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
Posts Tagged ‘ars poetica’
One in Deep December
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, dark, poem, poetry, solstice on December 18, 2018| 3 Comments »
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.
Impossible to Wrap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adagio for strings, ars poetica, Christmas, gift, giving, language, poem, poetry on December 26, 2017| 6 Comments »
I want to give you words,
as if they might do what
the body can’t do—
as if with verb I could
meet the place in you
that most wants to be touched,
as if with noun I could
know the parts of you
that most want to be known.
I want to give you
the most faithful adjective,
the one that cradles you
before you even realize
that you need to be held—
once I heard a song
written by a man
for another man, a song
that swelled, then took
two steps back,
then swelled again, then
took two steps back
before finally rising
to an unsteady ledge
and my heart
beat outside of my body
and my eyes wept
with tears that were mine and not mine,
and I want to give you words
that will find every ache in you
that longs to be soothed,
words that will seek out
each lonely place, that will find
every branch of you—
not like a wind
that is here and gone, no, more like
the bark that gives everything
to protect you,
the bark that grows as you grow
and takes its shape from you.
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.
Into the Poem I Tuck
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, poem, poetry on September 13, 2016| 1 Comment »
a left turn,
a river stone,
straw,
the moon,
an empty frame,
the scent of books,
a wide-brimmed hat,
a question mark,
ripe peach juice, maps
to nowhere,
unfinished songs,
a trunk, blue mornings,
fields of gold,
uncertainty
of what comes next,
the promise
I will try
again.
One Unfathomable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, love, poem, poetry on September 6, 2016| 1 Comment »
Muse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, cat, muse, poem, poetry on August 18, 2016| 2 Comments »
Muse
It’s like the absence
where the cat used to come
and rub against your leg
and you had some hope
there was real affection,
perhaps she even favored you,
you were, after all,
the one who fed her—
no wonder she nuzzled your shins—
but that was before you tried
to pick her up and rub
her belly. Eager fool.
It was days before the cat
let herself be seen again,
though you set out cream,
though you promised loudly
not to pick her up.
God, just to feel her
rub against your leg.
That would be enough, you
tell yourself, but you
and the cat both know you’ll try
to pick her up again, your hands
desperate as a blank page.
It Was Years Before I Could Say Thank You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, expectation vs. reality, gift, gift horse, poem, poetry on September 21, 2015| 1 Comment »
But you got it all wrong,
I wanted to say to that gift horse.
You brought me what,
stubbornness, devotion and persistence?
What kind of gifts are those?
I wanted to be a poet.
The gift horse reared and ran off,
leaving me with a thousand thousand poems
to read, a pen that will never run out,
and a whole lifetime of blank pages
just waiting to be written.
Dear Reader,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, poem, poetry, reader, why we write on September 18, 2015| 15 Comments »
Thank you for joining me
in this practice. It’s not easy
to write a poem every day.
In fact, it is not easy to write a poem at all.
As one of my heroes, A.R. Ammons once said,
why would anyone sit alone in a room
picking away at their own liver?
It’s not always easy to read poems, either.
But you do. Thank you.
Part of me would like to tell you
that I write every day because I can’t help it,
because I am driven to do it.
That sounds romantic and chosen.
The reality is much more practical.
It would be so easy to stop writing.
The reason I write every day
is so that I keep writing.
And the reason to write at all
is that it invites me to unlearn
whatever I think I know, to be curious
and look for connections
and remember to be more present.
And, though it sounds dramatic,
poetry has saved my life.
When I sit down to write a poem,
I make myself four promises.
One: I will write. Two:
I will write something true
(that does not mean factual).
Three: I will not know the ending
before I begin. Four:
I will send it to you.
Why do I send it to you?
Accountability. And because
at some point you invited me to.
And because when I share a poem with you,
I feel as if we enter together
into this big conversation
that has been going on between poets
and readers across continents and centuries
and cultures and languages, an ongoing
conversation about what it means to be alive.
Though we may not know each other,
I trust that we, like all humans,
are more alike than different,
and I believe that you, like me,
both long for and rail against connection.
As if we had a choice. As if we aren’t
already deeply connected
in ways that poetry suggests and physics
proves.
Though I write every day, I would never
consider what I’m doing an exercise,
though perhaps it’s making me stronger.
It’s a practice that I know I will never get right.
I am always too much in the way,
but that doesn’t stop me from trying again
the next day.
If I lived alone on an island with no computer,
no paper, no pen, I’d like to think I would still
be composing poems, perhaps in sand, perhaps
just in my head. I love the art of it, the way words
can sing when strung together just so.
But it wouldn’t be as much fun as sharing them,
which is why I am writing to thank you.
Sincerely,
r
Block: The Reality TV Show for Housewives Who Want to Feel Productive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, poem, poetry, reality tv, writer's block on January 10, 2015| 4 Comments »
She is still sitting there at the green counter top.
Her white screen is still blank. In the last 14 minutes,
I’ve seen her type and delete a few words at least nine times.
I don’t think she has ever ironed that dress she is wearing.
Oh! Look! She got up and walked to the fridge. Got out
the eggnog. Ah, and the Southern Comfort. Swirling them
together in a glass. Gosh, her shelves sure are a mess.
Oh, some nutmeg on top. Nice touch.
Must be stiff, that drink. She winced a little before she smiled.
Okay, and she’s back to sitting down at her blank screen.
Twisting her hair. Nope. Chin in her hands.
Poor thing. I’ve gotten all my laundry folded, my dishes done,
my shelves organized and my windows washed
and all she’s managed to do is delete and get a drink.
Wait, is she typing? Yes. A couple lines, a stanza break,
and she’s going into the next couple lines, no, no,
her right pinkie finger is going for the delete button again …
and she’s up. Looking for something in the cupboard.
Potato chips. The kind with ridges. Is she really going to eat
that whole bowl? She didn’t even look at the nutrition panel
to see how many calories and how much sodium there might be
in those, what, five servings? And she’s about to sit, wait, no, that’s it?
The show is over? Some eggnog, some chips and a whole
lotta blank? Dang, I can’t wait to tune in tomorrow.
Despite all the Right Conditions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, inspiration, poem, poetry, writer's block on June 16, 2013| 4 Comments »
Some days we can’t find
the poem, at least not
the one we want to write,
the one about purple wisteria,
for instance, or the one
in which the raven appears
a sign that magic is present. Instead
the poem waits to be found
on the back of a paint sample card
or it’s cracked inside a blue glass ball.
You can glimpse it, there!
and it’s beautiful, dewy, but when
you find the pen, the poem
is as missing as the tin man’s heart.
Each time you get close,
it dives into the swimming pool,
though there is no diving allowed.
It tells you there is no happy hour
on Saturdays. It invites you to a dance party,
only you don’t have a car and it is much
too far away to walk.
For a moment, the poem was
a red tailed hawk, but the circles
it made were too high to read.
For a moment, the poem
pulled like turquoise wool
through your fingers, but then
every turquoise stitch you knit
uncounted itself and unraveled.
It is hard not to think it’s something
you’ve done. It is hard not to think
you’ve let yourself down, or even worse,
that you’ve let down the poem.
I’m here, you say, to the air, to the hawk,
to the purple wisteria blooms.
I’m here, you say to the raven, the road runner,
the blue, blue glass of the blue glass ball.
But you’re too in the way, and the more you try
the more it’s like trying to catch a cat that knows
you want to clip its claws.
And the poem slips out of the dragonfly wings
you found on the path this morning,
and it steals the silver from the nightshade leaves
beside the Rio Grande, and it walks out of the room without you.
Even it doesn’t know where it is going.
Cutting Through the Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, crow, god, poem, poetry, silence on November 4, 2012| 7 Comments »
No words so perfect
as the crow.
Although I try.
to verbalize
the changing color
of its eyes,
the widening circles
of its calls,
the syllables
deny me. Only
crows can fly
on wings so black
they’re light. And words,
well I adore
those, too, the wrestling
with, the humbling
by, but moreso
I do love
(oh hush)
the crow.
Dedication
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, audience, poem, voice, women on August 12, 2012| 4 Comments »
I wish you were writing this poem
about those two days you hid in the woods,
partially scalped, your legs broken, your two kids
with you, hiding from the man who promised
to kill you when he came home.
I wish you were writing this poem
about the places you go in your mind
when the men mount you and start
their furious pumping.
I wish you were writing this poem
about the day you knew for sure
that you were not beautiful.
I wish you were writing this poem
about the look on your child’s face
the moment you slapped her
for calling you Bitch. And another
poem about the moment after.
I wish you were writing this poem
to the woman who slept with your husband,
asking her everything you know
you will never understand.
I wish you were writing this poem
about the way the light hit the empty room
just after you packed all your things to leave,
and how in that light for a moment
you thought you could stay,
loving in that moment the room, the potential,
and still you knew you would go.
It would not comfort you, this poem
that you are not writing, would not make
one thing better. Would not fix, not heal,
not redeem nor transform.
But something would happen,
something unnamable and mysterious—
and from that broken, torn,
shredded place, you might create,
surprising yourself, a little more space.
At the Poetry Reading Tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, compassion, poetry reading, scars, shoes, tanka, Valerie Haugen on July 13, 2012| 3 Comments »
for Valerie
implausibly balanced
on strappy bright pink heels,
the poem shows its scars—
I long to touch them gingerly
but they touch me