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Morning Open Thread: A Late Sleeper, She Blooms Alone in Winter [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-06
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The Road to Wisdom? –
Well, it’s plain and simple to express:
Err and err and err again
but less and less and less.
– Piet Hein, poet of the
Danish Resistance in WWII,
scientist, inventor, and designer
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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
– T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding”
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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.
Morning Open Thread is looking for
contributors — either occasional, or
weekly. If interested, please contact
officebss for more information.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 poets born in January –
a month of cold, long darks,
and troubles to be overcome –
speaking of Love, Life, Death,
Remembrance – and the
shield wall of Irony.
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January 5
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1926 – W.D. Snodgrass born as William De Witt Snodgrass in Pennsylvania; American poet, critic, educator, and translator; he served as a typist in the U.S. Navy during WWII, then earned his degrees at the University of Iowa, where he studied with Robert Lowell. Snodgrass won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Heart’s Needle. He published over 30 books. His 1977 collection The Fuehrer Bunker, imagined dramatic monologues of the people who shared Hitler’s bunker in the last days, was controversial. His poetry collections include: Heart’s Needle; Leaving the Motel; If Birds Build With Your Hair; A Locked House; and Each in His Season. William Snodgrass died at age 83 in January 2009.
Lasting
by W.D. Snodgrass
“Fish oils,” my doctor snorted, “and oily fish
are actually good for you. What’s actually wrong
for anyone your age are all those dishes
with thick sauce that we all pined for so long
as we were young and poor. Now we can afford
to order such things, just not to digest them;
we find what bills we’ve run up in the stored
plaque and fat cells of our next stress test.”
My own last test scored in the top 10 percent
of males in my age bracket. Which defies
all consequences or justice—I’ve spent
years shackled to my desk, saved from all exercise.
My dentist, next: “Your teeth seem quite good
for someone your age, better than we’d expect
with so few checkups or cleanings. Teeth should
repay you with more grief for such neglect”—
echoing how my mother always nagged,
“Brush a full 100 strokes,” and would jam
cod liver oil down our throats till we’d go gagging
off to flu-filled classrooms, crammed
with vegetables and vitamins. By now,
I’ve outlasted both parents whose plain food
and firm ordinance must have endowed
this heart’s tough muscle—weak still in gratitude.
“Lasting” from Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems, © by W. D. Snodgrass – BOA Editions
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January 6
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1878 – Carl Sandburg born in Galesburg, Illinois; one of the best-known and best-loved American poets, he was a prolific author of books of poetry and of an outstanding multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, which won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for History. Sandburg won two other Pulitzer Prizes, both for Poetry, in 1919 for Cornhuskers, and in 1951 for Collected Poems. Sandburg supported the Civil Rights Movement and was the first white man to be honored by the NAACP with their Silver Plaque Award as a “major prophet of civil rights in our time.” He died at age 89 in July 1967.
A Homely Winter Idyll
by Carl Sandburg
Great, long, lean clouds in sullen host
Along the skyline passed today;
While overhead I’ve only seen
A leaden sky the whole day long.
My heart would gloomily have mused
Had I not seen those queer, old crows
Stop short in their mad frolicking
And pose for me in long, black rows.
“A Homely Winter Idyll” from The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January 2003 edition
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1931 – P. J. Kavanaugh born as Patrick Joseph Kavanaugh in Worthing, Sussex, England; English poet, novelist, lecturer, actor, BBC broadcaster, and columnist. He was called up for National Service, and was wounded in the Korean War. He attended Merton College, Oxford (1951-1954), where he began writing poetry. He married Sarah Phillips in 1954, but she died of poliomyelitis two years later in Java, where he had been sent by the British Council to teach. His 1966 memoir about his early life and their relationship, The Perfect Stranger, won the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize. Among his many volumes of poetry are: One and One; On the Way to the Depot; About Time; An Enchantment; and Something About. He did some acting in British films and series television, including the episode of The Avengers in which Diana Rigg made her last appearance as Mrs. Peel. Kavanaugh also wrote columns for The Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement. He died at age 84 in August 2015.
Peace
by P. J. Kavanaugh
And sometimes I am sorry when the grass
Is growing over the stones in quiet hollows
And the cocksfoot leans across the rutted cart-pass
That I am not the voice of country fellows
Who now are standing by some headland talking
Of turnips and potatoes or young corn
Of turf banks stripped for victory.
Here Peace is still hawking
His coloured combs and scarves and beads of horn.
Upon a headland by a whinny hedge
A hare sits looking down a leaf-lapped furrow
There's an old plough upside-down on a weedy ridge
And someone is shouldering home a saddle-harrow.
Out of that childhood country what fools climb
To fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time?
“Peace” from Collected Poems, ©1992 by P J. Kavanaugh – Carcanet Press
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1949 – C.D. Wright born as Caroline Wright in Mountain Home, Arkansas; prolific American poet, and editor of Lost Roads Publishers, which specialized in publishing new poets and translations. In 2010, her book One With Others won both the National Book Award for Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, for. Wright died at age 67 of thrombosis in January 2016. Among her many poetry collections are: Room Rented By A Single Woman; Just Whistle: A Valentine; Steal Away; The Other Hand; and Shall Cross, published posthumously.
Approximately Forever
by C. D. Wright
She was changing on the inside
it was true what had been written
The new syntax of love
both sucked and burned
The secret clung around them
She took in the smell
Walking down a road to nowhere
every sound was relevant
The sun fell behind them now
he seemed strangely moved
She would take her clothes off
for the camera
she said in plain english
but she wasn’t holding that snake
“Approximately Forever” from Steal Away: New and Selected Poems, © 2002 by C.D. Wright – Copper Canyon Press
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January 7
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1947 – Camillo Mac Bica born in Brooklyn, NY; American author, philosopher, essayist, poet, and activist. In 1964, Bica entered the United States Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class. He earned a BA from Long Island University in 1968, then was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, serving 3 years on active duty, including 13 months with the 26th Marine Infantry Regiment in Viet Nam. He then spent years recovering from his wartime service, including being a founding member of the Veterans Self-Help Initiative (AKA The HOOTCH Program) at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Brooklyn. He earned a Master of Arts from New York University in 1986. Author of There Are No Flowers in a War Zone; Beyond PTSD: The Moral Casualties of War; and Worthy of Gratitude? Why Veterans May Not Want to Be Thanked for Their “Service” in War.
The Rose
by Camillo Mac Bica
I remember once, in another lifetime,
noticing a lone rose rising
defiantly from beneath the rubble
outside the destroyed city of Hue.
It had no business being there,
adding color to the drabness of war,
beauty to the ugliness of destruction,
and the hope of life
when life held nothing
but suffering and death.
It was a contradiction
and created confusion
amidst the clarity of killing to survive.
. . I stepped on it.
There are no flowers in a war zone;
nor color, nor beauty, nor hope.
“The Rose” from There Are No Flowers in a War Zone © 2019 by Camillo Mac Bica – Gnosis Press
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1954 – Cornelius Eady born in Rochester NY; Black American poet, writer, writer-in-residence and workshop leader, and co-founder with Toi Derricotte of Cave Canem Foundation, which sponsors writing workshops, poetry prizes, and anthology publications for African-American poets. He has also worked with jazz composer Deirdre Murray on theatre pieces with music. His poetry collections include Kartunes; Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (winner of the 1985 Lamont Poetry Prize); The Gathering of My Name; and Brutal Imagination (a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry).
Nina’s Blues
by Cornelius Eady
Your body, hard vowels
In a soft dress, is still.
What you can’t know
is that after you died
All the black poets
In New York City
Took a deep breath,
And breathed you out;
Dark corners of small clubs,
The silence you left twitching
On the floors of the gigs
You turned your back on,
The balled-up fists of notes
Flung, angry from a keyboard.
You won’t be able to hear us
Try to etch what rose
Off your eyes, from your throat.
Out you bleed, not as sweet, or sweaty,
Through our dark fingertips.
We drum rest
We drum thank you
We drum stay.
“Nina’s Blues,” from Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems, 2008 by Cornelius Eady – Putnam
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