The Crane Bag--Musings of a Modern Bard

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 9

2011-11-09T14:37:00.000-08:00

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “(blank) or (blank),” replace the blanks with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Example titles could be: “This or
that,” “Dogs or cats,” “Go my way or the highway,” “To poem or not to poem,” etc.

Waking, or Asleep?

We walk through the day
Moving, doing, and speaking.
But--are we alive?

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 8

2011-11-08T15:14:00.000-08:00

Here are the options for today’s “Two for Tuesday” prompt:

Write a paranormal poem. In case you’re unsure, click here for a thorough definition of the term “paranormal.”
Write a normal poem. I’m not sure what a normal poem is, but if you do (and you want to write one), go for it!

The Norm, Reworked

He arrived, quietly,
Not a hair out of place,
Suit neatly brushed,
Tie in a firm knot,
Face pasty,
Voice quiet.

He sat down at his desk
And began to push papers,
Speaking to no one.

He took out a small
Plastic badge
And pinned it to his lapel.
It said,
"Hi. I'm Norm."

We worked together
For many years.
He spoke seldom,
Never complained,
Took what he was given.

Management thought him
The perfect employee,
No trouble whatsoever.

Then, almost overnight,
Things changed.
He started
To work out.

He began to get stronger,
He developed a tan,
His hair got mussed.
He arrived at work,
Somewhat disheveled.

He began to speak up.
He disagreed with management.
He went on strike.

He bulked up,
Became stronger,
More vociferous,
Somewhat difficult.

He got his muscles
Really ripped,
Abs beyond belief,
So that we began
To think of him
As "AB Norm..."

He's a lot stronger now.
He's harder to work with.
He's outside the Norm
He used to be.
He's difficult.

I think of him as "Al"
Al he can be...
He's AB Norm Al...

And I like him better.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 7

2011-11-07T23:02:00.001-08:00

For today’s prompt, write a “what won’t wait” poem. Only you know what won’t wait. Maybe it’s falling in love or work–or death (one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems is about this topic). Something else that won’t wait is today’s prompt.

Now, Right Now

We put it off--
"Later", we say...
After this,
Or that,
Or the other thing...

We simply believe
It will wait
Until we are finished
Doing what
Is more important.

There's housework,
Careers, children,
Not to mention
School, marriage,
And other necessities.

So, now, I declare it.
It won't wait any longer.
Yes, I am talking to YOU.
The time is NOW---
Right NOW.

It won't wait.
Don't put it off
One more instant.
That other stuff
Is all minutiae.

When will you begin
To do what is important?
To do what needs to be done
Right NOW...
When will you start---to LIVE?

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 6

2011-11-06T09:22:00.000-08:00

For today’s prompt, write an addict poem. There are lots of possible addictions out there–some of them serious and some of them not so much. For instance, there are times when I think I’m addicted to work and pop (“pop” is what we call soda or cola in Ohio, where I was raised). Anyway, I realize today’s prompt might stir up some skeletons for some folks. For instance, I doubt I would’ve ever written my poem today without this prompt to prompt me.

A Positive Addiction

An addiction is something
That drives you, that owns you...
The more you have of
Whatever it is
To which you are addicted,
The more you want...

Until, finally, after many
Days, months, years, of indulging
You, or someone close to you
Realizes
That you cannot
Be without whatever it is--

And then it begins,
The loving, perhaps stern,
Totally focused
(And often misguided)
Attempts at "intervention",
Weaning you from the drug.

And so--I need to tell you,
I am a hard-core addict.
Intervention won't help.
Many before you have tried
But they, and I, know that
I will simply relapse.

I need it. I can't possibly
Live, or function, without it.
No matter how many
Placebo substitutes
You offer me
They won't work.

Forget about it.
I simply maintain
My right to live my life
As I see fit.
Leave me to the "crack"
Because I am a junkie.

Intelligent writing,
Intelligible prose.
Correct grammar and usage.
Correct use of the apostrophe.
Spelling "by the book"...
(That would be the "dictionary")

Despite herculean efforts
Of those who love me
To wean me onto "l33t"
And away from my affair
With the English language.
I am addicted to it all.

I am not going to change.
I will not stop using
The language and the lexicon
As I was taught in the dark ages.
I'm a hopeless case.
Leave me alone, 'k?

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 5

2011-11-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

For today’s prompt, write a broken poem. The poem can be specifically about something breaking or just include something (or someone for that matter) that’s broken. Get as creative as you want about interpreting what’s broken: cars, hearts, toys, spirits, codes, etc. Heck, I guess–unless we’re writing prose poems–we’ll automatically be breaking lines.

Brokedown, Bah!

We didn't get our tv show last night,
Because the snow piled up upon the dish.
I drove home in it, sleeting sideways, white
And winter-like as anyone could wish.

I went inside to comfort, warmth, and peace,
And sat to eat my dinner, watch my show,
But all night long the onslaught did not cease,
And Dish Network won't work when there is snow.

And Sanctuary, one of our all time
Beloved favorites--what a show to miss!
And they don't stream it either, so now I'm
Frustrated with our network--Bah! Boo! Hiss!

What irony! The electronic age,
And we're still stalled in life by winter's rage!

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 4

2011-11-04T08:08:00.001-07:00

For today’s prompt, write a poem about finding something unexpected. Maybe it’s a note from a friend or a bag filled with money (or guns). Maybe it’s finding a lover with someone who’s not you. Or finding a secluded place to sit in the middle of the forest and think.

Finding Equilibrium

Keeping my balance
Has never been something
I do with aplomb.

I usually find that
I need to be ranting
Before I am calm.

But sometimes a feeling
Of deep reassurance
Is found unawares

Whenever I look at
My dear wife's endurance
And see how she cares

For the raddled, guilt-ridden
And sometimes erratic
Impetuous part of me...

She's my center of peace,
She's the calm, but ecstatic
Delight in the heart of me.

And so, I muddle on
And when I'm on the brink of
The dive to oblivion

I see how she loves me,
And suddenly think of
The love, hers, I'm living on.

It never has failed me,
And I know I'll never
Have reason to doubt it.

She's my still point, my balance.
From now 'til forever
I can't move without it.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 3

2011-11-03T07:45:00.001-07:00

For today’s prompt, I want you to take the phrase “Sort of (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. Example titles could be: “Sort of cool,” “Sort of strange,” “Sort of not into getting out of bed in the morning,” or whatever! It should be sort of fun to read all the poems today!

Sort Of Silly....?

Putting on a pointed hat
And a cloak--whassup with that?

Flying on a hand-made broom
(Though I never leave the room!)

Waving wands, and singing spells
Using cards for psychic "tells",

Watching phases of the moon
And predicting what comes soon,

Working in close harmony
With a flow of energy...

Some folks wonder, "What's she thinking--
Or, more likely, what's she DRINKING?

To produce this weirdo itch?
Does she think that she's a witch?"

All I have to say is, "Gee,
Watch, and learn. Then--you tell me!"

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 2

2011-11-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

For today’s prompt, use an epigraph to kickstart your poem. That is, use a quotation. You can use a favorite of your own, or if you’re having trouble thinking of one, I’ve provided a few below. To format an epigraph poem, a poet places the quotation between the title and the body of the poem, while also giving credit to the source of
the quotation.

Needing It Back

Quotation: From Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, whose birthday is today: "America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration."

I've lost it--we all have.
That amazing thing we cherished
But didn't know enough
To hold on to--

That feeling of privilege,
That knowledge of rightness,
That starry-eyed gaze
Into spacious skies.

Fields of amber grain
Aren't feeding our homeless,
And our purple mountain majesties
Are blocking immigrants.

I remember singing it,
I remember feeling it,
That brotherhood
From sea to shining sea...

But it's gone now.
We have protestors
Being tear-gassed
And homes foreclosed for one dollar.

We have the 99 per cent
Losing hope, losing health,
Losing jobs, losing everything...
We want it all back.

I want to love my country.
I want to trust my government.
I want to once again live
In America the Beautiful.

Listen to Mr. Harding.
Not heroics, but healing;
Not nostrums, but normalcy;
Not revolution, but restoration.

I am the one per cent.
I am lonely, scared kitteh...
Plz, I can haz America back?
K thx bye...

November PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 1

2011-11-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

It's "Two-Fer Tuesday", so the prompt is for TWO poems, and you write one, or the other, or both. Here it is:

So here are today’s prompts:

Write a procrastination poem, or as I like to call it a “I’ll get to it tomorrow” poem. Or…
Write a proactive poem, or the old “I’ll get to it today” poem.

Here's mine: (and I think it is both kinds)

The Write Way

My day begins now--I woke late, of course--
For Samhain has the way of doing that....
I missed a phone call, but the phone was off,
So no surprises. And I see the cat

Has spilled the water bowl again. So I
Will take a paper towel, mop it up
And then refill it. Everyday routine,
As well as making coffee, looking up

My morning e-mail, Facebook, and the small
Routine of morning ritual. So, fine,
I am awake now. Normal day--NO, WAIT...
This day is DIFFERENT! New routines define

The traffic of my hours. Sit back down
And open up the laptop once again.
Postpone the planned-for housework for a while,
Because I have to raise my keyboard-pen

And WRITE! It's Chapbook Challenge time, right NOW....
And NaNoWriMo's reared its quiet soul
Reminding me "2000 words a day...."
And I will do it...That's just how I roll,

A writer, sure, but blocked with much to do,
And many things to which I give my heart,
So, yes, I write, infrequently, and I
Procrastinate--'til something makes me START!

And so, today, I'm writing, happily.
Enthusiasm sometimes will belie
Procrastination--yes, I know, I don't
Write often....But I wrote this, didn't I?

No Longer Persuaded

2011-09-02T22:58:00.000-07:00

Once I believed
In the infallibility
Of shining adult figures
Against the sometimes-brilliant sun.

Whenever such a one would speak
I thought the dictum applicable
To whatever bit of forgotten wisdom
My child-self had forgotten to live by.

"Eat your vegetables""Don't tease your sister"
"Go to church""Obey your auntie"--
Matronly posturing beneath feathered hats,
Face-powder caked in benevolent chins,
They spoke, always, as from heaven
And I listened. And I believed.

Now, I notice only the absence
Of the papers of authority
Whenever such a bloated figure opines.
Never do they speak the only truth I wish to hear;
"Don't listen to me.""Think for yourself"

Again And Again...

2011-08-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

So once again I lift my eyes to view the scattered morning.
And find it welcoming, but waiting for my constant hand
To sort the piles of tasks and errands into some coherence
And somehow make of this day something worthy of remembering.
There is a feeling as I look around me at the chaos
That all I do will matter, yet not be the final act.

It's up to me, and I can organize the way each act
Of mine fits into the great plan to make a stab, this morning,
At once again subduing, making order out of chaos.
And usually, I do the thing that comes first to my hand,
The ritual of coffee, somehow, every day, remembering
That it's the steaming cup that will persuade me to coherence.

And so, what will I do with it? This morning, my coherence
Will lead me to the laptop, and the satisfying act
Of answering my e-mail. No, I have not ceased remembering
That there are also dishes, since today is Monday morning.
The soap is there, the scrubber, and in just a bit, my hand
Will grasp the stuff of housewifery, and end the sticky chaos.

But there is always, every day, the looming larger chaos
Of dusting, floors and cupboards, and, defying all coherence,
The repetitious threnody of chores which by my hand
Were all done yesterday. It seems no matter how the act
Of energetic organizing zips through every morning,
That it returns next day. I know I did it. I'm remembering

This same pile of newspapers, and I also am remembering
The weeds and dirty laundry, the same overwhelming chaos
That I organized just yesterday. Why is it, every morning,
Just as if no one had made a single effort towards coherence?
It seems a waste of energy, since each and every act
Is just to do again next day. Perhaps I'll stay my hand

And sit back down. The book I am now reading in my hand,
The stretch of tired luxury. I close my eyes, remembering
Just how it feels to sit at ease, to not be pushed to act
At all, but simply BE, and once again explore the chaos
Of my own scattered thoughts, tumbled out of all coherence
By the whirlwind of disorder to which I awoke this morning.

And now I close my hand around the book. Forget the chaos.
It's time I was remembering that any small coherence
Will be my act of willing to enjoy this fresh new morning.

Silence...

2011-08-26T12:02:00.000-07:00

SILENCE...

...so different from "quiet"...
there is texture in silence,
and movement,
and feeling...
there is tension and release
the inside
of a large, cool sphere,
green water,
blue rain,
gold light...
the whirr of business...
busy.....ness....

all the movement echoes....
all the strings are muted.....

"hush" is such a pretty word,
a crystal word...
you can pour light out of your hands
like water...

...you touch air...
..you breathe life....
the sun shines through your hand,
and the bones slide
and the blood dances....

...conscious of me--- i --- small letter....
a separate creation--
a part of Creation...
all moving and real and Alive...
and all that is...
....Is....

unafraid of the wasps,
as neither of us intrudes....
they breathe their universe,
i mine...
we share life...
we notice, but do not mark,
one another....

...the mechanical world...
not intrusion,
completion....
an airplane right as a birdsong
in time, space,
silence to hear them both....

...one speaks to the world
in silence only...
words retard communication....
the stillness shimmers,
strings of silk...

the sound of one heart beating
is the pulse
of the world.....

********
1984, Dallas, Texas

Moon Mother

2011-08-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

We stood last night, a circle of kindred, and watched Her

Coming out from behind the crag of Mt. Olympus

Not shy, this globe of glowing silver light,

But plangent, full and bursting, assertive, a Presence.

She was THERE....and we....?

We stood, cups in hand, watching the unveiling

Sight seen so often, never taken for granted,

Her bounteous presence once again with us,

And yet new, unexpected, ever vivid and compelling

like the air you breathe every morning,

essential and appreciated,

though often unremarked.

But we had to mark Her, this night, this appearance...

It was like the processional of an ancient Queen,

Panoplied in splendor, golden, coruscating, glinting with awareness...

She would not be unregarded.

And we raised our cups, and honored Her, and bowed....

None of us, we urban-dwelling Pagans,

even for a moment thinking of Science or Technology,

But all of us awed once again, as our race has been from time immemorial,

By the living presence of the Lady,

The Mother of Lights,

In Her silvered radiance.

She is a Mystery, and we watch in awe,

As her face reveals itself to us again and again,

Always for the first time.

We drank deep, mead we had made together, and savored the moment...

Ancient wine, ancient Lady, ancient mystery of craft and kith,

Loving our Presence here in timelessness

within the globe of silver light,

And still so essentially present in our own world,

The hiss of cars on the motorway resonating with the pulse of crashing surf,

Recalled in genetic memory, though never experienced.

And at that moment, we recalled

Or thought for the first time,

Of all the Hidden Children,

over our land and other lands

All of them watching

Seeing Her in radiance,

The same glowing silver face

The same breathless awakening,

The same Awe,

Time and place compelling different circumstances

But all kindred, honoring the Mother of All.

We lifted our glasses again,

Gazing ever upward,

And felt our connection

To those unknown faces,

Perhaps also raising glasses in tribute.

We drank to them

A toast to "the Others"

Her other children,

Those we will never see,

But whom we Know,

More intimately, perhaps, than those

with whom we brush careless shoulders

In offices and stores

Where her face does not shine.

We connected

In moonlight

to all those we may never see,

But whose hearts and minds are kin to us

because of Her shining silver radiance,

And She smiled.

Aisling the Bard, 2005

Looking For Integrity (form: Villanelle)

2011-04-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem integrity has worth.
No more the "public servant" touts our needs;
More valued is the bloated purse's girth.

Dark comedy reflects their bitter mirth,
Bleak politics gives reason for their greeds;
It doesn't seem integrity has worth.

Not only has dishonour given birth
To soiled campaigns, but no one votes on 'deeds';
More valued is the bloated purse's girth.

Now corporations speak as persons. Dearth
Of values, meaning, substance, haunts their screeds.
It doesn't seem integrity has worth.

We watch as government spreads o'er the earth.
No wholesome food this grazing monster feeds;
More valued is the bloated purse's girth.

And those who hunger, given a wide berth
As famine to our land's destruction speeds.
It doesn't seem integrity has worth.
More valued is the bloated purse's girth.

Making It Up...

2011-04-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I don't trust my own instincts
Sometimes I think I'm full of crap.
Sometimes I get so overloaded
Sometimes there's too much in my lap--

Sometimes I despair when I look at
The things I have promised to do.
Sometimes I am certain I'll never
Have the energy to see it through.

Sometimes I outsmart myself. Often
I can't find the next step to take.
Sometimes I am certain that next time
I pick up the load it will break.

And then I remember the magic
I learned when I danced as a girl.
If you step wrong, you're losing your balance,
You'll stay right-side-up if you twirl.

If you're there on the stage and can't think of
The next step to take, well, just take it.
If you float gracefully through an error
No one will notice you make it.

So when I am too overloaded,
When there's far too much wine in my cup,
When I'm stuck on the stage with no options,
I have one. I just make it up.

Peace

2011-04-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

There is a feeling
One hardly noticed
Except by its absence

It is a deepness,
A widening of spirit,
A silent vista

It leaves nothing
But a cool breeze
And a deep silence

And it is so rare
That even as we notice it
We lose it.

Why is it
That all we do
Removes from us

This deep, quiet,
Yearned-for alliance
Of calm and awareness?

Could it be
That in becoming wise
We learn to do

Less?

Spring Fever

2011-04-04T23:38:00.000-07:00

I must go down to the store again, to the lovely gardening store,
And all I ask is a tall tree, and a flat of plants galore,
And a wind chime, and a windsock, and a white narcissus,
And a green thumb, and a rose bush that will please the missus.

I must go down to the store again, for the call of the growing green
Is the weed's clutch, and a yard full of stuff you've never seen;
All I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray of the RoundUp, and the crabgrass dying.

I must go down to the store again, for the vagrant gypsy's life
Is a soft dream that was long gone when I bought a house with my wife.
And all I ask is a spool of yarn to block the cats from the clover,
And a long vacation in someone else's garden when spring is over.

Glamourie

2011-04-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

On seeing the full moon rising behind the Wasatch Mountains in a light snowstorm.

Glamourie

Again She rises, white, distant, complete in Herself....

Once more I attempt to decipher the feelings She engenders...

I cannot fault myself for failing to comprehend Her...

Indeed, it is in Her nature to be integrally cryptic.

And the precious knowledge She withholds is not for the taking...

The message is concealed in rays of moonlit Glamour...

If timely action is required...I may miss it....

Mother...I need direct communication this time...

Or my response will honour neither Thee....nor me....

Why Bother?

2011-04-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it seems as if it's too much trouble
To make the effort to repair this place.

She doesn't notice all the mess and rubble
Or seem to feel it's mostly a disgrace.

Instead, she looks at tv, reads the paper
And sometimes slaps a bit of food together.

I go to see her, quite the useless caper,
And nothing ever changes but the weather.

Next time, I'll bring a mop, some soap, a broom.
If she's not glad to see me, well, the room

Will be the better for my visit, then.
And in a week, I'll do it all again.

NaPoWriMo, Here I Come....

2011-04-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

Signed on to the Poem-A-Day for 3o Days Madness that is NaPoWriMo--Will also be doing National Poetry Month challenges on my LiveJournal. So--here's today's effort:

April Fuel

It might be ridiculous
One more time
Subjecting myself
To rhythm and rhyme--
Hocus pocus
Is the focus
Of the poet's genus locus.

I know I can do it, though,
I must try
Even when my mind
Is running dry
And bare of muses.
It confuses
To be forced to poet's uses.

But I will write, on April's fuel,
With my pen I must needs duel,
Perhaps one poem will come out kewl--
Or I will be a Muses' tool--
But either way, hey.....April Fool!!!

A Year And A Day....

2011-03-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

One year and one day ago, March 1, 2010, my dear friend and brother, Roy Moorman (Cuchulainn) was untimely taken from the earth in a tragic car accident. I wrote this that week as a tribute, and I post it here again as a remembrance. He is being honored by the opening of Salt Lake City's first Pagan Community Center, Crone's Hollow, this coming weekend. I honor him here by remembering the man he was, and offer thanks and honor for his having been in my life.

Chulain's Hound

The Guardian, Cuchulainn, so softly he treads
That those in the circle do not turn their heads
To mark him, as silently beating the bounds
He slips through the shadows. In making his rounds
He wards and he watches, that nothing untoward
Be able to slip through as he weaves his ward.

The Watcher, Cuchulainn, his footstep is sure
As, watching and warding, he makes all secure.
He waits in the shadows whilst light glows within
And Guards the abode of his Kith and his Kin.
No threat will escape him; his presence pervades
Through the rustling darkness of woodlands and glades.

The Father, Cuchulainn, he covers his child
With the safe hand of love, as, compelling, yet mild,
He teaches and shows, demonstrating the man
Who is both strong and kind. As no other hand can,
His hand shares both power and gentleness. One
Such as he is a gift to his well-beloved son.

The Teacher, Cuchulainn, his words always few,
Shows his knowledge and cunning in what he can do.
Whether woodslore, or music, or Working the Arte,
All he knows, all he shares, coming straight from his heart
Is a gift to his clann. For such knowledge as his
Is not shared in mere lessons, but from Who he Is.

The Brother, Cuchulainn, his siblings may call,
And he'll be there. The Family he makes for us all
Is a Hearthstone of safety, with room to explore.
With his hand on the latch, we may pass through the door
Knowing he will be silently slipping behind
To keep us all safe as the Crossroads we find.

The Dear One, Cuchulainn, has gone on before,
As always, our Guardian. The first through the door
As he shields us from what dangers might lie in wait
For his unwary clann. So, we stand at the gate,
And look long and far, as the sound of his tread
Dies away. He's our trailblazer. He's gone ahead.

(written as a tribute to my dear friend and Craft brother, Cuchulainn of EarthHaven
March 3, 2010)

From my amazing son...

2011-02-25T11:56:00.000-08:00

...I found, in an old BOS, this poem, this morning. Written to me in 1991 on Samhain, when he was 22, and shared here because it's wonderful:

Stretch the taught tendon
--flex mind
Circle the cortex (lines of thought)
Feed the blood
Fire;
Cringe not at truth
But smile at your reality
For laughable life is ever entertaining
And tears may be the most prolific teachers.
Spin the dance of love
Eternal.
Life is round, and so it comes
And bids farewell
To the body,
But never to the soul.
Fill your shoes in hope with dreams;
Walk the fear-lined path to solace
But never in loneliness.
Tread in the eyes of others
Never forgetting the color of your own.
Speak in peace to kindred souls (and foreign)
Never pace alone
And be not weary.

*****

Damn, I wish I'd written that! But I love it that my kid did, and gave it to me. So now, I give it to you.

Once More, With Feeling....

2011-02-01T08:50:00.001-08:00

Brighid, again....
Once more, with feeling,
Once more, Her festival.
Once more.

Brighid Duffy of Kildare,
My long-beloved ancestress,
Daughter of Duffy,
As am I.

An unique woman,
Unlike any other of her time.
"Not like other young things"
Said the poem.

She wanted to marry God.
She thought she was special,
She thought she had something to offer
And she did.

Look at this world,
Thousands of years later.
Everywhere, all over the globe
We know her name.

She is Springtime.
She is snowdrops
Blooming in the snow.
She is Hope.

She is Barding,
She is creating something
Where nothing was before.
She is Song.

She is Making,
She is using hands and heart
To make the world better.
She is Craft.

She is Healing.
She is waters of comfort
Flowing over bruised flesh.
She is Love.

On this day
The sun shines brightly
Onto melting snow.
It is Her day.

And she gifts us
With the sound of water
Snow melting, rain falling,
Life returning.

I will sing today.
I will do something loving.
I will make something new.
I will praise Her.

I have written
This poem, in the morning
On Her day
And for Her.

Brigid, my Mother,
My Ancestress, My Goddess
My inner Fire,
My Harpsong...

Burn bright.
Dance today, old limbs joyful
Sing with me
Voice rich and full.

Create with me,
Something new and lovely,
Making beauty
Where was none

It is Your Day.
I praise You
Once more,
With feeling.

Aisling the Bard, for Her Lady
Imbolc, 2011

About the Harp

2011-01-31T02:16:00.001-08:00

It breathes.
I feel it, nestled against me,
breathing my breath
before I strike a note.

Living it sings
With a voice
Larger than my hands,
Deeper than my heart,
Higher than my dreams.

Seeing it stand there
Is sheathed potential.
Arrow-strings taut, tensed at any sky,
It is a Now,
A Doing,
Unlike any other place or being.

I stretch
to reach all the strings
And feel life beneath my fingers
Unexpected
because I have not made it,
Engendered it.
It is its own,
Not mine.

It breathes there
It lives in the soul of former musics
Calling, crooning

Sleepsong
Griefsong
Laughtersong

And that other song
Self song
the one I play when no one is listening.

It is a place,
A time,
A history,
A Universe

How can people say
"the harp is so relaxing"
When within its voice
Are children and battles,
Wars and kingdoms
Births and alliances...

And yet it cradles me
like a lover
And sings songs
I never knew until it spoke.

Harp
Is a verb.

Brighid's Fire

2011-01-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

It rises in my head
And words come to me,
Sometimes poetry,
Sometimes just a thought.

Always, I am sure
That words are my tools.

Now, I think again.

Not just words.
Not just
The babblings of my mouth,
Not thought of,
Not planned.

That's just not good enough.

It's not, any more.

Now the words must arise
From deep inside me...

I was told, long ago,
That Silence was Craft.

I haven't Learned it yet.

I still talk too much,
I interrupt too much,
And I don't say much.

So now, I'll make a change.

Odd thought, for a Bard,
That Poetry is still.
That words are all wrong.
That what I need to do
Is learn to shut up.

I have too much to say.
When anyone speaks,
I always add my bit,
No matter the need.

It's time to let that go.
My Goddess, my Brighid
Is Mistress of the Word
And knows its true use.

The Fire In The Head
Burns out, if not kept
In sacredness, and used
Only when there's need.

So I-- I will begin

To practice Silence,
To Listen, as my gift
To Herself of the Flame.

My heart will still be full,
But I will not speak.

Perhaps, if I do this
My own Inner Flame
Will once again burn bright.

Perhaps She will hear
And know it is for Her
That I remain mute.

The truest Gift of all
Is hard to attain.

For me, to speak is easy,
To babble and chat.

Remaining still is harder.
So....I will do that.

Aisling the Bard, Imbolc 2010

In The Belly

2011-01-25T11:52:00.000-08:00

She quivers behind my lips all winter,
Never speaking, but filling my mind
With words unuttered,
Thoughts of poesy in silence,
Postponed for warmer days.

She dances in my old limbs,
Never moving, but filling my veins
With warm blood,
Making me wish for days long gone
When I was the night-dancer.

She lives inside my thoughts,
Never acting, but filling my head
With bard's fire,
Sparks of imbas, stored up,
To burst forth in springtime.

She flows in my stilled hands,
Never crafting, but filling my fingers
With stored skill,
Plans for drawing, painting, writing
All for later execution.

And then it comes...
La Fheile Brid, filling my Being
With Herself, Her Inspiration,
Her Creative Spark,
Her Healing Waters,
Her Ringing Song...

Brighid is coming!
Brighid is coming!
Brighid is here!

And I am no longer
In the belly....

Welcome Brighid....
All this you have given me,
All this which comes forth,
All this is Yours..
As am I.

For the Lady
Imbolc, 2008
Aisling the Bard

2011-01-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

The Genealogy of Brighid

Every day and every night

That I say the genealogy of Brighid

I shall not be killed,

I shall not be wounded;

I shall not be harried;

I shall not be put into a cell;

No fire, no sun, no moon will burn me;

No water, no lake, no sea will drown me:

For I am child of Poetry;

Poetry, child of Reflection;

Reflection, child of Meditation;

Meditation, child of Lore;

Lore, child of Research;

Research, child of Great Knowledge;

Great Knowledge, child of Intelligence;

Intelligence, child of Comprehension;

Comprehension, child of Wisdom;

Wisdom, child of Brighid.

*********

Brighid's Arrow--an Invocation

Most Holy Brighid, Excellent Woman, Bright Arrow, Sudden Flame;

May your bright fiery Sun

Take us swiftly to your lasting kingdom.

Healer's Rune

Brigid, you are a woman of peace.
You bring harmony where there is conflict.
You bring light to the darkness.
You bring hope to the downcast.
May the mantle of your peace cover those who are troubled and anxious,
And may peace be firmly rooted in our hearts and in our world.
Inspire us to act justly and to reverence all that God/dess has made.
Brighid, you are a voice for the wounded and the weary.
Strengthen what is weak within us,
Calm us into a quietness that heals and listens.
May we grow each day into greater wholeness in mind, body, and spirit.

Brighid's Rune

I, _______, (your name) in this fateful hour

Place all Nature with Her power;

The Sun with its brightness,

The Moon with its whiteness,

The Fire with all the strength it hath,

The Lightning with its rapid wrath,

The Winds with their swiftness along their path,

The Sea with its deepness,

The Rocks with their steepness,

The Earth with its starkness;

All these I place

With Brighid's mighty help and grace

Between myself and the powers of darkness.

******

Brede's Breastplate (The Deer's Cry)

I arise today through the strength of Heaven:
Light of Sun,
Radiance of Moon,
Splendor of Fire,
Speed of Lightning,
Swiftness of Wind,
Depth of Sea,
Stability of Earth,
Firmness of Rock

Martin Luther King jr. "The Three Dimensions Of A Complete Life"

2011-01-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

The Three Dimensions Of A Complete Life

by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
New Covenant Baptist Church Chicago Illinois, April 9, 1967

I want to use as the subject from which to preach: "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life." You know, they used to tell us in Hollywood that in order for a movie to be complete, it had to be three-dimensional. Well, this morning I want to seek to get over to each of us that if life itself is to be complete, it must be three-dimensional.

Many, many centuries ago, there was a man by the name of John who found himself in prison out on a lonely, obscure island called Patmos. And I’ve been in prison just enough to know that it’s a lonely experience. And when you are incarcerated in such a situation, you are deprived of almost every freedom, but the freedom to think, the freedom to pray, the freedom to reflect and to meditate. And while John was out on this lonely island in prison, he lifted his vision to high heaven and he saw, descending out of heaven, a new heaven and a new earth. Over in the twenty-first chapter of the book of Revelation, it opens by saying, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. And I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven."

And one of the greatest glories of this new city of God that John saw was its completeness. It was not up on one side and down on the other, but it was complete in all three of its dimensions. And so in this same chapter as we looked down to the sixteenth verse, John says, "The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal." In other words, this new city of God, this new city of ideal humanity is not an unbalanced entity, but is complete on all sides. Now I think John is saying something here in all of the symbolism of this text and the symbolism of this chapter. He’s saying at bottom that life as it should be and life at its best is a life that is complete on all sides.

And there are three dimensions of any complete life to which we can fitly give the words of this text: length, breadth, and height. Now the length of life as we shall use it here is the inward concern for one’s own welfare. In other words, it is that inward concern that causes one to push forward, to achieve his own goals and ambitions. The breadth of life as we shall use it here is the outward concern for the welfare of others. And the height of life is the upward reach for God. Now you got to have all three of these to have a complete life.

Now let’s turn for the moment to the length of life. I said that this is the dimension of life where we are concerned with developing our inner powers. In a sense this is the selfish dimension of life. There is such a thing as rational and healthy self-interest. A great Jewish rabbi, the late Joshua Leibman, wrote a book some years ago entitled Peace of Mind. And he has a chapter in that book entitled "Love Thyself Properly." And what he says in that chapter, in substance, is that before you can love other selves adequately, you’ve got to love your own self properly. You know, a lot of people don’t love themselves. And they go through life with deep and haunting emotional conflicts. So the length of life means that you must love yourself.

And you know what loving yourself also means? It means that you’ve got to accept yourself. So many people are busy trying to be somebody else. God gave all of us something significant. And we must pray every day, asking God to help us to accept ourselves. That means everything. Too many Negroes are ashamed of themselves, ashamed of being black. A Negro got to rise up and say from the bottom of his soul, "I am somebody. I have a rich, noble, and proud heritage. However exploited and however painful my history has been, I’m black, but I’m black and beautiful." This is what we’ve got to say. We’ve got to accept ourselves. And we must pray, "Lord, Help me to accept myself every day; help me to accept my tools."

I remember when I was in college, I majored in sociology, and all sociology majors had to take a course that was required called statistics. And statistics can be very complicated. You’ve got to have a mathematical mind, a real knowledge of geometry, and you’ve got to know how to find the mean, the mode, and the median. I never will forget. I took this course and I had a fellow classmate who could just work that stuff out, you know. And he could do his homework in about an hour. We would often go to the lab or the workshop, and he would just work it out in about an hour, and it was over for him. And I was trying to do what he was doing; I was trying to do mine in an hour. And the more I tried to do it in an hour, the more I was flunking out in the course. And I had to come to a very hard conclusion. I had to sit down and say, "Now, Martin Luther King, Leif Cane has a better mind than you." Sometimes you have to acknowledge that. And I had to say to myself, "Now, he may be able to do it in an hour, but it takes me two or three hours to do it." I was not willing to accept myself. I was not willing to accept my tools and my limitations.

But you know in life we’re called upon to do this. A Ford car trying to be a Cadillac is absurd, but if a Ford will accept itself as a Ford, it can do many things that a Cadillac could never do: it can get in parking spaces that a Cadillac can never get in. And in life some of us are Fords and some of us are Cadillacs. Moses says in "Green Pastures," "Lord, I ain’t much, but I is all I got." The principle of self-acceptance is a basic principle in life.

Now the other thing about the length of life: after accepting ourselves and our tools, we must discover what we are called to do. And once we discover it we should set out to do it with all of the strength and all of the power that we have in our systems. And after we’ve discovered what God called us to do, after we’ve discovered our life’s work, we should set out to do that work so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn’t do it any better. Now this does not mean that everybody will do the so-called big, recognized things of life. Very few people will rise to the heights of genius in the arts and the sciences; very few collectively will rise to certain professions. Most of us will have to be content to work in the fields and in the factories and on the streets. But we must see the dignity of all labor.

When I was in Montgomery, Alabama, I went to a shoe shop quite often, known as the Gordon Shoe Shop. And there was a fellow in there that used to shine my shoes, and it was just an experience to witness this fellow shining my shoes. He would get that rag, you know, and he could bring music out of it. And I said to myself, "This fellow has a Ph.D. in shoe shining."

What I’m saying to you this morning, my friends, even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."

If you can’t be a pine on the top of a hill
Be a scrub in the valley—but be
The best little scrub on the side of the hill,
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.
If you can’t be a highway just be a trail
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or fail—
Be the best of whatever you are.

And when you do this, when you do this, you’ve mastered the length of life.

This onward push to the end of self-fulfillment is the end of a person’s life. Now don’t stop here, though. You know, a lot of people get no further in life than the length. They develop their inner powers; they do their jobs well. But do you know, they try to live as if nobody else lives in the world but themselves? And they use everybody as mere tools to get to where they’re going. They don’t love anybody but themselves. And the only kind of love that they really have for other people is utilitarian love. You know, they just love people that they can use.

A lot of people never get beyond the first dimension of life. They use other people as mere steps by which they can climb to their goals and their ambitions. These people don’t work out well in life. They may go for awhile, they may think they’re making it all right, but there is a law. They call it the law of gravitation in the physical universe, and it works, it’s final, it’s inexorable: whatever goes up can come down. You shall reap what you sow. God has structured the universe that way. And he who goes through life not concerned about others will be a subject, victim of this law.

So I move on and say that it is necessary to add breadth to length. Now the breadth of life is the outward concern for the welfare of others, as I said. And a man has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow confines of his own individual concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

One day Jesus told a parable. You will remember that parable. He had a man that came to him to talk with him about some very profound concerns. And they finally got around to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" And this man wanted to debate with Jesus. This question could have very easily ended up in thin air as a theological or philosophical debate. But you remember Jesus immediately pulled that question out of thin air and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. He talked about a certain man who fell among thieves. Two men came by and they just kept going. And then finally another man came, a member of another race, who stopped and helped him. And that parable ends up saying that this good Samaritan was a great man; he was a good man because he was concerned about more than himself.

Now you know, there are many ideas about why the priest and the Levite passed and didn’t stop to help that man. A lot of ideas about it. Some say that they were going to a church service, and they were running a little late, you know, and couldn’t be late for church, so they kept going because they had to get down to the synagogue. And then there are others who would say that they were involved in the priesthood and consequently there was a priestly law which said that if you were going to administer the sacrament or what have you, you couldn’t touch a human body twenty-four hours before worship. Now there’s another possibility. It is possible that they were going down to Jericho to organize a Jericho Road Improvement Association. That’s another possibility. And they may have passed by because they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal source rather than one individual victim. That’s a possibility.

But you know, when I think about this parable, I think of another possibility as I use my imagination. It’s possible that these men passed by on the other side because they were afraid. You know, the Jericho Road is a dangerous road. I’ve been on it and I know. And I never will forget, Mrs. King and I were in the Holy Land some time ago. We rented a car and we drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho, a distance of about sixteen miles. You get on that Jericho road—I’m telling you it’s a winding, curving, meandering road, very conducive for robbery. And I said to my wife, "Now I can see why Jesus used this road as the occasion for his parable." Here you are when you start out in Jerusalem: you are twenty-two hundred feet above sea level, and when you get down to Jericho sixteen miles later—I mean you have sixteen miles from Jerusalem—you’re twelve hundred feet below sea level. During the days of Jesus that road came to the point of being known as the "Bloody Path." So when I think about the priest and the Levite, I think those brothers were afraid.

They were just like me. I was going out to my father’s house in Atlanta the other day. He lives about three or four miles from me, and you go out there by going down Simpson Road. And then when I came back later that night—and brother, I can tell you, Simpson Road is a winding road. And a fellow was standing out there trying to flag me down. And I felt that he needed some help; I knew he needed help. But I didn’t know it. I’ll be honest with you, I kept going. I wasn’t really willing to take the risk.

I say to you this morning that the first question that the priest asked was the first question that I asked on that Jericho Road of Atlanta known as Simpson Road. The first question that the Levite asked was, ‘’If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But the good Samaritan came by and he reversed the question. Not "What will happen to me if I stop to help this man?" but "What will happen to this man if I do not stop to help him?" This was why that man was good and great. He was great because he was willing to take a risk for humanity; he was willing to ask, "What will happen to this man?" not "What will happen to me?"

This is what God needs today: Men and women who will ask, "What will happen to humanity if I don’t help? What will happen to the civil rights movement if I don’t participate? What will happen to my city if I don’t vote? What will happen to the sick if I don’t visit them?" This is how God judges people in the final analysis.

Oh, there will be a day, the question won’t be, "How many awards did you get in life?" Not that day. It won’t be, "How popular were you in your social setting?" That won’t be the question that day. It will not ask how many degrees you’ve been able to get. The question that day will not be concerned with whether you are a "Ph.D." or a "no D." It will not be concerned with whether you went to Morehouse or whether you went to "No House." The question that day will not be, "How beautiful is your house?" The question that day will not be, "How much money did you accumulate? How much did you have in stocks and bonds?" The question that day will not be, "What kind of automobile did you have?" On that day the question will be, "What did you do for others?"

Now I can hear somebody saying, "Lord, I did a lot of things in life. I did my job well; the world honored me for doing my job. I did a lot of things, Lord; I went to school and studied hard. I accumulated a lot of money, Lord; that’s what I did." It seems as if I can hear the Lord of Life saying, "But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was sick, and ye visited me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was in prison, and you weren’t concerned about me. So get out of my face. What did you do for others?" This is the breadth of life.

Somewhere along the way, we must learn that there is nothing greater than to do something for others. And this is the way I’ve decided to go the rest of my days. That’s what I’m concerned about. John, if you and Bernard happen to be around when I come to the latter-days and that moment to cross the Jordan, I want you to tell them that I made a request: I don’t want a long funeral. In fact, I don’t even need a eulogy more than one or two minutes. I hope that I will live so well the rest of the days—I don’t know how long I’ll live, and I’m not concerned about that—but I hope I can live so well that the preacher can get up and say, "He was faithful." That’s all, that’s enough. That’s the sermon I’d like to hear: "Well done my good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful; you’ve been concerned about others." That’s where I want to go from this point on the rest of my days. "He who is greatest among you shall be your servant." I want to be a servant. I want to be a witness for my Lord, to do something for others.

And don’t forget in doing something for others that you have what you have because of others. Don’t forget that. We are tied together in life and in the world. And you may think you got all you got by yourself. But you know, before you got out here to church this morning, you were dependent on more than half of the world. You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom, and you reach over for a bar of soap, and that’s handed to you by a Frenchman. You reach over for a sponge, and that’s given to you by a turk. You reach over for a towel, and that comes to your hand from the hands of a Pacific Islander. And then you go on to the kitchen to get your breakfast. You reach on over to get a little coffee, and that’s poured in your cup by a South American. Or maybe you decide that you want a little tea this morning, only to discover that that’s poured in your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you want a little cocoa, that’s poured in your cup by a West African. Then you want a little bread and you reach over to get it, and that’s given to you by the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. Before you get through eating breakfast in the morning, you’re dependent on more than half the world. That’s the way God structured it; that’s the way God structured this world. So let us be concerned about others because we are dependent on others.

But don’t stop here either. You know, a lot of people master the length of life, and they master the breadth of life, but they stop right there. Now if life is to be complete, we must move beyond our self-interest. We must move beyond humanity and reach up, way up for the God of the universe, whose purpose changeth not.

Now a lot of people have neglected this third dimension. And you know, the interesting thing is a lot of people neglect it and don’t even know they are neglecting it. They just get involved in other things. And you know, there are two kinds of atheism. Atheism is the theory that there is no God. Now one kind is a theoretical kind, where somebody just sits down and starts thinking about it, and they come to a conclusion that there is no God. The other kind is a practical atheism, and that kind goes out of living as if there is no God. And you know there are a lot of people who affirm the existence of God with their lips, and they deny his existence with their lives. You’ve seen these people who have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. They deny the existence of God with their lives and they just become so involved in other things. They become so involved in getting a big bank account. They become so involved in getting a beautiful house, which we all should have. They become so involved in getting a beautiful car that they unconsciously just forget about God. There are those who become so involved in looking at the man-made lights of the city that they unconsciously forget to rise up and look at that great cosmic light and think about it—that gets up in the eastern horizon every morning and moves across the sky with a kind of symphony of motion and paints its technicolor across the blue—a light that man can never make. They become so involved in looking at the skyscraping buildings of the Loop of Chicago or Empire State Building of New York that they unconsciously forget to think about the gigantic mountains that kiss the skies as if to bathe their peaks in the lofty blue—something that man could never make. They become so busy thinking about radar and their television that they unconsciously forget to think about the stars that bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity, those stars that appear to be shiny, silvery pins sticking in the magnificent blue pincushion. They become so involved in thinking about man’s progress that they forget to think about the need for God’s power in history. They end up going days and days not knowing that God is not with them.

And I’m here to tell you today that we need God. Modern man may know a great deal, but his knowledge does not eliminate God. And I tell you this morning that God is here to stay. A few theologians are trying to say that God is dead. And I’ve been asking them about it because it disturbs me to know that God died and I didn’t have a chance to attend the funeral. They haven’t been able to tell me yet the date of his death. They haven’t been able to tell me yet who the coroner was that pronounced him dead. They haven’t been able to tell me yet where he’s buried.

You see, when I think about God, I know his name. He said somewhere, back in the Old Testament, "I want you to go out, Moses, and tell them ‘I Am’ sent you." He said just to make it clear, let them know that "my last name is the same as my first, ‘I Am that I Am.’ Make that clear. I Am." And God is the only being in the universe that can say "I Am" and put a period behind it. Each of us sitting here has to say, "I am because of my parents; I am because of certain environmental conditions; I am because of certain hereditary circumstances; I am because of God." But God is the only being that can just say, "I Am" and stop right there. "I Am that I Am." And He’s here to stay. Let nobody make us feel that we don’t need God.

As I come to my conclusion this morning, I want to say that we should search for him. We were made for God, and we will be restless until we find rest in him. And I say to you this morning that this is the personal faith that has kept me going. I’m not worried about the future. You know, even on this race question, I’m not worried. I was down in Alabama the other day, and I started thinking about the state of Alabama where we worked so hard and may continue to elect the Wallaces. And down in my home state of Georgia, we have another sick governor by the name of Lester Maddox. And all of these things can get you confused, but they don’t worry me. Because the God that I worship is a God that has a way of saying even to kings and even to governors, "Be still, and know that I am God." And God has not yet turned over this universe to Lester Maddox and Lurleen Wallace. Somewhere I read, "The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, and I’m going on because I have faith in Him. I do not know what the future holds, but I do know who holds the future. And if He’ll guide us and hold our hand, we’ll go on in.

I remember down in Montgomery, Alabama, an experience that I’d like to share with you. When we were in the midst of the bus boycott, we had a marvelous old lady that we affectionately called Sister Pollard. She was a wonderful lady about seventy-two years old and she was still working at that age. During the boycott she would walk every day to and from work. She was one that somebody stopped one day and said, "Wouldn’t you like to ride?" And she said, "No." And then the driver moved on and stopped and thought, and backed up a little and said, "Well, aren’t you tired?" She said, "Yes, my feets is tired, but my soul is rested."

She was a marvelous lady. And one week I can remember that I had gone through a very difficult week. Threatening calls had come in all day and all night the night before, and I was beginning to falter and to get weak within and to lose my courage. And I never will forget that I went to the mass meeting that Monday night very discouraged and a little afraid, and wondering whether we were going to win the struggle. And I got up to make my talk that night, but it didn’t come out with strength and power. Sister Pollard came up to me after the meeting and said, "Son, what’s wrong with you?" Said, "You didn’t talk strong enough tonight."

And I said, "Nothing is wrong, Sister Pollard, I’m all right."

She said, "You can’t fool me." Said, "Something wrong with you." And then she went on to say these words, "Is the white folks doing something to you that you don’t like?"

I said, "Everything is going to be all right, Sister Pollard."

And then she finally said, "Now come close to me and let me tell you something one more time, and I want you to hear it this time." She said, "Now I done told you we is with you." She said, "Now, even if we ain’t with you, the Lord is with you." And she concluded by saying, "The Lord’s going to take care of you."

And I’ve seen many things since that day. I’ve gone through many experiences since that night in Montgomery, Alabama. Since that time Sister Pollard has died. Since that time I’ve been in more than eighteen jail cells. Since that time I’ve come perilously close to death at the hands of a demented Negro woman. Since that time I’ve seen my home bombed three times. Since that time I’ve had to live every day under the threat of death. Since that time I’ve had many frustrating and bewildering nights. But over and over again I can still hear Sister Pollard’s words: "God’s going to take care of you." So today I can face any man and any woman with my feet solidly placed on the ground and my head in the air because I know that when you are right, God will fight your battle.

"Darker yet may be the night, harder yet may be the fight. Just stand up for that which is right." It seems that I can hear a voice speaking even this morning, saying to all of us, "Stand up for what is right. Stand up for what is just. Lo, I will be with you even until the end of the world." Yes, I’ve seen the lightning flash. I’ve heard the thunder roll. I’ve felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. And I go on in believing that. Reach out and find the breadth of life.

You may not be able to define God in philosophical terms. Men through the ages have tried to talk about him. Plato said that he was the Architectonic Good. Aristotle called him the Unmoved Mover. Hegel called him the Absolute Whole. Then there was a man named Paul Tillich who called him Being-Itself. We don’t need to know all of these high-sounding terms. Maybe we have to know him and discover him another way. One day you ought to rise up and say, "I know him because he’s a lily of the valley." He’s a bright and morning star. He’s a rose of Sharon. He’s a battle-axe in the time of Babylon. And then somewhere you ought to just reach out and say, "He’s my everything. He’s my mother and my father. He’s my sister and my brother. He’s a friend to the friendless." This is the God of the universe. And if you believe in him and worship him, something will happen in your life. You will smile when others around you are crying. This is the power of God.

Go out this morning. Love yourself, and that means rational and healthy self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That’s the length of life. Then follow that: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are commanded to do that. That’s the breadth of life. And I’m going to take my seat now by letting you know that there’s a first and even greater commandment: "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength." I think the psychologist would just say with all thy personality. And when you do that, you’ve got the breadth of life.

And when you get all three of these together, you can walk and never get weary. You can look up and see the morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shouting for joy. When you get all of these working together in your very life, judgment will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

When you get all the three of these together, the lamb will lie down with the lion.

When you get all three of these together, you look up and every valley will be exalted, and every hill and mountain will be made low; the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh will see it together.

When you get all three of these working together, you will do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.

When you get all three of these together, you will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth.

When you get all three of these together...

Today, I'm Baha'i

2011-01-16T12:10:00.000-08:00

Today is "World Religion Day" in the Baha'i faith. Its stated purpose is something against which I have had much to say: the journey towards, according to the official site of the event, the "establishment of interfaith understanding and harmony by emphasizing the common denominators underlying all religions." I have been a supporter of efforts towards recognizing and applauding diversity of belief, feeling that it is imperative that we as human beings recognize the humanity and precious worth of those who are "the other", people who do not dress or look or speak or think or worship, or see the world, the same way that we do. So....I am surprised at myself, when I realize that, at least for this year, I am going to try to adopt the Baha'i perspective on this day, and think about the underlying philosophical and social truth that may inform this perspective. Again, from the World Religion Day web site: "The prime cause of age-old conflict between man and man has been the absence of one ethical belief, a single spiritual standard – one moral code."

Now, don't get me wrong here. I do not apprehend this statement to mean, nor could I support it if it did mean, that everyone should acknowledge the same set of mythos, and worship the same deity, and follow the same commandments. I would feel, and would, I think, be justified therein, that the above perspective would be simply another cloak for religious fundamentalism. But...there is a difference, albeit IMO poorly phrased above, between ethics and commandments, between morals and rules. Ethics, morals, are that which inform rules and laws, the reasoning and the philosophy behind rules and laws. And yes, I do, oddly enough, believe that there is, and should be acknowledged to be, a single set of ethics that informs rules, laws, and the rule of law, everywhere, in every religion. Simply put, as it is stated on the World Religions web site, "Human unity and true equality depend not on past origins, but on future goals, on what we are becoming and whither we are going....... to see the whole earth as a single country and humanity its citizenry."

That is an ethical construct I can support. I would not venture to speak for the Baha'i faith, nor for its members, because I know very little about them. But I would accept and promote the idea that humanity is one thing, and people are human beings in every religion, class, race, culture, society and other division of life, and should all, must all, be granted the same human respect and dignity and love from other human beings in other places and positions. Religious difference has been the Great Divide in society for millenia, beginning even before the emergence of the Bible and the concept of "chosen people". Most of the world's wars, back as far as we have historical records, can be shown in some way to have been about differences in religion. People have been using war to secure peace, and committing violence and murder on a large scale to force their opponents to accept the peculiar "Love" of a unique and individual perception of "God" almost as long as there have been human beings.

So...today is World Religions Day. And on this day, I suggest each and all of you reading this try, for even a few minutes, even there in front of your computer where no one else can see or hear you, to cultivate a momentary acceptance of, and grounds for agreement with, a religious practice, belief, or denomination not your own. What could it hurt, for just a few minutes, to try to see the members of another faith, or one member of another faith, not as "the other", but as another human person, a brother or sister, trying his or her best, according to his or her own lights, to make a way through the complex maze of human existence and come out whole and safe on the other side. I am going to try to do this, because I do believe, in my deepest core, that no matter what your religious practice, or lack thereof, may teach or command, at the end of the day it is Love, all kinds of Love, seeing the other as a person worthy of love and respect and assistance and kindness, that is going to get us through this millennium and beyond it without destroying the planet, one another and our true Selves in the process. So, just for today, here is what I am going to do to celebrate World Religions Day. I am going to try not to make any anti-Mormon jokes today. I am going to try to feel some compassion for the likes of Jimmy Swaggart (unfortunate name for a servant of the Lord) and Glenn Beck. I am going to try not to rant and rave, curse and swear, about the Tea Party and all its ramifications. Instead, I am going to try to remember that people are all trying, as best as they can, to do and be what they think their God wants them to be. They're all human beings, and so they are like me. I fuck up, and so will they. But even people who hate think they are doing God's will. For just this one day, I will try not to hate them for hating, and in so doing become like those who hate. I will try, just for this day, to understand that we're all in this together and that if we're even going to have a slim chance of getting through existence in one piece, we're going to have to do it together.

If I fail at this, or if you do, here is a small list of tools to assist us in believing that there is, as World Religions Day attests, a basic similarity in all faiths that can help us along the way to human understanding. We might refer to it as the Golden Rule, but it does occur in some form in practically every religion of which I have any knowledge. Here ya go :

The Ethic Of Reciprocity, otherwise known as The Golden Rule, is found in the scriptures of nearly every religion. It is considered a condensation in one statement of all longer lists of ethical dos and don'ts. T.O.T.E.G. adopted it as the basic ethical guidline for our people in 1984, with the understanding that it must be intelligently and cautiously applied since there is no absolute standard as to what is helpful or harmful to everyone or everything The following is the way the Ethic of Reciprocity is phrased in many of the major religions of the world.

African Traditional Religions One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts. [Yoruba Proverb (Nigeria) ]
Bahá'í Faith: And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself. [ Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, 30 ]
Buddhism : Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. [ Udana-Varga 5,1 ]
Christianity : All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. [ Matthew 7:1 ]
Confucianism : Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state. [ Analects12:2 ]
Hinduism, Brahmanism : This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you. [ Mahabharata 5,1517 ]
Islam : No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. [ Sunnah ]
Judaism : What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. [ Talmud, Shabbat 3id ]
Shinto : "The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form"
Taoism : Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. [ Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien ]
Zoroastrianism : That nature alone is good which refrains from doing to another whatsoever is not good for itself. [ Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5 ]
Jainism: A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated. Sutrakritanga 1.11.33
Native American Spirituality "All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One." Black Elk
Plato: May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me. (Greece; 4th century BCE)
Roman Pagan Religion: "The law imprinted on the hearts of all men is to love the members of society as themselves."
Principles of Scientology: 20: "Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you."
Seneca: "Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors," Epistle 47:11 (Rome; 1st century CE)
Socrates: "Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you." (Greece; 5th century BCE)
Sikhism: "No one is my enemy, none a stranger and everyone is my friend." Guru Arjan Dev : AG 1299
Sufism: "The basis of Sufism is consideration of the hearts and feelings of others. If you haven't the will to gladden someone's heart, then at least beware lest you hurt someone's heart, for on our path, no sin exists but this." Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order
Unitarian Universalism: "We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." 7th Principle of Unitarian Universalism
Wicca: "An it harm none, do what thou wilt" The Wiccan Rede

(from the Toteg Tribe web site)

********

So, go ahead. Try it today. You might be surprised how much it helps.

Mythopoesy, Graves, Trees, and Conclusions

2011-01-15T19:24:00.000-08:00

The White Goddess, by Robert Graves, is the source of a mythic system which purports to link the Celtic alphabet with the names of trees and plants whose characteristics are representative of the cycles of personality, as well as the changes in the land throughout the year. Whatever the actual source, the Solar and Lunar Wheels as designated by the "tree months" become a complex and workable system of magic. Beginning in the Winter, between Yule and Imbolc, the tree months exemplify the inception, growth and development and attainments of the personal cycle throughout the year.

Below is a listing of the alphabet in order, with the tree, season, and characteristic energy noted.

CELTIC TREE MONTHS..LUNAR WHEEL

BEITH...Birch...First lunation after Yule...Inception
LUIS...Rowan...between Yule and Imbolc...Quickening
NION...Ash...First lunation after Imbolc...Aspiration
FEARN...Alder...between Imbolc and Oestre...Assertion
SAILLE...Willow...First lunation after Oestre..Intuition
UATH...Hawthorne...between Bealteine and Litha...Purification
DUIR...Oak...first full lunation after Bealteine...Divination
TINNE...Holly...first lunation after Litha...Protection
COLL...Hazel...between Litha and Lughnassadh...Inspiration
MUIN...Vine...between Lughnassadh and Mabon...Intoxication
GORT...Ivy...first lunation after Mabon...Resurrection
NgETAL...Reed...between Mabon and Samhain...Seclusion
RUIS...Elder...first lunation after Samhain...Dissolution

STATIONS OF THE YEAR...SOLAR WHEEL

AILM...Silver Fir...INTERCALARY DAY...Conception
ONN...Furze or Gorse...SPRING EQUINOX...Seed
CROSS-QUARTER FESTIVAL...Bealteine...Flower
UR...Heather...SUMMER SOLSTICE...Fruit
CROSS-QUARTER FESTIVAL...Lughnassadh...Harvest
EADHA...Aspen...AUTUMN EQUINOX...Celebration
CROSS-QUARTER FESTIVAL...Samhain...Compost
IDHO...Yew...WINTER SOLSTICE...Fallow

Many people believe that there is something "wrong" with using Graves' Tree Calendar because it is "false"...as in, because the Ancient Celts didn't use it. Somehow they miss the point that even Graves knew the Calendar was his own creation, and his discussions of Mythopoesis state repeatedly that "this remains a very difficult book, as well as a very queer one, to be avoided by anyone with a distracted, tired, or rigidly scientific mind" He states clearly that he "assembled" the Tree Calendar from fragments of poetic writings over many centuries and several sources. Graves didn't pretend to be recording either history or science, and he doesn't expect anyone to take his writings for either of these. What is expected, and what I believe is owed to him by the integrity of a reader responding to the integrity of a writer, is to look carefully, study for yourself, and decide for yourself whether or not this is a useful tool, whether or not it works, whether or not mythopoesy should become a part of your own method of Crafting. For me it is, it does, and it has. See what you think.

The Write Stuff, Revisited

2011-01-13T11:07:00.000-08:00

I wonder if there is anything more terrifying than a blank page...or a promise, or a commitment, to fill it....

I will never understand what has made me a spectator in my own play, ridden by a desire to have it all without sacrificing ambiguity--perhaps the final act is my admission that what I envision has always greater power, depth, clarity, passion, magnitude, than any feeble effort to enchain it in words...how shallow I seem in my effort to transcend myself...

Madeleine L'Engle has reaffirmed for me what I have always known--that one is grasped by the work, which is greater than one's Self...perhaps my predominant punctuation mark is the ellipsis because I don't believe, really, that there is finality to anything...especially creative thought...

I am stultifying in an atmosphere of intellectual richness--starving in a garden, for I have forgotten to heed the admonition, "Take, eat"...I have forgotten the importance of feeding my own fires, as I have abandoned the richness of self-immolation in pure thought...all who draw from me draw out what is there, which I have forgotten to replenish...

I promise myself to read, to write, to pray--every night, just for me--there is no obstacle of life which I cannot overcome with the force of my own personality--if I still possess that force...Let me not to the growth of my own mind erect impediments...

I wonder if "the force which through the green fuse drives the flower" is my own creative energy, or my hookup to some vast cosmic consciousness...Is there an Oversoul--am I a transcendentalist--will I ever know, or would one be able to ask a question like that unless one were one of them....?

I have never succeeded in convincing myself of the worth of my own philosophical ramblings, but have always refused to believe those who have told me I should publish...fear has caused my inertia, as I do not feel what feeble talent I possess can possibly meet the needs of the gods with money and printing presses.

All I write is so real and such deep feeling...I find I never truly put pen to paper unless I hurt too much not to...how can I face the exposure and rejection of my spirit..."most people don't want a piece of your soul", a critic once told me, but a writer has nothing else to offer, no other way to communicate with the ultimate reality of existence.

I am too honest not to be vulnerable, too candid not to be shortsighted, too forthright for self-protection--it is uncomfortable to be an idealist, but other ways smack to me of compromise--I cannot cure myself of the lucent reaction to the phenomenon of existence...

My different drummer throws me out of step with reality, but I love his music....and somewhere inside whatever there is of wholeness in me is this determination to suffer it all, live it all, breathe it all, never give up or give in or be bored or get old or stop trying or settle...for anything....I know now that moderation is not my path, nor is wisdom of the sensible sort, for I will not be still and I would rather burn out than rust out...

The world is not as it should be, and it's much more wonderful than we know--and a writer must proclaim both points of view, in the face of indifference, at great personal risk, and both at once if possible...Ferlinghetti's "absurdity" is a necessary component of "taut truth", because Reality is not true, and much that is not real is very True, and much that is not Real is all too true...It is this absurdity which the writer must face squarely any time s/he attempts to make existence coherent...

Perhaps the most damning thing that can be said about anything is that "it really makes sense"...for we often abandon passion and intelligence for competence and commonsense---never--no, forget the middle road of safety; I need to burn and scintillate and push and grow and coruscate and care...I hope...

Is there any reason why we only use 3 to 10 per cent of our brain capacity? Is it not that there is some sort of a synapse--an automatic shutdown valve--which prevents us from giving all of ourselves to anything, "Lest we be as gods, knowing both good and evil"...lest we hear with our ears and understand with our hearts and be converted and healed...

What frightens us so much about the nakedness of Eden--why do we not know that wholeness is holiness--why can we not see that what we think of as our own imperfection is the glory of God, for he made us human and fallible and, being God, could have done otherwise...was it Twain or Lincoln who said, "The Lord must love plain folks, he made so many of 'em"? Is it not enough for us to glory in being plain folks--because what we call "plain" is infinite richness and variety**--and there is a tawdry sameness about the roads we take to make ourselves unique...when we hurt, we hunger for home food, and warmth and love---shouldn't that tell us something basic about the emptiness of elegance...?

Maybe I AM a transcendentalist, after all.....

__________

Written in my journal, January 22, 1983

*interpolation when copying, not part of the original* There is a lesson here for the creator, of writing, of anything....do not make a thing which is intended to only use part of its capacity and never understand nor achieve how to use the whole of it...for doing any less than the best you yourself can do, and failing to give your whole self, and ITS whole self, to the body of your creation, bespeaks fear that your creation will know, and tell, too much about you, and not remain dependent upon you. Jehova god was a coward, making man in His image and likeness, only not too much...OR...is that the point, that we are supposed to FIGURE OUT how to get there, to our Godness, and we have been given tools and seeds, not fruit and flowers, because we are supposed to grow, ourselves?

**inescapable thought here, 27 years later, "I want to be unique, like everybody else" lol

*****

And today, January 13, 2011, I find this, and read it again, and marvel at how much of it--no, wait, not that. Not literary vagueness, hinting at something more...no, fact is, it is all still true. And no more comprehensible than it was then. It's been almost 28 years. When will I get further into the maze? Guess there's nothing to do but keep walking, looking, seeking, listening, praying, loving, living, and paying attention. So....

Here I go. Again.

After Yesterday....

2011-01-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

I can't go into detail here, because there's too much risk of people seeing this that I don't know (I am not certain of Networked Blogs' security). So, I will only ask....yesterday's entry on prayer was too pertinent, too relevant, to what is happening in my life right now. If you believe that Deity is immanent, personal, relevant, as well as transcendent and omnipotent....what do you do when you give your whole heart to the Work, and the answer is "no"?

Maybe my horoscope from yesterday is something I should have looked at to BEGIN the day, not to end it: "You may not be sure what to think today, Virgo. Mental confusion could be the day's theme for you, but don't let it get you down. Realize that it's just one of those days when none of the pieces fit right. The truth is that they do fit somewhere, just not now. Lay low and wait for this phase to pass. Things will pick up soon as the fog lifts and you can see clearly again."

Yeah. What THEY said....

Pagans And Prayer

2011-01-09T23:55:00.000-08:00

Prayer is a concept with which many Pagans have some trouble. The commonly-held attitude amongst members of mainstream religions about prayer is that it is a means of petitioning, praising, and thanking God, and many Pagans do not believe in an exoteric Deity from whom come blessings. Most Pagans’ attitudes about the Universe fail to consciously contain a concept of a Being “out there” who hears and answers, or refuses to answer, prayers. Therefore it is sometimes surprising to those of Pagan persuasions to find out that indeed they DO pray, and to examine closely what that prayer consists of.

Prayer in the form of communication with Deity is probably the most common type of prayer found amongst Pagans, whether or not they use the term “prayer”, or even the term “Deity,” for that matter. Despite the fact that most Pagans have a diversity of belief about the nature of Deity, we are all aware on some level that there IS a difference between “The Goddess” and “the Goddess Within”, for example. As a former teacher of mine pointed out to me, “Yes, ‘Thou Art Goddess,’ but you didn’t make the sun come up this morning, and I KNOW those mountains were there before you moved to Utah.” Most of us do not believe ourselves to be the final authority on the entire Universe, and whether we call it Goddess and God, Spirit, energy, the One, or many another name, most of us find, or postulate, or hope, that the Unseen Force of Existence is one which is personal and benevolent. Whether or not we feel that we have a parent-child relationship, or see ourselves more as Seekers, Scientists or Shamans, we feel a need to ask the questions and contemplate the vastness of the many possible answers. That questioning, or meditation, or contemplation, or ecstasy, or focus, or wish, is akin to what members of other religions term “prayer.”

One Pagan’s perspective on prayer was rendered thus, in an article on Witchvox in 2000:

What is prayer? Webster's dictionary says "1)a) (1) an address (as a petition) to God or a god in word or thought (2) a set order of words used in praying b) an earnest request or wish. 2) the act or practice of praying to God or a god"

My understanding of prayer fits this definition and goes beyond it. There is that wonderful moment when a breathtaking vista of undiscovered beauty opens before you on a hike, when thoughts of praise and thanks fly out to the Goddess even before I am conscious of doing so. There is the discipline of focusing my mind and spirit as I write new rituals for our coven, silently seeking guidance as I work. Then there is the not so silent prayer for patience as I negotiate rush hour traffic. And the sharing of energy as the coven raises power in ritual and celebration. As you can see, for me, there are many types of prayer, many moments of prayerfulness, ranging from serious to humor-filled, all of them a means of connecting with the God and the Goddess in my daily life.

Connection seems to be the most significant element in what this woman refers to as prayer. It may not be obvious at first glance how the focus of such a prayer differs from that of many in mainstream religions, but another source states this more directly:

Do I pray? No, I do not feel that I pray. Prayer is a plea in my opinion, and my Gods to not need me to plea, beg or whine. They just need me to talk to Them. So I talk with my Gods daily. I do not take the role of supplicant, I take the role of what I am, a child talking to a very patient Parent.

Prayer is overrated. At some point, someone decided that in order to speak with a god, it was necessary to bend your knee in supplication (either physically or mentally) and make a plea to that god. This was supposed to be the only way that you could get your god to listen. Then it was labeled as prayer, and it only worked if you showed the proper amount of respect while doing it.

I show my respect by actually talking to my Gods. They are the original Mother and Father, we are their children. I do not expect my children to speak to me in pleading tones in order for me to answer and assist them, so I do not think the Lady and Lord expect that from us, their children, either. So talk to your Gods, make it known that you have not forgotten them, you love them, and they will do the same for you.

To connection, this writer adds mutual respect and a feeling of intimacy and entitlement, almost an egalitarian relationship. This idea is not as alien to Pagans as it may seem to members of other religions, as many Pagans hold to an idea that the Gods are created by those who remember and respect and worship them, so there is a mutual need there.

Most Pagans refer to what Christians think of as prayer as “sending energy.” They have within the concept that there is an Energy in the Universe that responds to their connecting with it, in ways often beyond the power of spoken or written language to convey. They may call this Energy Goddess, God, or Spirit…but they do communicate with, respect and sometimes attempt to interact directly with this Energy. Most Pagans also consider that the Christian custom of petitioning, thanking or praising God is as much an attempt to manipulate Energy as is what a Pagan does, only by a different name. Incidentally, the whole idea of prayer, even the word, has the same implication of giving responsibility over to Deity for what happens to one, whereas the Pagan idea of manipulating Energy seems to imply more personal responsibility for the results. Perhaps this is one reason why most Pagans pursue the concept of, and action of, prayer, whilst disavowing the name thereof.

Occasions of Prayer

Most Pagans do not think of what they do as intercession, but as cooperation, with Deity. For this reason, “praying for” someone is probably far more rare in a Pagan’s life than it is in that of a Christian. Part of the reason for this is the belief on the part of many Pagans that we “choose” our experiences in this lifetime, and that someone may be experiencing illness or hardship by their own pre-life choice, to enable them to grow in some specific way. Some one outside the experience would consider it unethical to interfere with that. Another part of the feeling of not “praying for” people has to do with the kinds of ideas expressed below:

To me “bad prayer” is when the intent is to change or fix the person being prayed for. When fundamentalists tell me they will pray for my soul, it feels like an attack on my soul. These kinds of prayers aren't honoring me as a human being, they are not offered in love (at least not in what I consider a reasonable definition of love). They are manipulative and controlling. I relate prayer like this to casting a spell without someone's consent. Trying to force an individual to behave differently. This kind of prayer is often used as a threat - "I will pray that you find the light and be saved from the torments of hell to which you are surely headed." My translation - "I want you to abandon your uniqueness and connection with the divine because it does not match mine and I feel it is a threat to my world and therefore evil, not just different. If you don't change you will suffer" also can be translated as "I'll have my god beat up your god!" This is the type of prayer that makes Pagans reluctant to use the word prayer. This is the kind of prayer I could do without.

And yet, we DO pray, even if we do not call it that. At every ritual we “call” or “invoke” the Elemental Beings or Guardians, the Lord and Lady, and sometimes other non-corporeal beings. At least in the Medieval sense (as in “I pray you” or “prithee”) we are then praying, no matter what we call it. When we send energy for healing or for spellcraft, we are praying, even if the prayer is directed at the Universe, our Selves, or has no designated object. When we sing or chant in praise of the Beauty of Life, we pray. When we touch for healing, and call upon Spirit to bless, we pray. When we say “So Mote It Be” as a Pagan form of “Amen!”, we pray. Whether we dance in active ecstasy or silently fall into contemplative or oracular trance…yes, we pray.

First Admission....

2011-01-08T18:08:00.000-08:00

...in a way. To those who read this who know what that term means, it's kind of a stretch...the "admission" I am looking for is to see what my CovenKith think of the Work that has just been done. I will keep you posted...

Compass...

2011-01-07T23:31:00.000-08:00

This has been a most amazing confluence of events. I have taken some of the deep lore of my 1734 Stream, and had it shown to me, by accidentally stumbling upon a drawing in an old BOS, that it fits beautifully with some newer, but equally deep, lore of my current Coven and Trad. They are melding beautifully to create a brand-new Witche's Compass for purposes of Working. I wish I could show and share the whole thing, but I can't. But suffice it to say I am bowing in gratitude and gasping in amazement as this new Work seems to be "doing itself". I can't help but think I have Help. You know who you Are. Thank you.

Something I Like To Revisit From Time To Time

2011-01-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

The question is what do you believe? About the purpose of life, about the nature of the gods, about your relationship to them, about what it means to be a Witch....just for a start.

(This question was asked at a panel discussion in which I was a participant, in 2003. I have been re-copying some old BOS and other materials, and ran into this again. I remind myself to look at things like this periodically, so here is a recounting of my responses at the time. I am not sure, now, that I would change any of it.)

OK….several things all at once, not all of them mutually intelligible or coherent. So I will start this out as a brainstorming, and hope it coalesces into prose somewhere along the way…..

I believe that each individual consciousness is unique, irreplaceable, never to be repeated, and that each life in the Universe, both life that is self-aware and life that is not, exists to fulfill a specific and unique purpose. The purpose of Lives is not interchangeable one with another. No one’s Life, or the deeds of their conscious human life, or the result of their non-self-aware biological or non-biological existence, can ever stand in for, or substitute for, or replace, the purpose or resonance or meaning of any other Life.

I believe that it is the purpose of successive human lives to find out the ultimate purpose of the Being’s Life, and to perform or become that thing. I believe that the Lives we are given, no matter how many times a single consciousness inhabits successive human bodies, are way-stations offering learning and growth opportunities to the Consciousness so that It may grow ever closer to the purpose for which It exists.

I believe that the Being can apprehend its Purpose while incarnate, and that once it discovers the Purpose for which it exists, the remainder of Life is ideally focussed on attaining that Purpose. I believe that the Purpose of any Incarnate Being has a focus that is both Personal (for the Self) Interpersonal (for other people), Intrapersonal (for the Entire Race of Living Beings) and Impersonal (for the Universe)

I believe that a Being which has achieved the Purpose of all its lives ceases to incarnate, and becomes a part of the Body of the Universe (of which the Body of Gaia, the Earth Biosphere, is one component, but only one) and is thus available as a resource to other Beings attempting to realize their own Ultimate Purpose. I believe that the things we call The Gods are Beings who have achieved their Ultimate Purpose and have become discarnate consciousnesses who are accessible to humans and other forms of Life as resources in our own journey to our Ultimate Purpose. I also believe that beings such as the Sidhe, Devae, Elves and Gnomes and the like, Dragonkin, and other non-earth based life forms such as “aliens” are similar Beings to what we call the Gods, except that their own Journey to Purpose was not taken in a body that resided on the Earth I now inhabit, but that originated in some other Realm of Living Beings.

I believe that the Gaian Consciousness, the Essential Realm of Earth and Stars, NEEDS the Life upon it, each being thereof, whether human or not, to realize Its Own ultimate purpose, and that for every Being who does not succeed in that Quest, the Being of Gaia is diminished. I also, however, believe that it is impossible NOT to finally succeed in that Quest if one is willing to learn, grow, evolve, and get one’s Ego out of the way. For some people, it does take many lifetimes. And some people opt out of the journey of their own Will, being unwilling to participate in a life-affirming existence, and being killers of the life force by deeds of hatred, waste, destruction, violence, and other life-denying behaviors. Such Beings do not contribute their own Essence to the ultimate well-being of the Gaian Mind, and the sum of existence is forever diminished by the loss of their potential.

I believe the Soul is the Life Force, and that the Human Soul is capable of far transcending the boundaries of living in a flesh casket. However, I do believe that the physical realm of life, including food and sex and color and laughter and music and sharing and reproduction and creation and all the rest of it, is Holy, and that some people’s Ultimate Purpose is to contribute to the knowledge of the World in these realms.

I believe the Soul has personality and consciousness, and that Spirit has consciousness, but not personality. I believe the Soul remembers lifetimes other than the current one, since the Ultimate Purpose of any living being might take more learning than can be compassed in a single lifetime. I believe that a Soul that has fully realized its ultimate purpose joins with Spirit, and has consciousness of ALL other Beings on the planet or in the Realm it inhabits, not only the racial and individual and familial memories of its current or prior consciousness.

A Witch is a Being who is fully conscious that it has a journey to Ultimate Purpose to complete, and who makes use of the tools of the Will and the Intuition and the Unseen Realm to work on perfecting itself. Indeed, it might be enough to say that I believe a Witch to be a Being who is Fully Conscious. This is the reason I believe a Witch is both Born and Made, because I believe there are many unevolved souls who come to Incarnation at the very beginning of their Journey to Purpose, and such Beings cannot possess the accumulation of the Knowledge of Lifetimes that will make them Witches, even if in this life they read and study and know about the Arte.

Knowing about the Arte is not Knowing the Arte, and it takes many lifetimes to arrive at that point.

I believe that is all I wish to say on this topic at this time, since some of my ideas are still evolving or resolving themselves. I am going to promise myself and you the luxury of revisiting this essay in the future and make what changes seem good to me then.

Four Dragons....

2011-01-05T12:37:00.001-08:00

The initiatory rite took place on the evening of the Dark Moon of Birch, 2011. The working area was a compass, and the Wraiths were invited (and everyone came!). The Work was a remembrance, a beginning, and a creation, all in one. Much to think about concerning the Stream, and how the Spirits I accessed fit therein. Again thinking about the mutability of the Stang, and wondering if some changes need to be made to the one I am using to make it more particularly Ours. Names came into play here, and I found some quasi-directional attributions of which I had been previously unaware. I was joined in Work by kith at a distance, whose presence was felt and whose energy was most welcomed. My prevalent impression looking back at this rite is one of excitement that the things I did not expect seemed to simply present themselves to me, in such a way as to say..."You waited long enough...let's get started!" There are Folk out there who want to be met with, recognized, and acknowledged. And there is a huge layer of gnosis that is simply waiting to be unwrapped. I'm already looking forward to the next time..

A Good Day To Begin....

2011-01-03T22:41:00.000-08:00

No, it isn't the first of January. I actually considered re-dating this post, but I am glad I didn't, because next year I would be confused and think I had done something I did not do. But here it is the third of January, and I am able to blog about the last three days, and feel as if my time has been well-spent.

On New Year's Day, an old tradition took its fifteenth year of presence in my life. Yes, Brie and I have been together for fifteen New Year's Celebrations. We have a tradition that we don't turn on the phone, we don't go anywhere, or have any company, either on New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day. It's our time. We drink some...I chose to get quietly tipsy this year, and thoroughly enjoyed it....we look at tv, we relax together, we toast the New Year together, and we simply spend New Year's Day looking back at the past year and forward at the year to come, and enjoying our life together. I wouldn't have wanted anything different.

On Sunday, the 2nd, we attended "Spackle Sunday" and had our hands in the creation...literally....of the new Salt Lake City Pagan Community Center, Crone's Hollow. I am so excited about this project that you might find more than one blog post about it. You wouldn't have believed the marvelously positive community energy that was evident at this event, or the way people hung out afterwards, ate pizza, chatted, drank coffee, played chess, and gave me a real view of what true community might be going to be like. We get to do it again next weekend, in a different fashion. I am terribly excited about this...

And then there was today...yes, I did hurt my back when I helped with the floor-spackling. Bending over from the waist to do work situated on the floor is not a really healthy position for me to hold for more than an hour. But I did, and I am glad I got to help. But today...OWIE!! My back's been in spasms all day long...so the plan to go down to the City Library for John McHugh's lecture didn't take place....driving the car, at night, in pain, in 12 degree weather..? No. But it didn't stop me from one of my New Years' "plans" (my FB entry will tell you why I am not saying "resolutions"), to clean my office and completely re-do my altar. I did that, and each and every piece on it has purpose, placement, and provenance. I will be doing my personal Work there, every day. Personal daily practice has kind of fallen off my radar, but it is back. Flamekeeping, too. And Dark and Full Moon work, personal work....but that's for tomorrow....

And that is why this post belongs here. Because I am inaugurating, tomorrow, my 1734 Tradition, the Four Dragons Clan, and beginning my own development of the Wraith of 1734 which was entrusted to me by Joe. My rite, my format and my resonances will be all in line with 1734. If I get to incorporate this into WiseCraft through the DRD, all the better. But even if I don't get to...it is my Trad, and I am going to enlarge it.

More tomorrow about how that goes, and what is part of it...

And the Wheel Turns...

2010-11-07T11:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. It was August, and this is November. Well, things take a bit of time in the real world (makes me wonder what the computer phrase 'real time' means and if it has anything whatsoever to do with "life is what is happening to you while you are busy making other plans"). In any case, I am now thinking more clearly...If you wanted to know what took up the time between now and my last post, well, if you are my RL friend you already do know. If you're an online friend, here's the mishmash: Quit most of my national Pagan positions, revamped my marriage (it's all good), put down with much regret my dearly beloved dog, dealt with Lughnasadh, Mabon and Samhain in all of whose rituals I was involved, started the incredible Virgo cleaning machine and have seen floor in rooms in my house that I didn't know had floors, had pneumonia (twice), continued teaching a bi-monthly Paganism 101 class for the community, traveled to Colorado to spread the ashes of my m-i-l and f-i-l, facilitated a week-long visit between my 88-year-old Uncle who lives in New York, and my 91-year-old Mother who lives here in SLC, started my 7th NaNoWriMo and my first Writer's Digest Poetry Challenge, both this month, and began work on 2 CDs I am currently in the studio producing. Oh, and 1734? Well, yes, that too. But most of the work to be done on that involves my figuring out HOW to do any of the work on that, so it is behind the scenes, and some of it intensely personal. I have discovered that blogging the process, at this stage, might actually be detrimental to the process. I will be back to talk about 1734 when I have something cogent to say.

A bit of a tidbit with ketchup...

2010-08-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

This blog has been pretty dead, as you may have noticed. There's a reason for that. I am trying really hard to separate my three writing venues, my LJ, this blog, and FB, by topic, and, to a degree, by f-list. So if you have been waiting to see what will happen next, this is the deal: This blog is going to be the venue for my poetry, and my discussion, which is going to get deeper and more arcane, of the growth of the Clan of 1734 Witchcraft I am trying to establish in SLC, Utah. I am a Holder of Virtue of 1734, Joseph Bearwalker Wilson stream, and I am feeling a call...as in, he's been visiting me in divination and dreamwork....and saying, "When the living HELL are you going to claim your Legacy and DO something with those Admissions...?" This is not my coven work, which is related to the kind of thing Joe was doing with Toteg (and those who knew him knew that Toteg Tribe became his primary spiritual focus in the years before his death), and our coven in my spiritual life is paramount. But there is a need to feed the Stream, and find a way to enrich and enflesh the Legacy and pass it on. SO this will be a place where I discuss, as much as I can, that process as it's ongoing. If you're getting this because you Follow me, you might want to decide on the basis of what my topics of discussion will be on this blog whether or not you want to continue to Follow me. I won't be offended by anyone who chooses not to, especially if you're someone I also talk to on FB and LJ. FB will become my daily touch-base for RL friends, and my LJ is mostly to keep in touch with my Pacific Northwest community of friends, and to talk about general Pagan philosophies and tidbits of personal news. And if you're getting an e-mail with this message and a link, that's because you're someone I think, from our prior interactions, might be interested in what I am going to be doing here. But again, feel free NOT to link, if you think you wouldn't be interested...it's really up to you.

FFF(F),

Aisling SilverBranch

Tubelo's Green Fire -- A Review

2010-06-24T07:50:00.001-07:00

This book, it must be said, boasts an innate difference from the many current books which propound the supposed "mysteries" of various traditions of Witchcraft, Wicca, and other arcanae. In a word, this book makes no promises, offers no answers, fills no loopholes, catches no Lapwings. The work is a dance between Dog and Deer, Deer, and Bird, Bird and Dog*, one in which no one loses a life, questions are offered to many an answer, and nothing is decided by the dance except the certainty on the part of the reader of the absolute necessity of such works in the hermetic library, works which offer philosophia rather than prestidigitation. The quotation above, "not for the feint-hearted", is taken from the Preface, and I was immediately taken by the subtlety of the not-misspelled adjective, and became aware very soon thereafter that the phrase bore as many levels of insight and layers of meaning as does the book itself. The feint-hearted, those who are looking for quick tricks of the hermetic hand with which to baffle and amaze the once-born, will find no fodder here. The book is Craft in its totality, fully intending to cloak, as my mentor Joseph Bearwalker Wilson was wont to say, "a method, wrapped in a mystery", hoping that the sincere and insightful reader will be able to grasp at the cloak of the Mystery wrapped in the Method.

Like a well-respected predecessor, The White Goddess by Robert Graves, the book is written in a style which can only be described as mythopoesy. The Preface is a highly literate, fully annotated and daringly speculative look at the origins of both the concepts of dualism in religious thought and the roots of Craft itself. The language and content here does presuppose that the reader has something of a background in academia, with an emphasis on anthropology, philosophy of religion, and literary history. Moving from this into the content of the chapters is like taking a voyage of discovery after a year spent studying the atlas. One will "land" in a chapter very like the intellectual tourist wishing to spend a year or more at each docking point and thoroughly familiarize hirself with the new territory. Each chapter in turn, beginning with one which does indeed discuss, exemplify and seek to source the reader in the aforementioned "mythopoesy", and moving through the Mysteries as accessed by the Clan of Tubal Cain, is contemplative, thought-provoking, shatteringly literate, and fully functional as a guide, whilst forbearing from revealing anything of the arcanum which must be fully and personally encountered in personal practice of the Witch.

WARNING: This is not a "beginning Witchcraft" kind of a book. This book is for those whose feet are already securely seated on the Path, those who wish to have a hermetic glimpse of another angle of the Thicket. This book is most suited to long and contemplative study, perhaps with academic tools at hand with which to explore the many side-paths referred to in the text, but always knowing that what one is seeing is only a glimpse of the tail-feathers of the Bird, a tantalizing glance between the horns of the Deer, a swift pat in passing at the questing Dog. The author, Shani Oates, Maid of the Clan of Tubal Cain, has enriched her Legacy and done more than justice to the ethos of the teachings of Robert Cochrane as illuminated by Evan John Jones. This book is, without doubt, one of the most intriguing and illuminating books I have had the good fortune of perusing in many years. But it is not a how-to, not a go-to, not an encyclopedia. It's a voyage of discovery. Enjoy the trip!

@ Aisling the Bard/Aisling SilverBranch
June 22, 2010/ Salt Lake City, Utah
aisling@technoharp.com
All Rights Reserved

*and, if you have no idea what I just said, you probably need to be reading something else.

National Poetry Month, Day 10

2010-04-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

This is a "recycled" poem, so it's not my real entry for today. It's just one I found, and love, even though I wrote it last year. I wanted it here because it's how I am feeling right now. A new poem, in a poetic form I have never seen before which a friend used in his blog will be posted later today, after I have written it.

But for now: "For today's prompt, I want you to take the title of a poem you especially like (by another poet) and change it. Then, with this new altered title, I want you to write a poem. Your altered poem does NOT have to follow the same style as the original poet, though you can try if you wish. " I am, of course, going to shadow the form of the poem, simply because I want to see if I can do it. So here we are. See what you think.

Here's my template:

Sea Fever

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
All I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trip's over.

John Masefield

And here's my attempt:

Spring Fever

I must go down to the store again, to the lovely gardening store,
And all I ask is a tall tree, and a flat of plants galore,
And a wind chime, and a windsock, and a white narcissus,
And a green thumb, and a rose bush that will please the missus.

I must go down to the store again, for the call of the growing green
Is the weed's clutch, and a yard full of stuff you've never seen;
All I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray of the RoundUp, and the crabgrass dying.

I must go down to the store again, for the vagrant gypsy's life
Is a soft dream that was long gone when I bought a house with my wife.
And all I ask is a spool of yarn to block the cats from the clover,
And a long vacation in someone else's garden when spring is over.

National Poetry Month, Day 9

2010-04-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

Here's today's prompt...first, think of a number between one and ten. Thinking of that number, go to this site, and go to that number of quotes on the page. Copy the quote, and write a poem about it, about what it might make you think about.

My quote:

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III

My poem: (poetic form is the anaphora, a poem where each line begins with the same word or series of words)

Miss, Taken

I never knew it could be dangerous to share myself,
I never knew someone might not accept me as I was.
I never knew the many ways people can bruise your soul,
I never knew a reason to be frightened of a friend.

I never knew, until I began seeing what's-his-name--
I never knew anyone who could make me seem so real,
I never knew when someone said "my girl", he could mean me.
I never knew the others to whom he said the same thing.

I never knew it was abuse, the things he did, he said,
I never knew I was a victim, never would have been.
I never knew anyone who could make me feel so small--
I never knew I would believe that it was all my fault.

I never knew how powerful I would feel when I left.
I never knew the many years his shadow would remain,
I never knew my children would be caught in the crossfire,
I never knew how long it would be until things might change.

I never knew what it would do to me to live that life,
I never knew how much I'd like myself, much better now,
I never knew the way a possible life-long mistake
I never knew I'd made might serve to make me who I am.

I never knew mistakes could lead to life experience,
I never knew that quote by Wilde could show me who I am.

I never knew.

National Poetry Month, Day 8

2010-04-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today is a "recycled poem", one I wrote two years ago, but just found again in looking through old manuscripts. Your prompt, if you would like to play, is to write a poem based on some "rule" or "symbol system" that you use in your personal life. This poem is based on The Witche's Pyramid.

Sphynx

To know...that one was easiest...
To my peril, because I became arrogant...
And indeed, the pyramid collapsed
With the weight of my over-confidence.

So once again, I began to build.
To know.
Not to tell everyone everything.
Not to brag, or boast, or blather.
But to quietly, successfully,
Go about the Work,
And the final result
Would come in its time
Successfully
This I know.

And so, to Will
To do more than Want
But to intend, to focus,
Indeed, to Be the thing desired.
When did I finally realize
That Willing is not something you do,
And Willing is not something you want.
The True Will is Who You Are...
And I know this.
And I am this.

And so, to Dare.
Reaching beyond the Self
To encounter the Being of the Other,
Others, people, sisters, brothers, friends.
To Dare, to speak one's Truth
To Dare, to be in another's grief
To Dare, to change, to become, to be More
More than Self
More than Will
Daring, and Sharing
And becoming One.

And so, to the final rung
The final angle of the Pyramid.
Now I Am With...
Now there is We, not just I
Now I see, and I hear
In the hearts, in the pain
In the crisis and the struggle of the Other
I am there
I am Daring to Be
With the Other,
Joined,
Friend, Brother, Sister, Lover, Companion.

And so, we are One.
And so, I see through the eyes of others.
I see hatred,
I see dishonor,
I see injustice,
I see lies that hurt.

And so....here, now, on that fourth angle
One step from completing the Pyramid.
I halt.
I have to stop.
I cannot continue.

For here and now,
In the pain of the Other
Who is also mySelf,
In the grip of injustice,
How can I Be Silent?

National Poetry Month, Day 7

2010-04-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

A slightly different prompt today...if you're playing, post a poem by someone else that resonates with you today, and then post your own poetic response thereto. Here's my model for today, Maya Angelou:

The Rock Cries Out To Us Today

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

**********

I Cry Out To The Rock....

Oh, strong, stalwart stone,
O thou upon whom was built
The foundation of history,
The church of Jesus,
The bones of civilization,
Hear now my complaint of thee....

Thou has become a bulwark,
A symbol of fortitude,
An icon of stability,
The metaphor for firmness,
Unchangeability,
Those things which must BE.

I say unto thee now,
It is time to change that.
It is the time for you
To crumble, to become sand,
To give in to the vicissitudes
Of time, and wear, and growth.

Let a tree's roots crack you.
Let thunder shake you in your bed.
Let a bolt of lightning
Split you asunder.
Let yourself be Moved,
Changed, Dissolved, Remade.

Become the Living Stone,
The avatar of existence
From which all things were made.
Become again sentient,
Let yourself be a live thing,
A life form, one which grows.

Too long have we poor humans
Used you as a symbol
To excuse our own failures,
Our own mental laziness,
Our own stubborn wrong-headedness,
Our failures to Become.

So, O Rock, show us now
That you are bone of bone,
And bone must grow, or die.
Illustrate for us
The power of transformation,
The reality of malleability.

Make us aware
That it is not the Rock
Upon which we build
But the vitality of the structure
That will sustain us,
That will make us Beings.

O rock, I know you hear me.
Rise up now, in power.
Become an earthquake.
Open a chasm
Prove to us that you can change.
And then, we can, too.

National Poetry Month, Day 6

2010-04-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

Here's another "oldie but a goodie", written on our vacation to Florida two years ago. Prompt for today...write a poem about a place you've been.

Ocean Thoughts

What is it, this vast, blue deepness?
Ululating bladder of an unseen wind
Stretching imperatively from horizon to horizon…

How to create enough awareness,
Not superimposing Self on the phenomenon,
To begin to encompass its living vastness.

I find it impossible.
Not even a drop in the coruscating breathing,
I just stare.

Composed when observing the ocean from Miami Beach
July 2008

National Poetry Month, Day 5

2010-04-05T20:19:00.000-07:00

All right then, yes, I am an old woman and a long-time teacher...so of course we have to do some things that are classical poetic exercises. So.. your prompt today. Pick an ADJECTIVE, and use it as your title. Form...the classic sonnet. Fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. Use your adjective at least once in the body of your poem. Have fun!

Uncommon

It takes a lot of courage to be strange.
No one has ever tried who couldn't see
The unexpected challenges the range
Of deviant behaviours might set free,

The many ways not living by the norm
Might point you out too clearly to the mob
Of those who live their lives in standard form
And think your forced compliance is their job.

So, creeping on the fringes of your own
Uncommon life, you yet begin to see
A certain kind of beauty, all your own,
In shattering of custom. It could be

The most important thing you'll ever do.
To live your life as no one else but you.

National Poetry Month, Day 4

2010-04-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a new one. If you would like a prompt, what are you doing lately that makes you feel good? Write a poem about that.

Walking

I had forgotten how it felt
To be out in the air
By myself
Stretching, looking, wondering.

Yesterday, I went along the street
Picking up trash
Consciously making an offering
To the Lady of the Land

Today, it was so brisk and chilly,
I hurried a little,
Making steam with my breath
And counting my paces.

And when I got home
I thought deeply.
How is it that I
Have so long neglected this simple joy?

So...it's not exercise
Not any more.
I won't fall into
The trap of "I gotta".

It's a privilege
It's a joy
My self-time,
Daily communion with Nature.

So...every day
Because I want to,
I will go out.
Don't bother me, I'm walking.

National Poetry Month, Day 3

2010-04-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

I am going to celebrate National Poetry Month, this year, with my own work, some recycled, some new. Here's a prompt for you....What's the first "-ing word" that comes to your mind? Make that your poem's title, and proceed in accordance....

Here's mine, one I wrote a number of years ago for My Honey, on seeing her photo seeming to look down on me from the wall. I looked back, and I called it...

Peeping...

I sit here in my armchair
Gazing at your face
Smiling down from the wall at me
With your accustomed grace

Or sometimes, when you’re busy
I just glance, unnoticed,

And you put me in a tizzy,
Even when you’re fully focused
On whatever you are doing.

I can sneak a look and wonder
How long have you been brewing
The spell you have me under?

I fall away from my own work, uncaring
And watch the play of light
and shadow in your eyes…

It's always a surprise,
And always a delight,
To look when you don’t see. How can I, daring

To disturb your concentration,
Even for a minute,

Intrude on you with talk of love
And how deep I am in it?

I love to rediscover how lovely you can be
while doing something focused,
that is nowise about me.

No matter how many times
I see you on the sofa
It is always a surprise that I never quite get over.

That you love me?!?

Then you look up
and give me that impish grin
and remind me once again, brand-new,
how deep the love I'm in...

No matter what you’re doing, I can be
As stealthy as a cat, and turn my head
And try to see
What are you thinking? Watching? Doing?

But…It never fails...

You will look up at me,
as if I had just called your name, instead
Of silently

just touching with my eyes…as if I touched, pursuing.

And love prevails.

You are forever somewhere, in your head
Or in a job of work…but I, unknown,
Can watch as if I were not there,
And know that you alone
Belong to me. On any day I gaze
You are within my view. The lamplight plays
Upon your hair, your skin…you have your work

But I….have you.

National Poetry Month, Day 2

2010-04-02T16:13:00.000-07:00

Today's poem came to me from a random thought I had during the morning's reading session, so I am not sure it is worthy of a prompt. I suppose we might say, write a poem based on an idea you got from whatever you're reading....My own prompt is complicated. I got the thought from a book of fiction I'm reading, but the actual place the idea originated is a quote from the Bible. So...whatever you're reading, what kind of poetic thought does it engender? For me.....

Turnabout

They wandered in the desert,
A people lost, abandoned,
Long before escaping from the plague in Egypt's land,

They'd always been the lost ones,
The wandering outsiders,
Convinced their God had sent them forth to wander in His name.

They knew that they were Chosen,
The only ones who knew Him,
The one God, He who told them they must worship at His shrines,

Disclaiming other Godness.
And so, within His writings
There came the Word forbidding any wasting of the seed.

They learned that it was better
To give a whore one's children
Than to ensure, by wasting, that there'd be no child at all.

Because they were the Chosen
Yet always few in numbers
They were enjoined from ever wasting seed upon the ground.

There was the tale of Onan,
Who would not be the father
With Tamar of a child he must support, yet not his child.

For centuries they've used it,
All Biblical non-scholars,
To justify forbidding masturbation, and to say

To all who would prohibit
Conception of more children
That anything that interferes with pregnancy is sin.

Today, I wandered into
The world of exigesis,
To find which verse, exactly, gives the context to this rule.

The way I'd always heard it,
"Tis better that the seed be
Cast in the belly of a whore than spilt upon the ground".

Surprisingly, I found out
There IS no verse of scripture
Which says this, nor in any way implies that it is so.

The "verse" is fabrication,
Cast into ancient diction
To make it sound like scripture, so the message would ring true.

Indeed, that very Tamar,
Not fertile, due to Onan,
Seduced her husband's father, and was not cast into hell.

And so, today, I wonder,
How many other places
Are we certain of a shibboleth which never has been real?

How many other "scriptures"
Are the work of politicians
Who need the strength of God's word to support their feeble own?

And most of all, who are we,
We herd of "chosen peoples"
Who somehow think it honors God to not think for ourselves?

National Poetry Month, Day 1

2010-04-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

Poetry Prompt--It's a Nine-Nine-Nine....closest book to hand, page nine, every ninth word, nine words total, and nine lines. Extra credit if you use nine words per line. Omit prepositions and conjunctions, as well as proper names...use every other word in your count. See what you can do with it. Here's mine:

Quick-Table-Story-Eastern-Fall-Dingy-Dignity-Found-Use

Too Little, Too Late

I remember a story my father told me once,
A tale of an eastern star, remote and cold,
And of its fall into oblivion, due to being
Fixed on its dignity, at the expense of brilliance.

Dad reminded me that I also was too quick
To judge, to assume, to decide that some dingy
Remnant of someone's life, laid on their kitchen table
Was beneath my use, too simple, not wise enough.

And then, he died. I found his words.....eternal.

Curse Or Blessing?

2010-03-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

In response to the An Fianna poetry challenge, "Write a Poem for Paddy!", here is my contribution:

Curse, or Blessing?

Craggy-faced as the rocks,
He stood, rooted firm on the shore,
His back to the waters.

In a whisper, he muttered,
While waving his hands in the air,
Maledictions, in French.

'Twas the Auld Ones he cursed,
The draiocht, the fili, the Land,
In the Name of his Christ.

Waves lapped at his heels.
He noticed, but calmly ignored;
His work was important.

His words fell to silence.
He spun, with a flip of his robes,
And re-entered the boat.

As the oarsmen took oars,
He turned for a pitying look
At the shores he had damned.

No more would the Snakes
Of draoicht and evil designing
Soil Eriu's fair face.

Twixt water and sand,
A ribbon of wrack in the waves
Formed a Guardian rune.

His shadow grew short
As the boat crested waves in the dusk,
Crossed the horizon.

Behind him, the Land
And the Folk, and the Druids he'd cursed
Watched as he left.

And yet, he returns,
Every year, cause for drinking, for dance,
An icon of Ireland.

It's an irony, this.
When you think how the things that he cursed
Now flourish, reborn.

The Druids still live,
All the Gods celebrated by Pagans,
Immrama still dreamt.

And Lá Fhéile Pádraig,
A holiday marking his coming
But not about God.

So, raise him a glass,
This man, who in bringing a curse
Brought "Erin go bragh!"

A chance to be proud
Of our Land, of our kith, of ourselves.
Just hear the Snakes laugh.

Chulain's Hound

2010-03-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Guardian, Cuchulainn, so softly he treads
That those in the circle do not turn their heads
To mark him, as silently beating the bounds
He slips through the shadows. In making his rounds
He wards and he watches, that nothing untoward
Be able to slip through as he weaves his ward.

The Watcher, Cuchulainn, his footstep is sure
As, watching and warding, he makes all secure.
He waits in the shadows whilst light glows within
And Guards the abode of his Kith and his Kin.
No threat will escape him; his presence pervades
Through the rustling darkness of woodlands and glades.

The Father, Cuchulain, he covers his child
With the safe hand of love, as, compelling, yet mild,
He teaches and shows, demonstrating the man
Who is both strong and kind. As no other hand can,
His hand shares both power and gentleness. One
Such as he is a gift to his well-beloved son.

The Teacher, Cuchulainn, his words always few,
Shows his knowledge and cunning in what he can do.
Whether woodslore, or music, or Working the Arte,
All he knows, all he shares, coming straight from his heart
Is a gift to his clann. For such knowledge as his
Is not shared in mere lessons, but from Who he Is.

The Brother, Cuchulainn, his siblings may call,
And he'll be there. The Family he makes for us all
Is a Hearthstone of safety, with room to explore.
With his hand on the latch, we may pass through the door
Knowing he will be silently slipping behind
To keep us all safe as the Crossroads we find.

The Dear One, Cuchulainn, has gone on before,
As always, our Guardian. The first through the door
As he shields us from what dangers might lie in wait
For his unwary clann. So, we stand at the gate,
And look long and far, as the sound of his tread
Dies away. He's our trailblazer. He's gone ahead.

(written as a tribute to my dear friend and Craft brother, Cuchulainn of EarthHaven
March 3, 2010)

Poetry Challenge Day 5

2009-05-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

Write a poem about a landmark.

Tower of Verse

A landmark? Well, I think he qualifies,
His name resounds through every venue where
The art of poesy is given care
And thought, wherever stellar writing vies
With honest feeling, when in lines of verse
One tries to capture moment, feeling, thought.
The lines of poetry his hand has wrought
Have never been supplanted. Not averse
To trying to aim high, despite my sure
And certain knowledge that he will endure
For centuries beyond my finest line,
I try in this poor effort to make mine
The latest voice to praise him. William, Bard
Of Avon, hoist me now with your petard!

Hoodie Crow

2009-05-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

She is screeching down the hollow echoes of your shattered mind,
She is clawing with her talons at the wraith you cannot find
For her power has destroyed it, and it 'ere no more can be
And you bleed, and coil, and crumble, as her power sets it free.

You are powerless to stop her, she is clawing at your eyes
And her own are black obsidian, immune to your disguise,
For despite your craven cringing as you run and try to hide
The crow has marked your path and will destroy you from inside.

Never seek to try evading, never dare to lift your hand
In retaliation, for her strength you never will withstand,
As she swoops in screaming majesty to tear your tattered face
And her wings are swirling whirlwinds to erase you from this place.

You are gone, destroyed, defeated, and the shrieking of her glee
Is the last humiliation of your pride, and sets her free,
Both herself and one she cares for, her beloved, wife, and pet,
And for all your naked suffering, you always will regret

Having meddled in the business of the Witch who lays this curse,
And despite the dread you now must feel, it only will get worse.
For her power is supreme and in its working she's the queen...
And there's nought for you to do but bow, and, broken, flee the scene..

Poetry Challenge

2009-05-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

Prompt...write a poem entitled "The trouble with...."

( Here's the prompt... )

The Problem With Logic...

Is pretty intense.
It's simply that,
By and large,
Things don't "make sense."

Logicians expect
An elegant
Patterning.
While people are

Experts at
Effortless shattering
Of formulas,
Shibboleths,

Trite preconceptions.
And so, mostly,
With only
Tiny exceptions

Due to vicissitudes
Unique and foreign,
"Logical action"
Is an oxymoron.

2009-05-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Write an "Outsider" poem.

Looking In

I am never going to understand it...
I watch them,
Laughing, hilarious.
Slapping one another's shoulders
Splashing beer,
Raucous, overblown,

No two faces alike in expression,
Not really,
And yet they all, somehow,
Make one thing...

"One big teeth", in the words
Of some other poet
Whose name I've forgotten.

So I watch.
Outside the wraith
Not part, not wanting to be...

I can't understand it.
NBA Playoffs....who the hell cares?
But I know I am the outsider here
The minority...

Next St. Patrick's Day I will find
A different bar,
Wine, maybe
And Irish dancing.

Fat chance, tonight.
I stand outside and wonder
Then turn and leave.

Think I like it outside.
I will go home
And read a book.

Poetry Challenge

2009-05-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

This actually took place in the month of April, National Poetry Month, but as you saw I was in the process of teaching poetry and featuring poets of all kinds and styles. Not my own stuff. So here is the Poetry Challenge, but it's for May.

First prompt...
Write a poem about a first..

Reality

It was a small package,
Unremarkable,
Not obtrusive.

It felt, in the mailbox,
Like one more relic
Of a desultory march through e-bay.

But opened,
It scintillated,
Coruscated.

It belied its humble cloak
Of mailing envelope
By springing full-blown to life,

Denying the staid wrappings
And blaring its insistent trumpet of my name
Into its genuine listing of authors.

Brilliantly my own words resound
On the last four pages,
As something awaited, stayed for...

There I was,
Published anthologically
For the very first time.

I wonder if anything
Will ever feel this much again
Like an ultimate birthday.

An Announcement....

2009-05-01T00:14:00.000-07:00

This place has now become my official poetry blog. I need a place to post poetry and nothing else, and since this is a google blog, anyone who wants to can see it, unlike my Live Journal. So, from now on, this is going to be the writing space, and seldom if ever any kind of other posting. Thanks to those who are following. Hope you enjoy the new endeavor.

National Poetry Month Day 30

2009-04-30T13:19:00.001-07:00

e e cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings was born October 14, 1894 in the town of Cambridge Massachusetts. His father, and most constant source of awe, Edward Cummings, was a professor of Sociology and Political Science at Harvard University. In 1900, Edward left Harvard to become the ordained minister of the South Congregational Church, in Boston. As a child, E.E. attended Cambridge public schools and lived during the summer with his family in their summer home in Silver Lake, New Hampshire. (Kennedy 8-9) E.E. loved his childhood in Cambridge so much that he was inspired to write disputably his most famous poem, "In Just-" (Lane pp. 26-27)

Not so much in, "In Just-" but Cummings took his father's pastoral background and used it to preach in many of his other poems. In "you shall above all things be glad and young," Cummings preaches to the reader in verse telling them to love with naivete and innocence, rather than listen to the world and depend on their mind.

Attending Harvard, Cummings studied Greek and other languages (p. 62). In college, Cummings was introduced to the writing and artistry of Ezra Pound, who was a large influence on E.E. and many other artists in his time (pp. 105-107). After graduation, Cummings volunteered for the Norton-Haries Ambulance Corps. En-route to France, Cummings met another recruit, William Slater Brown. The two became close friends, and as Brown was arrested for writing incriminating letters home, Cummings refused to separate from his friend and the two were sent to the La Ferte Mace concentration camp. The two friends were finally freed, only due to the persuasion of Cummings' father.

This experience proved quite instrumental to Cummings writing; The Enormous Room is Cummings' autobiographical account of his time in the internment camp. E.E. was extremely cautious to attempt to publish The Enormous Room, however after great persuasion by his father, Cummings finally had a copy of the manuscript sent to Boston to be read. (Kennedy p. 213) Cummings greatest fan, Edward wrote after reading his son's manuscript, "I am sure now that you [E.E] are a great writer, and as proud of it now, as I shall be when the world finds out." (p. 213)

Cummings and Brown returned back to the states in January only to see Cummings drafted back to the war that summer. When Cummings returned after the armistice, he moved back in with Brown and soon met his first wife, Elaine Orr (p. 165). In 1920, Cummings began to concentrate on his writing and painting. For the next six years, Cummings wrote many pieces of work, Tulips and Chimneys (1923), & (1925), XLI Poems (1925), and Is 5 (1926). Also during that time, Cummings and Elaine's marriage ended in a rather complicated divorce. Cummings had no concept of how to treat his new wife correctly, so she found herself love in the arms of another man (p. 264).

In the same year that Is 5 was published, Cummings' father was abruptly killed and his mother was injured seriously in a car accident. With his new love-interest, Anne Barton, Cummings found out of his father's death at a small party in New York. Cummings and his sister, Elizabeth, immediately rushed to their mother's bedside. Although she was not expected to live through the week, Rebecca was inspired by her children to continue living and she miraculously survived a fractured skull. E.E. explained the catastrophe in these words,

"... a locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly. When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing- dazed but erect- beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head. One of her hands (the younger added) kept feeling her dress, as if trying to discover why it was wet. These men took my sixty-six year old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him. When this had been done (and only then) she let them lead her away." (Kennedy 293)
Cummings' father was an incredible influence on his work. At his death, Cummings' entered "a new poetic period." (p. 386) His father's death sobered E.E. to write about more important facets of life. Cummings began his new era of poetry by paying tribute to his father's memory in his poem, "my father moved through dooms of love" (Lane p. 41ñ43). This poem, used to cope with the death of his role model, was not a somber funeral drone, but rather, a celebration of the life and love that his father brought to Cummings' life and poetry. While making notes about his father, Cummings wrote, "He was the handsomest man I ever saw. Big was my father and strong with lightblue skies for eyes." (Kennedy p. 385)

From his father's death to 1932, Cummings survived a poor showing of his play Him (1927), and published two other works of his artistic talents in CIOPW (1931), and ViVa (1931). Cummings also successfully married and divorced Anne Barton in the five years after the accident that took his father away from him (p. 296). 1932 is an important year for Cummings because it is the year that he met the woman that he would ultimately spent his remaining life with. Marion Morehouse was twelve years younger than E.E. It is uncertain whether E.E. and Marion ever officially exchanged vows, although their role in each other's lives was certainly that of husband and wife (p. 338-340).

With a beautiful "wife", Cummings traveled the world. He ventured to Tunisia, Russia, Mexico, and France, among many other visits he made to lands across the Atlantic. Throughout these trips, Cummings manages to publish eight works: The Red Front (1933), Eimi (1933), No Thanks (1935), Tom (1935), Collected Poems (1940), 1x 1 (1944), and Santa Claus (1946). In Europe, Cummings wrote many anti-war poems in protesting America's involvement in Europe and the Pacific. E.E. wrote the poem "plato told" to continue the work that his late-father had done as the Executive Secretary of the World Peace Foundation. (Kennedy p. 286) His work was cut short for a brief period with the sudden deterioration of his mother's health. In January of 1947, Rebecca suffered a stroke and was put into a coma. She died a couple weeks later, never regaining consciousness. One of his poems was read at her funeral service, "if there are any heavens." (p. 413)

This memorial for Cummings mother is a true testament to the knowledge that E.E. had about his parents' love. He paints a picture to the reader of Cummings father waiting in heaven for his wife (Cummings' mother). His parents are described as strong and determined spirits, yet they have a comforting demeanor. Obvious from this poem, Cummings truly loved his parents, and had a sense of closure knowing that with his mother's death, the two were finally together.

Fifteen years after his mother's death, Edward Estlin Cummings collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage at his summer home in Joy Farm. Soon after his death, three more volumes of his verse were published (p. 484). Counting these works, Cummings died leaving behind over twenty-five books of prose, poetry, charcoal and pencil drawings, plays and stories. He did all this in his sixty-eight years of life.

in Just-

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed

baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

i thank you God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

National Poetry Month, Day 29

2009-04-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

Jenny Joseph

Jenny Joseph (born 7 May 1932) is one of the UK's foremost living poets.

She was born in Birmingham, and studied English literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford, before becoming a journalist. She has worked for the Bedfordshire Times, the Oxford Mail and Drum Publications (Johannesburg, South Africa).

Her first collection of poetry was published in 1960. The poem entitled Warning, a witty poem about growing old, is her most popular work, and the inspiration for the Red Hat Society. A BBC poll found it to be the most popular 20th Century poem.

In 1995, she was awarded a travelling scholarship by the Society of Authors. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

National Poetry Month, Day 28

2009-04-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

I didn't do this on purpose but it is perfect. Today is the anniversary of the death of today's poet...

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland County, England, April 7, 1770, and he died on April 28, 1850. He was buried by the side of his daughter in the beautiful churchyard of Grasmere.

His father was law agent to Sir James Lowther, afterward Earl of Lonsdale, but he died when William was in his seventh year.

The poet attended school first at Hawkshead School, then at Cambridge University. William was also entered at St. Johns in 1787. Having finished his academical course, Wordsworth, in 1790, in company with Mr. Robert James, a fellow-student, made a tour on the continent. With this friend Wordsworth made a tour in North Wales the following year, after taking his degree in college. He was again in France toward the close of the year 1791, and remained in that country about a twelvemonth. He had hailed the French Revolution with feelings of enthusiastic admiration.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven.

A young friend, Raisley Calvert, dying in 1795, left him a sum. A further sum came to him as a part of the estate of his father, who died intestate; and with this small competence Wordsworth devoted himself to study and seclusion.

In 1793, in his twenty-third year, he appeared before the world as an author, in "Descriptive Sketches" and "The Evening Walk." The sketches were made from his tour in Switzerland with his friend, and the Walk was among the mountains of Westmoreland.

In 1795 Wordsworth and his sister were living at Racedown Lodge, in Somersetshire, where, in 1797, they were visited by Coleridge. The meeting was mutually pleasant, and a life-long friendship was the result. The intimate relations thus established induced Wordsworth and his sister to change their home for a residence near Coleridge, at Alfoxen, near Neither Stowey. In this new home the poet composed many of his lighter poems, also the "Borderers," a tragedy, which was rejected by the Covent Garden Theatre. In 1797 appeared his "Lyrical Ballads," which also contained Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner."

In 1798, in company with his sister and Coleridge, he went to Germany, where he spent some time at Hamburg, Ratzeburg and Goslar. Returning to England, he took up his residence at Grasmere, in Westmoreland. In 1800 he reprinted his "Lyrical Ballads" with some additions, making two volumes. Two years later he married Mary Hutchinson, to whom he addressed, the beautiful lines, "She was a Phantom of Delight." In 1802, Wordsworth, with his sister and his friend Coleridge, visited Scotland. This visit formed one of the most important periods of his literary life, as it led to the composition of some of his finest lighter poems. In 1805 he completed the "Prelude, or Growth of my own Mind," a poem written in blank verse, but not published till after the author's death. In the same year he also wrote his "Waggoner," but did not publish it till in 1819. At this time he purchased a cottage and small estate at the head of Ulleswater, Lord Lonsdale generously assisting him. In 1807 he published two volumes of "Poems."

In the spring of 1813 he removed from Grasmere to Royal Mount, where he remained for the rest of his life, a period of thirty-seven years. Here were passed his brightest days. He enjoyed retirement and almost perfect happiness, as seen in his lines:

Long have I loved what I behold,
The night that calms, the day that cheers;
The common growth of mother-earth
Suffices me--her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.

The dragon's wing, the magic ring,
I shall not covet for my dower,
If I along that lowly way
With sympathetic heart may stray,
And with a soul of power.

At the same time he commenced to write poems of a higher order, thus greatly extending the circle of his admirers. In 1814 he published "The Excursion," a philosophical poem in blank verse. By viewing man in connection with external nature, the poet blends his metaphysics with pictures of life and scenery. To build up and strengthen the powers of the mind, in contrast to the operations of sense, was ever his object. Like Bacon, Wordsworth would rather have believed all the fables in the Talmud and Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind--or that mind does not, by its external symbols, speak to the human heart. He lived under the habitual away of nature:

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

The removal of the poet to Rydal was marked by an incident of considerable importance in his personal history. Through the influence of the Earl of Lonsdale, he was appointed distributor of stamps in the county of Westmoreland, which added greatly to his income without engrossing all of his time. He was now placed beyond the frowns of Fortune--if Fortune can ever be said to have frowned on one so independent of her smiles. The subsequent works of the poet were numerous--"The White Doe of Rylstone," a romantic narrative poem, yet colored with his peculiar genius; "Sonnets on the River Duddon" "The Waggoner;" "Peter Bell;" "Ecclesiastical Sketches;" "Yarrow Revisited," and others. His fame was extending rapidly. The universities of Durham and Oxford conferred academic honors upon him. Upon the death of his friend Southey, in 1843, he was made Poet Laureate of England, and the crown gave him a pension of per annum. Thus his income was increased and honors were showered upon him, making glad the closing years of his life. But sadness found its way into his household in 1847, caused by the death of his only daughter, Dora, then Mrs. Quillinan. Wordsworth survived the shock but three years, having reached the advanced age of eighty, always enjoying robust health and writing his poems in the open air. He died in 1850, on the anniversary of St. George, the patron saint of England.

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Lines Written In Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

National Poetry Month, Day 27

2009-04-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today is the birthday of my beloved, and so today's poem is for her:

Fairy Queen

Beautiful as Beauty is which does not know its face is fair.
Rare and precious as a diamond hidden in a pirate's lair.
In her heart no thought except how best to meet another's need…
Always looking for the next most helpful, selfless word or deed.
Never first to speak a word of argument or injury.
All the beauty of an April day; This is my love, to me.

Keeping faith forever once her lips have passed her given word.
In her speech no trace of other's private sayings e'er is heard.
Reaching out without a murmur, helping before help is asked.
Simply keeping on each day to complete all with which she's tasked.
Tender to each child, each creature, each who comes with tears of pain.
Even when her own is greater, no one ever asks in vain.
No one more beloved. She is all that ever I need gain.

Blessed is the day upon which she, beloved, came to Earth.
Once in all the world was such a fairy treasure given birth.
Once alone was such a lovely woman's heart decreed to grow
Surely Someone wiser was the first to understand and know
Every way her love would bless my life. May it be ever so!!

For my love on her birthday, April 25, 2009

National Poetry Month, Day 26

2009-04-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Today was Earth Jam, and I came home so cold I thought I was going to die. Hence, one of my favourite death poems, by a little-known poet. Here you go...

Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson was born on October 18, 1831 as Helen Maria Fiske. She was born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts. Helen Maria Fiske. Helen grew up in a literary atmosphere and she was herself a poet and writer of children’s stories, novels, and essays. She published her work under the pen name of H.H.H. Her poetry was the outflow of deep sympathetic thought on the problem of life’s trials and temptations. Her verses were strong and noble, never giving attention to mere prettiness of verse. One of her early works, “Bits of Travel”, revealed the humorous side of her nature. With friendly merriment she describes human nature.

Soon, Helen’s interests turned to the plight of the American Indian. As a keen and sympathetic observer, her attention was attracted by the unfair treatment our American Indians received at the hands of government agents. Her interest in the American Indians began in Boston in 1879 at a lecture by Chief Standing Bear, who described the ill-treatment of the Ponca Indians in Nebraska. Helen was furious by what she heard, but being well balanced by nature, she made a painstaking study of the situation. She kept her feelings in check and searched for facts. When she was at last fully equipped for her work, she took up the pen in defense of the wronged Indian.

Because she was in poor health at the time, she wrote with desperate haste. “A Century of Dishonor” appeared calling for change from the base, selfish policy to a treatment characterized by humanity and justice.

Her next step was to cast her material in the form of fiction to reach a wider circle of readers. She wrote “Ramona”, which was her supreme effort. it was in every way a noble book and gave Helen lasting fame. “Ramona” first appeared as a serial in the “Christian Union”, because she was anxious to get the story out.

Helen died in San Francisco on August 12, 1885, while she was examining the condition of the California Indians as a special government commissioner.

Death

My body, eh? Friend Death, how now?
Why all this tedious pomp of writ?
Thou hast reclaimed it sure and slow
For half a century bit by bit.

In faith thou knowest more to-day
Than I do, where it can be found!
This shrivelled lump of suffering clay,
To which I am now chained and bound,

Has not of kith or kin a trace
To the good body once I bore;
Look at this shrunken, ghastly face:
Didst ever see that face before?

Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art;
Thy only fault thy lagging gait,
Mistaken pity in thy heart
For timorous ones that bid thee wait.

Do quickly all thou hast to do,
Nor I nor mine will hindrance make;
I shall be free when thou art through;
I grudge thee nought that thou must take!

Stay! I have lied; I grudge thee one,
Yes, two I grudge thee at this last,--
Two members which have faithful done
My will and bidding in the past.

I grudge thee this right hand of mine;
I grudge thee this quick-beating heart;
They never gave me coward sign,
Nor played me once the traitor's part.

I see now why in olden days
Men in barbaric love or hate
Nailed enemies' hands at wild crossways,
Shrined leaders' hearts in costly state:

The symbol, sign and instrument
Of each soul's purpose, passion, strife,
Of fires in which are poured and spent
Their all of love, their all of life.

O feeble, mighty human hand!
O fragile, dauntless human heart!
The universe holds nothing planned
With such sublime, transcendent art!

Yes, Death, I own I grudge thee mine
Poor little hand, so feeble now;
Its wrinkled palm, its altered line,
Its veins so pallid and so slow --

Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art;
I shall be free when thou art through.
Take all there is -- take hand and heart;
There must be somewhere work to do

National Poetry Month, Day 25

2009-04-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

Of course this is a day late...Shakespeare's birthday was yesterday. And perhaps it seems painfully obvious. But yesterday was a woman poet day in my matrix (Virgo OCD, yannow), and so few people think of Shakespeare as a poet rather than a dramatist that I think the obvious is worth stating at least once. So, enjoy the Bard of Avon, courtesy of the Bard of SLC...
*****

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon. The son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, he was probably educated at the King Edward IV Grammar School in Stratford, where he learned Latin and a little Greek and read the Roman dramatists. At eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman seven or eight years his senior. Together they raised two daughters: Susanna, who was born in 1583, and Judith (whose twin brother died in boyhood), born in 1585.

Little is known about Shakespeare's activities between 1585 and 1592. Robert Greene's A Groatsworth of Wit alludes to him as an actor and playwright. Shakespeare may have taught at school during this period, but it seems more probable that shortly after 1585 he went to London to begin his apprenticeship as an actor. Due to the plague, the London theaters were often closed between June 1592 and April 1594. During that period, Shakespeare probably had some income from his patron, Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his first two poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). The fomer was a long narrative poem depicting the rejection of Venus by Adonis, his death, and the consequent disappearance of beauty from the world. Despite conservative objections to the poem's glorification of sensuality, it was immensely popular and was reprinted six times during the nine years following its publication.

In 1594, Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain's company of actors, the most popular of the companies acting at Court. In 1599 Shakespeare joined a group of Chamberlain's Men that would form a syndicate to build and operate a new playhouse: the Globe, which became the most famous theater of its time. With his share of the income from the Globe, Shakespeare was able to purchase New Place, his home in Stratford.

While Shakespeare was regarded as the foremost dramatist of his time, evidence indicates that both he and his world looked to poetry, not playwriting, for enduring fame. Shakespeare's sonnets were composed between 1593 and 1601, though not published until 1609. That edition, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, consists of 154 sonnets, all written in the form of three quatrains and a couplet that is now recognized as Shakespearean. The sonnets fall into two groups: sonnets 1-126, addressed to a beloved friend, a handsome and noble young man, and sonnets 127-152, to a malignant but fascinating "Dark Lady," whom the poet loves in spite of himself. Nearly all of Shakespeare's sonnets examine the inevitable decay of time, and the immortalization of beauty and love in poetry.

In his poems and plays, Shakespeare invented thousands of words, often combining or contorting Latin, French and native roots. His impressive expansion of the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, includes such words as: arch-villain, birthplace, bloodsucking, courtship, dewdrop, downstairs, fanged, heartsore, hunchbacked, leapfrog, misquote, pageantry, radiance, schoolboy, stillborn, watchdog, and zany.

Shakespeare wrote more than 30 plays. These are usually divided into four categories: histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances. His earliest plays were primarily comedies and histories such as Henry VI and The Comedy of Errors, but in 1596, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, his second tragedy, and over the next dozen years he would return to the form, writing the plays for which he is now best known: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In his final years, Shakespeare turned to the romantic with Cymbeline, A Winter's Tale, and The Tempest.

Only eighteen of Shakespeare's plays were published separately in quarto editions during his lifetime; a complete collection of his works did not appear until the publication of the First Folio in 1623, several years after his death. Nonetheless, his contemporaries recognized Shakespeare's achievements. Francis Meres cited "honey-tongued" Shakespeare for his plays and poems in 1598, and the Chamberlain's Men rose to become the leading dramatic company in London, installed as members of the royal household in 1603.

Sometime after 1612, Shakespeare retired from the stage and returned to his home in Stratford. He drew up his will in January of 1616, which included his famous bequest to his wife of his "second best bed." He died on April 23, 1616, and was buried two days later at Stratford Church.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

The Rape of Lucrece (1594)
The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1609)
Venus and Adonis (1593)

Drama

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)
All's Well that Ends Well (1602)
Antony and Cleopatra (1607)
As You Like It (1599)
Coriolanus (1608)
Cymbeline (1609)
Hamlet (1600)
Henry IV (1597)
Henry V (1598)
Henry VI (Parts I, II, and III) (1590)
Henry VIII (1612)
Julius Caesar (1599)
King John (1596)
King Lear (1605)
Love's Labour's Lost (1593)
Macbeth (1606)
Measure for Measure (1604)
Much Ado About Nothing (1598)
Othello (1604)
Pericles (1608)
Richard II (1595)
Richard III (1594)
Romeo and Juliet (1596)
The Comedy of Errors (1590)
The Merchant of Venice (1596)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597)
The Taming of the Shrew (1593)
The Tempest (1611)
The Winter's Tale (1610)
Timon of Athens (1607)
Titus Andronicus (1590)
Troilus and Cressida (1600)
Twelfth Night (1599)
Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592)

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world's a stage]

Jaques to Duke Senior

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

National Poetry Month, Day 24

2009-04-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

Gwendolyn Brooks

The African American poet Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born June 7, 1917, to Keziah and David Brooks in Topeka, Kansas. Later that year the Brooks family moved to Chicago, where her two siblings were born. Brooks' mother discovered Gwendolyn's gift for writing when she was seven. She promptly encouraged this talent by exposing the girl to various forms of literature. Her parents, however were very strict and she was not allowed to play with the kids in the neighborhood. As a child she lacked the sass and brass of the other girls in her class and became very isolated. As a result, she made few friends while in school. When Brooks was at home in her room she often created a world of her own by reading and writing stories and poetry. Due to her lack of social skills she became very shy and continued to be shy throughout her adult life. After graduating from high school she went on to Wilson Junior College and graduated in 1936. Her early verses appeared in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper written primarily for the black community of Chicago. In 1939 she was married to Henry Blakely and they had two children, Henry junior and Nora Blakely. In 1945 Gwendolyn Brooks' first book entitled A Street In Bronzeville was published. In 1949 Annie Allen (a loosely-connected series of poems related to a black girl's growing up in Chicago) was published and received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1950, becoming the first African American to receive this prestigious award in poetry. In 1953 Brooks' first novel is published Maud Martha. In 1963 she published Selected Poems and secured her first teaching job at Chicago's Columbia College. In 1967 at the Fisk University Writers Conference in Nashville, Brooks met the new black revolution. She came from South Dakota State College, which was all white, where she was received with love. Now she had arrived at an all black college where she was now coldly respected. After this trip Brooks says that she is no longer asleep she is now awake. After 1967 she became aware that other blacks feel that way and are not hesitant about saying it. She appeals to her people for understanding and is more conscious of them in her writing. In 1968 she published her next major collection of poetry, In the Mecca. The effect of her awakening is noticeable in her poetry. Brooks is less concerned with poetic form, and uses mostly free verse. In 1968 she was named poet laureate for the state of Illinois and was also the first African American to receive an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 1976. Since then, Gwendolyn Brooks has gone on to receive over fifty honorary doctorates from numerous colleges and universities. She has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and has served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress. In 1990 she became professor of English at Chicago State University. Ms. Brooks died at the age of 83 Sunday December 3, 2000.

The Lovers of the Poor

arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You'd better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle's bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it's all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they're told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Note homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.
Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,
There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no
Unkillable infirmity of such
A tasteful turn as lately they have left,
Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars
Must presently restore them. When they're done
With dullards and distortions of this fistic
Patience of the poor and put-upon.
They've never seen such a make-do-ness as
Newspaper rugs before! In this, this "flat,"
Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich
Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered . . . ),
Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . .
They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin "hangings,"
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter
In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,
When suitable, the nice Art Institute;
Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter
On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.
Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre
With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings
Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers
So old old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies'
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!--
Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.

National Poetry Month, Day 23

2009-04-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919. After spending his early childhood in France, he received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne. During World War II he served in the US Naval Reserve and was sent to Nagasaki shortly after it was bombed. He married in 1951 and has one daughter and one son.

In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin began to publish City Lights magazine. They also opened the City Lights Books Shop in San Francisco to help support the magazine. In 1955, they launched City Light Publishing, a book-publishing venture. City Lights became known as the heart of the "Beat" movement, which included writers such as Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

Ferlinghetti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, including Americus, Book I (New Directions, 2004), San Francisco Poems (2002), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (1993), Over All the Obscene Boundaries: European Poems & Transitions (1984), Who Are We Now? (1976), The Secret Meaning of Things (1969), and A Coney Island of the Mind (1958). He has translated the work of a number of poets including Nicanor Parra, Jacques Prevert, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Ferlinghetti is also the author more than eight plays and of the novels Love in the Days of Rage (1988) and Her (1966).

In 1994, San Francisco renamed a street in his honor. He was also named the first Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 1998. In 2000, he received the lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle. Currently, Ferlinghetti writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also continues to operate the City Lights bookstore, and he travels frequently to participate in literary conferences and poetry readings.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

A Coney Island of the Mind (1958)
Back Roads to Far Places (1971)
Her (1960)
Open Eye, Open Heart (1973)
Pictures of the Gone World (1955)
Routines (1964)
Starting from San Francisco (1961)
The Mexican Night (1970)
The Secret Meaning of Things (1969)
Tyrannus Nix? (1969)
Unfair Arguments with Existence (1963)

Constantly Risking Absurdity

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

National Poetry Month, Day 22

2009-04-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell was born in 1874 at Sevenels, a ten-acre family estate in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her family was Episcopalian, of old New England stock, and at the top of Boston society. Lowell was the youngest of five children. Her elder brother Abbott Lawrence, a freshman at Harvard at the time of her birth, went on to become president of Harvard College. As a young girl she was first tutored at home, then attended private schools in Boston, during which time she made several trips to Europe with her family. At seventeen she secluded herself in the 7,000-book library at Sevenals to study literature. Lowell was encouraged to write from an early age. In 1887 she, with her mother and sister, wrote Dream Drops or Stories From Fairy Land by a Dreamer, printed privately by the Boston firm Cupples and Hurd. Her poem "Fixed Idea" was published in 1910 by the Atlantic Monthly, after which Lowell published individual poems in various journals. In October of 1912 Houghton Mifflin published her first collection, A Dome of Many Colored Glass.

Lowell, a vivacious and outspoken businesswoman, tended to excite controversy. She was deeply interested in and influenced by the Imagist movement, led by Ezra Pound. The primary Imagists were Pound, Ford Madox Ford, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and Richard Aldington. This Anglo-American movement believed, in Lowell's words, that "concentration is of the very essence of poetry" and strove to "produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite." Lowell campaigned for the success of Imagist poetry in America and embraced its principles in her own work. She acted as a publicity agent for the movement, editing and contributing to an anthology of Imagist poets in 1915. Her enthusiastic involvement and influence contributed to Pound's separation from the movement. As Lowell continued to explore the Imagist style she pioneered the use of "polyphonic prose" in English, mixing formal verse and free forms. Later she was drawn to and influenced by Chinese and Japanese poetry. This interest led her to collaborate with translator Florence Ayscough on Fir-Flower Tablets in 1921. Lowell had a lifelong love for the poet Keats, whose letters she collected and influences can be seen in her poems. She believed him to be the forbearer of Imagism. Her biography of Keats was published in 1925, the same year she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection What's A Clock.

A dedicated poet, publicity agent, collector, critic, and lecturer, Lowell died in 1925 at Sevenals.

A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.

They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another,
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city:
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the
moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.

National Poetry Month, Day 21

2009-04-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is a two-fer. If you have been following, you know that Walt Whitman, one of my favourite poets of all time, already had his initial bow, way back on day eight or so. But there can't be too much Walt, and I have just realized that some of the ideas I have been using in some writing I am currently doing are bits and pieces of his masterwork, Song of Myself. And so...I need you all to share this amazing poem, if you haven't ever seen it. Yes, all of it. Here: www.princeton.edu/~batke/logr/log_026.html The interface here wouldn't hold the whole thing as a blog entry. But I have some favourite pieces, and here are a few of them. And I don't promise not to post the occasional three-fer, or four-fer, either, before the month is over. And just because I am a Virgo and do the OCD thing, yes, there needs to be a new/different poet every day, so look below the Whitman for another of my UU existentialist friends.

Song of Myself, I, II, VI, LI & LII

I

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

II

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes.... the shelves
are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume.... it has no taste
of the distillation.... it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever.... I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, and buzzed whispers.... loveroot, silkthread,
crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration.... the beating of my heart....
the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore
and darkcolored sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice.... words loosed
to the eddies of the wind,

A few light kisses.... a few embraces.... reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along
the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health.... the full-noon trill.... the song of me
rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned
the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are
millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor
look through the eyes of the dead. nor feed on the spectres
in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

VI

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess if is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of
the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive then the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

LI

The past and present wilt - I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute
longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his
supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

LII

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

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

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, in 1907. He moved to Birmingham during childhood and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. As a young man he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. At Oxford his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood.

In 1928, his collection Poems was privately printed, but it wasn't until 1930, when another collection titled Poems (though its contents were different) was published, that Auden was established as the leading voice of a new generation.

Ever since, he has been admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and an ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; the incorporation in his work of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech; and also for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information. He had a remarkable wit, and often mimicked the writing styles of other poets such as Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, and Henry James. His poetry frequently recounts, literally or metaphorically, a journey or quest, and his travels provided rich material for his verse.

He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war, and in 1939 moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. His own beliefs changed radically between his youthful career in England, when he was an ardent advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians. A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic.

W. H. Auden was a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973, and divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York City and Austria. He died in Vienna in 1973.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Poems (privately printed, 1928)
Poems (1930)
The Orators prose and verse (1932)
Look, Stranger! in America: On This Island (1936)
Spain (1937)
Another Time (1940)
The Double Man (1941)
The Quest (1941)
For the Time Being (1944)
The Sea and the Mirror (1944)
Collected Poetry (1945)
The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1947)
Collected Shorter Poems 1930-1944 (1950)
Nones (1952)
The Shield of Achilles (1955)
Selected Poetry (1956)
The Old Man's Road (1956)
Homage to Clio (1960)
About the House About the House (1965)
Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 (1966)
Collected Longer Poems (1968)
City without Walls (1969)
Academic Graffiti (1971)
Epistle to a Godson (1972)
Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (1974)
Selected Poems (1979)
Collected Poems (1991)

Prose

Letters from Iceland (1937)
Journey to a War (1939)
Enchaféd Flood (1950)
The Dyer's Hand (1962)
Selected Essays (1964)
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Anthology

Selected Poems by Gunnar Ekelöf (1972)

Drama
Paid On Both Sides (1928)
The Dance of Death (1933)
The Dog Beneath the Skin: or, Where is Francis? (1935)
The Ascent of F.6 (1936)
On the Frontier (1938)

In Memory of W. B. Yeats

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

National Poetry Month, Day 20

2009-04-19T11:07:00.001-07:00

The God Gene

I don't know quite how to think about this....
Somewhere on a sub-molecular level
We are supposed to be hard-wired to Deity....

I hadn't planned on worrying about it.
Life comes at me daily, with the teaching of the moment...

Not sure I like the idea that I am intended to do it all,
Not making my own choices, intuitive, numinous, immediate,
But following what Someone Else's divine intent has planned,
Making me more a vegetable being fertilized and watered
Than a human soul making decisions.

I find that in human connections,
Whether the deep and nurturant bond between spouses
Or the fraternal, sororal, and intended connections among family of choice,
Much room must be left for the individual meme...

Where human interconnection is concerned,
The paths are as important as the junctions.
The old adage goes, "You can lead a horse to water..."
And the drink is definitely on us....

OK, then. I am distracted by the thought of being impelled.
It sends me around another one of those roundabouts of philosophy.

So....we may be hard-wired to believe...
But if God, or Nature, did, can do, that kind of tampering,
That forcing of the Will, that warping of natural process...
What end could justify such unethical means?

Then, if it is so, if it/he/she/they, can do this, has done it...
Then...in my lexicon, it/he/she/they....are not God.
Because God is greater than to need our forced and compelled belief.

If I can't get there on my own,
It isn't worth the trip.

Aisling the Bard
Winter 2008

National Poetry Month, Day 19

2009-04-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

Edna St Vincent Millay

Edna St Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine on 22nd February, 1892. Cora St Vincent Millay raised Edna and her three sisters on her own after her husband left the family home. When Edna was twenty her poem, Renascence, was published in The Lyric Year. As a result of this poem Edna won a scholarship to Vassar.

In 1917, the year of her graduation, Millay published her first book, Renascence and Other Poems. After leaving Vassar she moved to New York's Greenwich Village where she befriended writers such as Floyd Dell, John Reed and Max Eastman. The three men were all involved in the left-wing journal, the Masses, and she joined in their campaign against USA involvement in the First World War.

Millay also joined the Provincetown Theatre Group. Others who wrote or acted for the group included Floyd Dell, Eugene O'Neill, John Reed, George Gig Cook, Susan Glaspell and Louise Bryant. Millay was considered a great success as Annabelle in Floyd Dell's The Angel Intrudes. In 1918 Millay directed and took the lead in her own play, The Princess Marries the Page. Later she directed her morality play, Two Slatterns and the King at Provincetown.

In 1920 Millay published a new volume of poems, A Few Figs from Thistles. This created considerable controversy as the poems dealt with issues such as female sexuality and feminism. Her next volume of poems, The Harp Weaver (1923), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Millay married Eugen Boissevain, the widower of Inez Milholland, in 1923. Both were believers in free-love and it was agreed they should have an open marriage. Boissevain managed Millay's literary career and this included the highly popular readings of her work. In his autobiography, Homecoming (1933), Floyd Dell commented that he had "never heard poetry read so beautifully".

In 1927 joined with other artists such as John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Dorothy Parker, Ben Shahn, Floyd Dell in the campaign against the proposed execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The day before the execution Millay was arrested at a demonstration in Boston for "sauntering and loitering" and carrying the placard "If These Men Are Executed, Justice is Dead in Massachusetts".

Later Millay was to write several poems about the the Sacco-Vanzetti Case. The most famous of these was Justice Denied in Massachusetts. Her next volume of poems, The Buck and the Snow (1928) included several others including Hangman's Oak, The Anguish, Wine from These Grapes and To Those Without Pity.

In 1931 Millay published, Fatal Interview (1931) a volume of 52 sonnets in celebration of a recent love affair. Edmund Wilson claimed the book contained some of the greatest poems of the 20th century. Others were more critical preferring the more political material that had appeared in The Buck and the Snow.

Her next volume of poems, Wine From These Grapes (1934) included the remarkable Conscientious Objector, a poem that expressed her strong views on pacifism. Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939) also dealt with political issues such as the Spanish Civil War and the growth of fascism.

During the Second World War Millay abandoned her pacifists views and wrote patriotic poems such as Not to be Spattered by His Blood (1941), Murder at Lidice (1942) and Poem and Prayer for an Invading Army (1944). Edna St Vincent Millay died in 1950.

The Ballad Of The Harp-Weaver

"Son," said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
"you've need of clothes to cover you,
and not a rag have I.

"There's nothing in the house
To make a boy breeches,
Nor shears to cut a cloth with,
Nor thread to take stitches.

"There's nothing in the house
But a loaf-end of rye,
And a harp with a woman's head
Nobody will buy,"
And she began to cry.

That was in the early fall.
When came the late fall,
"Son," she said, "the sight of you
Makes your mother's blood crawl,—

"Little skinny shoulder-blades
Sticking through your clothes!
And where you'll get a jacket from
God above knows.

"It's lucky for me, lad,
Your daddy's in the ground,
And can't see the way I let
His son go around!"
And she made a queer sound.

That was in the late fall.
When the winter came,
I'd not a pair of breeches
Nor a shirt to my name.

I couldn't go to school,
Or out of doors to play.
And all the other little boys
Passed our way.

"Son," said my mother,
"Come, climb into my lap,
And I'll chafe your little bones
While you take a nap."

And, oh, but we were silly
For half and hour or more,
Me with my long legs,
Dragging on the floor,

A-rock-rock-rocking
To a mother-goose rhyme!
Oh, but we were happy
For half an hour's time!

But there was I, a great boy,
And what would folks say
To hear my mother singing me
To sleep all day,
In such a daft way?

Men say the winter
Was bad that year;
Fuel was scarce,
And food was dear.

A wind with a wolf's head
Howled about our door,
And we burned up the chairs
And sat upon the floor.

All that was left us
Was a chair we couldn't break,
And the harp with a woman's head
Nobody would take,
For song or pity's sake.

The night before Christmas
I cried with cold,
I cried myself to sleep
Like a two-year old.

And in the deep night
I felt my mother rise,
And stare down upon me
With love in her eyes.

I saw my mother sitting
On the one good chair,
A light falling on her
From I couldn't tell where.

Looking nineteen,
And not a day older,
And the harp with a woman's head
Leaned against her shoulder.

Her thin fingers, moving
In the thin, tall strings,
Were weav-weav-weaving
Wonderful things.

Many bright threads,
From where I couldn't see,
Were running through the harp-strings
Rapidly,

And gold threads whistling
Through my mother's hand.
I saw the web grow,
And the pattern expand.

She wove a child's jacket,
And when it was done
She laid it on the floor
And wove another one.

She wove a red cloak
So regal to see,
"She's made it for a king's son,"
I said, "and not for me."
But I knew it was for me.

She wove a pair of breeches
Quicker than that!
She wove a pair of boots
And a little cocked hat.

She wove a pair of mittens,
Shw wove a little blouse,
She wove all night
In the still, cold house.

She sang as she worked,
And the harp-strings spoke;
Her voice never faltered,
And the thread never broke,
And when I awoke,—

There sat my mother
With the harp against her shoulder,
Looking nineteeen,
And not a day older,

A smile about her lips,
And a light about her head,
And her hands in the harp-strings
Frozen dead.

And piled beside her
And toppling to the skies,
Were the clothes of a king's son,
Just my size.

National Poetry Month, Day 18

2009-04-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1865, the son of a well-known Irish painter, John Butler Yeats. He spent his childhood in County Sligo, where his parents were raised, and in London. He returned to Dublin at the age of fifteen to continue his education and study painting, but quickly discovered he preferred poetry. Born into the Anglo-Irish landowning class, Yeats became involved with the Celtic Revival, a movement against the cultural influences of English rule in Ireland during the Victorian period, which sought to promote the spirit of Ireland's native heritage. Though Yeats never learned Gaelic himself, his writing at the turn of the century drew extensively from sources in Irish mythology and folklore. Also a potent influence on his poetry was the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1889, a woman equally famous for her passionate nationalist politics and her beauty. Though she married another man in 1903 and grew apart from Yeats (and Yeats himself was eventually married to another woman, Georgie Hyde Lees), she remained a powerful figure in his poetry.

Yeats was deeply involved in politics in Ireland, and in the twenties, despite Irish independence from England, his verse reflected a pessimism about the political situation in his country and the rest of Europe, paralleling the increasing conservativism of his American counterparts in London, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. His work after 1910 was strongly influenced by Pound, becoming more modern in its concision and imagery, but Yeats never abandoned his strict adherence to traditional verse forms. He had a life-long interest in mysticism and the occult, which was off-putting to some readers, but he remained uninhibited in advancing his idiosyncratic philosophy, and his poetry continued to grow stronger as he grew older. Appointed a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922, he is remembered as an important cultural leader, as a major playwright (he was one of the founders of the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin), and as one of the very greatest poets—in any language—of the century. W. B. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 and died in 1939 at the age of 73.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

National Poetry Month, Day 17

2009-04-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Today's entry is unusual on several levels. As you may have noticed, I have fallen into a thematic fancy (which actually began accidentally but is now deliberate) of alternating between a male and a female poet. Today, we have a female poet, which is correct according to my pattern, who rejoiced in a male name for her entire literary career. She is also a poet who is primarily a novelist, but whose poetry is significant enough that she is listed as both a poet and a novelist. As all of you know, I am myself immersed in conundrums of this kind both in my own life, and my work. So it's fun to have found someone (not the only possibility, either) who slips through all the filters. Enjoy!

George Eliot ~ MARY ANN EVANS

Mary Ann Evans was born at Griff House, England, near Nuneaton, November 22, 1820. Upon reaching womanhood, she married the eminent English author, George H. Lewes. By his suggestion, she commenced to write fiction. Her literary name was George Eliot, and by that name we shall know her in the world of letters. She died in London, December 22, 1880.

Her father, Mr. Robert Evans, was able to give his daughter an exceptionally good education. There were and are so many bad schools for girls that it was a piece of singular good fortune that Mrs. Wellington, at Nuneaton, and afterward Miss Franklin, at Coventry, undertook her education. To Mrs. Wellington, the writer in the "Graphic" thinks that George Eliot owed some of the beauty of her intonation in reading English poetry. Besides the studies at school, she was fortunate in finding a willing instructor in the then head master of Coventry Grammar School, Mr. Sheepshanks; and motherless as she was, she possibly studied more deeply than a mother's care for a delicate daughter's health would have permitted. However this may be, the years that she spent in Coventry, on her father's removal to Foleshill, till his death in 1849, were years of excessive work, issuing in a riper culture than that attained by any other prominent English woman of our age, and only approached by that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her first introduction to serious literary work was brought about by Mr. and Mrs. Bray, of Coventry. Mrs. Bray's brother, Mr. Charles Hennell, was interested in a translation of Strauss' "Leben Jesu," which had been entrusted to the lady he was about to marry, and who had performed about one-fourth of the work. When the lady was married, the work of completing the translation was turned over to our author, who performed her duty most acceptably.

On Mr. Evans' death, in 1849, his daughter went abroad with the Brays, and staid behind them at Geneva for purposes of study. Some time after her return to England she became a boarder in the house of Mr. -- now Dr. -- Chapman, who with his wife, was in the habit of receiving ladies into their family. She assisted Mr. Chapman in the editorship of the "Westminster Review," and her literary career in London was fairly begun. Her work on the "Westminster Review" was chiefly editorial. During the years in which she was connected with it she wrote far fewer articles than might have been supposed. The most important of them were the following, written between 1852 and 1859, inclusive: "Women in France," "Madame De Sable;" "Evangelical Teachings" (on Dr. Cumming); "The Natural History of German Life;" "German Wit" (on Heine); "Worldliness and Other Worldliness" (on Young and Cowper).

While in London she formed numerous valuable acquaintances among literary persons, among whom may be mentioned Herbert Spencer, Mr. Pigott, and George H. Lewes. Her acquaintance with Lewes resulted in her marriage to him. These two eminent scholars lived together most happily; and each profited by the companionship of the other.

Her own somewhat somber cast of thought was cheered, enlivened and diversified by the vivacity and versatility which characterized Mr. Lewes. Was the character of Ladislaw, to ourselves one of very great charm, in any degree drawn from George Henry Lewes, as his wife first remembered him? The suggestion that she should try her hand at fiction undoubtedly came from Mr. Lewes. Probably no great writers ever know their real vein. But for this outward stimulation, she might have remained through life the accurate translator, the brilliant reviewer, the thoughtful poet, to whom accuracy of poetic form was somewhat wanting, rather than as the writer of fiction who has swayed the hearts of men as no other writer but Walter Scott has done, or even attempted to do.

In the maturity of her life and intellectual powers she became known as a writer of fiction. There are those who regard the "Scenes of Clerical Life" as her best work. Beautiful as they are, that is not our opinion, and, at any rate, the "Scenes" failed to attract much notice at first. The publication of "Adam Bede," in 1859, however, took the world by storm. Five editions were sold within as many months. Considerable anxiety was manifested as to the authorship of the novel. In this matter, the actual author was greatly complimented, for the popularity of her work induced one Joseph Liggins to copy the entire book, and then, by exhibiting his manuscript, to claim the authorship. The impostor received some money by subscription before the authorship of "Adam Bede" was fully settled. In 1859 also appeared "The Mill on the Floss," a work fully up to the standard of her former production; and in 1861, "Silas Marner" sustained George Eliot's reputation as a powerful writer. In 1863 she published a more ambitious work than any before attempted. It was an historical novel of Italian life in the days of Savonarola, entitled "Romola." By many this is considered her greatest intellectual effort. She published "Felix Holt, the Radical," in 1866; "Middlemarch, a Study of English Provincial Life," 1871-'72; "Daniel Deronda," a story of modern English life, 1876; "The Gypsie Queen," an elaborate dramatic poem, 1868; "Agatha," a poem, 1869. In 1878 her husband died, thus leaving her alone. The loss was deeply felt by her, but she soon commenced to enter society again, when she married Mr. J. W. Cross. Although many of her friends were not favorable to the new union, yet it proved to be a happy one. In company with Mr. Cross, she visited Italy, and her health seemed greatly benefited by that sunny clime. Upon returning to England, however, the severe winter which followed was most unfavorable. She moved to her new home in Chelsea, but from the effects of a severe cold, died within two weeks of the change, and was laid to rest by the side of Mr. George Henry Lewes.

The complete works of George Eliot have been issued in this country, in eight volumes. While she has written some verses of considerable merit, yet her fame rests upon her prose works. There is probably no question but what she is the greatest female novelist England has produced, and a large class of critical writers deem her the greatest that ever lived.

God Needs Antonio

Your soul was lifted by the wings today
Hearing the master of the violin:
You praised him, praised the great Sabastian too
Who made that fine Chaconne; but did you think
Of old Antonio Stradivari? -him
Who a good century and a half ago
Put his true work in that brown instrument
And by the nice adjustment of its frame
Gave it responsive life, continuous
With the master's finger-tips and perfected
Like them by delicate rectitude of use.
That plain white-aproned man, who stood at work
Patient and accurate full fourscore years,
Cherished his sight and touch by temperance,
And since keen sense is love of perfectness
Made perfect violins, the needed paths
For inspiration and high mastery.

No simpler man than he; he never cried,
"why was I born to this monotonous task
Of making violins?" or flung them down
To suit with hurling act well-hurled curse
At labor on such perishable stuff.
Hence neighbors in Cremona held him dull,
Called him a slave, a mill-horse, a machine.

Naldo, a painter of eclectic school,
Knowing all tricks of style at thirty-one,
And weary of them, while Antonio
At sixty-nine wrought placidly his best,
Making the violin you heard today -
Naldo would tease him oft to tell his aims.
"Perhaps thou hast some pleasant vice to feed -
the love of louis d'ors in heaps of four,
Each violin a heap - I've naught to blame;
My vices waste such heaps. But then, why work
With painful nicety?"

Antonio then:
"I like the gold - well, yes - but not for meals.
And as my stomach, so my eye and hand,
And inward sense that works along with both,
Have hunger that can never feed on coin.
Who draws a line and satisfies his soul,
Making it crooked where it should be straight?
Antonio Stradivari has an eye
That winces at false work and loves the true."
Then Naldo: "'Tis a petty kind of fame
At best, that comes of making violins;
And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go
To purgatory none the less."

But he:
"'Twere purgatory here to make them ill;
And for my fame - when any master holds
'Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,
He will be glad that Stradivari lived,
Made violins, and made them of the best.
The masters only know whose work is good:
They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill
I give them instruments to play upon,
God choosing me to help him.

"What! Were God
at fault for violins, thou absent?"

"Yes;
He were at fault for Stradivari's work."

"Why, many hold Giuseppe's violins
As good as thine."

"May be: they are different.
His quality declines: he spoils his hand
With over-drinking. But were his the best,
He could not work for two. My work is mine,
And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked
I should rob God - since his is fullest good -
Leaving a blank instead of violins.
I say, not God himself can make man's best
Without best men to help him.

'Tis God gives skill,
But not without men's hands: he could not make
Antonio Stradivari's violins
Without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel."

Pagan Paeans Shameless Plug and Even More Shameless Self-Egoboo

2009-04-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Pagan Paeans Shameless Promotion !!
Pre-order your copy now from Cafepress.com and be the first to own one!
http://www.cafepress.com/paganpaeans

Pagan Paeans has an IBSN 978-0-9562403-0-9 and can be wholesaled or bought directly...

from May 1st it will be available through
Cafepress.com/paganpaeans (USA, UK and Ireland, Europe, Rest of World)
ppp@anfianna.com (paypal, postal order, individual sales or wholesale UK and Ireland only )
or nielsenbooknet.co.uk teleordering (wholesale only)

Hate Poetry?
Fake it. I don't care :) This is a note of Shameless Celtic Boasting in the grand tradition of our forebears to raise awareness that A) we have an Anthology and B) it's damn fine. PPP Publications are terribly proud of themselves :)And if you're thinking why the giddy hell is she annoying ME with this...it's so you know we have an anthology so yah boo !

Can you help?
Want one? buy one!
Like it? promote it!
Know a bookshop? ask them to take one!

And yes, that is TOO my own poetry in there. Aisling the Bard, at your service....want me to sign that?

National Poetry Month, Day 16

2009-04-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, Alfred Tennyson is one of the most well-loved Victorian poets. Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, showed an early talent for writing. At the age of twelve he wrote a 6,000-line epic poem. His father, the Reverend George Tennyson, tutored his sons in classical and modern languages. In the 1820s, however, Tennyson's father began to suffer frequent mental breakdowns that were exacerbated by alcoholism. One of Tennyson's brothers had violent quarrels with his father, a second was later confined to an insane asylum, and another became an opium addict.

Tennyson escaped home in 1827 to attend Trinity College, Cambridge. In that same year, he and his brother Charles published Poems by Two Brothers. Although the poems in the book were mostly juvenilia, they attracted the attention of the "Apostles," an undergraduate literary club led by Arthur Hallam. The "Apostles" provided Tennyson, who was tremendously shy, with much needed friendship and confidence as a poet. Hallam and Tennyson became the best of friends; they toured Europe together in 1830 and again in 1832. Hallam's sudden death in 1833 greatly affected the young poet. The long elegy In Memoriam and many of Tennyson's other poems are tributes to Hallam.

In 1830, Tennyson published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical and in 1832 he published a second volume entitled simply Poems. Some reviewers condemned these books as "affected" and "obscure." Tennyson, stung by the reviews, would not publish another book for nine years. In 1836, he became engaged to Emily Sellwood. When he lost his inheritance on a bad investment in 1840, Sellwood's family called off the engagement. In 1842, however, Tennyson's Poems in two volumes was a tremendous critical and popular success. In 1850, with the publication of In Memoriam, Tennyson became one of Britain's most popular poets. He was selected Poet Laureate in succession to Wordsworth. In that same year, he married Emily Sellwood. They had two sons, Hallam and Lionel.

At the age of 41, Tennyson had established himself as the most popular poet of the Victorian era. The money from his poetry (at times exceeding 10,000 pounds per year) allowed him to purchase a house in the country and to write in relative seclusion. His appearance—a large and bearded man, he regularly wore a cloak and a broad brimmed hat—enhanced his notoriety. He read his poetry with a booming voice, often compared to that of Dylan Thomas. In 1859, Tennyson published the first poems of Idylls of the Kings, which sold more than 10,000 copies in one month. In 1884, he accepted a peerage, becoming Alfred Lord Tennyson. Tennyson died in 1892 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Ulysses
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known--cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

National Poetry Month, Day 15

2009-04-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. She grew up in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. She is an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her autobiographical books: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), The Heart of a Woman (1981), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), Gather Together in My Name (1974), and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), which was nominated for the National Book Award.

Among her volumes of poetry are A Brave and Startling Truth (Random House, 1995), The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994), Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? (1983), Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), and Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), which was nominated for the Pulitzer prize.

In 1959, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From 1961 to 1962 she was associate editor of The Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt, the only English-language news weekly in the Middle East, and from 1964 to 1966 she was feature editor of the African Review in Accra, Ghana. She returned to the U.S. in 1974 and was appointed by Gerald Ford to the Bicentennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year. She accepted a lifetime appointment in 1981 as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 1993, Angelou wrote and delivered a poem, "On The Pulse of the Morning," at the inauguration for President Bill Clinton at his request.

The first black woman director in Hollywood, Angelou has written, produced, directed, and starred in productions for stage, film, and television. In 1971, she wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia, and was both author and executive producer of a five-part television miniseries "Three Way Choice." She has also written and produced several prize-winning documentaries, including "Afro-Americans in the Arts," a PBS special for which she received the Golden Eagle Award. Maya Angelou was twice nominated for a Tony award for acting: once for her Broadway debut in Look Away (1973), and again for her performance in Roots (1977).

The Rock Cries Out to Us Today

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

National Poetry Month, Day 14

2009-04-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

Langston Hughes

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.

Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period—Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen—Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.

Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed "Langston Hughes Place."

In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Stakes a Claim,Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple's Uncle Sam. He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography (The Big Sea) and co-wrote the play Mule Bone with Zora Neale Hurston.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961)
Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1994)
Dear Lovely Death (1931)
Fields of Wonder (1947)
Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)
Freedom's Plow (1943)
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
One-Way Ticket (1949)
Scottsboro Limited (1932)
Selected Poems (1959)
Shakespeare in Harlem (1942)
The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932)
The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times (1967)
The Weary Blues (1926)

Prose

Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes (1973)
I Wonder as I Wander (1956)
Laughing to Keep From Crying (1952)
Not Without Laughter (1930)
Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964 (2001)
Simple Speaks His Mind (1950)
Simple Stakes a Claim (1957)
Simple Takes a Wife (1953)
Simple's Uncle Sam (1965)
Something in Common and Other Stories (1963)
Tambourines to Glory (1958)
The Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters (1980)
The Big Sea (1940)
The Langston Hughes Reader (1958)
The Ways of White Folks (1934)

Drama

Black Nativity (1961)
Collected Works of Langston Hughes, vol. 5: The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move (2000)
Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938)
Five Plays by Langston Hughes (1963)
Little Ham (1935)
Mulatto (1935)
Mule Bone (1930)
Simply Heavenly (1957)
Soul Gone Home (1937)
The Political Plays of Langston Hughes (2000)

Poetry in Translation

Cuba Libre (1948)
Gypsy Ballads (1951)
Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (1957)

Translation
Masters of the Dew (1947)

*************
Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

I, Too, Sing America

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!.

National Poetry Month Day 13

2009-04-11T23:08:00.000-07:00

Into The Mist

The trees are sinister
Ragged edges of fog
Like tattered cobweb-fingers
Beckoning eerily

Between the hummocks,
Tiny rivulets
Of unnamed water
Not flowing...perhaps waiting.

The air is alive.
Dank, resonant,
Hollowly echoing
Cries stilled before forming.

I stand at forest's edge
Neither able to move
Nor to stand still.
Pulled in, scarcely knowing...

Where will it lead me?
The mist is leering,
A dank scent like tired hollows
Filled with nameless, moving things...

I must not enter.
I cannot stay here.
I cannot continue down this path.
I cannot prevent my going...

Is this how it feels?
Is the end of all simply this grey nothing?
Am I simply going to be absorbed here?
Is there nothing but this mist?

No one answers
No sound.
My hands are disappearing.
My eyes are dimming.
Where am I?

Aisling the Bard
September 2008

National Poetry Month, Day 12

2009-04-11T09:51:00.001-07:00

Marianne Moore

Born near St. Louis, Missouri, on November 15, 1887, Marianne Moore was raised in the home of her grandfather, a Presbyterian pastor. After her grandfather's death, in 1894, Moore and her family stayed with other relatives, and in 1896 they moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She attended Bryn Mawr College and received her B.A. in 1909. Following graduation, Moore studied typing at Carlisle Commercial College, and from 1911 to 1915 she was employed as a school teacher at the Carlisle Indian School. In 1918, Moore and her mother moved to New York City, and in 1921, she became an assistant at the New York Public Library. She began to meet other poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, and to contribute to the Dial, a prestigious literary magazine. She served as acting editor of the Dial from 1925 to 1929. Along with the work of such other members of the Imagist movement as Ezra Pound, Williams, and H. D., Moore's poems were published in the Egoist, an English magazine, beginning in 1915. In 1921, H.D. published Moore's first book, Poems, without her knowledge.

Moore was widely recognized for her work; among her many honors were the Bollingen prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote with the freedom characteristic of the other modernist poets, often incorporating quotes from other sources into the text, yet her use of language was always extraordinarily condensed and precise, capable of suggesting a variety of ideas and associations within a single, compact image. In his 1925 essay "Marianne Moore," William Carlos Williams wrote about Moore's signature mode, the vastness of the particular: "So that in looking at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events." She was particularly fond of animals, and much of her imagery is drawn from the natural world. She was also a great fan of professional baseball and an admirer of Muhammed Ali, for whom she wrote the liner notes to his record, I Am the Greatest! Deeply attached to her mother, she lived with her until Mrs. Moore's death in 1947. Marianne Moore died in New York City in 1972.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Collected Poems (1951)
Like a Bulwark (1956)
Nevertheless (1944)
O to Be a Dragon (1959)
Observations (1924)
Poems (1921)
Selected Poems (1935)
Tell Me, Tell Me (1966)
The Arctic Fox (1964)
The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967)
The Pangolin and Other Verse (1936)
What AreYears? (1941)

Prose

A Marianne Moore Reader (1961)
Predilections (1955)
The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (1987)

Anthology

Rock Crystal (1945)
The Fables of La Fontaine (1954)

Poetry
by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

National Poetry Month, Day 11

2009-04-10T08:10:00.001-07:00

Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree.

Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.

In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work.

By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.

Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.

In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frost's early work as "the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the sources of its own delight in the world," and comments on Frost's career as The American Bard: "He became a national celebrity, our nearly official Poet Laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain."

About Frost, President John F. Kennedy said, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."

Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

A Boy's Will (1913)
North of Boston (1914)
Mountain Interval (1916)
New Hampshire (1923)
West-Running Brook (1928)
The Lovely Shall Be Choosers (1929)
The Lone Striker (1933)
From Snow to Snow (1936)
A Further Range (1936)
A Witness Tree (1942)
Come In, and Other Poems (1943)
Masque of Reason (1945)
Steeple Bush (1947)
Hard Not to be King (1951)

***********
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

National Poetry Month, Day 10

2009-04-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

May Swenson
May Swenson was born Anna Thilda May Swenson on May 28, 1913 in Logan, Utah. Her parents were Swedish immigrants, and her father was a professor of mechanical engineering at Utah State University. English was her second language, her family having spoken mostly Swedish in their home. Influenced early on by Edgar Allan Poe, she kept journals as a young girl, in which she wrote in multiple genres.

She attended Utah State University, Logan, and received a bachelor's degree in 1934. She spent another year in Utah working as a reporter, but in 1935 relocated to New York, where she remained for most of her adult life. In New York City, she worked in various jobs while writing and publishing her poetry, including employment as a stenographer, ghostwriter, secretary, manuscript reader, and, in 1959, she became the editor of New Directions Press.

Since her first collection of poems, Another Animal, was published by Scribner in 1954, Swenson's work has been admired for its adventurous word play and erotic exuberance. Her poems have been compared to those of poets E. E. Cummings and Gertrude Stein, as well as Elizabeth Bishop, with whom she was engaged in regular, often frequent correspondence from 1950 until Bishop's death in 1979.

Swenson's other collections of poems include A Cage of Spines (1958); To Mix with Time: New and Selected Poems (1963); Half Sun Half Sleep (1967); Iconographs (1970); New & Selected Things Taking Place (1978); and In Other Words (1987). Posthumous collections of her work include The Love Poems (1991); Nature: Poems Old and New (1994); and May Out West (1996).

She is also the author of three collections of poems for younger readers, including Poems to Solve (1966) and More Poems to Solve (1968); a collection of essays, The Contemporary Poet as Artist and Critic (1964); and a one-act play titled The Floor, which was produced in New York in the 1960s. As translator, she published Windows and Stones: Selected Poems of Tomas Tranströmer (1972), which received a medal of excellence from the International Poetry Forum.

She left New Directions Press in 1966, having decided to devote herself fully to her own writing. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, she served as poet-in-residence at several universities in the United States and Canada, including Bryn Mawr, the University of North Carolina, the University of California at Riverside, Purdue University and Utah State University. She then moved to Sea Cliff, New York, where she lived for the remainder of her life.

About her work, the poet Grace Schulman said, "Questions are the wellspring of May Swenson's art... In her speculations and her close observations, she fulfills Marianne Moore's formula for the working artist: 'Curiosity, observation, and a great deal of joy in the thing.'"

Swenson’s work shows strong use of imagery and use of eroticism. She continually questions existence and writes much on the topic of love. Her love poems concerned “human nature, the natural world, geography, and invention. They are poems of intense love between women, written at a time when that genre was rare in poetry” (Schulman). A self proclaimed lesbian,[2] much critique has been done on her heterosexual imagery. Although she did not go out of her way to make known her sexual identity, she also did not hide it. Perhaps she did not promote her sexuality because of the times, religion, or maybe just personal preference not to. In her career she has turned down publication offers to use her poetry in a compilation of lesbian writing, yet she did agree in one case, which she explained as a tasteful collection she did not mind contributing to. Her biography The Love Poems of May Swenson focused mostly on poems in which sexual imagery is especially abundant. It is considered her book of strongest love poems. One example, the poem “In the Yard” reads:

You're back,
barefoot, brought
some fruit. Split me
an apple. We'll
get red, white
halves each, our
juice on the
Indian spread. (Nature 94)

Swenson's style is described as rhythmic. Her creative style merges in her writing with her interest in plant and animal behavior with works such as "The Cross Spider". As well as natural themes, some of her work focuses on scientific research, for example the exploration of space. Fascinated by perception, much of Swenson's work contains key themes of how this human perception can be found in landscapes and wider contexts. One source comments that her use of nature and sexuality are not used separately, but that nature is something we are all part of, and in that commonality we share energy derived from sexuality.

Swenson's honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ford, Rockefeller, and MacArthur Foundations, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Bollingen Prize from Yale University, and an Award in Literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

In 1967, she received a Distinguished Service Gold Medal from Utah State University, and in 1987 an honorary doctor of letters. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1980 until her death. She died in Oceanview, Delaware, in 1989, and is buried in the city she where she was born.

Four months before her death, Swenson wrote: "The best poetry has its roots in the subconscious to a great degree. Youth, naivety, reliance on instinct more than learning and method, a sense of freedom and play, even trust in randomness, is necessary to the making of a poem."

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Another Animal (1954)
A Cage of Spines (1958)
To Mix with Time: New and Selected Poems (1963)
Poems to Solve (1966)
Half Sun Half Sleep (1967)
Iconographs (1970)
More Poems to Solve (1971)
New and Selected Things Taking Place (1978)
In Other Words (1987)
The Love Poems of May Swenson (1991)
Nature: Poems Old and New (1994)
May Out West (1996)

Prose
The Contemporary Poet as Artist and Critic (1964)

Landing on the Moon

When in the mask of night there shone that cut,
we were riddled. A probe reached down
and stroked some nerve in us,
as if the glint from a wizard's eye, of silver,
slanted out of the mask of the unknown-
pit of riddles, the scratch-marked sky.

When, albino bowl on cloth of jet,
it spilled its virile rays,
our eyes enlarged, our blood reared with the waves.
We craved its secret, but unreachable
it held away from us, chilly and frail.
Distance kept it magnate. Enigma made it white.

When we learned to read it with our rod,
reflected light revealed
a lead mirror, a bruised shield
seamed with scars and shadow-soiled.
A half faced sycophant, its glitter borrowed,
rode around our throne.

On the moon there shines earth light
as moonlight shines upon th earth…
If on its obsidian we set our weightless foot,
and sniff no wind, and lick no rain
and feel no gauze between us and the Fire
will we trot its grassless skull, sick for the homelike shade?

Naked to the earth-beam we shall be,
who have arrived to map an apparition,
who walk upon the forehead of a myth.
Can flesh rub with symbol? If our ball
be iron, and not light, our earliest wish
eclipses. Dare we land upon a dream?

National Poetry Month, Day 9

2009-04-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. He was introduced to the countryside at a young age, and this first contact with the natural world sparked a lifelong fascination. Although his family lived in relative poverty, subsisting on the income from their small pencil-making business, Thoreau was able to attend Harvard, where he gained an early reputation as an individualist. After graduating in 1837, he assisted his father with the family business and worked for several years as a schoolteacher.

In 1841, Thoreau was invited to live in the home of his neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. There he began meeting with the group now known as the Transcendentalist Club, which included A. Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and George Ripley. Thoreau passed his time at the Emerson house writing essays and poems for the transcendentalist journal The Dial and doing odd jobs like gardening and mending fences. In 1845, he began building a small house on Emerson's land on the shore of Walden Pond, where he spent more than two years "living deep and sucking out all the marrow of life." His experiences there formed the basis for two books, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and his masterpiece, Walden, which advocated a lifestyle of self-sufficiency and simplicity.

Although Thoreau thought of himself primarily as a poet during his early years, he was later discouraged in this pursuit and gradually came to feel that poetry was too confining. It is as a prose writer that Thoreau made his most meaningful contributions, both as a stylist and as a philosopher. A tireless champion of the human spirit against the materialism and conformity that he saw as dominant in American culture, Thoreau's ideas about civil disobedience, as set forth in his 1849 essay, have influenced, among others, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and his mastery of prose style has been acknowledged by writers as disparate as Robert Louis Stevenson, Marcel Proust, Sinclair Lewis, and Henry Miller. Largely ignored in his own time, the self-styled "inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms" has emerged as one of America's greatest literary figures. Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862, in his native Concord.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Collected Poems (1943)
Poems of Nature (1895)

Prose

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (1866)
Cape Cod (1865)
Excursions (1864)
Letters to Various Persons (1865)
The Correspondance of Henry David Thoreau (1958)
Thoreau's Literary Notebook (1840-1840) (1964)
Walden; Or, Life in the Wood

Inspiration
by Henry David Thoreau

Whate'er we leave to God, God does,
And blesses us;
The work we choose should be our own,
God leaves alone.

If with light head erect I sing,
Though all the Muses lend their force,
From my poor love of anything,
The verse is weak and shallow as its source.

But if with bended neck I grope
Listening behind me for my wit,
With faith superior to hope,
More anxious to keep back than forward it;

Making my soul accomplice there
Unto the flame my heart hath lit,
Then will the verse forever wear—
Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ.

Always the general show of things
Floats in review before my mind,
And such true love and reverence brings,
That sometimes I forget that I am blind.

But now there comes unsought, unseen,
Some clear divine electuary,
And I, who had but sensual been,
Grow sensible, and as God is, am wary.

I hearing get, who had but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before,
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.

I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.

A clear and ancient harmony
Pierces my soul through all its din,
As through its utmost melody—
Farther behind than they, farther within.

More swift its bolt than lightning is,
Its voice than thunder is more loud,
It doth expand my privacies
To all, and leave me single in the crowd.

It speaks with such authority,
With so serene and lofty tone,
That idle Time runs gadding by,
And leaves me with Eternity alone.

Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life;
Of manhood's strength it is the flower,
'Tis peace's end and war's beginning strife.

It comes in summer's broadest noon,
By a grey wall or some chance place,
Unseasoning Time, insulting June,
And vexing day with its presuming face.

Such fragrance round my couch it makes,
More rich than are Arabian drugs,
That my soul scents its life and wakes
The body up beneath its perfumed rugs.

Such is the Muse, the heavenly maid,
The star that guides our mortal course,
Which shows where life's true kernel's laid,
Its wheat's fine flour, and its undying force.

She with one breath attunes the spheres,
And also my poor human heart,
With one impulse propels the years
Around, and gives my throbbing pulse its start.

I will not doubt for evermore,
Nor falter from a steadfast faith,
For thought the system be turned o'er,
God takes not back the word which once He saith.

I will not doubt the love untold
Which not my worth nor want has bought,
Which wooed me young, and woos me old,
And to this evening hath me brought.

My memory I'll educate
To know the one historic truth,
Remembering to the latest date
The only true and sole immortal youth.

Be but thy inspiration given,
No matter through what danger sought,
I'll fathom hell or climb to heaven,
And yet esteem that cheap which love has bought.

Fame cannot tempt the bard
Who's famous with his God,
Nor laurel him reward
Who has his Maker's nod.

National Poetry Month, Day 8

2009-04-07T15:09:00.001-07:00

Hildegard of Bingen (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis; 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Blessed Hildegard and Saint Hildegard, was a German abbess, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, channeller, visionary and composer. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165.

She is a composer with an extant biography from her own time. One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama.

She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, poems, and the first surviving morality play, while supervising brilliant miniature Illuminations.

Hildegard was raised in a family of free nobles. She was the 10th child, sickly from birth. In her Vita, Hildegard explains that from a very young age she had experienced visions.

Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political positioning, Hildegard's parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, offered her as a tithe to the church. The date of Hildegard's enclosure in the church is contentious. Her vita tells us she was enclosed with another older nun Jutta at the age of eight, though Jutta's enclosure date is known to be in 1112, at which time Hildegard would have been fourteen. Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta, the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim, at the age of eight, before the two women were enclosed together six years later.[3] In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed at Disibodenberg in the Palatinate Forest in what is now Germany. Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to visit her at the enclosure. Hildegard also tells us that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was unlearned and therefore incapable of teaching Hildegard Biblical interpretation.

Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra," or leader, of her sister community by her fellow nuns. Abbot Kuno, the Abbot of Disibodenberg, also asked Hildegard to be Prioress. Hildegard, however, wanted more independence for herself and her nuns and asked Abbot Kuno to allow them to move to Rupertsberg. When the abbot declined Hildegard's proposition, Hildegard went over his head and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. Abbot Kuno did not relent, however, until Hildegard was stricken by an illness that kept her paralyzed and unable to move from her bed, an event that she attributed to God's unhappiness at her not following his orders to move her nuns to Rupertsberg. It was only when the Abbot himself could not move Hildegard that he decided to grant the nuns their own monastery.[4] Hildegard and about twenty nuns thus moved to the St. Rupertsberg monastery in 1150, where Volmar served as provost, as well as Hildegard's confessor and scribe. In 1165 Hildegard founded a second convent for her nuns at Eibingen.

Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who in turn told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary. Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to "write down that which you see and hear." Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. In her first theological text, Scivias, or "Know the Ways," Hildegard describes her struggle within:

But I, though I saw and heard those things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close - though just barely - in ten years. [...] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out therefore, and write thus!'

Hildegard's vivid description of the physical sensations which accompanied her visions have been diagnosed by neurologist (and popular author) Oliver Sacks as symptoms of migraine, in particular because of her description of light. Sacks, as well as other scholars, argue that the illuminations that appear in Hildegard's manuscripts confirm that Hildegard suffered from 'scintillating scotoma.'

Hildegard's vita was begun by Godfrey of Disibodenberg under Hildegard's supervision.

******

Hymn to the Holy Spirit

Praise to you
Spirit of fire!
to you who sound the timbrel
and the lyre.

Your music sets our minds
ablaze! The strength of our souls
awaits your coming
in the tent of meeting.

There the mounting will
gives the soul its savor
and desire is its lantern.

Insight invokes you in a cry
full of sweetness, while reason
builds you temples as she labors
at her golden crafts.

But sword
in hand you stand poised
to prune shoots of the poisoned
apple --
scions of the darkest
murder --

when mist overshadows the will.
Adrift in desires the soul is spinning
everywhere. But the mind
is a bond
to bind will and desire.

When the heart yearns to look
the Evil One in the eye,
to stare down the jaws of
iniquity, swiftly
you burn it in consuming
fire. Such is your wish.

And when reason doing ill
falls from her place, you
restrain and constrain her as you will
in the flow of experience until
she obeys you.

And when the Evil One brandishes
his sword against you,
you break it in his own
heart. For so you did
to the first lost angel,
tumbling the tower of his
arrogance to hell.

And there you built a second
tower -- traitors and sinners
its stones. In repentance
they confessed all their crafts.

So all beings that live by you
praise your outpouring
like a priceless salve upon festering
sores, upon fractured
limbs. You convert them
into priceless gems!

Now gather us all to yourself
and in your mercy guide us
into the paths of justice.

Themes
Fire
Heart
Honey
Sound
Water

Recommended Books
The Book of the Rewards of Life: Liber Vitae Meritorum, by Hildegard of Bingen / Translated by Bruce W. Hozeski
Creation and Christ: The Wisdom of Hildegard of Bingen, Translated by Columbar Hart / Translated by Jane Bishop
German Mystical Writings: Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme, and others, Edited by Karen J. Campbell
Hildegard of Bingen, by Regine Pernoud / Translated by Paul Duggan
Hildegard of Bingen, by Nancy Fierro

National Poetry Month, Day 7

2009-04-05T23:50:00.001-07:00

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in Missouri on September 26, 1888. He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees and having contributed several poems to the Harvard Advocate. After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd's Bank.

It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his contemporary Ezra Pound, who recognized his poetic genius at once, and assisted in the publication of his work in a number of magazines, most notably "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poetry in 1915. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde. With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot's reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world.

As a poet, he transmuted his affinity for the English metaphysical poets of the 17th century (most notably John Donne) and the 19th century French symbolist poets (including Baudelaire and Laforgue) into radical innovations in poetic technique and subject matter. His poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger post-World-War-I generation with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era. As a critic also, he had an enormous impact on contemporary literary taste, propounding views that, after his conversion to orthodox Christianity in the late thirties, were increasingly based in social and religious conservatism. His major later poems include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943); his books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, whose verse dramas include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.

He became a British citizen in 1927; long associated with the publishing house of Faber & Faber, he published many younger poets, and eventually became director of the firm. After a notoriously unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first wife in 1933, and was remarried, to Valerie Fletcher, in 1956. T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, and died in London in 1965.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by T. S. Eliot

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

National Poetry Month, Day 6

2009-04-05T09:52:00.001-07:00

I wrote this in the summer of 2008, on a fishing boat off the coast of Florida, in the middle of an amazing storm. We weren't under it yet, but we were watching it rain and thunder and lightning about three miles to the east of us, and still all the lines remained in the water and all the fishermen at the rail. The wind was audible, but it wasn't blowing towards us, and we could see the lightning cut the sky even though it was dark as night right above us....And so, this came....

Dark As Lightning

It shatters,

Enveloping the darkness

In momentary light.

The bolt brilliant,

Electric

Across the swathe of sky

Far darker than the land below

It stutters, hesitates,

Then rips a wall

Of electric astonishment

From horizon to horizon

Across the sea.

The camera lens,

Poor, paltry thing,

Too slow, too late,

Too feeble.

Nowhere near enough juice

To record the impetuous exclamation

Of the mother of all juice…

I find myself wondering

How often

Light, thrown in suddenness

Over the bleeding darkness

Of long-entrenched ideas

May serve only

To leave its dazzled spectators

More in the dark than before.

August 2008

National Poetry Month, Day 5

2009-04-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

Walt Whitman

Born on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman was the second son of Walter Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. The family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Brooklyn and Long Island in the 1820s and 1830s. At the age of twelve Whitman began to learn the printer's trade, and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that he experienced at first hand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets of that city.

On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, he founded a "free soil" newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, and continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his subsequent career, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of the book.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a "purged" and "cleansed" life. He wrote freelance journalism and visited the wounded at New York-area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. in December 1862 to care for his brother who had been wounded in the war. Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals. Whitman stayed in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet.

Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life. In Washington he lived on a clerk's salary and modest royalties, and spent any excess money, including gifts from friends, to buy supplies for the patients he nursed. He had also been sending money to his widowed mother and an invalid brother. From time to time writers both in the states and in England sent him "purses" of money so that he could get by.

In the early 1870s, Whitman settled in Camden, where he had come to visit his dying mother at his brother's house. However, after suffering a stroke, Whitman found it impossible to return to Washington. He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in Camden. In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to a new edition of the book and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy (1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.

A noiseless patient spider
by Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.