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Morning Open Thread: May No Fascist Ever Drag You into Forever Fear [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-10-16
We all declare for liberty, but in
using the same word we do not
all mean the same thing. – Abraham Lincoln ________________________
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___________________________
13 poets born this week,
from the 1770s
to the 1 990s
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October 15
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1940 – Fanny Howe born Fanny Quincy Howe in Buffalo, New York; American poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and civil rights activist. Her sister Susan Howe, her husband Carl Senna, and their daughter Danzy Senna are also writers. She has published over 20 poetry collections. Her book Selected Poems was honored in 2001 with the Lenore Marshal Poetry Prize for most outstanding poetry book of 2000, and she received the 2009 Ruth Lily Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Foundation. Her other poetry collections include The Amerindian Coastline Poem; One Crossed Out; On the Ground; Second Childhood; and Love and I.
Ice
by Fanny Howe
They say ice
is the calmest way to Stiff City
A deep freeze
Against bad dreams and other house pests
Snow on your face, your blood blue, Christ is
Your liquor, your dog, but not your death
“Ice” © 1973 by Fanny Howe appeared in Poetry magazine’s April 1973 issue
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October 16
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1863 – Katharine Lee Bates born in Falmouth, Massachusetts; American author who wrote for both adults and children, poet, editor, and professor of English and American literature at Wellesley College. Her father, a Congregational minister, died a few weeks after she was born, and she was raised by her mother and an aunt, both graduates of Mount Holyoke. Bates graduated with Wellesley College’s second class in 1876. Though now only known for the lyrics of America the Beautiful, she was influential in the development of American literature as an academic specialty, and wrote one of its earliest college textbooks. Bates was also one of the organizers of Denison House, a college women’s settlement house. She spoke and wrote extensively on social issues, including the struggles of women, workers, people of color, and immigrants. She was appalled by the carnage of WWI, was against American isolationism, and very active in attempts to establish the League of Nations. She even crossed party lines to vote for Democrat John W. Davis because of Republican opposition to American participation in the league. She died at age 69 in March 1929.
Glory
by Katharine Lee Bates
At the crowded gangway they kissed good-bye.
He had half a mind to scold her.
An officer's mother and not keep dry
The epaulet on his shoulder.
He had forgotten mother and fame,
His mind in a blood-mist floated,
But when reeling back from carnage they came,
One told him: "You are promoted!"
His friend smiled up from the wet red sand,
The look was afar, eternal,
But he tried to salute with his shattered hand:
"Room now for another colonel!"
Again he raged in that lurid hell
Where the country he loved had thrown him.
"You are promoted!" shrieked a shell.
His mother would not have known him.
“Glory” from The Retinue and Other Poems, by Katharine Lee Bates – published in January 1918
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October 17
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1942 – Duane Ackerson born in New York City; American author of speculative fiction and poetry. He was Director of Creative Writing at Idaho State University. His published works include The Eggplant & Other Absurdities; Weathering; UA Flight to Chicago; and the textbook Writing Poetry. He died at age 77 in April 2020.
A Mirror
by Duane Ackerson
Is a bank in which we deposit
our faces each day.
No matter how much we put in
all we get back is change.
“A Mirror” from The Bird at the End of the Universe, © 1997 by Duane Ackerson – TM Press
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October 18
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1948 – Ntozake Shange born as Paulette Linda Williams in Trenton, New Jersey; American playwright, poet, novelist, and Black feminist. Her ground-breaking play, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, which she called a choreopoem, was first performed in 1974, in a women’s bar in Northern California. Shange moved to New York, and the play continued evolving, winning an Obie Award before it opened at the Booth Theatre in September 1976, only the second play by a Black woman to reach Broadway, after Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun in 1959. It was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. She wrote five novels, including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo and Betsy Brown. Her poetry collections include Nappy Edges; Some Men; “Enuf’; Wild Beauty; and Freedom’s a-Callin Me. Shange suffered a series of strokes in 2004, and died at age 70 in October 2018.
from Sorry
by Ntozake Shange
one thing i don't need
is any more apologies
i got sorry greetin me at my front door
you can keep yrs
i don't know what to do wit em
they dont open doors
or bring the sun back
they dont make me happy
or get a mornin paper
didnt nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars
cuz a sorry
i am simply tired
of collecting
i didn't know
i was so important to you
i’m gonna haveta throw some away
i can't get to the clothes in my closet
for alla the sorries.
i’m gonna tack a sign to my door
leave a message by the phone
‘if you called to say your sorry
call somebody else!’
“Sorry” excerpt from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf, © 1989 by Ntozake Shange – Scribner
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1949 – Carol Snow lives in Northern California. She has published five poetry collections, including The Seventy Prepositions; Placed: Karesanui Poems; and Artist and Model, which won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award.
Poem 023: Tour
by Carol Snow
Near a shrine in Japan he'd swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.
Or—we had no way of knowing—he'd swept the path
between fallen camellias.
“Poem 023: Tour” from Placed: Karesansui Poems, © 2008 by Carol Snow – Conterpath Press
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October 19
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1784 – Leigh Hunt born as James Henry Leigh Hunt in Southgate, London; English critic, essayist, and poet. He co-founded The Examiner, a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the central figure of the Hampstead-based "Hunt circle" along with William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, and John Keats. He also introduced Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson to the public. He died at age 74 in August 1859.
Jenny Kiss'd Me
by Leigh Hunt
Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.
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1899 – Miguel Angel Asturias born in Ciudad de Guatemala (Guatemala City), Guatemala; prolific Guatemalan poet, diplomat, novelist, playwright, and journalist. Winner of the 1966 Soviet Union’s Lenin Peace Prize, and the 1967 Nobel Prize in Literature. In the 1920s, he studied ethnology in Paris, and was involved with members of the Surrealist movement. He served as an ambassador to several Latin American countries. His novel El Señor Presidente mixed realism with fantasy in a story about a ruthless dictator. His book Hombres de maíz (Men of Maize), explores and defends Mayan culture and customs. He spent many years in exile because of his opposition to dictatorship, and died in Madrid at age 74 in June 1974. His collections of poetry include: Sonetos; Poesía : Sien de alondra (Poetry: Lark’s Temple); and Clarivigilia Primaveral (Clearvigil in Spring).
Caudal (The Fortune)
by Miguel Angel Asturias
To give is to love,
To give prodigiously:
For every drop of water
To return a torrent.
We were made that way,
Made to scatter
Seeds in the furrow
And stars in the ocean.
Woe to him, Lord,
who doesn't exhaust his supply,
And, on returning, tells you:
"Like an empty satchel
Is my heart."
– translator not credited
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1996 – Anna Leader born in Bellingham, Washington; Luxembourger poet and novelist who writes in English; daughter of 2 schoolteachers, who moved the family to Luxembourg in 2000 when Anna was four. Leader won the first prize at the 'Concours Jeune Printemps' in 2012 for her poem "Elegy for Two." Her poetry collection Squeak Like Dolls, and her debut novel Tentative were both published in 2013. She won the Luxembourgish Concours littéraire national in 2014, for her historical novel A Several World; again in 2015, for her poetry collection A Lifetime Lies; and a third time in 2018 for her play Outlast.
the psychology of forgetting (a business proposal)
by Anna Leader
come in! take a seat! so glad to meet you—
yes, down to business. here’s what we do.
you surely know it’s long been thought
by those who ought to know that you can’t feel
a feeling or think something if you do not
possess a word for it: words make things real.
we take pride in putting theory into remedy.
let me tell you how it’s done.
forgetting how to be in love, for one,
our top sought-after surgery. we agree:
love’s painful and you’re better off without.
so how to fix it? to use a farm analogy—
you plough romance’s lexical fields,
tear stubborn love-words out like weeds,
dump newly-indifferent semantic seeds
and wait for them to sprout.
a simple operation! it’s guaranteed
you won’t succumb to ‘love’ at all.
sounds good, yes? (oh, just something small
i have to say: it has occurred
that on occasion we can’t excise love.
then, like pain after anesthetic, the word
as a wordless scream will rise up in the throat—
but nothing to be frightened of.)
“the psychology of forgetting (a business proposal)” © 2015 by Anna Leader, won the the Freud and the Unconscious Challenge on Young Poets Network
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October 20
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1854 – Arthur Rimbaud born as Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, in Charleville-Mézières in northern France near the Belgium border; French poet who influenced modern literature, and was a precursor of surrealism. His father, a serving officer, met and married his mother after a short courtship. Captain Rimbaud stopped coming back on leave after seven years. There was no divorce, but he vanished from his children’s lives, and Rimbaud’s mother imposed her will, demanding scholastic excellence from her two sons, even punishing them by withholding food. Arthur excelled in Greek, Latin, and French literature, and began writing poetry. After the Franco-Prussian War started in 1870, 16-year-old Rimbaud ran away from home, stealing books and alcohol. He sent a letter and two of his poems to poet Paul Verlaine, a leader of the French Symbolist movement. One of the poems was "Le Dormeur du Val" (The Sleeper in the Valley). Verlaine responded, “Come, dear great soul. We await you …” and sent him a one-way ticket to Paris. Though Verlaine was married, the two began a torrid but brief affair, indulging in absinthe, hashish, and opium. Parisian literary society was scandalized by this new enfant terrible, and Verlaine’s abandonment of his wife and new-born son. They went to London, scraping by on meager earnings from teaching and an allowance from Verlaine’s mother. Verlaine soon abandoned Rimbaud, and returned to his wife. Rimbaud continued on his path of self-destruction, but ultimately died of cancer at age 37 in November 1891. A number of his poems were published individually, or in anthologies, but Une Saison en Fenfer (A Season in Hell) and Illuminations were collections published before his death, and several of his poems and prose works were published after his death.
The Sleeper In The Valley
by Arthur Rimbaud
A small green valley where a slow stream flows
And leaves long strands of silver on the bright
Grass; from the mountaintop stream the Sun's
Rays; they fill the hollow full of light.
A soldier, very young, lies open-mouthed,
A pillow made of fern beneath his head,
Asleep; stretched in the heavy undergrowth,
Pale in his warm, green, sun-soaked bed.
His feet among the flowers, he sleeps. His smile
Is like an infant's - gentle, without guile.
Ah, Nature, keep him warm; he may catch cold.
The humming insects don't disturb his rest;
He sleeps in sunlight, one hand on his breast;
At peace. In his side there are two red holes.
– translator not credited
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1940 – Robert Pinsky born in Long Branch, New Jersey; American poet, essayist, literary critic, academic, anthologist, and translator. As U.S. Poet Laureate (1997-2000), he founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans of every age and background shared their favorite poems, proving there was an audience for poetry in the U.S. Enthusiastic response to the project caused Pinsky to be the first U.S. Poet Laureate named to a third term. He is a professor of English and creative writing in Boston’s University’s graduate writing program. His poetry collections include Sadness and Happiness; The Figured Wheel; Jersey Rain; Gulf Music; and At the Foundling Hospital. He has also written several books about poetry, including Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry.
Poem of Disconnected Parts
by Robert Pinsky
At Robben Island the political prisoners studied.
They coined the motto Each one Teach one.
In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners
Address them always as “Profesor.”
Many of my friends are moved by guilt, but I
Am a creature of shame, I am ashamed to say.
Culture the lock, culture the key. Imagination
That calls boiled sheep heads “Smileys.”
The first year at Guantánamo, Abdul Rahim Dost
Incised his Pashto poems into styrofoam cups.
“The Sangomo says in our Zulu culture we do not
Worship our ancestors: we consult them.”
Becky is abandoned in 1902 and Rose dies giving
Birth in 1924 and Sylvia falls in 1951.
Still falling still dying still abandoned in 2005
Still nothing finished among the descendants.
I support the War, says the comic, it’s just the Troops
I’m against: can’t stand those Young People.
Proud of the fallen, proud of her son the bomber.
Ashamed of the government. Skeptical.
After the Klansman was found Not Guilty one juror
Said she just couldn’t vote to convict a pastor.
Who do you write for? I write for dead people:
For Emily Dickinson, for my grandfather.
“The Ancestors say the problem with your Knees
Began in your Feet. It could move up your Back.”
But later the Americans gave Dost not only paper
And pen but books. Hemingway, Dickens.
Old Aegyptius said Whoever has called this Assembly,
For whatever reason—it is a good in itself.
O thirsty shades who regard the offering, O stained earth.
There are many fake Sangomos. This one is real.
Coloured prisoners got different meals and could wear
Long pants and underwear, Blacks got only shorts.
No he says he cannot regret the three years in prison:
Otherwise he would not have written those poems.
I have a small-town mind. Like the Greeks and Trojans.
Shame. Pride. Importance of looking bad or good.
Did he see anything like the prisoner on a leash? Yes,
In Afghanistan. In Guantánamo he was isolated.
Our enemies “disassemble” says the President.
Not that anyone at all couldn’t mis-speak.
The profesores created nicknames for torture devices:
The Airplane. The Frog. Burping the Baby.
Not that those who behead the helpless in the name
Of God or tradition don’t also write poetry.
Guilts. metaphors, traditions. Hunger strikes.
Culture the penalty. Culture the escape.
What could your children boast about you? What
Will your father say, down among the shades?
The Sangomo told Marvin, “You are crushed by some
Weight. Only your own Ancestors can help you.”
"Poem of Disconnected Parts" from Gulf Music, © 2007 by Robert Pinsky – Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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1950 – Susan Deer Cloud, a mixed-lineage Catskill Indian, was born in Livingston Manor, NY, to Joseph R. Hauptfleisch and Dorothea Mae Lare; American poet, fiction writer, essayist, and former academic. She currently lives year-round in the Catskill Mountains. Deer Cloud previously published under her then-married name Susan Clements. Her poetry collections include Before Language; Hunger Moon; Braiding Starlight; Confluence; and The Broken Hoop.
Black Girl with No Name
by Susan Deer Cloud
A night I just wanted to watch an old movie —
cozy in bed while outside the full moon
made it appear as though snow sparkled over
Earth rather than pre-Halloween ghost-light.
Channel surfing, I paused on CNN video
of huge Caucasian cop slamming a black
girl out of classroom chair, flipping her
upside down, desk banging to floor along
with soft body, dragging splayed arms
and legs to the door. When a second
black girl began crying in protest,
the “resource officer” yelled “Sit down
or you’ll be next.” Stunned, other students
made secret videos in the “shock and awe”
of that South Carolina school. What would I
have done about that goon with a gun?
Speaking of doing, what did the black girl
with no name do? Briefly text someone?
The videos showed no fighting back,
only a mute ragdoll tossed about. It was like
that day my ex yanked my hair and body
to kitchen floor, neck snapped into whiplash.
Will the high spirited schoolgirl descend
into years of pain, a nervous breakdown,
flashbacks forever more? In trauma
so deep she nearly forgets she has a name
or tears to shed? Last night I thought
about the little Cherokee-Black girl
who lives in the house across the street –
girl magical, courteous, sweet,
who makes me smile whenever she speaks
of dance lessons, puppies and stars.
October 27, Halloween and ghosts
glimmering near, daylight growing
less, skies more bruised. When
the little girl sashays up to our porch
in that way she does and lilts
“trick-or-treat,” I have a black cat
bag to give to her, a cornucopia
of candies and rainbow ice pops,
a wand with a glow-in-the-dark star,
a stuffed puppy with immense eyes –
my way to say May no bully ever
grab you by the hair. May no fascist
ever drag you into forever fear. Tonight,
I pray Grandmother Moon kisses the faces
of Sheriya across our street, the nameless
black girl, and the one who cried.
“Black Girl with No Name” © 2016 by Susan Deer Cloud, appeared in Oddball Magazine’s January 2016 issue
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October 21
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1772 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge born in Ottery Saint Mary in Devon, England; English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian; member of the Lake Poets, and co-founder with William Wordsworth of the Romantic Movement. Throughout his adult life, Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression. Childhood illnesses, including rheumatic fever, were treated with laudanum, leading to his lifelong opium addiction. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge, and won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode attacking the slave trade. There, he became friends with poet Robert Southey. While living in a cottage in Somerset (1797-1798), he wrote his long poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Kubla Khan, the result of an opium-induced dream, and famously interrupted by a “person from Porlock,” causing Coleridge to lose track of the rest of the poem. Coleridge met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy in 1795, and he and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads, regarded as the starting point for the English romantic age. Coleridge traveled to Germany with the Wordsworths, where he became interested in German philosophy, and later translated poetry by Fredrich Schiller into English. Starting in 1810, Coleridge gave a series of lectures in London and Bristol – his lectures on Shakespeare renewed interest in the playwright. Much of Coleridge's reputation as a literary critic is founded these lectures, sponsored by the Philosophical Institution. His increasing dependence on opium would later contribute to his death from heart failure at age 61 in July 1834.
Kubla Khan
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
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1929 – Ursula K. Le Guin born as Ursula Krober in Berkeley, CA; American author of over 20 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as dozens of short stories, poetry, literary criticism, children’s books, and translations. Noted for her Earthsea series, and the novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel. A pioneer in feminist science fiction, she was the first woman to win both awards for the same book. Her poetry collections include Out Here; Sixty Odd; Going out with Peacocks; and Wild Angels. She died at age 88 of heart-related causes in January 2018.
To the Rain
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Mother rain, manifold, measureless,
falling on fallow, on field and forest,
on house-roof, low hovel, high tower,
downwelling waters all-washing, wider
than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster
than countrysides, calming, recalling:
return to us, teaching our troubled
souls in your ceaseless descent
to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root,
to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.
"To the Rain" from So Far So Good: Poems 2014-2018, © 2018 by Ursula K. Le Guin – Copper Canyon Press
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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