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Morning Open Thread: Because of You the Other Side of the World Is Real [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-21
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.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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I am not here this morning because my husband and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary this week. When we got married, we only had a one-night honeymoon, so ever since then, we’ve taken some time off to celebrate during our anniversary week. This week’s getaway is Part 42 of our “Never-Ending Honeymoon.”
And you MOTlies get a “bonus” poem – something I wrote about what I wore for our wedding. I look washed out in white, and always manage to spill something on it – so of course, this bride wore RED—
An antique Chinese wedding reception ensemble originally given to my mother as a HS graduation gift. She kept it, but never wore it.
It has fascinated me all my life.
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Red Silk
– for all the creators of beauty whose names we
will never know
You hang
in the hall closet of my childhood,
talisman of awe and mystery,
Journey to China made only in dreams . . .
Because of you
the other side of the world is real,
and maps
are pictures of places people live.
How many tiny women
threaded silk,
sewed tiny stitches,
made you beautiful
with flowers, birds, symbols?
How many days
working
until you and the night and their fingers
became one darkness?
Were they old
with blurring vision,
or needle-eyed apprentices?
Flower centers so intricate
each stitch
a risk of blindness —
Our century
forbids it —
No more blind women
no bound, crippled feet,
We have gained so much . . .
What have we lost?
Too soon,
no red silk sails from China
untouched by machine . . .
Flowers for beauty
Phoenix for long life, good fortune
from five thousand years of women’s hands:
Ancient witnesses to out altered ritual
The garments of my wedding day,
borrowed from another time
and half a world away.
©1983 by Nona Blyth Cloud
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Wishing all of you find something to
celebrate this week. We all need some hope
and joy to get us through these trying times.
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Thirteen poets born in April,
from the greatest Bard of all
to some far less familiar, they
celebrate how words shape
our thoughts and feelings
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April 20
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1826 – Dinah Mulock Craik born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire; English novelist, poet, and author of biographical sketches of famous writers, who often used Mrs. Craik as her pen name. Her most popular novel was John Halifax, Gentleman, but to support herself and help her family, she wrote dozens of articles and sketches and hundreds of poems for popular magazines of the day. A Woman’s Thoughts about Women was published in 1858, essays advocating for women being educated, so they could support themselves if they remained unmarried, or were widowed. She died of heart failure at age 61 in Shortlands, a London suburb.
A Silly Song
by Dinah Mulock Craik
"O HEART, my heart!" she said, and heard
His mate the blackbird calling,
While through the sheen of the garden green
May rain was softly falling,—
Aye softly, softly falling.
The buttercups across the field
Made sunshine rifts of splendor:
The round snow-bud of the thorn in the wood
Peeped through its leefage tender,
As the rain came softly falling.
"O heart, my heart!" she said and smiled,
"There's not a tree of the valley,
Or a leaf I wis which the rain's soft kiss
Freshens in yonder alley,
Where the drops keep ever falling,—
"There's not a foolish flower i' the grass,
Or bird through the woodland calling,
So glad again of the coming of rain
As I of these tears now falling,—
These happy tears down falling."
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April 21
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1907 – Sanora Babb born in Otoe territory (now Red Rock Oklahoma), but neither of her parents were of Otoe heritage; American novelist, poet, short story writer, and literary editor. Her father was a professional gambler, but she, her sister, and their mother lived in a one-room dugout on a broomcorm (sorghum) farm near Lamar, Colorado. She didn’t go to school until she was 11, but graduated from high school as valedictorian. Her novel The Lost Traveler, her memoir An Owl on Every Post, and a short story collection, Cry of the Tinamou, are all based on her childhood. After a year at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, lack of money caused her to transfer to Garden City Community College near Dodge City. She worked as a reporter for the Garden City Herald, then moved to Los Angeles in 1929, but a job offer from the Los Angeles Times fell through because of the stock market crash, and she was sometimes homeless until finding work as a secretary at Warner Brothers and as a radio script writer. She joined the Communist Party and visited the Soviet Union in 1936. In 1938, Babb went to work for the Farm Security Administration, making detailed notes on the Dust Bowl migrant tent camps in California. Without her knowledge, her supervisor shared her notes with John Steinbeck. The novel she wrote based on her notes, Whose Names Are Unknown, was shelved by Random House when Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath was published in April 1939, and won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her novel was finally published in 2004. In the 1940s, she worked as West Coast secretary of the League of American Writers, and edited a literary magazine, one of the first to publish stories by Ray Bradbury. She also ran a Chinese restaurant owned by cinematographer James Wong Howe. She and Howe married in 1937 in Paris, but he wasn’t allowed to become a U.S. citizen until the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. Their marriage wasn’t recognized by the state of California until a law banning interracial marriage was abolished in 1948, so they had in separate apartments in the same building. When Babb was blacklisted during the HUAC hearings, she moved to Mexico City to protect Howe, who was “graylisted.” Her poetry collection, Told in the Seed, was published in 1998. Sanora Babb died at age 98 in December 2005.
It Is the Way the Deep Lush Grass
by Sanora Babb
It is the way the deep lush grass
Roots bravely to the precipice edge,
The way the wind mourns over the low bleak hills
And blows into the sea,
The way the rain drives over the downs
Staining the trees and shining the low stone walls
The way a mockingbird sings his hesitant copied notes
Before the rain … the notes breaking sharply
Over the white rock cliffs that march along
The sea.
The way these quiet, lonely country sounds
Come into me, that turns my heart’s anger
Into an upthrust fist, as the army planes
Roar over, startling the sheep a little,
Waking the shepherd hardly, raising his head;
It is expected, yet unbelieved, that bombs
Will drop on London, a few hours away,
That gas will tear a choked and ragged strip
Of death through England.
The radio, the newsreel and the press show
The death-head muzzle of the twentieth century man:
The government makes them now: 11 million people
Wait and doubt, believe and unbelieve the fears
That burn in their minds at night,
When they hear the monotonous roar of the surf
Hurled back to itself by the mighty roar
Of a bomber squadron rehearsing death.
“It Is the Way the Deep Lush Grass” from Told in the Seed and Selected Poems, © 1998 by Sanora Babb - Muse Ink Press
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1930 – Hilda Hilst born, influential Brazilian author, poet, and playwright; noted for her poetry collection, Presságio (Omen), and her novels, Com meus olhos de cão (With My Dog Eyes) and A obscena senhora D (The Obscene Madame D). She died at age 73 of a chronic heart and pulmonary condition in 2004.
IX
by Hilda Hilst
Your hooves bandaged
so I won’t hear
your hard trot.
Is this, little mare,
how you’ll come for me?
Or because I thought you
severe and silent
you’ll come as a child
on a shard of china?
Lover
because I disdained you?
Or with the airs of a king
because I made you queen?
“IX” from Of Death. Minimal Odes, © 1980 by Hilda Hilst — translation © 2018 by Laura Cesarco Eglin — co-im-press 2018 edition
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1971 – Selina Tusitala Marsh born in Auckland, New Zealand; New Zealand poet, academic, illustrator, and editor; New Zealand Poet Laureate (2017-2019). Her mother was of Samoan and Tuvaluan (Pacific island of Tuvalu) ancestry. She earned a doctorate from the University of Auckland in 2004. Her thesis was titled “Ancient banyans, flying foxes and white ginger”: five Pacific women writers. Marsh is a Professor at the University of Auckland, teaching Creative Writing, and Pacific Literature. She has edited the Pasifika poetry section of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. In 2015, Marsh won the Literary Death Match for poets at the Australia and New Zealand Literary Festival in London. In 2019, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Her poetry collections include: Fast Talking PI; Tightrope; and Dark Sparring. She also wrote and illustrated Mophead: How Your Difference Makes a Difference, a memoir in graphic novel form, winner of the 2020 top prize at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
naming myself
by Selina Tusitala Marsh
“Tusitala”
teller of tales
that i never heard
till yesterday
born away
for another life
today
the tale i tell
is my own
theirsyours
a way of seeking
some more
of Sāmoa
of my sacred centre
the tale i tell
will book its way
through tongued histories
timeless mysteries
sanctioned violence
spaces of silence
telling lives
“tala tusi”
tell the book
worded spirit of brown
in theorycreativity
our sound made
renown
“naming myself” from Tightrope, © 2017 by Selina Tusitala Marsh – Aukland University Press
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April 22
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1943 – Louise Glück born in New York City and grew up on Long Island; American poet and essayist; winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Wild Iris; Library of Congress Special Bicentennial Consultant (2000-2002) and Poet Laureate (2003-2004); and 2014 National Book Award (Poetry) for Faithful and Virtuous Night. In 2020, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who helped invent and market the X-Acto Knife. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University without graduating from either school. In her mid-twenties, she published her poetry collection Firstborn to mixed reviews. Glück published over 14 poetry collections, including: Descending Figure; The Triumph of Achilles (1985 National Books Critics Circle Poetry Award winner); Vita Nova; and Averro. She died of cancer at age 80 in October 2023.
Parable of the Beast
by Louise Glück
The cat circles the kitchen
with the dead bird,
its new possession.
Someone should discuss
ethics with the cat as it
inquires into the limp bird:
in this house
we do not experience
will in this manner.
Tell that to the animal,
its teeth already
deep in the flesh of another animal.
“Parable of the Beast” from Meadowlands, © 1997 by Louise Glück – Ecco Press
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April 23
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1564 (traditional date, based on his April 26 baptism) – William Shakespeare born in Stratford-Upon-Avon; English playwright, poet and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and the world’s greatest dramatist. His poetry output includes the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, but he is best known as a poet for his Sonnets, published in 1609. He died at age 52 on April 23, 1616.
Sonnet 115
by William Shakespeare
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgement knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning time, whose millon’d accidents
Creep in ’twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
Alas, why, fearing of time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say ‘Now I love you best,’
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?
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1852 – Edwin Markham born Charles Edwin Markham in Oregon Territory. His parents divorced, and his mother brought up Markham and his siblings on a farm in central California. Disliking farm labor, and frustrated by his mother’s refusal to buy him books, or pay for his education, he left home at 15 until his mother agreed to pay for college. He earned a teacher’s certificate, and taught while taking Classics courses at Christian College in Santa Rosa, then was school superintendent in Placerville, a California gold rush town. Markham sold his first poem in 1880, then regularly contributed poems to Harper’s, Century, and Scribner’s. Markham wrote The Man With a Hoe, first published in the San Francisco Examiner in January, 1899. It was republished in newspapers across the country. With his new-found celebrity, Markham went on tour doing readings and lectures. Though he remained popular with readers, as his style never evolved, critics began calling him “old-fashioned.” On his 80th birthday, there was a celebration at Carnegie Hall, attended by President Hoover. In 1936, Markham suffered a debilitating stroke from which he never fully recovered. He died at age 87 in his home on Staten Island, New York, in March, 1940.
Joy of the Morning
by Edwin Markham
I hear you, little bird,
Shouting aswing above the broken wall.
Shout louder yet: no song can tell it all.
Sing to my soul in the deep still wood:
‘Tis wonderful beyond the wildest word:
I’d tell it, too, if I could.
Oft when the white, still dawn
Lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart,
I’ve felt it like a glory in my heart –
(The world’s mysterious stir)
But had no throat like yours, my bird,
Nor such a listener.
“Joy of the Morning” from The Man With the Hoe and Other Poems, by Edwin Markham – Doubleday & McClure Co – 1900 edition
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April 24
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1936 – Vera Rich born as Faith Elizabeth Rich in London; British poet, journalist, historian, and translator. She studied at St Hilda’s College of the University of Oxford and Bedford College, London. In 1959, her poetry attracted the attention of the editors of John O’London’s Weekly. Her first collection of verse, Outlines, was privately published in 1960 to favourable reviews, selling out within six months. She was a notable translator of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, and edited Like Water, Like Fire – the first anthology of Belarusian poetry translated into a western European language. She founded Manifold, a “magazine of new poetry” in 1962. Her other poetry collections, which often include her translations as well as her own work, include: Portents and Images; The images swarm free; and Poems on Liberty. Vera Rich died at age 73 in December 2009.
VISA APPLICATION circa 1936
by Vera Rich
The Nazi form read: "State your race!"
So Tolkein with a smiling face
(Being a bold man and a true man!)
In neat block capitals wrote "HUMAN"
“VISA APPLICATION circa 1936” © 2009 by Vera Rich, appeared online at All Poetry in November 2009
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1943 – Maureen Scott Harris born in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada, but grew up in Winnipeg; Canadian poet. She has a BA and a Library Degree from the University of Toronto, and worked until 1993 as a rare books cataloguer and in other capacities at the University of Toronto Library. She has since been an author, editor, reviewer, freelancer; and has worked in a bookstore, and as a manager at Brick Books, one of the few poetry-only publishers. In 2005 she won the Trillium Book Award for poetry for Drowning Lessons. In 2009, Scott Harris was the first non-Australian awarded the WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. Her poetry collections include: A Possile Landscape; Drowning Lessons; Slow Curve Out; and the bilingual Whispers from the Water / Sussurri dall’acqua.
Visiting My Aunt
by Maureen Scott Harris
Try to remember all of the birds
You've heard but didn't see.
This is called grace.
– Jim Harrison
The forecaster said 80% chance of rain
this morning, but the clouds to the east
have thinned, revealing the sky pale blue.
On a rooftop two houses away a starling
perches facing south and flaps its wings
in a burst of applause, then stretches tip-toe
and flies. Mid-morning lull — no scramble
at the feeder, wind on a moment's
holiday, the prayer flags next door pause.
Now the lawn mower has stopped. Mutter
of voices outside, cars shushing by, flip
of pages as my aunt reads. A rattling call
rises from the apple tree's small leaves,
a warble falls from high in the firs.
The invisible bird I've been listening to
for days, its four-note piping unfamiliar,
sings somewhere across the street.
The morning is going on in the fridge too.
One day slides into another, sunshine
dissolving clouds which reassemble
overnight, and a whole week has drifted
past in birdsong and silences. Like
the tide going out, then coming in again.
“Visiting My Aunt” from Slow Curve Out, © 2012 by Maureen Scott Harris – Pedlar Press
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April 25
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1873 – Walter de la Mare born in Kent, in southern England, prolific English poet, and fiction author, the son of a Bank of England official. His mother was related to Robert Browning. Educated in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir School, he worked for Anglo-American Oil Company (1890-1908) in London as a statistic clerk. His first published story Kismet appeared in 1895 under a pen name. In 1908, he was awarded a yearly government pension of £100, and devoted himself entirely to writing He won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for children’s books, and published 13 collections of poetry. He died at age 83 in June 1956.
Things
by Walter de la Mare
Things are the mind’s mute looking-glass —
That vase of flowers, this work-box here,
When false love flattered me, alas,
Glowed with a beauty crystal clear.
Now they are hostile. The tulip’s glow
Burns with the mockery of despair;
And when I open the box, I know
What kind of self awaits me there.
‘Things’ from Four Poems by Walter de la Mare, Poetry Magazine, August, 1940
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1939 – Ted Kooser born in Ames, Iowa. He worked for insurance companies for over 35 years, writing seven books of poetry in his spare time. U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (2004-2006). He used his time as laureate to further the cause of poetry with American readers. Partnering with the Poetry Foundation, he began the “American Life in Poetry” program, which offers a free weekly poem to newspapers across the United States, aiming to raise the visibility of poetry. He has been honored with four Pushcart Prizes, and the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Delights & Shadows.
Depression Glass
by Ted Kooser
It seemed those rose-pink dishes
she kept for special company
were always cold, brought down
from the shelf in jingling stacks,
the plates like the panes of ice
she broke from the water bucket
winter mornings, the flaring cups
like tulips that opened too early
and got bitten by frost. They chilled
the coffee no matter how quickly
you drank, while a heavy
everyday mug would have kept
a splash hot for the better
part of a conversation. It was hard
to hold up your end of the gossip
with your coffee cold, but it was
a special occasion, just the same,
to sit at her kitchen table
and sip the bitter percolation
of the past week’s rumors from cups
it had taken a year to collect
at the grocery, with one piece free
for each five pounds of flour.
‘Depression Glass’ from Delights and Shadows, © 2004 by Ted Kooser, Copper Canyon Press
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April 26
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1946 – Marilyn Nelson born in Cleveland, Ohio, into a military family, and spent most of her childhood on a series of military bases – her father was one of the Tuskegee Airmen; American poet, translator, educator, and children’s author. She earned a PhD from the University of Minnesota, and is now professor emerita at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. She was also Poet Laureate of Connecticut (2001-2006). In 2004, Nelson founded the Soul Mountain Retreat for writers. She won the 1992 Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction for The Homeplace; the 2001 Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for Carver: a Life in Poems; the 2012 Poetry Society of America’s Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement;and the 2019 Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for her body of work. Nelson is also a three-time finalist for the National Book Award for The Homeplace, The Fields of Praise, and Carver: A Life in Poems.
Conductor
Nancy Morris, widow, ca. 1838
by Marilyn Nelson
When did my knees learn how to forecast rain,
and my hairbrush start yielding silver curls?
Of late, a short walk makes me short of breath,
and every day begins and ends with pain.
Just yesterday I was raising my girls;
now I’m alone, and making friends with death.
So let the railroad stop at my back door
for a hot meal. What do I have to lose?
The Lord has counted the hairs on my head
and made a little space under my floor.
All I ask of life is to be of use.
There’ll be time to be careful when I’m dead.
Birth is a one-way ticket to the grave:
I’ve learned that much slowly, over the years,
watching my body age. Time is a thief,
and what we give away is all we can save.
So bring on the runaways! I know no fear.
Let life have meaning, if it must be brief.
“Conductor” © 2015 by Marilyn Nelson – Namelos Editions
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1966 – Natasha Trethewey born in Gulfport, Mississippi, American poet and academic. She came to national attention in 1999, when her poetry collection, Domestic Work, won the inaugural Cave Canem Prize, an award for the best first collection of poems by an African American poet. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Native Guard. She was the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (2012-2014). Her many honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Miscegenation
by Natasha Trethewey
In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.
They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name
begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi.
A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the same
as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi.
Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name
for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi.
My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.
I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi.
When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year—you’re the same
age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi.
I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name—
though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.
“Miscegenation” from Native Guard, © 2007 by Natasha Trethewey, Houghton Mifflin
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
I’ll be back next week, but my Friday 4-25
is in the Queue, so carry on without me.
🙋♀️
[END]
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