joseph Auslander – MacMillan Company
___________________________
1948 – Becky Birtha born in Hampton, Virginia; African American poet and children’s author whose heritage also includes Cherokee and Catawba; known for poems and short stories depicting African-American and lesbian relationships. Her family moved to Philadelphia when she was four, and she attended the Philadelphia School for Girls, a college prep public magnet school. She earned a BS in Child Studies at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and a MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Birtha has worked as a teacher, a librarian in a law library, and as an adoption agency representative. In 1983, her work appeared in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, and her first book was published, a short story collection called For Nights Like This One: Stories of Loving Women. Her first poetry collection, The Forbidden Poems, was published in 1991. Her children’s book Grandmama’s Pride won the 2005 Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Honor Book for Picture Book Text.
How I Became A Lesbian
by Becky Birtha
It's not that you
become this way
so much as it is
something you always were
someone you one day realize
you are
like the discovery
that you would have always loved
star fruit
kiwis or
mangoes
only you never knew they existed until
you were halfway through your life.
Maybe you remember the day you
discovered mangoes
when you and a friend
fed thick, pulpy slices
into each other
mouths open in astonishment.
Maybe you remember
your first taste—
and the startling comprehension
of the possibilities
of life in a world that included
this incredible
sweet
reality.
“How I Became A Lesbian” © 1983 by Becky Birtha from Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology –Kitchen Table Press – first edition
______________________
October 12
______________________
1896 – Eugenio Montale born in Genoa, Italy; Italian poet, translator, literary critic, journalist, and editor. He worked as an editor for the Florentine publisher R. Bemporad in the 1920s and 1930s. In the late 1940s, he moved to Milan, and became a contributor and the music editor for the newspaper Corriere della Sera. In the 1950s and 1960s, he also worked as a reporter. In 1975, he was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature. Montale died of heart failure in 1981 at age 84.
Maybe One Morning
by Eugenio Montale
Maybe one morning, walking in dry, glassy air,
I’ll turn and see the miracle occur:
nothing at my back, the void
behind me, with a drunkard’s terror.
Then, as if on a screen, trees houses hills
will suddenly collect for the usual illusion.
But it will be too late, and I’ll walk on silent
among the men who don’t look back, with my secret.
– translated by Jonathan Galassi
______________________
October 13
______________________
1896 – Arna Bontemps born in Alexandria, Louisiana, to a Creole family; American poet, novelist, anthologist, and librarian, notable figure during the Harlem Renaissance. The Bontemps family moved to Los Angeles when Arna was three years old, and settled in the Watts district. After graduating from college in 1923, he worked for the post office until he moved to New York in 1924. He wrote several novels, including God Sends Sunday, Sad-Faced Boy, and Drums at Dusk. Bontemps was the editor of Great Slave Narratives and The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, and co-editor of The Poetry of the Negro with Langston Hughes.
The Day-Breakers
by Arna Bontemps
We are not come to wage a strife
With swords upon this hill,
It is not wise to waste the life
Against a stubborn will.
Yet would we die as some have done.
Beating a way for the rising sun.
“The Day-Breakers” from The Book of American Negro Poetry – Harcourt, Brace and Company – 1922 edition
______________________
October 14
______________________
1867 – Masaoka Shiki born as Masaoka Noboru on Japan’s Shikoku Island; Japanese poet, author, and literary critic during the Meiji period. One of the four great haiku masters, along with Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. He died of tuberculosis at age 34 in 1902.
a fancy-free cat
is about to catch
a quail
Autumn wind -
met, returning alive
you and me
___________________________
1949 – Katha Pollitt born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Protestant father and a Jewish mother; American poet, essayist, critic, and feminist. She writes a bimonthly column, “Subject to Debate,” for The Nation magazine, and is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. She was The Frost Place poet-in-residence in 1977, and her poetry collection Antarctic Traveller won the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her 2014 nonfiction book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights is an unapologetic and wholehearted defense of abortion as a moral right and force for social good. She also writes on racism, feminism, poverty and welfare reform.
Lunaria
by Katha Pollitt
Now that I am
all done with spring
rampant in purple
and ragged leaves
and summer too
its great green moons
rising through
the breathless air
pale dusted like
the Luna's wings
I'd like to meet
October's chill
like the silver moonplant
Honesty
that bears toward winter
its dark seeds
a paper lantern
lit within
and shining in
the fallen leaves.
“Lunaria” from The Mind-Body Problem, © 2009 by Katha Pollitt – Random House
___________________________
1988 – Ocean Vuong born as Vuong Quốc Vinh in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. His grandfather was a white American serving during the Vietnam War, who met and married a Vietnamese girl. They had three children, including Vuong’s mother. In 1975, his grandfather, on a visit to the U.S., was cut off from the family when Saigon fell to communist forces. His grandmother separated her daughters into orphanages, concerned for their survival. When Ocean was two, the family fled Vietnam after a police officer became suspicious that his mother was part white, and subject to the regime's discriminatory policies. They eventually reached a refugee camp in the Philippines, then gained asylum and migrated to the U.S., settling in Hartford, Connecticut. His mother renamed him Ocean after they came to America. His father abandoned the family, but Vuong later found his American grandfather. At age 11, he was the first child in his family to learn to read. By 15, he was working on a tobacco farm illegally, which he wrote about in his 2019 debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. After struggling in school, he tried community college, then enrolled as a marketing major, but quickly decided it wasn’t for him. He earned a BA in English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, then an MFA in poetry at New York University. Among his many awards, he has won the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and was short-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. His poetry collections include Burnings; Night Sky with Exit Wounds; and Time is a Mother.
DetoNation
by Ocean Vuong
There’s a joke that ends with — huh?
It’s the bomb saying here is your father.
Now here is your father inside
your lungs. Look how lighter
the earth is — afterward.
To even write the word father
is to carve a portion of the day
out of a bomb-bright page.
There’s enough light to drown in
but never enough to enter the bones
& stay. Don’t stay here, he said, my boy
broken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry
anymore. So I ran into the night.
The night: my shadow growing
toward my father.
“DetoNation” – © 2014 by Ocean Vuong, appeared in Poetry magazine’s February 2014 issue
_____________________________________
G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
_____________________________________
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/9/2198161/-Morning-Open-Thread-A-Working-Class-Hero-Is-Something-To-Be?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
