(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Morning Open Thread: The Road of Change Is Before You Always [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-12-25
by Nona Blyth Cloud . A bright parched sky over cold cracked earth Our north wind stole the last tear from air’s face Abandoning a static-crackling still life in its wake . Lights cover house fronts and the dead lawns Illumine green trees aglitter from some other world Where snow rides their wind down to a sleeping earth . Dreaming of a spring which will have teased this sea-desert Long before its welcome home among the tall green trees ― Our spring of tiny blue butterflies disappearing from the dunes . Too many Christmas songs buried in snow’s white dazzle Which never fell from some other world on Bethlehem From a bright parched sky over cold cracked earth .
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.
_______________________________
One gatecrasher
from January and
13 poets born at the
end of December
_______________________________
December 24
________________________________
1881 – Juan Ramon Jimenez born in Andalucia, prolific Spanish poet and writer; honored with the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his lyrical poetry, which in the Spanish language constitutes an example of high spirit and artistic purity.” He was just 18 when he published his first two books of poetry in 1900, but when his father the same year, he was devastated and suffered a mental breakdown. Jimenez spent the next three years in sanatoriums in France and Spain. He then began to contribute to the avant-garde magazine Prometeo. In 1916, he and poet Zenobia Camprubí were married. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, they went into exile in Puerto Rico. Jiménez was hospitalized for eight months due to another deep depression, but later became a professor of Spanish Language and Literature at the University of Puerto Rico. Just two days after he received the Nobel Prize, his wife died of ovarian cancer. Jiménez never recovered from her death, and he died two years later, at age 76, in May 1958.
I Am Not I
by Juan Ramon Jimenez
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.
“I Am Not I” from Lorca & Jimenez: Selected Poems, translations © 1997 by Robert Bly – Beacon Press
________________________________
1950 – Dana Gioia born in Los Angeles, American poet, writer, and literary critic; his MBA is from Stanford Business School and he was a vice president at General Foods, where he marketed Kool-Aid, so Gioia is not your usual poet. He ended his corporate career at age 42 to concentrate on writing, then later became a professor at the University of Southern California. From 2003 to 2009, he combined his diverse skills to become chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), where his initiatives were legion. He raised funds to launch ‘Shakespeare in American Communities’ to send over 75 professional theatre companies touring the country. ‘Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest’ involves nearly half a million high school students in a national contest that awards $50,000 in scholarships. ‘The Big Read’ was the largest literary program in federal government history: over 400 communities held month-long celebrations of great literature. ‘Operation Homecoming’ put distinguished American authors in charge of writing workshops for returning troops and their spouses to help them express their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and on the homefront. Business Week magazine called Gioia “The Man Who Saved the NEA.” His poetry collections include The Gods of Winter; Daily Horoscope; 99 Poems; and Pity the Beautiful.
Unsaid
by Dana Gioia
So much of what we live goes on inside–
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.
“Unsaid” from Interrogations at Noon, © 2001 by Dana Gioia – Graywolf Press
________________________________
1967 – Maureen N. McLane was raised in Upstate New York; American poet, memoirist, critic, essayist, and scholar. She was a Rhodes Scholar, and holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and University of Chicago. McLane is the Henry James Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. She has published monographs on British romantic poets, and essays on Anglophone poetics and balladry. In 2003 she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing. Her 2012 book My Poets, a hybrid of memoir and criticism, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Her seven poetry collections include: World Enough; This Blue; Some Say; and More Anon: Selected Poems.
What I'm Looking For
by Maureen N. McLane
What I’m looking for
is an unmarked door
we’ll walk through
and there: whatever
we’d wished for
beyond the door.
What I’m looking for
is a golden bowl
carefully repaired
a complete world sealed
along cracked lines.
What I’m looking for
may not be there.
What you’re looking for
may or may not
be me. I’m listening for
the return of that sound
I heard in the woods
just now, that silvery sound
that seemed to call
not only to me.
“What I’m Looking For,” from What I'm Looking For: Selected Poems 2005-2017, © 2019 by Maureen N. McLane – Penguin Poetry
_______________________________
December 25
________________________________
1771 – Dorothy Wordsworth born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England; English author, poet, and diarist; sister of William Wordsworth; noted for her Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, published in 1874, and Grasmere Journal, published posthumously, taken from her diaries about her life in the Lake District, where she lived with her brother, UK Poet Laureate William Wordsworth, and his family. She died at age 83 in January 1855.
The Cottager to Her Infant
by Dorothy Wordworth
The days are cold, the nights are long,
The North wind sings a doleful song;
Then hush again upon my breast;
All merry things are now at rest,
Save thee, my pretty love!
The kitten sleeps upon the hearth,
The crickets long have ceased their mirth;
There's nothing stirring in the house
Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse,
Then why so busy thou?
Nay! start not at the sparkling light;
'Tis but the moon that shines so bright
On the window-pane
Bedropped with rain:
Then, little darling! sleep again,
And wake when it is day.
_______________________________
1956 – Ishrat Afreen born in Karachi, Pakistan; Urdu poet, author, and feminist, whose work has been translated into many languages, including English. She began contributing poetry to newspapers and literary magazines at age 14, and later was an assistant editor at the magazine Awaaz. In 1985, she married Syed Perwaiz Jafri, an Indian lawyer. They lived in India until 1990 when they relocated to the U.S. and settled in Houston, Texas. She is the Principal Urdu Lecturer for the Hindu Urdu Flagship Program of the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to two poetry collections in Urdu, her work was included in the English-translation anthologies We Sinful Women and Beyond Belief: Contemporary Feminist Urdu Poetry.
Ghazal
by Ishat Afreen
The bitter taste of hunger on cold lips
Blood-spitting, cracked, dry, yellow lips.
Broken bangle, icy girl, rebellious age
Green body, stony eyes, and blue lips.
Bare courtyard, lone woman, long years
Blank eyes, damp veil, moist lips.
Blue poison from bitter words grazes
Peels off these peeling lips.
Begging for poison, refusing honey dew
Rebellious, stubborn, wild willful lips.
Derelict thoughts, bitter words
Lovely, gentle, red, juicy lips.
What will they say to all this talk:
‘Girls, they say, must seal their lips.’
translation © 1991 by Rukhsana Ahmad – from We Sinful Women: Contemporary Urdu Feminist Poetry (with original Urdu poems) – The Women’s Press Ltd
_______________________________
December 26
________________________________
1867 – Ella Young born in Antrim and educated in Dublin; Irish and Celtic mythologist. She took her MA at Trinity College and was involved in the local branch of the Theosophical Society. Young was a member of Cumann na mBan (The Women’s Army) and was involved in the 1916 rising. Later she moved to the USA and taught at University of California, Berkeley. She published a number of collections of Irish folklore, short stories for children (two of them were Newberry Honor Books), and seven poetry books, including The Rose of Heaven; Seed of the Pomegranate; and Smoke of Myrrh. She died of cancer at age 88 in July 1956.
Twilight
by Ella Young
The sky is silver pale with just one star,
One lonely wanderer from the shining host
Of Night’s companions. Through the drowsy woods
The shadows creep and touch with quietness
The curling fern heads and the ancient trees.
The sea is all aglimmer with faint lights
That change and move as if the crystal prow
Of Naive cleft unseen its waveless floor,
And Naive stood there with the magic token,
The apple-branch with silver singing leaves.
The wind has stolen away as though it feared
To stir the fringes of her faery mantle
Dream-woven in the land of Heart’s Desire:
And all the world is hushed as though she called
Ossian again, and no one answered her.
(In Irish mythology, Naive — also spelled Naimh — was the daughter of the sea god Manannán mac Lir, and her lover was the poet-hero Ossian)
“Twilight” appeared in New Songs: a lyric selection, edited by George Russell – A. H. Bullen, 1904 edition
________________________________
1894 – Jean Toomer born as Nathan Pinchback Toomer, in Washington DC; African American poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist, associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He was the grandson of Pinckney Pinchback, the first Black governor in the United States, who was governor of Louisiana for 36 days during Reconstruction. As a child, Toomer went to both all-white and all-black segregated schools. He would resist being classified by race, and just called himself an American. He began writing his best-known work, Cane, a novel that incorporated poems and vignettes, while serving briefly as a school principle at a black agricultural and industrial college in Sparta, Georgia. There were lynchings while he was in Georgia, and he soon left to go to New York. He was a student of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic and spiritualist, but later became a Quaker. He stopped writing for publication in 1950, but The Wayward and the Seeking, a volume of poetry and short stories written in his last years, was published posthumously. Toomer died at age 72 in 1967.
A Portrait in Georgia
by Jean Toomer
Hair–braided chestnut,
coiled like a lyncher’s rope,
Eye–fagots,
Lips–old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breath–the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash
of black flesh after flame.
_______________________________
December 27
________________________________
1797 – Mirza Ghalib born Agra, India, into a Mughal family; Ghalib is considered the last great poet of the Mughal Empire. He wrote in Urdu and Persian, and used Ghalib and Asad as pen names.His father died in battle in 1803 when he was five years old. He was married unhappily as a teenager, and moved to Delhi, where Emperor Bhadur Sha Zafar conferred favors on him, giving him a pension, making him a courtier, and a tutor of Prince Fakhr-ud Din Mirza, who would be the last Crown Prince of the Mughal Kingdom. Mirza Ghalib lived through the eclipse of the Mughal Empire by the British East India Company, and India’s first attempt at regaining its independence in 1857. This failed attempt resulted in the rule of India being transferred from the East India Company to the British Crown. After the British took over, they suspended Ghalib’s pension, and he traveled to Calcutta to appeal to the British Governor General for its restoration, and remained in the city, a center of literary gatherings which influenced his work, even causing him to switch from writing poetry in Urdu to writing primarily in Persian. Mirza Ghalib died at age 71 in Delhi in February 1869.
Let the ascetics sing of the garden of Paradise
by Mizra Ghalib
Let the ascetics sing of the garden of Paradise --
We who dwell in the true ecstasy can forget their vase-tamed bouquet.
In our hall of mirrors, the map of the one Face appears
As the sun's splendor would spangle a world made of dew.
Hidden in this image is also its end,
As peasants' lives harbor revolt and unthreshed corn sparks with fire.
Hidden in my silence are a thousand abandoned longings:
My words the darkened oil lamp on a stranger's unspeaking grave.
Ghalib, the road of change is before you always:
The only line stitching this world's scattered parts.
– translated by Jane Hirshfield
_______________________________
December 28
________________________________
1955 – Liu Xiaobo born, Chinese humanitarian activist, author, poet, and literary critic. He staged a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, and wrote the Charter 08 manifesto, calling for free speech, democratic elections, and human rights. In 2009, he was arrested, convicted of 'incitement to subversion' and sentenced to eleven years in prison. In 2010, during this prison term – his 4th – he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 'his prolonged non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.' He and his wife were both blocked by the Chinese government from traveling to Oslo, and all news stories of the prize were kept out of Chinese media. Liu's friends and family were also intimidated. Still in custody, he died from liver cancer at age 62 in 2017.
June Fourth Elegies is a collection of the poems Liu Xiaobo wrote each year on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. It is dedicated to 'the Tiananmen Mothers and for those who can remember.'
June Fourth Massacre
by Liu Xiaobo
The day
seems more and more distant
and yet for me it
remains a needle inside my body
(. . .)
This needle
that has stayed for so long round the heart’s periphery
is determined to plunge inside
and bring an end to all guilt
but then just before acting
“June Fourth Massacre” from June Fourth Elegies, translated by Jeffrey Yang – Jonathan Cape Company – 2012 bilingual first edition
________________________________
1933 – Panna Naik born in Bombay, British India; Indian Gujarati language poet, story writer, and essayist. At college in India, she studied Gujarati and Sanskrit. In 1960, as a bride, she came to the Philadelphia. She earned a Master’s in Library Science, and a Master of Science degree in South Asian Studies. Naik worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library as a bibliographer and librarian (1964-2003) and was also a professor of Gujarati (1985- 2002). Her poetry collections in English are Philadelphia, Cherry Blossom, and The Astrologer's Sparrow.
Lioness
by Panna Naik
“You may stroke my neck with fingers now.
I will not roar!
I have become a tamed animal.
No need to worry I may be dangerous.
See, the pet licks
Your hand, your cheek, your nose
And she rolls over at your feet.
Don’t you feel the touch of her soft hair?
My needs are few: a little milk and meat;
A small corner in your mansion.
You are a lion and I am
A lioness.
You can lift and throw me in the air.
I won’t tear you with my claws.
Here, put your hand on my neck and mouth;
Cup my soft muzzle.
See, I am a tamed lioness.
But you don’t want me as a pet.
I know, you want to let me loose
Somewhere in the Acacia forest.
I also know why. It’s because
I refuse to meet your demand.
You want a lioness that never roars.
Oh, naiveté!
No such creature exists.
You seek mythology.
“Lioness” from The Astrologer's Sparrow: Poems, © 2018 by Panna Naik – New Academia Publishing/Scarith Books
_______________________________
December 29
________________________________
1948 – William Baer born in Geneva, New York, but grew up in the Bronx NYC and New Jersey; American mystery novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator, academic, and editor. He studied for a time with James Dickey, and has Master’s degrees in Creative Writing and Cinema. He was the founding editor (1990-2004) of The Formalist, a poetry journal. His mystery novels feature private detective Jack Colt. Baer’s poetry collections include The Unfortunates, which won the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize and “Bocage” and Other Sonnets, winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize; and
Snowflake
by William Baer
Timing’s everything. The vapor rises
high in the sky, tossing to and fro,
then freezes, suddenly, and crystalizes
into a perfect flake of miraculous snow.
For countless miles, drifting east above
the world, whirling about in a swirling free-
for-all, appearing aimless, just like love,
but sensing, seeking out, its destiny.
Falling to where the two young skaters stand,
hand in hand, then flips and dips and whips
itself about to ever-so-gently land,
a miracle, across her unkissed lips:
as he blocks the wind raging from the south,
leaning forward to kiss her lovely mouth.
“Snowflake” from Borges and Other Sonnets, © 2003 by William Baer – Truman State University Press
_______________________________
December 30
________________________________
1865 – Rudyard Kipling born in British India; prolific English novelist, short-story writer, children’s author, poet, and journalist. Known for The Jungle Book, Kim, Just So Stories, The Light That Failed, and Captains Courageous, as well as his poems “Recessional”, “If”, and “Gunga Din.” Though he enthusiastically supported the “War to End All Wars,” privately he was deeply critical of how the British Army was fighting the war. He paid a very high price for his support of the war. His only son John immediately tried to join up, but was turned down by the Royal Navy because of his very poor eyesight, and was also turned down twice by the army. Kipling asked his friend Lord Roberts, a Colonel of the Irish Guards, to use his influence, and John was accepted into the Irish Guards in August 1915, just before his 18th birthday. A month later, John Kipling was listed as “wounded and missing” in France. In the confusion of the ongoing battle, he was not found. In vain, Kipling and his wife searched field hospitals and spoke to his fellow soldiers. Eventually, it was determined that John was killed on September 27, 1915, and had been buried in France. Kipling wrote, “If any question why we died, / Tell them, because our fathers lied.” Because of his support for Britain’s expansive colonialism, Rudyard Kipling’s reputation has suffered, but he remains a consummate storyteller, and a memorable poet.
New Year’s Resolutions
by Rudyard Kipling
I am resolved throughout the year
To lay my vices on the shelf;
A godly, sober course to steer
And love my neighbors as myself—
Excepting always two or three
Whom I detest as they hate me.
I am resolved—to flirt no more,
It leads to strife and tribulation;
Not that I used to flirt before,
But as a bar against temptation.
Here I except (cut out the names)
Perfectly Platonic flames.
I am resolved — that vows like these,
Though lightly made, are hard to keep;
Wherefore I’ll take them by degrees,
Lest my back-slidings make me weep.
One vow a year will see me through;
and I’ll begin with Number Two.
________________________________
1946 – Patti Smith born in Chicago; American Punk Rock singer-songwriter-poet, dubbed the “punk poet laureate.” Best known for “Because the Night,” co-written with Bruce Springsteen. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Smith won the 2010 National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids. Her poetry collections include Seventh Heaven; Witt; and Auguries of Innocence.
Prophecy’s Lullaby
by Patti Smith
The night is dotted with constellations crowned with a band
of light, whose galactic center produces the milk of time. When shall we drink, children?
We shall drink when the seal is broken, the princess wilts and the bullseye closes. We shall drink when the tears from the eyes of the girls in raincoats form unsullied streams, and their brothers lead us to the baptismal waters.
The clay of the earth will be ours and there will be nothing we cannot image and therefore accomplish. We will build a miniature city from the palace of memory, yet not a temple to house our covenant. We are our own house, the living architecture.
We shall send up a fleet of kites, scrawled with the words of the day. Kites of bleached muslin stretched over glowing cross-sticks, dressed with flowing tails.
They will be seen drifting above the clouds, all our blameless, childish hopes.
Stalking the target, our bows indestructible, we draw and release. The Sun shall have the fleece and the flesh shall fall away. the secrets of the Minotaur, the grail of Parsifal and the bones of saints shall be purified, committed to the elements.
And these thing we saw written on the immense screen once known as sky. And these things we heard as prophecy’s lullaby. the mountain is the mountain. The Lord is the Lord. the holy city belongs to none. the Mountains of Judah belong to none. The yielding seed belong to none. and we are the new Jerusalem.
These things are written on the wind…
“Prophecy’s Lullaby” from 84 Notes, © 2018 by Patti Smith – tumblr post
_______________________________
G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies
and may good cheer be yours this day!
________________________________
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/25/2213279/-Morning-Opem-Thread-The-Road-of-Change-Is-Before-You-Always?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/
