Poetry Friday: Thirteen Ways of Looking...

I'm joining the Poetry Pals/Sisters/Princesses for their monthly challenge. Tanita shared this prompt for September: 

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of September! Here’s the scoop: We’re wandering through Wallace Stevens’ “13 Different Ways of Looking…” at something. Maybe it’s not 13 ways – maybe it’s only seven. Maybe it’s not a blackbird or anything alive, but something inanimate. Whatever happens, your way of looking will be different than mine, and I’m here for it. Are you in? Good! You have a month to craft your creation and share it on September 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

I'm cheating a little because I wrote this one a while ago, when my daughters were young. And saying I "wrote" it is a wee bit of a stretch since I borrowed lines from Stevens and interspersed them throughout my version. But I've always liked it and thought it would be fun to share it again, especially given this month's challenge. 

If you joined in the challenge, let us know! 

(Original lines from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird are in italics. All the good lines belong to Stevens, but hey, the children are mine.)

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Interruption 
Karen Edmisten
(with apologies and thanks to Wallace Stevens)

I
In the stillness of night,
The only moving thing
is a child.

II
I was of three minds:
sleep, motherhood, sleep.

III
I pretended not to care that I was awakened.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
There is my "to do" list, and then there is God's.
These are not the same thing.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a child
Are one.
Add, mix and stir: my daughters' "to do" lists are mine.


V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The life with the child
or the thought of that life.

VI
Chatter filled the long day
The company of children
Transformed a mood. Sometimes
for better. Sometimes ... not.


VII
O, dear control-freak-self,
Why do you imagine a different life?
Do you not see how the life
you've been given is unspeakable gift?

VIII
I know of a tidy life,
of elegance, rhythm and control.
But I know, too, That a child is involved
In what I know.

IX
When my children have grown,
They will mark the edge
Of one of many circles.
I will be grateful for their imprint.

X
At the sight of children
I used to say, "Not for me, please.
An unwelcome interruption."
But something shifted. I gave myself
Over to motherhood, and held on tight.

XI
Once, a fear pierced me,
that I would never rise to this task,
would not die to self.


XII
3:20 a.m.: A nightmare. She needs me more
than I need this sleep. 
I rise. I go.
A child will not wait for morning.


XIII
It was nighttime all day.
I loved her and I was going to love her.
The child sat entwined in my limbs.
The interruption sweetly complete.

~~~~~~~~~~

Join the #PoetryPals and loads of other bloggers and poets for the Poetry Friday round-up. The incomparable Irene Latham is hosting this week at Live Your Poem. 

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. 

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

Poetry Friday: "Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Interruption"

The "interruptions" are different these days. 

My two oldest daughters have moved out. Only Ramona is at home, taking a well-earned gap year (which makes immense sense during a pandemic) after graduating from Green Gables Homeschool in May. 

I wrote this poem (or rather, stole some lines from Wallace Stevens and worked around them) ten years ago. Anne-with-an-e and Betsy were in their teens, but Ramona was only eight years old, so I was still sometimes up in the night with a child who was sick, or scared, or needed me in some unspoken way. 

But even with teens, a mother is up in the night: worrying while they're driving home after midnight ... talking to them on the couch, in quiet whispers at 2 a.m. ... tending to tears or heartbreak; other times sharing in laughter and giddy discovery. These days, those talks might start in a text, or a Marco Polo. That's a gift, too. 

When I was twenty years old, when I met Atticus and we started dating, neither of us wanted children. We knew it. We were firm. We would never change our minds. We would not countenance such an interruption to our lives. 

Thank God for crumbling paradigms and fresh and frightening starts that shake us to our core. 

Thank God for interruptions. 

 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Interruption 
by Karen Edmisten

(With apologies to Wallace Stevens. Original lines from his poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird are in italics. Obviously, all the good lines are his. The children, however, are mine.)


I
In the stillness of night,
The only moving thing
is a child.

II
I was of three minds:
sleep, motherhood, sleep.

III
I pretended not to care that I was awakened.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
There is my "to do" list, and then there is God's.
These are not the same thing.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a child
Are one.
Add, mix and stir: my daughters' "to do" lists are mine.


V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The life with the child
or the thought of that life.

VI
Chatter filled the long day
The company of children
Transformed a mood. Sometimes
for better. Sometimes ... not.


VII
O, dear control-freak-self,
Why do you imagine a different life?
Do you not see how the life
you've been given is unspeakable gift?

VIII
I know of a tidy life,
of elegance, rhythm and control.
But I know, too, That a child is involved
In what I know.

IX
When my children have grown,
They will mark the edge
Of one of many circles.
I will be grateful for their imprint.

X
At the sight of children
I used to say, "Not for me, please.
An unwelcome interruption."
But something shifted. I gave myself
Over to motherhood, and held on tight.

XI
Once, a fear pierced me,
that I would never rise to this task,
would not die to self.


XII
3:20 a.m.: A nightmare. She needs me more
than I need this sleep. 
I rise. I go.
A child will not wait for morning.


XIII
It was nighttime all day.
I loved her and I was going to love her.
The child sat entwined in my limbs.
The interruption sweetly complete.

~~~~~

Find more posts about Wallace Stevens here. 

~~~~~~~~~~

 The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink. 

Poetry Friday: "A bird’s cry, at daylight or before, In the early March wind...."

When I muse aloud, "What should I post for Poetry Friday?" I can usually count on Atticus to suggest some Wallace Stevens. I've actually posted a fair amount about Stevens, as I find him pretty fascinating, so when Atticus said, "How about 'Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself'?" I said, "You're a genius."

Without further ado, here is the genius of my husband, Wallace Stevens, and spring:

Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself 
by Wallace Stevens

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

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

~~~~~

The wonderful Amy Ludwig VanDerwater has the round up today at The Poem Farm.