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Morning Open Thread: Last Night I Saw Orion Rise [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-01
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Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
— Mary Oliver, American poet,
1984 Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive,
1992 National Book Award for New and Selected Poems
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“So let the world go, but hold fast to joy.”
― May Sarton,
Belgium-born American writer and poet –
1985 American Book Award for At Seventy
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13 poets born at August’s end
and September’s beginning,
a time of transition,
of slow deep thoughts
and longer nights
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August 31
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1811 – Theophile Gautier born in Tarbes, France; French art critic, journalist, novelist, and transitional poet from Romanticism to early Modernism. Known for his poetry collections Albertus, España, and Émaux et Camées (Enamels and Cameos). Gautier was an editor of L’Artiste, a weekly review of the arts in Paris.
Smoke
by Théophile Gautier
Over there, trees are sheltering
A hunchedback hut… A slum, no more…
Roof askew, walls and wainscoting
Falling away… Moss hides the door.
Only one shutter, hanging . . . But
Seeping over the windowsill,
Like frosted breath, proof that this hut,
This slum, is living, breathing still.
Corkscrew of smoke… A wisp of blue
Escapes the hovel, whose soul it is . . .
Rises to God himself, and who
Receives the news and makes it his.
“Smoke” from Selected Lyrics, translated by Norman R. Shapiro – © 2011 by Norman R. Shapiro – Yale University Press
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1919 – Amrita Pritam born as Amrita Kaur in Gujranwala, British India; Indian novelist, essayist, and poet, who wrote in Punjabi and Hindi. Her career spanned over six decades, and she produced more than 100 books of poetry, fiction, biographies, essays, a collection of Punjabi folk songs, and an autobiography that were all translated into several Indian and foreign languages. Her mother died when she was eleven, and she was married at age sixteen. In 1947, a million people – Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims – died during the violence that followed the partition of India. Pritam became a Punjabi refugee, leaving Lahore and moving to New Delhi. Her work is much admired in both India and Pakistan. In 1956, she became the first woman to win the Sahitya Akademi Award for her long poem, Sunehade (Messages). After her divorce in 1960, her work became more feminist. Many of her stories and poems drew on the unhappy experience of her marriage. She worked for All India Radio, and edited Nagmani, a monthly Punjabi literary magazine. For the last forty years of her life, she lived with artist and writer Imroz. He designed most of her book covers and made her the subject of several paintings. Pritam died in her sleep, after a long illness, in October, 2005.
Street Dog
by Amrita Pritam
It's really something from the past—
when you and I split up
without any regrets—
just one thing that I don't quite understand . . .
When we were saying our farewells
and our house was up for sale
the empty pots and pans strewn across the courtyard—
perhaps they were gazing into our eyes
and others that were upside down—
perhaps they were hiding their faces from us.
A faded vine over the door,
perhaps it was confiding something to us
—or grumbling to the faucet.
Things such as these
never cross my mind;
just one thing comes to mind again and again—
how a street dog—
catching the scent
wandered into a bare room
and the door slammed shut behind him.
After three days—
when the house changed hands
we swapped keys for hard cash
delivered every one of the locks to the new owner
showed him one room after the other—
we found that dog's carcass in the middle of a room . . .
Not once had I heard him bark
—I had smelled only his foul odor
and even now, all of a sudden, I smell that odor—
it gets to me from so many things . . .
translation by R. Parthasarathy
“Street Dog” by Amrita Pritam appeared in Poetry magazine’s September 2007 issue
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1947 – Billy Marshall Stoneking born as William Randolph Marshall in Orlando, Florida Considered an American-Australian poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and teacher. Born into a military family, he spent his early years on U.S. military bases, but the family settled Northern California after his father retired in 1961. He graduated from Cal State University/Sacramento in 1970, with a major in English, and minors in philosophy and education In 1972, he immigrated to Australia. In 1983, after over decade in Australia, teaching high school, except for four years he spent living with tribal Aboriginal people, Stoneking graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney, specializing in screenwriting. His poetry collections include Ear Ink and Singing the Snake: Poems from the Western Desert.
I Have Poems
by Billy Marshall Stoneking
I have poems that would rather sleep
with women than be written down,
that stumble round in unmade rooms,
unwashed & unafraid —
poems in search of tongues that have
no answers to the world’s problems and
don’t pretend to, that have no tips about
what to do in Fukushima
other than dance the night away —
poems with scars that desire
touch, having spent themselves
in the company of the deaf,
craving love & death with equal breaths,
between a gasping nakedness that
knows its place and the price you pay
for loving much and too unwisely.
I have poems that left home years ago
without so much as a phone call or fax,
huddled in the eternity of a Tuscan train,
watching, unnoticed, as the visiting soloist
practices Brahms, dreaming as the carriage rocks,
her fingers dancing on the fret-less case.
“I Have Poems” © 2013 by Billy Marshall Stoneking
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September 1
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1882 – Sara Bard Field born in Cincinnati, Ohio; American writer, poet, suffragist, newspaper reporter, free love advocate, and Christian Socialist. Her family moved to Detroit in 1885. In 1900, right out of high school, she married Reverend Albert Ehrgott, a man twice her age, and they went to Rangoon, Burma. She divorced him in 1914. After working with Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, Field drove from California to Washington, D.C., to present to President Woodrow Wilson a petition containing 500,000 signatures demanding a federal suffrage amendment. She began living with lawyer and poet Charles Erskine Scott Wood in San Francisco after 1918. His wife refused to grant him a divorce. In 1923, she and Wood established their estate “The Cats” in Los Gatos, California, and were part of a wide circle of notable artists and writers, whom they often entertained in their home. Following the death of his wife, Wood and Field married in 1938. Wood died in 1944 and in 1955, Field moved near her daughter in Berkeley. Sara Bard Field died at age 91 from heart disease in June 1974.
Successful Pessimist
by Sara Bard Field
He makes a monument from clay
He urges men to throw away.
He knots a strangle-net of words
To catch and silence singing birds.
But he flies free and he grows strong
On word that stilled their wing and song.
Succor, indeed, he gives a host
And pity—but his own heart most.
His deepest need becomes a fear
Disguised by ribaldry and sneer—
So he with woman rudely fights,
Envying her higher flights.
“Successful Pessimist” from The Pale Woman, by Sara Bard Field, © 1927 by William Edwin Rudge, Publisher
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1888 – Clement Wood born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and grew up in Birmingham; American writer, lawyer, poet, short story writer, novelist, biographer, and author of books on history and about games. He was also a political activist. Wood graduated from the University of Alabama in 1909, and earned a law degree from Yale in 1911. As a member of the Socialist Party of America he ran for mayor of Birmingham in 1913, and was endorsed by the Birmingham Labor Advocate and Birmingham Trades Council. He lost. Wood was also a member and lecturer of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism. In 1914, he moved to New York City, and was briefly Upton Sinclair’s secretary. Though best known for his poetry, Wood also wrote pulp fiction, and his story “The Coffin” was included in The Best Short Stories of 1922. His work often appeared in magazines. His poetry collections include Glad of Earth and The Eagle Sonnets. Clement Moore suffered a stroke, and died at age 68 in October 1950.
Wide Haven
by Clement Wood
Tired of man’s futile, petty cry,
Of lips that lie and flout,
I saw the slow sun dim and die
And the slim dusk slip out . . .
Life held no room for doubt.
What though Death claim the ones I prize
In War’s insane crusade,
Last night I saw Orion rise
And the great day-star fade,
And I am not dismayed.
“Wide Haven” from Glad of Earth by Clement Wood, originally published in 1917 by Laurence James Gomme publishing
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September 2
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1925 – Marcela Delpastre born in Germont, near Chamberet, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France, to a farming family; prolific Occitan and French language writer, poet, and collector of fairy tales and folk songs. She studied philosophy, literature, and the decorative arts in Limoges, but returned home in 1945 to run the family farm. A witness to the profound upheavals of the post-WWII era, she chose to write about the land and the language of her people, and her profound connection with nature. She died at age 72 in February 1998.
Along the Path
by Marcela Delpastre
Where do they go, those who leave?
The poor bird, the dog, the woman —
And you who speaks so much, where will you go?
They're not leaving at all!
They remain here, not moving, not stirring, neither foot nor sole.
And the time that elapses —
The time that doesn't need them —
The time that doesn't wait —
The time that leaves from here to the morrow and then never comes back.
And you too will walk in there, along the quiet path.
And you sure will walk in there, in the deep silence of enduring eternity.
“Along the Path” from The Blood of the Stone, by Marcela Delpastre, translation © 2016 by Pierre Joris and Nicole Peyrafitte – Mindmade Books
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1934 – Jack Agüeros born in East Harlem NY to parents who moved to New York from Puerto Rico; American poet, community activist, writer, translator, and museum director. After graduating from high school in 1952, he joined the U.S. Air Force, became a guided missile instructor, then went to Brooklyn College on the G.I. Bill. He was studying to be an engineer, but his English professor inspired him to write plays and poems, and he graduated with a BA in English literature and a minor in speech and drama. In the 1960s, he worked for a settlement house, then the Johnson administration’s Office of Economic Opportunity. He then became deputy director of the Puerto Rican Community Development Project. In 1968, he was appointed deputy commissioner of NYC’s Community Development Agency, the highest-ranking Puerto Rican in the city’s administration, and staged a hunger strike to protest the lack of Puerto Ricans in city government. By 1970, he was director of Mobilization For Youth in the Lower East Side. Agüeros never stopped writing, and his one-act play, They Can’t Even Read Spanish, was produced on WNBC TV in May 1971. He wrote a script for Sesame Street’s 71-72 season. In 1974, two of his poems were included in Borinquen, an anthology of Puerto Rican literature. He became the director (1977-1986) of El Museo del Barrio, and started the museum’s annual Three Kings Day Parade on January 6 to celebrate the Epiphany. His three poetry collections are: Correspondence Between Stonehaulers; Sonnets from the Puerto Rican; and Lord, Is This a Psalm? Jack Agüeros was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in December 2004, and died from related complications at age 79 in May 2014.
Sonnet Substantially Like The Words Of F Rodriguez One Position Ahead Of Me On The Unemployment Line
By Jack Agüeros
It happens to me all the time--business
Goes up and down but I'm the yo-yo spun
Into the high speed trick called sleeping
Such as I am fast standing in this line now.
Maybe I am also a top; they too sleep
While standing, tightly twirling in place.
I wish I could step out and listen for
The sort of music that I must make.
But this is where the state celebrates its sport.
From cushioned chairs the agents turn your ample
Time against you through a box of lines.
Your string is both your leash and lash.
The faster you spin, the stiller you look.
There's something to learn in that, but what?
“Sonnet Substantially Like The Words Of F Rodriguez One Position Ahead Of Me On The Unemployment Line” from Sonnets from the Puerto Rican, © 1996 by Jack Agüeros – Hanging Loose Press
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September 3
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1907 – Loren Eiseley born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to a father struggling to support his family, and a deaf mother. Eiseley’s college years were interrupted by tuberculosis. He became an American anthropologist, academic, prolific natural science writer, essayist, and poet ; noted for his science and philosophy books, including The Immense Journey; Darwin’s Century; The Mind as Nature; The Star Thrower; and The Unexpected Universe; for his memoir All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life; and for his poetry collections Notes of an Alchemist; The Innocent Assassins; Another Kind of Autumn; and All the Night Wings. He died at age 69 of cardiac arrest after surgery in 1977.
Never Like Deer
by Loren Eiseley
Apples will fall again upon this place,
In the deep smother of the windy grass
Loose the wild scent that none can ever trace
Save the few deer to westward in the pass.
They will come down, come stepping softly down
From the steep hollows where acorns lie;
No single twig will squeak, a shadow down
The last cold star of morning in the sky.
Yet suddenly they will be there. They feed
In the first light before the light of day
And go as quick. Love’s windfall does not need
More time to father nor to go away.
But clumsy in departures men are gone
Never like deer across the edge of dawn.
“Never Like Deer” appeared in the Prairie Schooner Winter 1941 edition – © 1941 by Loren Eiseley
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September 4
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1908 – Richard Wright born in Roxie, in rural Mississippi; African American novelist and poet known for Native Son, The Outsider, and his memoir Black Boy. His writings exposed American racism and its harsh effects. At age 19, he moved to Chicago, and worked as a postal clerk, but lost his job after the stock market crash, and had to go on relief. In 1932, he started going to meetings of the John Reed Club, a Marxist literary group, and wrote revolutionary poetry, which appeared in leftist periodicals like New Masses. He was part of the Federal Writers’ Project. In 1933, Wright founded the South Side Writers Group, whose members included Arna Bontemps and Margaret Walker, and became editor of Left Front, a literary magazine. He was writing short stories and finished a novel, but it was rejected by publishers. His novel Native Son was published in 1940, and was an immediate best-seller. It made Wright the wealthiest Black writer of his time, and the “father of Black American literature.” It is still one of the most frequently challenged books on public school reading lists, but is also on many lists of the most influential novels of the 20th century. In 1946, he moved to Paris, and became a French citizen in 1947. He died of a heart attack in November 1960 at age 52.
Haiku 21
On winter mornings
The candle shows faint markings
Of the teeth of rats.
Haiku 30
A bloody knife blade
Is being licked by a cat
At hog-killing time.
Both poems by Richard Wright are from Haiku: The Last Poems of an American Icon © 2012 by Ellen Wright – Arcade Publishing
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1980 – Elyse Fenton born in Brookline, Massachusetts: American poet who won the 2010 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize and the 2008 Pablo Neruda Award from the Nimrod International Literary Journal. She has published poetry and nonfiction in The New York Times, Best New Poets, and The Massachusetts Review. Fenton received her M.F.A. from the University of Oregon and has worked in the woods, on farms, and in the schools in New Hampshire, Texas, and the Pacific Northwest. Her first poetry collection, Clamor, written in part while her husband was deployed as a medic in Bagdad, won the 2009 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize Selected by D. A. Powell. Her other poetry collection is Sweet Insurgent, and her poems appear in the anthology Home Front.
After the Blast
by Elyse Fenton
It happened again just now, one word
snagging like fabric on a barbed fence.
Concertina wire. You said: I didn't see the body
hung on concertina wire. This was after the blast.
After you had stood in the divot, both feet
in the dust's new mouth and found no one alive.
Just out of the shower, I imagine
a flake of soap crusting your dark jaw, the phone
cradled like a hand on your bare cheek.
I should say: love. I should say: go on.
But I'm stuck on concertina—
the accordion's deep inner coils, bellows,
lungful of air contracting like a body caught
in the agony of climax.
Graceless, before the ballooning rush
of air or sound. The battering release.
“After the Blast” from Clamor, © 2010 by Elyse Fenton – Cleveland State Poetry Center
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September 5
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1950 – Frances Chung born in New York City’s Chinatown; American poet and teacher. She earned an MS in mathematics from Smith College, then spent two years in the Peace Corps in Central and South America. She next taught math in New York Public Schools. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and while in surgery, she was injected with antibodies to which she had an allergic reaction, and died at age 40 in December 1990. Her only published work is a two-part collection of her prose and poetry, Crazy Melon & Chinese Apple: The Poems of Frances Chung, published in 2000.
Page 65 / Riding the subway is an adventure
by Frances Chung
Riding the subway is an adventure
especially if you cannot read the signs.
One gets lost. One becomes anxious and
does not know whether to get off when
the other Chinese person in your car
does. (Your crazy logic tells you that
the both of you must be headed for the
same stop.) One woman has discovered the
secret of one-to-one correspondence.
She keeps the right amount of pennies
in one pocket and upon arriving in each
new station along the way she shifts one
penny to her other pocket. When all the
pennies in the first pocket have disappeared,
she knows that she is home.
“Page 65/Riding the subway is an adventure” from Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple, © 2000 by The Estate of Frances Chung – Wesleyan University Press
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September 6
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1953 – Belinda Subraman born in Wilkesboro, North Carolina; American poet, writer, publisher, political activist, and registered nurse. American poet, writer, publisher, political activist, and registered nurse. She worked as a hospice nurse (2001-2007) in El Paso, Texas, which inspired her collection Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights. While living in Germany in the 1980s, she started Gypsy Literary Magazine and the Sanctuary Tapes series of the writings and vocal performances of an international array of poets. She traveled extensively, and by marriage, became part of an East Indian family for 22 years. She was on the Texas Green Party State Executive Committee from 2001-2003 and served as the El Paso County Green Party Co-chair (2000-2004). Currently she is politically independent and only works with peace groups. Her solo poetry collections include Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights and Left Hand Dharma. She also published The Innocents, in collaboration with Lyn Lifshin and David Transue.
Wayward Wind
by Belinda Subraman
My patient, Paul, wrote in a poem
that he belongs to the wayward wind,
a restless breed,
a strange and hardy class.
I’ve been with him for two years
and now he is dying.
“Are you in pain, Paul?” I ask.
“I AM pain,” he said.
But he is refusing medication
although his cancer has spread
from his kidneys to his lungs, brain and bones.
Somehow bearing this pain to the grave
is his last act of defiance/bravery/repentance.
My hands are tied.
My job now is to protect his choice
and later as promised
to collect his ashes,
read his poems in my garden
then set him free in the wind
where he belongs.
“Wayward Wind” from Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights, © 2012 by Belinda Subraman – Unlikely Books
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197? – Christine Rhein was born in Detroit, Michigan to German immigrants; American poet, writer, teacher, and speaker; a former mechanical engineer in the automotive industry. Her father was one of the German children who escaped to America during World War II, and he taught her to speak fluent German. Her poems have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review. Her collection, Wild Flight, published in 2009, won the Walt McDonald First Book Prize in Poetry. Asked what she believed in, Rhein replied, “the pulse/ of algebra, all those x’s busy intersecting / all those y’s, points aligned” then added, “the tangle of science and poetry.”
In Detroit, What Counts as Grace
by Christine Rhein
Trees growing from the roofs
of empty factories and houses,
birds nesting deep inside.
Children at their desks
without breakfast, busy adding
and subtracting, the lunch bell
not ringing until 12:45.
The teacher, mid-morning,
with snack mix from home,
pouring a little extra
into the shyest cupped hands.
The men who stand and fish,
casting lines into the river,
office towers soaring at their backs.
New farmers, in their agri-hoods,
watering and weeding, growing
peas, beans, Motor City Kale,
making Wild Detroit Honey.
The cooks who serve up
Coney Dogs, burritos,
shawarma—even at 3 a.m.—
singing out the orders.
And the woman at Cass and Forest
dancing by her boom box
every afternoon, her feet
sliding on the sidewalk,
trailing through the snow.
“In Detroit, What Counts as Grace” appeared in the December 2017 issue of Rattle, a quarterly poetry magazine, which is also has a blog online
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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[END]
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