for Phyllis
in the long darkness
she makes lanterns of poems
guides us one light at a time
Posts Tagged ‘ars poetica’
One Heroic
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, friendship, phyllis k, poem, poetry on April 4, 2019| 2 Comments »
Emily in Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, emily dickinson, love, maria popova, poem, poetry on March 6, 2019| 2 Comments »
We are the only poets, and everyone else is prose.
—Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Susan Gilbert
It is perhaps an inner drum,
the meter of the soul
that sometimes finds a resonance
inside another’s halls—
an inner song, an inner scheme
that rhymes with someone else’s,
a dream that scans like heartbeats
inside the other’s pulse.
Yes in this world of counterfeit,
such thrill to find a poem
that redefines Circumference—
and curious, leads us home.
for more on the love letters and life-changing love of Emily Dickinson, read the fabulous Brain Pickings by Maria Popova,
https://mailchi.mp/brainpickings/emily-dickinson-love-letters?e=ea2d3e439a
One in Deep December
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, dark, poem, poetry, solstice on December 18, 2018| 3 Comments »
the night asked me
to read its poetry, all that ink
scrawled across the world—
reading late without the light,
I, too, become page, poem
While Stopped at the Intersection, I Consider
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, escape, poem, poetry, reality on December 4, 2018| Leave a Comment »
and we will go
to the haiku cottage
in the mountains
where there are no roads
and there are no pens
and there we let ourselves
be written, the seasons
will shape our syllables,
the moon shall be
our cutting word,
and every time we think
we know what line comes next
we will thrill at how new
the world can be, sliding,
escaping, unswirling,
and calling follow me,
bring only wonder,
follow me
One Impasse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, paradox, poem, poetry, vulnerability, writing on September 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Anna Akhmatova Remembers Paris, 1911
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anna akhmatova, ars poetica, love, modigliani, poem, poetry on April 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »
When I met Amadeo Modigliani,
I knew of hunger
what did I know of love?
I was in Paris. On my honeymoon.
As my new husband met with other women
i met with Amadeo, an impoverished Italian Jew.
His paintings not yet famous.
We would walk Parisian streets
in the warm summer rain
and snuggle under his black umbrella
and recite by heart poems from Verlaine together.
He begged me, don’t go back to Russia.
Russia? I said, where is that? It’s Russiya.
Don’t go back to Russiya, Anna.
I did.
That winter he wrote me in Petrograd:
Vous êtes en moi comme une hantise;
You are obsessively part of me.
I knew it was true,
that he was more myself
than my own familiar hands.
Back in Petrograd,
I would touch my lips in the mirror
and say my own name
and believe my voice was his.
I think of Lot’s wife.
How they told her not to turn,
to not look at Sodom, her home
even as it was being destroyed
but how could she not
turn to the green fields where she had sung,
turn to the bed where her children
were made, turn to the place
of her blood?
When I turned back to Paris
because his love felt like home
even though i knew it would be destroyed,
I was not transformed into salt
but into chalk, black chalk, his chalk on paper.
I did not know then
how that I would come
to treasure his vision,
how I would tape his drawing
on the wall in every house
i ever lived in so I could live again
between those lines in a time
of wild honey, scent of beeswax candles,
his amber eyes.
Amedeo always drew me naked
in long spare lines—
Always from memory when he was alone.
With me, his hands
were too busy for chalk.
He’d slip off my dress,
and in my breast,
he’d visit my beloved Russian steppes,
in my waist, he buried himself
in Siberian snow,
and between my thighs,
he was baptized again and again
in the floodwaters of the Neva River.
They’d not yet made
a corset that will fit me—
how could it when I
am all of Russia?
Oh I loved him. Wrote him poems.
Left red roses strewn on his studio floor.
How airy the light was then.
How I loved being what they would later call me,
polovina monakhini, half nun,
polovina shlyukha, half whore.
Damn Thirsty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, darjeeling, poem, poetry, tea, thirst on December 7, 2017| 2 Comments »
Scent of Darjeeling
escapes through
the poem’s cup—
from miles away
you smell it,
twist of citrus,
muscatel—
try telling your thirst
it’s just words,
the delicate
flowering in the air,
the warmth
of the cup,
the fruit
making merry
on your tongue.
One Because
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, poem, poetry on November 28, 2016| 1 Comment »
Sometimes
nothing
happens
still we arrive
to be wrestled
by a poem
sometimes
what emerges
has wings.
Glacier Lake, Unruled
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, glacier lake, poem, poetry, skinny dipping on October 27, 2016| 3 Comments »
I could tell you it doesn’t hurt, but
that’s a lie. Still, I choose
to dive into what’s frozen,
entering the cold with no armor.
Naked and alone. I could tell you
I want you to join me,
and that is partially true.
After the shock, the shudder,
the clench, we can stretch
our limbs on a warm flat rock
and let the sun write its blushing graffiti
across our skin.
It is not our toughness
that will save us here, but
our curiosity.
Let us not come for answers,
and if we find some, let’s not
fill our pockets. Let’s toss them
like stones into the lake,
and let’s not dive in after them
no matter how strong we are,
no matter how deep
the water, no matter
how clear.
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