found poem

In some very old mail, I found a poem. I still like it, reading it after such a long time, so I am posting it here.

Almost Love

Magaly Sanchez, Cuba

(translated by Margaret Randall)

It happens sometimes; a pair of eyes a profile
someone we don't know and see only once
or every afternoon.
Someone we met, it was just like that:
a hand on yours
some hasty words.
But someone who became a part of you
and now there's no seeing that face without paling
without trembling hands
and it's almost love.

Image: jacquesleblanc.net

"Nothing seems different here, / but nothing is the same."

My favorite poet of all time, Wisława Szymborska, died this week. If you don't know her- give her poetry a chance (give her a chance even if you don't like poetry. She'll break your heart and then piece it back together again. I promise).

Here's a heart breaker as well as a eulogy.

"Cat in an Empty Apartment" 

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

Die—you can’t do that to a cat.

Since what can a cat do

in an empty apartment?

Climb the walls?

Rub up against the furniture?

Nothing seems different here,

but nothing is the same.

Nothing has been moved,

but there’s more space.

And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase,

but they’re new ones.

The hand that puts fish on the saucer

has changed, too.

Something doesn’t start

at its usual time.

Something doesn’t happen 

as it should.

Someone was always, always here,

then suddenly disappeared

and stubbornly stays disappeared.

Every closet has been examined.

Every shelf has been explored.

Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.

A commandment was even broken,

papers scattered everywhere.

What remains to be done.

Just sleep and wait.

Just wait till he turns up,

Just let him show his face.

Will he ever get a lesson

on what not to do to a cat.

Sidle toward him

as if unwilling

and ever so slow

on visibly offended paws,

and no leaps or squeals at least to start.

P.S. 

Her best translators are the co-translators Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh and so start with the collection, "View With a Grain of Sand." Seriously.

"When at a Certain Party..."

One of my New Year's resolutions was to read more poetry, but with starting a new job, squeezing a new fat body into old skinny clothes, and having meltdowns over Sweet Pea falling in love with the babysister he has for 8 hours a week and completely forgetting about me - who has time to read? I do, however, have time to watch poetry when it is as awesome as this animated version of Eric Belieu's all too true poem titled "When at a Certain Party in NYC."

When at a Certain Party in NYC from Amy Schmitt on Vimeo.

And here is the poem in print because it's that good that you've got to experience it twice:

When At a Certain Party In NYC
Wherever you’re from sucks,
and wherever you grew up sucks,
and everyone here lives in a converted
chocolate factory or deconsecrated church
without an ugly lamp or souvenir coffee cup
in sight, but only carefully edited objets like
the Lacanian soap dispenser in the kitchen
that looks like an industrial age dildo, and
when you rifle through the bathroom
cabinet looking for a spare tampon, you discover
that even their toothpaste is somehow more
desirable than yours. And later you go
with a world famous critic to eat a plate
of sushi prepared by a world famous chef from
Sweden and the roll is conceived to look like
“a strand of pearls around a white throat,” and is
so confusingly beautiful that it makes itself
impossible to eat. And your friend back home—-
who says the pioneers who first settled
the great asphalt parking lot of our
middle, were not in fact heroic, but really
the chubby ones who lacked the imagination
to go all the way to California—it could be that
she’s on to something. Because, admit it,
when you look at the people on these streets,
the razor-blade women with their strategic bones
and the men wearing Amish pants with
interesting zippers, it’s pretty clear that you
will never cut it anywhere that constitutes
a where, that even ordering a pint of tuna salad in
a deli is an illustrative exercise in self-doubt.
So when you see the dogs on the high-rise elevators
practically tweaking, panting all the way down
from the 19th floor to the 1st, dying to get on
with their long planned business of snuffling
garbage or peeing on something to which all day
they’ve been looking forward, what you want is
to be on the fastest Conestoga home, where the other
losers live and where the tasteless azaleas are,
as we speak, half-heartedly exploding.

Erin Belieu
from 32 Poems, Fall/Winter 2009 via Little Epic Against Oblivion

"the world offers itself to your imagination"

 Just some poetry on this chilly fall day...

"Wild Geese" 

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

{image via wehearit}

"On Discovering a Butterfly"

 

"On Discovering a Butterfly"
by Vladimir Nabokov

I found it and I named it, being versed
in taxonomic Latin; thus became
godfather to an insect and its first
describer – and I want no other fame.

Wide open on its pin (though fast asleep),
and safe from creeping relatives and rust,
in the secluded stronghold where we keep
type specimens it will transcend its dust.

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss,
poems that take a thousand years to die
but ape the immortality of this
red label on a little butterfly.

poem:

“A Discovery” (December 1941); 

published as “On Discovering a Butterfly” in The New Yorker (15 May 1943)

via Kathryn Ciano

 

 

butterflies:

"Hand Crochet Alpaca Butterflies" by Oeuf

And they lived happily ever...ur... oh wait...

No matter what life you lead

the virgin is a lovely number:

cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,

arms and legs made of Limoges,

lips like Vin Du Rhône,

rolling her china-blue doll eyes

open and shut.

Open to say,

Good Day Mama,

and shut for the thrust

of the unicorn.

She is unsoiled.

She is as white as a bonefish.

from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

A friend of mine sent me a link to a photo project, called "Fallen Princesses" by Dina Goldstein because she thought I would love it and she was so right! I love the real looking scenarios, but with these very Disney-esque princesses still all dressed up.

Goldstein writes:

"These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The '...happily ever after' is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues."

I think these images are amazing and I can't wait to see the 2 that she has yet to shoot. And because I can't help but think of Anne Sexton's retellings of classic fairy tales found in her collection, Transformations, I've posted some snippets of the poems for your reading enjoyment.

This one day her mother gave her

a basket of wine and cake

to take to her grandmother

because she was ill.

Wine and cake?

Where's the aspirin? The penicillin?

Where's the fruit juice?

Peter Rabbit got camomile tea.

But wine and cake it was.

from "Red Riding Hood"

I must not sleep
for while I'm asleep I'm ninety

and think I'm dying.

Death rattles in my throat

like a marble.

I wear tubes like earrings.

I lie as still as a bar of iron.

You can stick a needle

through my kneecap and I won't flinch.

I'm all shot up with Novocain.

This trance girl

is yours to do with.

from "Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)"

Cinderella and the prince

lived, they say, happily ever after,

like two dolls in a museum case

never bothered by diapers or dust,

never arguing over the timing of an egg,

never telling the same story twice,

never getting a middle-aged spread,

their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.

Regular Bobbsey Twins.

That story.

from "Cinderella"

Poem in Your Pocket

Though officially celebrated on April 14th, I say celebrate national Poem in Your Pocket Day everyday! The idea is pretty self-explanatory - carry a poem you love with you or share one with those around you. The Academy of American Poets has some handy-dandy poetry books printed on tear-away sheets for just this purpose, but also poem PDFs to print and share.

see full list of poem PDFs here

Right now I wouldn't mind carrying around the poem found under "Moth" in my pocket for a few days. It's one of my favorites.

"Design"
by Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Shel Silverstein's art

Isn't it incredible that - for so many of us - to just look at these images is to remember the poems themselves? I think the impact that Shel Silverstein has made on our minds as children is argument enough to feed our children poetry daily (his poems, yes, but there are plenty of others too).

images via:

learning curve on the ecliptic, changehealthcare.com, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 

American Society of Authors and Writers, Save the Kales, and

Because Shel Silverstein is cooler than Life.

"April Rain Song"

 by soup & sunday (via these are a few of my favourite things...)

The following animated version of the poem, "April Rain Song," read by Langston Hughes and part of the HBO/Poetry Foundation's children's program, "Classical Baby (I'm Grown Up Now): The Poetry Show" makes me very happy:  April Rain Song : Classical Baby : Video.

National Poetry Month

 via poets.org

It's April which means that aside from taxes, Easter, and pollen - this month is all about poetry! Yep, it's "National Poetry Month" and to celebrate we thought we'd do a poetry-themed post every Monday.

Here's the first - a free poster! I know that Ms. Lorelei just blogged that you can get a free poster in honor of "Children's Book Week," but a good idea is a good idea and so... click here to get your own Elizabeth Bishop-inspired poetry poster before they run out.

P.S. Though this year's poster is free, you can buy posters from previous years for only $5 bucks. Sadly, my favorite, the 2005 Emily Dickinson inspired / Chip Kidd designed poster, is sold out. Bummer indeed.

"What the Living Do"

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down 

there.

And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it 

off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

by Marie Howe from What the Living Do

{Stevan Dohanos illustration via ondiraiduveau} 

for my snow buried friends...

Snowy Morning

Wake
gently this morning
to a different day.
Listen.
There is no bray
of buses,
no brake growls,
no siren howls and
no horns
blow.
There is only
the silence
of a city
hushed
by snow.

- Lilian Moore

poem via "The Golden Book of Poems for the Very Young"

image via rags and tatters

magic lantern magic

I know I just mentioned magic lantern slides, but I stumbled on these from the late1890s/early 1900s on a really pretty tumblr blog called "Mothic Flights and Flutterings" and I just had to share. No wonder the French writer Marcel Proust was so fixated on the magic lantern from his childhood... 

"At Combray, as every afternoon ended, long before the time when I should have to go up to bed, and to lie there, unsleeping, far from my mother and grandmother, my bedroom became the fixed point on which my melancholy and anxious thoughts were centred. Some one had had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for dinner-time to come: in the manner of the master-builders and glass-painters of gothic days it substituted for the opaqueness of my walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours, in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory window...."

"...But my sorrows were only increased, because this change of lighting destroyed, as nothing else could have done, the customary impression I had formed of my room, thanks to which the room itself, but for the torture of having to go to bed in it, had become quite endurable. For now I no longer recognised it, and I became uneasy, as though I were in a room in some hotel or furnished lodging, in a place where I had just arrived, by train, for the first time." 

Quoted passage from the Overture of "Swann's Way" (1913) which is the 1st volume of Proust's 7 volume novel. The name of the entire work is  "À la recherche du temps perdu" which is translated as Remembrance of Things Past" or as "In Search of Lost Time." You wanted to know all that, right?

{Larger versions of these slides can be found here or here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.}

How to Be Alone

A video by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis for your viewing pleasure...

Shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia, produced by this Bravo!, found here.

poem from "Still Another Day" for today

poem from Pablo Neruda's "Still Another Day"

via These are a few of my favourite things...

M is for...

via k.james

Love to all the moms out there this weekend especially to the ones I love most - my own as well as my fellow bloggers, Lorelei and Mae! In honor of your day - here's a little round-up of some beautiful mom-centric illustrations just for you...

By the way, love the shades of red and oranges and yellows in these (especially when cooled with touches of blue or brown):

via SurrendrDorothy

via pipnstuff

via ART By MAR

via finsbry

via judibird (animal mothers count too!)

In terms of the next 3, I've got to point out how surprising similar these seemingly very different images are in color (green and a red maroon), composition, and just general sweetness:

by Laura Logan

via Little Cotton Rabbits

via "T"eresa

And here's a really beautiful poem by Hope Anita Smith from her really beautiful collection, "Mother Poems," that will make you want to call your mother today:

Q and A

I never thought to ask my mother
what I was like when I was a baby.
Did I laugh a lot?
Was I fussy?
Did I have a favorite toy?
What was my first word?
When did I roll over? Crawl? Walk?
Did I ever like carrots?
Mothers give us our stories,
at least the beginning.
My mother left before she got a chance to
give me mine,
and I forgot to ask.
God should have made me smarter.
I am remembering less and less about my mother
and wanting to know more and more about me.

{poem found here}

Land Art

"Leaf Star" by Land Art for Kids

And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

--from "Song of Nature," Ralph Waldo Emerson

The images below are all from one of my favorite Flickr pools: Land Art for Kids

Land Art, according to landartforkids.com, "involves making art and sculptures using natural materials you find in the environment, such as leaves, fir cones, twigs, pebbles, rocks, sand and shells."

"Floating Leaf Boat" by Land Art for Kids

"Circle" from landartforkids.com

"Mosiac Bark Cube" from JRTPickle

"Winter Leaf Spiral" by Land Art for Kids

"Dragonfly" by Land Art for Kids

"Leaf Tree" by Land Art for Kids

"Pebble Fish" by Land Art for Kids

"Grass Flower Doodles" by escher...

For more land art, including land art from the grown-ups, visit the Land Art Flickr Pool.

Happy (belated) Earth Day!

thinking about gardens and poems

"Natalies Garden, Agapanthus and Bee"

My mother is visiting next month and part of the reason I am so excited for her stay (aside from all the mending and re-sewing of buttons that I have planned for her to do) is that she is going to help me set up my first ever garden. Therefore in preparation, I am reveling in these gorgeous watercolors by Jinn 'n Tonic and reading this book by the poet Stanley Kunitz. Yeah, I know, I probably should be reading up on soil and pest control, but all in due time. Right now I'm just loving this...

from "never trying to explain"

by Stanley Kunitz

"Thinking of a new season in the garden feels different from imagining a new poem. The garden has achieved its form; it doesn't have to be new each year. What it has to do is grow. You're not going to uproot the entire garden and start all over. The poem is always a new creation and aspires to a transcendence that is beyond telling at the moment when you're working on it. You know you are moving into an area you've never explored before and there is a great difference."

(published in Kunitz's last work, "The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden")

"The Garden in July"

Love

"Romeo and Juliet" sculpted by Milton Hebald, Central Park, NYC via flickr

So, we are coming to the end of February. Did you know that February is "Creative Romance Month", "National Mend a Broken Heart Month", and "Relationship Wellness Month"? -that is all in addition to being the home of Valentine's Day of course. I decided the last post for the month should be about love (seems only fitting given February's credentials).

I am not a poetry person and I can say this even with an English degree under my belt. I do have two very favorite love poems though and, yes, they could be considered trite, but they get me every time..... and isn't that the point really?

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e.e. cummings

*********************************

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

e.e. cummings

"To make a perfect heart you take a sheet / of red construction paper..."

"A Perfect Heart"

To make a perfect heart you take a sheet
of red construction paper of the type
that's rough as a cat's tongue, fold it once,
and crease it really hard, so it feels
as if your thumb might light up like a match,

then you choose your scissors from the box. I like
those safety scissors with the sticky blades
and the rubber grips that pinch a little skin
as you snip along. They make you careful,
just as you should be, cutting out a heart

for someone you love. Don't worry that your curve
won't make a valentine; it will. Rely
on chewing on your lip and symmetry
to guide your hand along with special art.
And there it is at last: a heart, a heart!

by Ted Kooser (published in his collection, Valentines)


{image via cafemom}