A new poet laureate was announced today. Kay Ryan’s story is humble, unpretentious and heartwarming. Here’s an excerpt from the announcement in the New York Times: When Kay Ryan was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, the poetry club rejected her application; she was perhaps too much of a loner, she recalls… […]
Poetry
Not a Roof, Love
Rent If you want my apartment, sleep in it but let’s have a clear understanding: the books are still free agents. If the rocking chair’s arms surround you they can also let you go, they can shape the air like a body. I don’t want your rent, I want a radiance of attention like the […]
Stevens, Now and Forever
One of my blogging heros and friends is G at Writer Not Reading. She has invited her readers to post their favorite poems so of course I will post mine here since I am always eager to share it. Stevens has been my favorite poet since I was 17, the same year I memorized this […]
Glorious Impersonality
For several years now my Sunday mornings have begun with the anticipation of reading the weekly email from Andrew that arrives in my inbox around 7am. I have saved every one he has sent to me, and for good reason. Both he and his wife Kathryn, in addition to being two of the wisest and […]
Louise Bogan: A Poet’s Poet
On a roll here, with another female poet… I was reminded recently by friend and poet Dean J. Baker of the poet Louise Bogan. (One of her poems was posted here on April 4, 2008.) Bogan (1897-1970) grew up in mill towns in Maine. After a year at Boston University and an unhappy early marriage. […]
Tribeswoman
May Swenson (1913-1989) was born in Logan Utah to a Swedish immigrant Mormon family, the eldest of ten children. After finishing college at Utah State University, she moved East, teaching at Bryn Mawr and several other universities. Well respected as a poet during her lifetime, she is known for her proclivity to closely align nature […]
Hafiz: Tongue of the Invisible
Still under the spell of my friend Andrew’s message to me yesterday (see below), I’ve been thinking about the ecstatic poets, particularly the Sufi mystics—Rumi, Kabir, Omar Khayyam and my favorite, Hafiz. Hafiz, a 14th century Sufi poet from Persia, writes about longing for union with the divine. His work explores the nature of spiritual […]
Surfacing into a New Season
This weekend was like the joyride down the mountain you spent a grueling morning pedaling up. For the first time in three months I had three halcyon days with no hint of that ambient grief that arrived uninvited, filled my front room with baggage and has blocked my view ever since. Maybe it was the […]
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A Hum in Our Ears
Summer arrives on Saturday, so say the calendar keepers. (Although the idea of a season having an official “opening day” seems rather absurd, doesn’t it?) I’m not waiting, I’m ready to celebrate the sensuousness of this warm swing through the solar system NOW. This stanza is from another beguiling Fleur Adcock poem called Prelude, and […]
Ups, and Downs
In my studio yesterday, I felt some of the old familiar feelings of “flow”, a sense of things that invariably calls up an unforgettable line from Mary Oliver: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” It’s a quiet place, that soft animal of my body right now. […]