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Morning Open Thread: Was It Something I Said? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-17
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I'm a two-time breast cancer survivor who
lives with pre-existing conditions every day,
and I know the uncertainty people face if
they can't get their medicine.
– Lucy McBath,
African-American Congresswoman
from Georgia
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You have to act as if it were possible
to radically transform the world.
And you have to do it all the time.
– Angela Davis,
American Marxist/feminist academic,
former Black Panther
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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 or Ozarkblue
for more information.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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In honor of
Women’s History Month,
13 women poets,
from the 11th century
into the 21st century
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March 16
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1929 – Adrienne Rich born in Baltimore, Maryland. Poet, essayist, and an icon of radical American feminism. Rich is one of the most widely read and influential poets of the late 20th century. An irony of the 1940s-early 1950s era in which she attended Radcliffe College is that none of her teachers were women. In 1951, Rich’s last year at college, her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award by W.H. Auden. He also wrote the introduction to the book when it was published. Rich received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study at Oxford for a year in 1952, but after a visit to Florence, she spent the rest of her time exploring Italy. Through the following decades, she struggled with the 1950s version of marriage and motherhood, became a ‘60s anti-war, civil rights, and feminist activist, then ended her marriage, acknowledged her lesbianism, and became a leading voice in the campaigns for sexual equality and gay rights. When she shared the 1974 National Book Award for Poetry with Allen Ginsberg, she insisted on Alice Walker and Audre Lorde, the two other feminist nominees, accepting with her, on behalf of all women “whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world.”
Apology
by Adrienne Rich
I’ve said: I wouldn’t ever
keep a cat, a dog,
a bird —
chiefly because
I’d rather love my equals.
Today, turning
in the fog of my mind,
I knew, the thing I really
couldn’t stand in the house
is a woman
with a mindful of fog
and bloodletting claws
and the nerves of a bird
and the nightmares of a dog.
“Apology” from The Diamond Cutters, © 1955 by Adrienne Rich – Harper and Brothers
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1951 – Deborah Tall born in New York City but grew up in a middle class Jewish family in Philadelphia’s suburbs; American poet, non-fiction writer, academic, and editor of the literary journal The Seneca Review. She lived on the Irish island of Inishbofin for five years in the 1970s, chronicled in her book, Island of the White Cow. She met her husband and fellow poet, David Weiss, after returning to New York City. In 2004, Tall was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. Her four poetry collections are: Eight Colours Wide; Ninth Life; Come Wind, Come Weather; and Summons. Her non-fiction book, A Family of Strangers, published shortly before her death, records her search for the family her parents never spoke of. After uncovering her father’s original last name prior to immigrating to the U.S. just before WWII, she then traced what happened to the family members who had stayed in Ukraine. Tall died at age 55 of breast cancer in September 2006.
Yearning
by Deborah Tall
Not a light in the stars
can match your eye,
What am I looking for from the roof?
I know where the moon falls
and yellows towards the river.
Water takes it.
I lean into river wind
but don’t take off.
Cinders of burnt paper do–
A ragged flock escapes the chimney
from my own fire.
Where does it fly to?
I lean another quarter inch
and in no time at all
am the spectator below
watching the wild child drop.
“Yearning” © 1979 by Deborah Tall, appeared in Poetry magazine’s October 1979 issue
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March 17
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1956 — Lisa Russ Spaar born in New Jersey; American poet, professor, essayist, critic, editor, and novelist. A graduate of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, she is now a Professor of English and Creative Writing at her alma mater. Her many poetry collections include: Glass Town; Blue Venus; Satin Cash; Vanitas, Rough: Poems; Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems; and Orexia. Russ Spaar has edited three anthologies: Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson; Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems; and All that Mighty Heart: London Poems.
Temple You
by Lisa Russ Spaar
What is mysterious about loss,
flush of arm pulled from a wilted sleeve,
summer’s urine-tang in autumn leaves?
Let John Keats light another fag.
Or Brontë refuse the doctor
on her black sateen settee.
For whatever part of you
may be taken away, you said,
is the scar I will visit first
with my mouth, each time,
as gold visits the thieved till,
sun the obliterated sill,
saying praise you for leaving
me this you, this living still.
© 2013 by Lisa Russ Spaar appeared in Poetry magazine’s February 2013 issue
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March 18
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1868 – Jessie Pope born in Leicester in England’s East Midlands; British poet, writer, children’s author, and journalist. She was educated at North London Collegiate School for Girls, and was a regular contributor to major UK magazines and newspapers of the day, including Punch, the British Vanity Fair, and The Daily Mail. But her extremely jingoistic WWI poems caused Wilfred Owen to write his 1917 poem Dulce et Decorum est in response. However, her poem “Socks” gives a more realistic picture of what British women were doing at home while the men were fighting in the trenches in Europe. In the 1920s, she published her poetry collection Hits and Misses, and children’s books like Animal Fun and Frolic and The Cat Scouts. She unexpectedly married a widowed banker in 1929 when she was 61 years old. Jessie Pope died at age 73 in December 1941.
Socks
by Jessie Pope
Shining pins that dart and click
In the fireside’s sheltered peace
Check the thoughts the cluster thick –
20 plain and then decrease.
He was brave – well, so was I –
Keen and merry, but his lip
Quivered when he said good-bye –
Purl the seam-stitch, purl and slip.
Never used to living rough,
Lots of things he’d got to learn;
Wonder if he’s warm enough –
Knit 2, catch 2, knit, turn.
Hark! The paper-boys again!
Wish that shout could be suppressed;
Keeps one always on the strain –
Knit off 9, and slip the rest.
Wonder if he’s fighting now,
What he’s done an’ where he’s been;
He’ll come out on top somehow –
Slip 1, knit 2, purl 14.
“Socks” from Jessie Pope’s War Poems by Jessie Pope, originally published in 1915 – republished in 2008 by Read Books Publisher
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1921 – Claire Pratt born as Mildred Claire Pratt in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Canadian artist, printmaker, poet, and editor. She contracted polio when she was four years old, and later developed osteomyelitis, an inflammatory bone disease. Pratt earned degrees in English and Philosophy from Victoria College, University of Toronto, then studied international relations at Columbia University, and art at the Boston Museum of Fine Art. She was an editor for Macmillan Canada, the University of Toronto Press, then a senior editor at McClelland & Stewart (1956-1965), but retired because of her increasing health problems. As an artist, she made woodcuts, and her interest in Japanese graphics led to her writing haiku, which she often illustrated with her artwork. Claire Pratt died at age 74 in 1995.
Kitchen all aglow
by Claire Pratt
Kitchen all aglow
not yet, not yet—frosty stars,
angels in the snow.
“Kitchen all aglow” from HAIKU, © 1965 by Claire Pratt – self-published
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March 19
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1084 – Li Qingzhao, AKA Yi-an Jushi, born in Jian, Shandong province, China, during the Song dynasty; Chinese poet and essayist considered one of the greatest poets in Chinese history. Her father was an academic professor, a famous essayist, and her mother was a well-known poet from a prominent family. Li’s poetry was already gaining fame in elite circles by 1101 when she married politician and epigrapher Zhao Mingcheng at age 18. They shared a love of the arts and collecting books, but he was often called away from home by his duties. In 1127, during the Jin-song wars, their home in Shandong was burned down during the fighting, and they were forced to flee to Nanjing. Then her husband died of typhoid fever in 1129 while en route to a new post. Devastated, she struggled to keep what remained of their book and art collections safe until she was able to settle in Hangzhou, which the Song government made its new capital after the war. Many of her poems were lost during the war. Only about 100 of her poems have survived to the present day. Li Quinzhao died in 1155.
The Sun Sets in Molten Gold
by Li Qingzhao
The sun sets in molten gold.
The evening clouds form a jade disk.
Where is he?
Dense white mist envelops the willows.
A sad flute plays “Falling Plum Blossoms.”
How many Spring days are left now?
This Feast of Lanterns should be joyful.
The weather is calm and lovely.
But who can tell if it
Will be followed by wind and rain?
– translator not credited
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1894 – Lilith Lorraine born as Mary Maude Dunn in Corpus Christi, Texas; American science fiction and pulp fiction author, poet, journalist, editor, and teacher. The daughter of a Texas Ranger, she earned a teaching certificate at age 16, and taught in a rural Texas school. Her feminist socialist utopia novelette, The Brain of the Planet, was published as a chapbook in 1929. Her science fiction stories appeared in magazines like Astounding Stories, but she often wrote both prose and poetry under male pen-names (because many publishers paid women writer half of what they said men), so the list of her stories is incomplete. Lorraine was an editor for poetry magazines and fan zines from the 1930s through the 1950s. She wrote a textbook for writers, Character against Chaos, and Wine of Wonder, published in 1952, which may have been the first science fiction poetry collection. She died at age 73 in November 1967.
from Without Regret
by Lilith Lorraine
This is the day the prophets have foretold,
This is the hour for which the Chosen wait,
This is the requiem of the Age of Gold,
This is the end of Babylon the Great.
May we who write the annals of this hour
Suspend our pens in silence, speak no word
Of greed that blossomed like an evil flower,
Of peace that perished crucified, unheard.
Write only for a cleaner, kindlier race
After the last bomb thunders from the skies,
That love survived the Terror out of Space,
And that the Grass is infinitely wise.
Yes, grass is merciful — without regret,
And what it covers . . . let all men forget.
“Without Regret” from Wine of Wonder, © 1952 by Lilith Lorraine – Bookcraft
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1947 – Kate Braid born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Canadian poet, non-fiction writer, and construction worker, who grew up in Montreal, Quebec, and graduated from Mount Allison University. In 1977, Braid got her first job in construction as a labourer on an island off the coast of British Columbia. She hadn’t planned to be a construction worker, but was desperate to stay on the island and had run out of money. Turning Left to the Ladies, a mix of prose and poetry, is about the 15 years she worked as a labourer, then apprentice and journey carpenter. She was the first woman member of the Vancouver union local of the Carpenters, and the first full-time woman teaching trades at the BC Institute of Technology. In 1992, she won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, presented by the League of Canadian Poets, for her collection, Covering Rough Ground. Her other poetry books include: To This Cedar Fountain; Small Songs; and A Woman’s Fingerprint. She has also written poetry about an imagined friendship between artists Georgia O’Keefe and Emily Carr, and a collection of short stories, The Fish Come in Dancing.
Spy
by Kate Braid
I parachute into man’s country,
hoist my beer in the bar as if native.
Cool, I talk shop, stand as they stand,
not quite sure
of the cocky swing of hips,
lift of the glass in a loud bass,
confidence laughing.
This is the world of the knowing.
It’s only a small slip into a minor key
when I turn left to go to the Ladies.
“Spy” from Turning Left to the Ladies, © 2009 by Kate Braid – Palimpsest Press
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March 20
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1899 – Muriel Stuart born on Norbury, South London, UK, as Muriel Stuart Irwin, daughter of a Scottish barrister. She wrote poetry about WWII, sexual politics, and gardening, published in five collections. In 1922, she married publisher Alfred William Board. She gave up writing poetry in the 1930s, after the births of their son and daughter, to write books about gardening, including the best-seller Fool’s Garden, as well as Gardener’s Choice and Gardener’s Nightcap. She died at age 82 in December 1967.
The Thief of Beauty
by Muriel Stuart
I
The mind is Beauty's thief, the poet takes
The golden spendthrift's trail among the blooms
Where she stands tossing silver in the lakes,
And twisting bright swift threads on airy looms.
Her ring the poppy snatches, and the rose
With laughter plunders all her gusty plumes.
The poet gleans and gathers as she goes
Heedless of summer's end certain and soon,
Of winter rattling at the door of June.
II
When Beauty lies hand-folded, pale and still,
Forsaken of her lovers and her lords,
And winter keeps cold watch upon the hill,
Then he lets fall his bale of coloured words.
At frosty midnight June shall rise in flame,
Move at his magic with her bells and birds,
The rose will redden as he speaks her name.
He shall release earth's frozen bosom there,
And with great words shall cuff the whining air.
“The Thief of Beauty” from Poems, © 1922 by Muriel Stuart – University of California Libraries
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1963 – Maggie Estep born in Summit, New Jersey; American spoken word poet, writer, and novelist, who was featured on MTV's Spoken Word Unplugged, PBS's The United States of Poetry, and on Season 3 of HBO's Def Poetry. She published seven books and recorded two spoken word albums, No More Mr. Nice Girl and Love is a Dog From Hell. In February 2014, Maggie Estep died at age 50, two days after she had a heart attack.
Emotional Idiot
by Maggie Estep
I'm an Emotional Idiot
so get away from me.
I mean,
COME HERE.
Wait, no,
that's too close,
give me some space
it's a big country,
there's plenty of room,
don't sit so close to me.
Hey, where are you?
I haven't seen you in days.
Whadya, having an affair?
Who is she?
Come on,
aren't I enough for you?
God,
You're so cold.
I never know what you're thinking.
You're not very affectionate.
I mean,
you're clinging to me,
DON'T TOUCH ME,
what am I, your fucking cat?
Don't rub me like that.
Don't you have anything better to do
than sit there fawning over me?
Don't you have any interests?
Hobbies?
Sailing Fly fishing
Archeology?
There's an archeology expedition leaving tomorrow
why don't you go?
I'll loan you the money,
my money is your money.
my life is your life
my soul is yours
without you I'm nothing.
Move in with me
we'll get a studio apartment together, save on rent,
well, wait, I mean, a one bedroom,
so we don't get in each other's hair or anything
or, well,
maybe a two bedroom
I'll have my own bedroom,
it's nothing personal
I just need to be alone sometimes,
you do understand,
don't you?
Hey, why are you acting distant?
Where you goin',
was it something I said?
What
What did I do?
I'm an emotional idiot
so get away from me
I mean,
MARRY ME.
“Emotional Idiot” from Diary of an Emotional Idiot, © 2003 by Maggie Estep – Soft Skull Press
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March 21
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1841 – Mathilde Blind born as Mathilda Cohen in Mannheim, Germany; English poet, fiction writer, biographer, essayist, critic, and pioneering feminist ‘New Woman’ author. Her mother and stepfather moved the family to London in 1852, and Mathilda changed her first name to Mathilde, and took her stepfather’s surname. Blind’s political views were shaped by the foreign refugees who frequented her stepfather’s house, including Giuseppe Mazzini, Karl Marx, and Louis Blanc. She attended the Ladies’ Institute, St John’s Wood, but was expelled for her radical thinking, and went to Switzerland. Women were barred from attending lectures at the University of Zürich, but she took private lessons from scholar Kuno Fischer, author of History of Modern Philosophy. She wrote sexually subversive poems, an erudite essay on Icelandic poetry, and a short story exploring the corrosive effects of class divisions on human relations. In 1886, she lectured on “Shelley’s View of Nature Contrasted With Darwin’s.” Her poetry collections include Poems; The Prophecy of St. Oran and Other Poems (1881); The Ascent of Man (1889); and Songs and Sonnets (1893). Mathilde Blind died at age 55 of cancer in November 1896, bequeathing to Newnham College, Cambridge, the greater part of her property.
A Winter Landscape
by Mathilde Blind
All night, all day, in dizzy, downward flight,
Fell the wild-whirling, vague, chaotic snow,
Till every landmark of the earth below,
Trees, moorlands, roads, and each familiar sight
Were blotted out by the bewildering white.
And winds, now shrieking loud, now whimpering low,
Seemed lamentations for the world-old woe
That death must swallow life, and darkness light.
But all at once the rack was blown away,
The snowstorm hushing ended in a sigh;
Then like a flame the crescent moon on high
Leaped forth among the planets; pure as they,
Earth vied in whiteness with the Milky Way:
Herself a star beneath the starry sky.
“A Winter Landscape” from Poems, by Mathilde Blind – originally published in 1867 under the pen name ‘Claude Lake’
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1905 – Phyllis McGinley born in Ontario, Oregon; American poet, author, and essayist; winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades. After a brief career as a teacher, she worked in New York City as an ad copywriter and the poetry editor for Town and Country magazine. After her marriage in 1937, the couple moved to Larchmont, New York, a suburb which provided much subject matter for McGinley’s work. Her poetry collections include Confessions of a Reluctant Optimist, Stones from a Glass House, and A Pocketful of Wry. She died at age 72 in 1978 in New York City.
First Lesson
by Phyllis McGinley
The first thing to remember about fathers is, they’re men.
A girl has to keep it in mind.
They are dragon-seekers, bent on impossible rescues.
Scratch any father, you find
Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors,
Believing change is a threat –
Like your first shoes with heel on, like your first bicycle
It took months to get.
Walk in strange woods, they warn you about the snakes there.
Climb and they fear you’ll fall.
Books, angular looks, swimming in deep water –
Fathers mistrust them all.
Men are the worriers. It is difficult for them
To learn what they must learn:
How you have a journey to take and very likely,
For a while, will not return.
“First Lesson” from Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades, © 1960 by Phyllis McGinley –Viking Press
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March 22
__________________________________
1956 – Lucie Brock-Boido was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; American poet who published four collections of poetry; winner of the 1996 Witter-Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She died of cancer at age 61 in March 2018.
A Girl Ago
by Lucie Brock-Boido
No feeding on wisteria. No pitch-burner traipsing
In the nettled woods. milk in metal cylinders, no
Buttering. making small contusions on the page
But saying nothing no one has not said before.
milkweed blown across your pony-coat, no burrs.
scent of juniper on your Jacobean mouth. No crush
Of ink or injury, no lacerating wish.
Extinguish me from this.
I was sixteen for twenty years. By September I will be a ghost
And flickering in unison with all the other fireflies in Appalachia,
Blinking in the swarm of it, and all at once, above
And on a bare branch in a shepherd’s sky. No Dove.
There is no thou to speak of.
“A Girl Ago” from Stay, Illusion, © 2013 by Lucie Brock-Broido – Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
[END]
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