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Posts tagged “poetry”

Some Days, by Billy Collins

td Whittle

Posted on February 3, 2015

Artist: Laurie Simmons, from the Disturbing Innocence group show at FLAG Art Foundation. Curated by Eric Fischl. Oct 25, 2014 - Jan 31, 2015.

 

Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs, 
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next 
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds, 
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face? 
“Some Days” from Picnic, Lightning, by Billy Collins, © 1998, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. The image above is of a work by Laurie Simmons, from the Disturbing Innocence group show at FLAG Art Foundation. Curated by Eric Fischl. Oct 25, 2014 - Jan 31, 2015.

Our two souls therefore, which are one

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on July 15, 2014

dried roses, book, and scarf

 

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

by John Donne

 

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

 

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

 

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

 

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

 

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

 

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

 

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

 

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

 

 

 

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on February 17, 2014

 

red chair

 

The bud

stands for all things,

even those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing it’s loveliness, 

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing

 

~from Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

 

 

 

*****

 

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

 

and hope’s a reptile waiting for the sun

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on February 5, 2014

In Hiding

Lui et Elle

O Mistress, Mistress,

Reptile Mistress,

Your eye is very dark, very bright,

And it never softens

Although you watch.

 

~from Lui et Elle by D. H. Lawrence

 

 

February

The cold grows colder, even as the days

grow longer, February’s mercury vapor light

buffing but not defrosting the bone-white

ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot.

This is the time of year that’s apt to put

a hammerlock on a healthy appetite,

old anxieties back into the night,

insomnia and nightmares into play;

when things in need of doing go undone

and things that can’t be undone come to call,

muttering recriminations at the door,

and buried ambitions rise up through the floor

and pin your wriggling shoulders to the wall;

and hope’s a reptile waiting for the sun.

 

~from February by Bill Christophersen

 

Source: Poetry (February 2002)

 

 

 

*****

 

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

 

Unmarked

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on January 12, 2014

No Flowers

 

I know flowers to be funeral companions
they make poisons and venoms
and eat abandoned stone walls
I know flowers shine stronger
than the sun
                                     their eclipse means the end of
times
but I love flowers for their treachery
their fragile bodies
grace my imagination’s avenues
without their presence
my mind would be an unmarked
grave.

 

 

~from The Spring Flowers Own by Etel Adnan

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Book Review: Incarnadine: Poems, by Mary Szybist

td Whittle

Posted on December 21, 2013

Incarnadine: Poems by Mary Szybist Publisher: Graywolf Press, Minneapolis 2013 My rating: 5 of 5 stars   This is so beautiful, in so many ways. Szybist is a new favourite poet of mine, now that I have just finished both this book of poems and Granted, her first published collection. These are modern contemplative pieces that are well introduced by the two quotes Sybist has included at the beginning:   The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation. — Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace   Repose had again incarnadined her cheeks. — Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd   How apt those quotes are,…

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But I have premises to keep

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on April 24, 2012

 

Straight rye whiskey, 100 proof

you need a better friend?

Yes. Myself.

The lights

the lights

the lonely lovely fucking lights

and the bridge on a rainy Tuesday night

Blue/green double-stars the line

that is the drive and on the dark alive

gleaming river

Xmas trees of tugs scream and struggle

 

Midnite

 

~from Brooklyn Narcissus by Paul Blackburn

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez

When Even the Mud Chuckles

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on March 22, 2012

 
For Sartori
 
In the spring of joy,
when even the mud chuckles,
my soul runs rabid,
snaps at its own bleeding heels,
and barks: “What is happiness?”
 
~Philip Appleman
 
 
Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Heliodora, by HD

td Whittle

Posted on February 26, 2012

James Pradier (1790-1852), The Three Graces, The Louvre (Photo by Ward Serrill)

Heliodora, by HD (c.1922)

He and I sought together,
over the spattered table,
rhymes and flowers,
gifts for a name.

He said, among others,
I will bring
(and the phrase was just and good,
but not as good as mine)
“the narcissus that loves the rain.”

We strove for a name,
while the light of the lamps burnt thin
and the outer dawn came in,
a ghost, the last at the feast
or the first,
to sit within
with the two that remained
to quibble in flowers and verse
over a girl’s name.

He said, “the rain loving,”
I said, “the narcissus, drunk,
drunk with the rain.”

Beata Beatrix, Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1864-1870), Tate Gallery   

Yet I had lost
for he said,
“the rose, the lover’s gift,
is loved of love,”
he said it,
“loved of love;”
I waited, even as he spoke,
to see the room filled with a light,
as when in winter
the embers catch in a wind
when a room is dank:
so it would be filled, I thought,
our room with a light
when he said
(and he said it first)
“the rose, the lover’s delight,
is loved of love,”
but the light was the same.

Then he caught,
seeing the fire in my eyes,
my fire, my fever, perhaps,
for he leaned
with the purple wine
stained in his sleeve,
and said this:
“Did you ever think
a girl’s mouth
caught in a kiss
is a lily that laughs?”

Venus Verticordia, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1868), Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth

Venus Verticordia, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1868), Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth

I had not.
I saw it now
as men must see it forever afterwards;
no poet could write again,
“the red-lily,
a girl’s laugh caught in a kiss;”
it was his to pour in the vat
from which all poets dip and quaff,
for poets are brothers in this.

So I saw the fire in his eyes,
it was almost my fire
(he was younger)
I saw the face so white;
my heart beat,
it was almost my phrase,
I said, “surprise the muses,
take them by surprise;
it is late,
rather it is dawn-rise,
those ladies sleep, the nine,
our own king’s mistresses.”

A name to rhyme,
flowers to bring to a name,
what was one girl faint and shy,
with eyes like the myrtle
(I said: “her underlids
are rather like myrtle”),
to vie with the nine?

Alessandro Botticelli (1445-1510), La Primavera (detail), Galleria degli Uffizi

Alessandro Botticelli (1445-1510), La Primavera (detail), Galleria degli Uffizi

Let him take the name,
he had the rhymes,
“the rose, loved of love,”
“the lily, a mouth that laughs,”
he had the gift,
“the scented crocus,
the purple hyacinth,”
what was one girl to the nine?

He said:
“I will make her a wreath;”
he said:
“I will write it thus:
‘I will bring you the lily that laughs,
I will twine
with soft narcissus, the myrtle,
sweet crocus, white violet,
the purple hyacinth and, last,
the rose, loved of love,
that these may drip on your hair
the less soft flowers,
may mingle sweet with the sweet
of Heliodora’s locks,
myrrh-curled.'”

(He wrote myrrh-curled,
I think, the first.)

I said:
“they sleep, the nine,”
when he shouted swift and passionate:
“that for the nine!

Eustache Le Sueur; Clio, Euterpe, and Thalia (three muses), c. 1652-1655, The Louvre

Eustache Le Sueur; Clio, Euterpe, and Thalia (three muses), c. 1652-1655, The Louvre

Above the mountains
the sun is about to wake,
and to-day white violets
shine beside white lilies
adrift on the mountain side;
to-day the narcissus opens
that loves the rain.”

I watched him to the door,
catching his robe
as the wine-bowl crashed to the floor,
spilling a few wet lees
(ah, his purple hyacinth!);
I saw him out of the door,
I thought:
there will never be a poet,
in all the centuries after this,
who will dare write,
after my friend’s verse,
“a girl’s mouth
is a lily kissed.”

Auguste Rodin, Eternal Spring, c 1906-1907, The Metropolitian Museum of Art

Auguste Rodin, Eternal Spring, c 1906-1907, The Metropolitian Museum of Art

The Sun Never Says, by Hafiz

td Whittle

Posted on February 19, 2012

Riza-yi `Abbasi (ca. 1565–1635), The Lovers, Persian Date: dated A.H. 1039/ A.D. 1630 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Islamic Collection

Riza-yi `Abbasi (ca. 1565–1635), The Lovers, Persian Date: dated A.H. 1039/ A.D. 1630 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Islamic Collection

 Even after all this time

The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe Me.”

Look what happens with

A love like that,

It lights the whole sky.

– from The Gift

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