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Morning Open Thread: Under the Sun That Shines on Everyone [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-24
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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 around the world
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March 23
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1942 – Ama Ata Aidoo born as Christiana Ama Aidoo, near Saltpond in central Ghana; Ghanaian playwright, novelist, poet, academic, and politician. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was the first play written by an African woman to be published. Her novel Changes won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Ghana at Legon, then held a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University before returning to Ghana in 1969 to teach English at her alma mater. After becoming a professor at the University of Cape Coast, she was appointed as Ghana’s Secretary of education (1982-1983) but resigned in frustration because she was unable to achieve her goal of free education for all Ghanaians. In 1983, she moved to Zimbabwe, where she worked for the Ministry of Education and wrote poetry and a children’s book. In 1989, she was a writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond, in Virginia, then was a visiting professor at Brown University (2004-2011). She and African-American poet Jane Cortez co-founded the Organization of Women Writers of Africa. Her two poetry collections are Someone Talking to Sometime and Birds and Other Poems. Aidoo died in Ghana at age 81 in May 2023.
Comparisons II: We Women, Still!
by Ama Ata Adoo
Honestly, Sisters,
there is some elation here
… and some bitterness too.
But if you want to find out
how equal
even
the more equal ½ of us are,
come see us at any
public library
– after a normal 9-5 working day.
We are there
in our numbers:
multi-racial
multi-national
multi-ethnic.
“Comparisons II: We Women, Still!” © 2010 by Ama Ata Adoo, appeared at Taylor & Francis Online on April 28, 2010
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Year of Birth undisclosed – Annette Marie Hyder was born in Florida, but has been living in Minnesota; American poet, author, editor, journalist, and founder-curator of the international feminist project, ‘Facing Feminism: Feminists I Know’. Her books include The Real Reason the Queen Hated Snow and the consequence of wings.
Snow White
by Annette Marie Hyder
Snow White's obsession
with darkness, with stains, with impurities,
had her scrubbing floors and scouring self
until the cobblestones were bloody
from her knuckles;
her moonlight skin gave off a bleachy gleam.
She had no mercy for the cobwebs, the dust balls,
the mealy balls of matter.
She rubbed her fingerprints
right off her busy tips;
sent her imperfections packing
for some place called Normal Heaven.
Her wild wringing of washcloths
and brillo blasting bathing
is what really bugged the queen;
finally blanched White's goose.
“Snow White” © 2001 by Annette Marie Hyder appeared in the online journal Mentress Moon in August 2001
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March 24
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1953 – Jo Shapcott born in London; English poet, editor, translator, and lecturer. She won the National Poetry Competition in 1985 and 1991. Her collections include: Electroplating the Baby; which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection; Phrase Book; My Life Asleep, winner of the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection); Her Book: Poems 1988-1998; Emergency Kit; and Of Mutability. In May 2003, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and underwent the “full gamut” of treatment (her oncology team are named in Of Mutability’s acknowledgments). The process took almost a year, and was deemed, in the cautious terms of cancer medicine, to have been a success. In 2011, Shapcott was honored with the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.
I Tell the Bees
by Jo Shapcott
He left for good in the early hours with just
one book, held tight in his left hand:
The Cyclopedia of Everything Pertaining
to the Care Of the Honey-Bee; Bees, Hives,
Honey, Implements, Honey-Plants, Etc.
And I begrudged him every single et cetera,
every honey-strainer and cucumber blossom,
every bee-wing and flown year and dead eye.
I went outside when the sun rose, whistling
to call out them as I walked towards the hive.
I pressed my cheek against the wood, opened
my synapses to bee hum, I could smell bee hum.
‘It’s over, honies,’ I whispered, ‘and now you’re mine.’
“I Tell the Bees,” © 2010 by Jo Shapcott, was specially commissioned for the programme of poetry about bees at Gresham College for the City of London Festival in 2010.
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1954 – Ofelia Zepeda born and grew up in the tiny town of Stanfield, in southern Arizona; she earned an MA and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Arizona, and is the author of a grammar of the Tohono O’odham language, A Papago Grammar (1983). Zepeda’s poetry collections include Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert and Jewed’l-hoi/Earth Movements, O’Odham Poems). Zepeda was director of the American Indian Language Development Institute. She edits Sun Tracks, a book series which publishes work by Native American artists and writers, at the University of Arizona Press.
Smoke in Our Hair
by Ofelia Zepeda
The scent of burning wood holds
the strongest memory.
Mesquite, cedar, piñon, juniper,
all are distinct.
Mesquite is dry desert air and mild winter.
Cedar and piñon are colder places.
Winter air in our hair is pulled away,
and scent of smoke settles in its place.
We walk around the rest of the day
with the aroma resting on our shoulders.
The sweet smell holds the strongest memory.
We stand around the fire.
The sound of the crackle of wood and spark
is ephemeral.
Smoke, like memories, permeates our hair,
our clothing, our layers of skin.
The smoke travels deep
to the seat of memory.
We walk away from the fire;
no matter how far we walk,
we carry this scent with us.
New York City, France, Germany—
we catch the scent of burning wood;
we are brought home.
“Smoke in Our Hair” from Where Clouds Are Formed, © 2008 by Ofelia Zepeda – University of Arizona Press
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March 25
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1881 – Mary Webb born in Leighton, Shropshire; English novelist and poet; most of her work is set in Shropshire, where she grew up. Best
known for her novels Gone to Earth; The Golden Arrow; Precious Bane, which won the 1926 Prix Femina Vie Heureuse; and Armour Wherein He Trusted. Her poetry collections include Poems and the Spring of Joy and Fifty-One Poems. She suffered from Graves disease and died at age 46 in 1927.
The Happy Life
by Mary Webb
No silks have I, no furs nor feathers,
But one old gown that knows all weathers;
No veils nor parasols nor lace,
But rough hands and a tanned face.
Yet the soft, crinkled leaves are mine
Where pale, mysterious veins shine,
And laced larches upon the blue,
And grey veils where the moon looks through;
The cries of birds across the lawns
In dark and teeming April dawns;
The sound of wings at the door-sill,
Where grows the wet-eyed tormentil;
The ripe berry’s witcheries-
Its perfect round that satisfies;
And the gay scent of the wood I burn,
And the slap of butter in a busy churn.
“The Happy Life” from Poems and the Spring of Joy, published in 1928 by Jonathan Cape Publishing
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1942 – Ana Blandiana born as Otilia Valeria Coman in Timișoara, Romania; Romanian poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. She took her pen name from Blandiana, a commune near her mother’s home village, Vințu de Jos. Her mother was an accountant, but her father was an orthodox priest and former member of the fascist Iron Guard, who spent years in Communist prisons and died soon after his release. In 1967, she settled in Bucharest, and worked as an editor, mainly for the literary journal Amfiteatru. Then she was a librarian (1875-1977) at the Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest. In 1984, her poem ‘Totul’ (‘Everything’), which contrasted everyday life in Bucharest with the official view of Romanian life, was published in Amfiteatru. The issue was withdrawn within hours of publication, and the editors were dismissed, but the poem had some underground circulation, and a translation of it appeared in Western media. After the 1989 Romanian Revolution, she campaigned for an open society. Her poetry has appeared in English-language anthologies, and in Five Books, an English translation of poems from her original Romanian collections, and The Hour of Sand: Selected Poems 1969-1989. In 2017, she was honored with the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Beneath the Snow
by Ana Blandiana
They say the snow gives warmth.
Gives warmth?
Are you content beneath the walnut tree
You used to climb?
Do you recognise the town?
As everyone has gone
To harvest strawberries in Spain,
The empty town looks almost like it did
When you were a child,
Except that the dome of the church,
Covered in tin,
Is uglier now.
In spring
The grass will be the same –
You’ll see!
I’ll come back then to ask you
If it’s true that you can hear it grow …
“Beneath the Snow” from Five Books, © 2022 by Ana Blandiana – translation © 2022 by Paul Scott Derrick and Viorica Patea – Bloodaxe Books
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March 26
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1819 – Louise Otto-Peters born in Meissen, Saxony; German poet, novelist, essayist, journalist, and women’s rights activist; founder of Frauen-Zeitung (Women’s Newspaper), and Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein (German Association of Women Citizens), Germany’s oldest women’s rights organization.
Fog
by Louise Otto-Peters
A grey veil has settled all around.
I know not: will the sun break through
Or will this fog completely mask it, today;
And will it rise; and will it fall again?
So might I ask- but the world maintains its silence
And meadow and valley are filled with haze.
The woodland steams, a smoking altar,
A cautious eagle crosses the sky alone,
It would rather rise to the sun above-
Yet, only as a dreary point in the sea of ether
Does it appear today. Otherwise, all is grey about-
So sinister is this silence.
Our time portrayed! A fogbank surrounds us -
No raging weather, no sunshine glint-
The world wrapped up in a great wide cloud!
No eagle's eye detects the splendour of sun -
The sun of freedom- it is completely masked -
A sluggish silence pervading the people.
translation © by David Paley
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1954 – Dorothy Porter born as Dorothy Featherstone Porter in Sydney, Australia; Australian poet best known for her noir private eye novel in verse, The Monkey’s Mask, which was a surprise international hit and revitalized Australian poetry publishing – after being rejected by publishers for years. It won Australia’s National Book Council Turnbull Fox Phillips Poetry Prize (the Banjo) in 1995. In 2004, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and died in 2008. She was survived by her partner, novelist Andrea Goldsmith, her parents, her two sisters, and her cat, Wystan, named after W. H. Auden. Her ten poetry collections include: The Night Parrot; Crete; The Bee Hut; and Love Poems, which was published posthumously. In addition to The Monkey’s Mask, she wrote four other verse novels: Akhenaton; What a Piece of Work; Wild Surmise; and El Dorado.
Silence
by Dorothy Porter
It is rare
for me
to write a poem
in absolute silence.
No music.
No throttling heart.
Just faint early birds
and a grey early
sky.
I’ve given up
this serpentine fight.
No one won.
And I’m flooded
with peace and
gratitude
for that.
This poem, handwritten by Dorothy Porter, was found by Andrea Goldsmith on July 27, 2022, on a blank page at the back of a copy of A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
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March 27
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1950 – Julia Alvarez born in New York City, but spent most of her childhood in the Dominican Republic; Dominican-American novelist, poet, and essayist; best known for her novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies. She has published three volumes of poetry: The Other Side, Homecoming, and The Woman I Kept to Myself. She is also the author of a collection of essays, and several books for younger readers. In 2014, she was honored with the National Medal of Arts.
I, Too, Sing América
by Julia Alvarez
I know it’s been said before
but not in this voice
of the plátano
and the mango,
marimba y bongó,
not in this sancocho
of inglés
con español.
Ay sí,
it’s my turn
to oh say
what I see,
I’m going to sing America!
with all América
inside me:
from the soles
of Tierra del Fuego
to the thin waist
of Chiriquí
up the spine of the Mississippi
through the heartland
of the Yanquis
to the great plain face of Canada —
all of us
singing America,
the whole hemispheric
familia
belting our canción,
singing our brown skin
into that white
and red and blue song —
the big song
that sings
all America,
el canto
que cuenta
con toda América:
un new song!
Ya llegó el momento,
our moment
under the sun —
ese sol that shines
on everyone.
So, hit it maestro!
“I, Too, Sing América” from Homecoming: New and Collected Poems, © 1996 by Julia Alvarez – Plume
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March 28
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1976 – Ada Limón born in Sonoma, California; American poet of Mexican heritage; in 2022, she became the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. She is the first Latina appointed as U.S. Poet Laureate. Limón has published six collections of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry; The Carrying, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; and most recently The Hurting Kind. Prior to becoming Poet Laureate, she was the host of American Public Media’s weekday poetry podcast The Slowdown. When Limón isn’t on the road, she lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
The Visitor
by Ada Limón
A neighborhood tuxedo cat’s walking the fence line
and the dogs are going bonkers in the early morning.
The louder they bark, the more their vexation grows,
the less the cat seems to care. She’s behind my raised
beds now, no doubt looking for the family of field mice
I’ve been leaving be because, why not? The cat’s
dressed up for this occasion of trespass, black tie
attire for the canine taunting, but the whole clamor
is making me uneasy. This might be what growing
older is. My problem: I see all the angles of what
could go wrong so I never know what side to be on.
Save the mice, shoo the cat, quiet the dogs? Let
the cat have at it? Let the dogs have at it? Instead,
I do what I do best: nothing. I watch the cat
leap into the drainage ditch, dew-wet fur against
the day lilies, and disappear. The dogs go quiet
again, and the mice are safe in their caves, and
I’m here waiting for something to happen to me.
“The Visitor” from The Carrying, © 2018 by Ada Limón –
Milkweed Editions
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March 29
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1945 – Karen Alkalay-Gut born in London, but her family moved to Rochester NY in 1948; Israeli poet, professor, editor, and critic who writes in primarily English, but also in Hebrew and Yiddish. She earned a BA with honors and an MA in English literature from the University of Rochester. She then taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo before earning her doctorate. In 1972, she immigrated to Israel, and taught at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (1972-9176), then moved to Tel Aviv University. Her first poetry collection, Making Love, came out in 1980. She has since published over 20 books of her own, and has translated poems by several Hebrew-language writers. In 2019, she was awarded the Rubinicht Prize for her contributions to Yiddish literature. Her poetry collections include: Ignorant Armies; Between Bombardments; Love Soup; So Far So Good; Inheritance; and Egypt: An Israelite Returns.
Praying in Israel
“In his great mercy, He revives the dead”
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
Prayers shift their substance,
when the congregation is armed.
M-16s sling over folded tallitim,
ready for prayers, ready for battle
From the women’s section in the rear,
male backs are all I can perceive,
I mouth praise to the Lord
as I recall the flash of a girl
in a field of her friends’ corpses
begging to be released from life.
“Praying in Israel” © 2024 by Karen Alkalay-Gut was posted on her website April 13, 2024
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1974 – Irma Shiolashvili AKA Irma Shiolashvili-Britze born in Dedoplistsqaro, Kakheti, in the nation of Georgia; Georgian poet, translator, lecturer, and journalist. She studied journalism at Tbilisi State University and the University of Bonn. She has produced TV programs about Georgian writers for National Georgian Television, and is a member of the Georgian Writers’ Union. Shiolashvili remained in Germany after earning her doctorate at the University of Bonn. Her best-known book, A Bridge of Colorful Leaves, was published in German in 2012, and has been translated into Russian, English, and French. Her other books include: Non-existing Word; The Blue Bow, Trace of Tears; and Monday.
The Trees
by Irma Shiolashvili
It’s impossible not to notice these trees,
Oh, these trees.
It’s impossible to swallow all this green without tasting its beauty.
It’s impossible to walk along and
not to be surprised at them,
Impossible to look at trees without
being mesmerized.
Is it possible to reflect all this green brightness,
blooming in your eyes,
and think the world is still so trivial?
Like these trees, you’d planted in front of our house,
I grew and, like them,
I want to keep looking up at the sky all day long.
I want to look amazing with green on my shoulders
and light brown on my feet.
I want to wear the clods on foot,
both escaping from Earth and staying here at the same time.
I want to make friends with the grassy lands around
and talk to them about the love, that raised me up,
talk with my mouth full of earth.
–translated by Manana Matiashvili
“The Trees” © 2021 by Irma Shiolashvili, appeared in Poetry Collection of Georgian Women: ‘I Am a Lot’
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1977 – Nina Riggs born in San Francisco, CA; American writer, poet, and memoirist. She is a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Riggs earned a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a master of fine arts degree in poetry from UNC at Greensboro. She published a poetry collection Lucky, Lucky in 2009, but she is remembered for her bestselling memoir The Bright Hour, about living with incurable cancer, which was published shortly after her death at age 39 in February 2017.
Laundry
by Nina Riggs
The washer and dryer lurch
on the other side of the wall
at the desk where I come to write.
They rattle and thump and sing,
the wild Picasso dancing
off its hook above me.
I stare at the pulsating whiteness
of sheetrock, trying to dismiss
laundry as a matter of fact,
two machines shaking with the
necessity of keeping house,
not some ghost seeking exorcism,
not the tumblings of my own mind
with all these words trapped inside,
not the muse knocking for admission,
but just an old washing machine,
half-broken and squeakier with every load,
its frantic rhythm not a raging heartbeat,
not the permanent press of love making,
but just a toneless song to move my pen to,
thinking now of cycles and rinsing
and spinning, and of the plumber's
resigned drawl on his last visit:
"Don't wanna mess with it —
it might stop gone round altogether."
“Laundry” © by Nina Riggs appears at the online site Poetry 99
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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