Poetry Friday: "For What Binds Us" by Jane Hirshfield

 

Like you — I'm guessing, but hey, I think I know you pretty well — I'm stunned that 2022 is coming to a close. Every cliche I've ever heard about age and time is true. Time really does fly, the days really are long while the years actually are short, and time truly is a blur. The fountain of cliches is a fountain of truth.

As this year ends, I'm thinking about the blur that is 2022 and about what holds it together for me. And as I often do, I'm turning to Jane Hirshfield. When I read this one, what I feel down to my bones is persistent, ferocious love. 

This one's for you, Atticus. 

For What Binds Us

by Jane Hirshfield 

There are names for what binds us:

strong forces, weak forces.

Look around, you can see them:

the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,

nails rusting into the places they join,

joints dovetailed on their own weight.

The way things stay so solidly

wherever they've been set down—

....

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

Join Patricia Franz at Reverie for the final poetry gathering of 2022 and see what binds those of us who love this community. 

Photo credit: Kevin Quarshie, Pexels

Poetry Friday: "Noel" by Anne Porter

This is a lovely and companionably haunting piece by Anne Porter, who did not have her poetry published until she was 83 years old. Her first book of poetry was a finalist for the National Book Award and over the next 17 years, Porter would see her work anthologized and widely featured. She died in 2011, shortly before her 100th birthday. 

Are you an unpublished poet? It's never too late. Wishing you "ragged miracles" and "flowering weeds of poetry" this holiday season. 

Noel
by Anne Porter

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they're cut down
And brought into our houses

When clustered sparks
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night
In ordinary windows

We hear and sing
The customary carols

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles
And flowering weeds of poetry

....

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org)

~~~~~~~~~~

Irene Latham has the round-up this week at Live Your Poem. 

Photo credit: Jeswin Thomas as Pexels. 

Poetry Friday: I'm hosting!

Photo by Jodi Pelman

Welcome to Poetry Friday! 

If you've never made the rounds, here's an old post from Renée LaTulippe (some links may be out of date) that will tell you about this bloggy, poetic gathering. And here's an older article at the Poetry Foundation from Susan Thomsen of Chicken Spaghetti. 

Here's another fun (old!)* article from Susan about poetry and homeschoolers, in which she mentioned one of my daughters who, at age four, was enchanted by Emily Dickinson. A funny coincidence about that article: it was written way back in 2008 and Susan also interviewed Julie Bogart, of Brave Writer for that piece. Nine years later, Julie and I would cross paths again. In 2017, when Brave Writer was growing tremendously, I was lucky enough to be hired as one of their writing coaches, a part-time job that I still do and still love. 

On to this week's offerings! 

I think this lovely piece by Michael Blumenthal could alternatively be titled, "Surely the hedgehog" (from lines 21-22) but I'll take "Be Kind" — both as a title and as a life suggestion, motto, and blueprint. 

As Blumenthal exhorts: 

Oh friends, take

whatever kindness you can find

and be profligate in its expenditure...

Here's to poetry and profligate kindness. Happy Poetry Friday! 

*Are all the articles about Poetry Friday old? Do we need to write new ones? Anyone, anyone? 

Be Kind

by Michael Blumenthal 

Not merely because Henry James said
there were but four rules of life—
be kind be kind be kind be kind—but
because it's good for the soul, and,
what's more, for others, it may be
that kindness is our best audition
for a worthier world, and, despite
the vagueness and uncertainty of
its recompense, a bird may yet wander
into a bush before our very houses,

....

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

Mr. Linky is here to gather the goodness and scatter it throughout the poetic, bloggy neighborhood. Please join us with a link or as a reader — your choice. 

Poetry Friday: Hope

It's Advent — a season of hope — so I thought a little Emily Dickinson was in order. The photo is of an ornament that my dear friend Danae gave me a couple of Decembers ago. It seems like both yesterday and a thousand years ago that my parents were so sick with Covid. There was so much going on, so many medical questions, decisions to be made every day. Danae brought me a Care package one afternoon and this ornament was in it. Every time I look at it (Hope! The cardinal!)I remember feeling both alone and very loved and surrounded during that time. 

The felt ornament to the right is one I've had for years. That one was a gift from my friend Jenn. We've never met in person but we connected online in what seems like another era: the early days of blogging, when lots of us blogging moms somehow made the time to both blog and visit other blogs. One year, a handful of us did a Christmas ornament exchange. I was the lucky recipient of Jenn's beautiful hand-embroidered work. A coffee cup, no less! She gets me! Jenn and I are still in touch and my Jenn Coffee Cup always gives me hope, too — the internet may be a cesspool, but it has brought me people from across the country, across the ocean, and across time and space. It's TARDIS-y that way and has always delivered traveling companions of the highest caliber into my life. 

(Poetry Friday, anyone? Another beautiful example of connections and friendships I cherish. Carry on, internet! Keep connecting me with the highest caliber. I'm forever grateful.) 

The quote is from a Mary Englebreit page-a-day calendar (gorgeous illustration) that Atticus and the girls gave me. I found this page torn off the calendar and left on my desk. ❤️  I'd have to blog for days to cover all the ways that Atticus and Anne-with-an-e, Betsy Ray, and Ramona have given me hope over the years. Endless, bottomless hope and courage.  

What's giving you hope this season? 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Michelle Kogan has the round-up this week. 

Wishing you a hopeful third week of Advent! 

Poetry Friday: December Poem-a-Day (curated by Arthur Sze) and "Prayer" by Jorie Graham

Three weeks ago, I shared Arthur Sze's "The Shapes of Leaves" and now, serendipitously, I see that Sze is the December guest editor for Poem-a-Day at Poets.org. Lovely! 

Here's their interview with him about his curation process and his own poetry. In that interview, they asked what poem in the Poets.org collection he would send readers to: 

Poets.org: ... If you could direct readers to one poem in our collection at Poets.org that you haven’t curated, what would it be and why?

Sze: I would direct readers to the poem “Prayer” by Jorie Graham. And it’s a short poem; it’s a marvelous poem that begins with observing a stream of minnows. And I love how it moves from the visible to the invisible world; how, in its syntax, it enacts a swaying and large, deep, generous vision of life. And she gets to say really large, fundamentally powerful things that are harnessed, that come by surprise through looking again at this stream of minnows. And I find it a marvelous poem, so I want to send readers to that.

Upon that recommendation, I offer you Jorie Graham's "Prayer." Some of my favorite lines from the poem are: 

Nobody gets

what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing

is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. 

Prayer

by Jorie Graham

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl

themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the

way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-

                                                infolding,

entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a

visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by

minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the

dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where

they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into

itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly

invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing

                         motion that forces change—

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

Catherine Flynn has the Poetry Friday round-up today at Reading to the Core. 

And don't forget to sign up, if you haven't already, for "Poem-a-Day." 

(Photo credit: Suzy Hazelwood at Pexels.)

Poetry Friday: Thankful, thankful, thankful (and Joy Harjo)

Thanksgiving is on the horizon and I'm feeling so grateful for my family and for all that has transpired around our kitchen table over the years. 

At our table we have eaten, of course, but our kitchen table has been the heart of so much more. We have laughed there, yes. We have wept. We've discussed books and writing. We've spent time with our babies, our toddlers, our teens, our grown and beautiful daughters. We've considered cancer treatments, health changes, chronic illness, new ways of eating. We've discussed politics and surrealism. We have shared stories of friends, faith, art, history. We have pondered jobs and job changes, school and not-school. We have lived in our kitchen; if our table could speak, it would be overflowing with stories from the lives of the Edmistens. 

I'm so grateful for our kitchen table.  

U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo captures the essence of this core, this beating heart of our shared lives, in "Perhaps the World Ends Here." 

Here's to the kitchen table, and to the happiest of Thanksgivings. May your gratitude be overflowing. 

Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo 

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been
    since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They 

    scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. 

    We make men at it, we make women.

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

The Poetry Friday roundup is being hosted by the hostess with the mostest, Jama Rattigan. 

(Photo credit: Matthias Cooper, Pexels)

Poetry Friday: "The Shapes of Leaves" by Arthur Sze

One day soon I'll be ready to stop talking about autumn, golden leaves, and the bottomless supply of beauty that I find in this time of year. 

But today is not that day. 

In "The Shape of Leaves" Arthur Sze captures a relationship with nature that is either a simple but complex web or a complicatedly simple interdependence, a symbiotic relationship that helps us define who we are. Whichever way we look at it, "way leads on to way" and nature's depths and riches inform our lives until, as Sze says in the final line, "I am living at the edge of a new leaf." 

Enjoy this short but sublime piece: 

The Shapes of Leaves
by Arthur Sze

Ginkgo, cottonwood, pin oak, sweet gum, tulip tree:
our emotions resemble leaves and alive
to their shapes we are nourished.

Have you felt the expanse and contours of grief
along the edges of a big Norway maple?
Have you winced at the orange flare

searing the curves of a curling dogwood?

....

(Read the whole poem here, at Poets.org.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by Buffy Silverman. 

(Photo credit: Marta Wave, Pexels)

Poetry Friday: "November Night" by Adelaide Crapsey

I've shared this one before but it's always worth a re-share. 

Maisy thinks so too: 

"Adelaide Crapsey? Inventor of the cinquain?
Oh, yes, please, I'd love that." 

November Night 

by Adelaide Crapsey 

Listen. . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

~~~~~~~~~~

Heidi Mordhorst has the Poetry Friday round-up this week at My Juicy Little Universe. 

Poetry Friday: "October" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

A final farewell to October. 

In this one, by the incomparable Paul Laurence Dunbar, October is the haughty "treasurer of the year," caring not for the troubles of the other months, but rather reveling in her royalty, and accepting her final fate. 

Farewell, beloved October! 

October
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

October is the treasurer of the year,
And all the months pay bounty to her store;
The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,
And fill her brimming coffers more and more.
But she, with youthful lavishness,
Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,
And decks herself in garments bold
Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.

She heedeth not how swift the hours fly,
But smiles and sings her happy life along;
She only sees above a shining sky;
She only hears the breezes' voice in song.
Her garments trail the woodlands through,
And gather pearls of early dew
That sparkle, till the roguish Sun
Creeps up and steals them every one.

But what cares she that jewels should be lost,
When all of Nature's bounteous wealth is hers?
Though princely fortunes may have been their cost,
Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs.
Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free,
She lives her life out joyously,
Nor cares when Frost stalks o'er her way
And turns her auburn locks to gray.

("October" is in the public domain.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jone Rush MacCulloch is hosting the Poetry Friday round-up this week.

Poetry Friday: "And Now it's October" by Barbara Crooker

She's always right. 

And Now it’s October 

by Barbara Crooker 

the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run 

to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy 

pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells, 

the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright 

as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery

....

(Read the rest here. The final lines are everything: "...but nothing can stopper time.") 

~~~~~~~~~~

Drop by Matt Forrest Esenwine's Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme for the Poetry Friday round-up. 

Poetry Friday: Sending you elsewhere

 I don't have a poem ready for today, but I do have this: 

Joy: Editor's Discussion, September, 2022 at the Poetry Foundation. 

• I had never read Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Renascence" before (as Shoemaker had not) and I was deeply moved (as was Shoemaker.)

• I loved learning that Ross Gay is unreachable during his office hours, which he holds in his garden. Oh, joy! The setting aside of technology. Yes. 

• And I reveled in the piece by Ada Limón (now the 24th Poet Laureate of the U.S. — huzzah!) about being alone. That short piece was written in 2008 so you'll laugh at the technology references. She wrote, "We spend so much time checking our IM, our e-mails, our texts, that we’re hardly ever alone with our own thoughts." Ah, the difference fourteen years makes. We're drowning even more, wishing that the only noises came from IM, email, texting...But the message is the same. It is good to be alone. We have to be alone sometimes if, as Limón notes, we are to think of Yeats, to write, to simply be. 

Spend a little time alone today, or spend time with your favorite Poetry Friday people. (Or spend the day alone with your Poetry Friday people?) Tabatha is hosting today, at The Opposite of Indifference. 

Poetry Friday: (Maisy and) "Song for Autumn" by Mary Oliver

It's here. 

It's autumn.

It's my favorite time of year. 

It's my favorite quote about autumn: 

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

                        

 ~~ The Great Gatsby

It's my favorite kitten in autumn: 

Maisy on top of the world. 

Maisy making it incredibly hard for me to get anything done. 

Maisy, with no idea why we are applauding her very existence.

It's my favorite (okay, one favorite) Mary Oliver poem about autumn: 

Song for Autumn 

by Mary Oliver 

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now

how comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of the air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don’t you think

the trees, especially those with

mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep

....

(Read the whole thing here, at The Poetry Foundation.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

It's my favorite thing to do on a Friday: 

refer you to the Poetry Friday host: 

Visit Rose at Imagine the Possibilities for this week's beauty and goodness. 

Poetry Friday: Pangur Bán (a monk and his cat, or, me and our new kitten)

We have a new kitten. I am smitten.

She is (I say with complete objectivity) perfect.

As the poet said, "Truth to tell, just being here,/Housed alone, housed together,/Adds up to its own reward." 

Pangur Bán 

By Anonymous 

Translated by Seamus Heaney 

(from a ninth-century Irish poem about a monk and his cat) 

 Pangur Bán and I at work, 

Adepts, equals, cat and clerk: 

His whole instinct is to hunt, 

Mine to free the meaning pent. 

More than loud acclaim, I love 

Books, silence, thought, my alcove. 

Happy for me, Pangur Bán 

Child-plays round some mouse’s den. 

Truth to tell, just being here, 

Housed alone, housed together, 

Adds up to its own reward: 

Concentration, stealthy art.

(Read the rest here, at the Poetry Foundation.) 

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The Poetry Friday roundup is being hosted this week 

by Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink. 

And just in case you need another dose of Maisy: 

Poetry Friday: School's In (but not for Atticus!)

Since he usually has summers off, this season with Atticus hasn't felt particularly different. But now? Now that schools all around us are in session, Ramona's started her second year of college, and all of my husband's colleagues have returned to work? Now we're feeling it: 

Atticus is retired. 

Yup. After thirty-five years of teaching, he's retired from full-time work. (And from teetering stacks of sophomore and senior essays hauled home so many weekends.) He plans to sub here and there (so maybe it's more accurate to call him semi-retired?) but it's likely that he'll never again lead a deep dive into Hamlet, or introduce kids to To Kill a Mockingbird, or do his best to help a high school student understand gerunds or tweak a dangling modifier. 

As for us? I know we'll keep talking about those things. We'll keep discussing, learning, and sharing about literature and language, and we'll keep seeking to understand and revel in the world around us. Our hearts will still leap up, as Wordsworth's did. It's a new phase of life, but he's still Atticus. "The Child is the father of the Man." Long live the child, the man, the retiree. 

My heart leaps up. 

My Heart Leaps Up
by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The inimitable Tanita Davis has the round-up today. 

Visit her at fiction, instead of lies. 

Poetry Friday: "Things of August" by Wallace Stevens

Some lines from Wallace Stevens for this August Friday. 

Locusts and crickets as ambits of the soul? It rings satisfyingly true. 

This poem appeared in the 

December 1949 issue of Poetry Magazine. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Past musings on Wallace Stevens are here. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Molly is hosting the Poetry Friday round-up at 
Nix the Comfort Zone. 

Poetry Friday: "Time to Hear Ourselves Think"

I've missed you! 

I haven't really had time to think lately as I've been traveling back and forth between my own town and my parents', helping them out with a number of health issues, and just trying to stay afloat. So Dick Allen's "Time to Hear Ourselves Think" feels like an appropriate choice for today. 

I hope you can enjoy some time this week to hear yourself think. 

Time to Hear Ourselves Think 

by Dick Allen 

We've missed that for years, not so much 

The thinking itself — that goes on regardless —

But the hearing of it, small waterwheels ....

(Read the whole thing here, at The Poetry Foundation.) 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Elisabeth Norton has the round-up at Unexpected Intersections. 

Poetry Friday: I love the father my husband is

 

Every Father's Day, I marvel at the amazing father that my husband became, and is. 

And here's a perfectly beautiful poem by Li-Young Lee about his father. 

The happiest of Father's Days to Atticus, to my dad, and to all fathers. 

The Gift

by Li-Young Lee 

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he’d removed

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,

but hear his voice still, a well

of dark water, a prayer.

And I recall his hands,

....

(Read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

Michelle Kogan is hosting the round-up this week. 

Poetry Friday: I'm hosting!

I took an unintentional blog break as I moved from the busyness of the school year into helping my parents with a couple of things and now I've suddenly realized: 

It is June. 

In honor of June, summer, seasonal beauty, and in honor of my deep love for Yeats, I give you "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Is there anything more perfect? 

I'm hosting Poetry Friday this week, so please add your links — June-ish, summery, and otherwise — to Mr. Linky, below. 

Happy Arrival of June and Happy Poetry Friday! 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
by William Butler Yeats 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Photo credit: Kathy Büscher, Pixabay 

Poetry Friday: Billy Collins reads Lawrence Raab

On Wednesday's Poetry Broadcast, Billy Collins read a short poem called "One of the Ways We Talk to Each Other" by Lawrence Raab. (I can't find that one in print online, but you can hear Collins read it here, starting at the 29:00 minute mark.) As someone who's been married for 38 years, I appreciated the genuine peek into a moment of communication gone wrong, then set right. 

I also appreciated the introduction to Raab — I wasn't familiar with him at all — and it made me want to buy his latest collection, April at the Ruins. Poetry Foundation says, "Conversational yet precise, Raab’s lyrical meditations trace human fallibility and doubt." 

Ah, a few of my favorite things. 

Here's another one: 

Marriage
by Lawrence Raab

Years later they find themselves talking
about chances, moments when their lives
might have swerved off
for the smallest reason.

....

(Read the rest of this short one here, at Poetry Foundation.)

~~~~~~~~~~

The inimitable Jama Rattigan is hosting the roundup this week. 

Poetry Friday: "The Poet" by Jane Hirshfield

On the eve of the last day of National Poetry Month, I give you this gem from the marvelous poet Jane Hirshfield: 

The Poet 

by Jane Hirshfield

She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not; she has taken it off.

(Read the rest here, at The Atlantic.) 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jone Rush MacCulloch has the round-up this week. 

(Photo thanks to Pixabay and congerdesign.) 

Poetry Friday: It's National Poetry Month and I've got the Poetry Month Blues

It happens every year. April is a busy time for me. The reasons vary, but the fact remains the same. I never ever tackle National Poetry Month with the verve I intend and desire. (Past lamentation posts here.) 

Case in point: four years ago, I wrote this poem near the end of NPM. In keeping with today's theme of "I'm too busy, I'm too busy!" I haven't even written a new poem about National Poetry Month. I'm simply re-running this old one.  🙂

But, as the poem declares, that's okay. Every week is Poetry Week (well, except last week, when I was too busy to post. Arrgh!) 

Enough. The past is the past. Onward! 

Happy National Poetry Month! And for more about what's happening with KidLit bloggers everywhere, check out Jama Rattigan's comprehensive post. Thanks, Jama! 

Poetry Month Blues 

Karen Edmisten 

Another April — Poetry Month! —

slipping through my fingers.

Failed plans, lack of sharing ...

Oh, the guilt in me lingers.

"Next year will be different!"

I shout out with conviction.

Really? Inner Me sneers,

that's a doubtful prediction. 

Who knows? Should I worry?

I think not, you see. 

Every Friday's poetry day.

That's just Weekly Me.

~~~~~~~~~~

Janice has the roundup this week at Salt City Verse. 

Poetry Friday: Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Feast! Today is the Solemnity of the Annunciation. I've been running behind on everything this week, including getting a Poetry Friday post together, but this morning Atticus suggested "The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

Ah. Yes. Perfect. 

Hopkins has always fascinated me. From Poetry Foundation: 

Gerard Manley Hopkins is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era. However, because his style was so radically different from that of his contemporaries, his best poems were not accepted for publication during his lifetime, and his achievement was not fully recognized until after World War I. Hopkins’s family encouraged his artistic talents when he was a youth in Essex, England. However, Hopkins became estranged from his Protestant family when he converted to Roman Catholicism. Upon deciding to become a priest, he burned all of his poems and did not write again for many years. His work was not published until 30 years after his death when his friend Robert Bridges edited the volume Poems.

That entry includes an extensive bio of Hopkins — it's long but well worth your time. As a melancholic/INFJ/Enneagram 4/Questioner/all-around-party-killer myself, I've always been intrigued by Hopkins, who wrote one of my most beloved poems about grief, "No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief."  I love that piece for its brutal honesty, the way it confronts the devastation of loss and acknowledges that no matter how deeply one believes in God, we are gutted when we lose someone we love. There is no denying our humanity: "Comforter, where, where is your comforting?/Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?" 

The Poetry Foundation says: 

According to his own testimony Hopkins was subject to melancholy all his life, but his “terrible pathos,” as Dixon called it, is most obvious in these late sonnets. Following Saint Ignatius, Hopkins defined “spiritual sloth” or “desolation” as “darkness and confusion of soul ... diffidence without hope and without love, so that [the soul] finds itself altogether slothful, tepid, sad, and as it were separated from its Creator and Lord.” Called acedia in Latin, this sin is differentiated from physical sloth by the fact that the victim realizes his predicament, worries about it, and tries to overcome it.

The sense of coldness, impotence, and wastefulness evident in Hopkins’s religious poetry of the 1860s is an important feature of acedia, but by far the most important is “world sorrow,” the predicament lamented in Hopkins’s “No worst, there is none” (1885). 

See? I told you I was a party killer. 

Because today is not about death and grief, but about life and a particular kind of celebration, so it's time to switch gears a bit. At the Annunciation, Mary was asked if she would say yes to the incomprehensible. (I do feel compelled to point out that this was, in its way, a kind of death, the death of the life Mary had known but hey, we melancholics can relate everything to death. It's a talent.) The Annunciation was also a turning point and a model for us: Mary said yes to a staggering request. What am I asked to say yes to? When God asks the incomprehensible of me, do I remember Gabriel's words to Mary: "Do not be afraid"? On a good day, I both say yes and am not afraid. Not every day is a good day but today I'm shaking off my melancholic tendencies and party-killing ways and I will celebrate accordingly. I will not be afraid, I will say yes, I will take comfort in the Comforter and find relief in Mary's ways. 

Here are some excerpts from Hopkins's beautiful poem, "The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe": 

This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace

That does now reach our race—

....

Again, look overhead

How air is azurèd;

O how! nay do but stand

Where you can lift your hand

Skywards: rich, rich it laps

Round the four fingergaps.

Yet such a sapphire-shot,

Charged, steepèd sky will not

Stain light.   Yea, mark you this:

It does no prejudice.

The glass-blue days are those

When every colour glows,

Each shape and shadow shows.

Blue be it: this blue heaven

The seven or seven times seven

Hued sunbeam will transmit

Perfect, not alter it.

(Read the whole thing here, at the website of the International Hopkins Association.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

Amy Ludwig Vanderwater has the round-up at The Poem Farm. 

Poetry Friday: "Time" by Laura Landis Laedlein

I went looking for a poem about time because, as we are all painfully aware, this week is our first week on Daylight Saving Time. 

(Not "Daylight Savings Time," because it is, as Kent of VEEP so helpfully points out, "neither plural nor possessive.") 

Daylight Saving Time provokes all manner of thought and emotion in me. I get tired, I rail and rage against this attempt to harness and control the uncontrollable. After a day or two of (exhausting) railing and raging, I collapse. I nap. Then I ponder time and the endless ways we reflect on it. My hunt for "poems about time" led me to this one in the 1923 issue of Poetry Magazine and also left me wondering who Laura Landis Laedlein was. All I could find out about her was this brief bio in the magazine: "Miss Laura Landis Laedlein is a business woman in Williamsport, Pa." 

Hmm. 

I hope that Laura Landis Laedlein made the most of her time in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I hope she had the time of her life writing poetry and that she spent time rejoicing when this one was published in Poetry magazine. I hope her time as a business woman was successful and that perhaps she saw a kindred spirit in Wallace Stevens, he of insurance/poetry fame. I hope she knows she did what poets do: she touched eternity in a small, human way — she reached out, hand stretched across so many decades, and handed me this poem, a hundred years after its publication, on a day when I was thinking about time and its odd and poignant hold on us. 

Thank you, Miss Laura Landis Laedlein, for taking the time to write a poem. Thank you for setting aside time to submit your poem to Poetry magazine. Thank you for whatever else you did in Williamsport, Pennsylvania and I hope that your time on this earth was, as Mary Oliver would want it to be for you, wild and precious. 

Time 

by Laura Landis Laedlein 

I see the procession of the hours...
Across the day:
Hand-linked they run, and light-footed;
Swift-footed alway.

I see the procession of the years

Across life's plain:
Masked, they lean forward, and press onward,
A marching train. 

I see the backward path centuries have come
To where I stand;
And, holding the present, touching eternities
With my hand.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ruth has the round-up this week at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. 

Poetry Friday: The Traveling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye

Head straight to Poetry for Children today as Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong talk food and poetry and share a sneak peek at their book, Things We Eat. This new anthology features an all-star cast of poets and eaters and you won't want to miss it. All the proceeds from this book will go to the IBBY Children in Crisis Fund. 

In keeping with our hosts' food theme, I'm sharing this one from Naomi Shihab Nye. It's about onions but, of course, it's not really about onions. Or perhaps I should say it's not only about onions. Peel away its layers and see what you think. 

The Traveling Onion

by Naomi Shihab Nye 

“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship —why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook


When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,

crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,

pearly layers in smooth agreement,

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

Poetry Friday: Dear March—Come in by Emily Dickinson

I'm welcoming March with my beloved Emily because, well, isn't this simply what one does? 

Dear March—Come in

by Emily Dickinson 

Dear March—Come in—

How glad I am—

I hoped for you before—

Put down your Hat—

You must have walked—

How out of Breath you are—

Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—

Did you leave Nature well—

Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—

I have so much to tell—

I got your Letter, and the Birds—

The Maples never knew that you were coming—

I declare - how Red their Faces grew—

But March, forgive me—

And all those Hills you left for me to Hue—

There was no Purple suitable—

You took it all with you—

Who knocks? That April—

Lock the Door—

I will not be pursued—

He stayed away a Year to call

When I am occupied—

But trifles look so trivial

As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise

And Praise as mere as Blame—

(This poem is in the public domain.)

~~~~~~~~~~

Kathryn Apel has the roundup (not to mention a new book — congratulations, Kat!) 

Visit her here for all the poetic goodness. 

A Meaningful Lent: The Monstrously Long Post

Ready to head into the desert? You'll find ideas in my newest book, The Companion Book of Catholic Days: A Guide to Feasts, Saints, Holy Days, and Seasons. (You can find it here, at The Word Among Us, and here, on Amazon.) 

And to revisit a past series of posts go here, to A Meaningful Lent: The Monstrously Long Post. 

Poetry Friday: Wild Gratitude

Today I'm sharing Edward Hirsch's "Wild Gratitude" because I keep learning and relearning what it means to offer praise and thanksgiving. Gratitude doesn't look the same from year to year, month to month, day to day, or even minute to minute. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the gifts that have made their way into my life and other days I'm holding on to gratitude as if it's a gossamer strand I could lose if I blink. Those are the days I most need to sit down with my journal and simpy write, Thank you, thank you, thank you. Oh, and most of all? Thank you. 

 Wild Gratitude

by Edward Hirsch

Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat’s mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In every one of the splintered London streets,

(Read the whole poem at Edward Hirsch's website.)

~~~~~~~~~~

Tricia has the Poetry Friday round-up at The Miss Rumphius Effect. 

She and the Poetry Sisters have been up to their usual Amazing-ness. 

Thank you, Poetry Sisters. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

Poetry Friday: Billy Collins again (not because I forgot, but because he deserves it)

It's Billy Collins again. 

I could lie and say that I forgot I shared a Billy Collins poem last week, but that's not true. I just can't get enough of Billy Collins (that's always been true). 

So, not because I've forgotten, but rather because I love "Forgetfulness" (and can relate), here it is: 

Forgetfulness

by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

And as long as we're on the subject of fading memories, we might need this today too: 

            

~~~~~~~~~~

 Don't forget to visit Linda Baie, who has the roundup at TeacherDance. 

Poetry Friday: "Days" by Billy Collins

It's been far too long since I shared anything by Billy Collins. It's time, people, it's time! Days are precious and every day without Billy Collins is a day with a hole in it. 

I love the way this poem delicately walks the line between gratitude and sheer, existential terror. 

And, in case you didn't know, here's a thing you should know: 

Billy Collins does "The Poetry Broadcast" every day on Facebook. 

Days
by Billy Collins

Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

....

Through the calm eye of the window

everything is in its place 

but so precariously 

this day might be resting somehow 

on the one before it, 

all the days of the past stacked high

like the impossible tower of dishes 

entertainers used to build on stage. 

(Read the whole thing here, at The Poetry Foundation.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

 Elisabeth has the round-up at Unexpected Intersections.