short poems and stafford {poetry thursday}

Another Thursday filled with poetry!

We are having a snow day here out in the Tacoma area. Those of you in snowier parts of the world might think that means we have a foot or more of snow. Nope. Not here. It just takes a few inches to close down schools. It is nice having my husband home though as I work.

Speaking of work, I am finding clichés everywhere as I edit this week! My cliché radar is in full force after this week’s (completely and totally optional) idea. It looks like people have had fun with this odd prompt. I can’t wait to spend some time clicking around to Poetry Thursday participants’ sites later today.

I have been working on several poems lately, but I find myself getting stuck. I was on the phone with Dana last evening and was telling her how I think I need to write short poems for a while. I explained how I keep getting stuck in the wordiness and my own amateurishness (which, I guess, is a word).

I thought about this conversation today and decided to just write a few short poems. Here is one of them:

Where you live

Though you sit on a mantle
in the house you lived in
for almost 40 years,
all that you were is folded
into this windbreaker
resting upon my lap.

This is where you live.

This feels like the beginning of a poem, but maybe it is just a thought I have been having wrapped up in the form of a poem.

I have started reading The Answers are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life by William Stafford (edited by Paul Merchant and Vincent Wixon). It is a collection of his essays, interviews, writings, and so on. As I struggle with my writing, he finds a way, as he always does, to remind me to keep going. In an interview, when asked if he has an audience in mind when he writes, he said:

No, it’s just for myself. I’m very indulgent at the time of writing. I’ll accept anything, any old trash; it can never be low enough to keep me from writing it. You know, the process of writing is kind of a trusting to the nowness, to the immediacy of the experience. And if you enter into the artistic endeavor with standards, already arrived-at ideas of what you want to do, you’re not entering creatively into the immediacy of encountering the materials.

It’s almost as if an artist who enters into the process with this determination to meet standards, achieve quality, is not trusting the self that’s doing the writing. That’s what led me to say once, writers ought to let themselves write bad poems. Not bad from their point of view, but unacceptable from another’s.

I read Stafford’s words.
I read my own.

I keep writing.
I keep writing.
I keep writing.

poetry found on a walk with a friend {poetry thursday}

poetry found on a walk with my friend heather along the venice canals

lighting a candle and deciding to really spend thursday with poetry

I light a candle

for healing
for hope
for peace
for light
for space to know
for support
for love
for spirit
for understanding

on tuesday, as the news came about darlene’s son’s accident and my uncle’s diagnosis of cancer, i lit a candle with these intentions. this candle burned throughout the day yesterday.

i light it again this morning.

i turn to my wise friend hafiz who speaks to me through the words of Daniel Ladinsky. I look through a few pages until I find the words that cause me to exclaim aloud, “this is fantastic.”

I Am Really Just a Tambourine

Good

Poetry

Makes the universe admit a

Secret

“I am

Really just a tambourine,

Grab hold

Play me

Against your warm

Thigh.”

********

shortly after i wrote tuesday’s post about choosing happiness, i had the opportunity to choose the opposite emotion and the universe continues to provide that opportunity over and over again.

the news of mark’s accident
the news of my uncle’s cancer

and then the following not-on-the-same-level-but-crap-doesn’t-the-universe-understand-that-it-is-the-holidays-at-all? stuff:

my computer, which seems at times to be my best friend as I use it for my job, my hobby, my connection to friends and this community, started to do some odd things (going in to standby mode while I was working for no reason at all). thinking I had backed everything up, my husband and the tech he was on the phone with reimaged my computer. which. means. I. lost. everything. that. wasn’t. backed. up. luckily, this did not include photographs or my writing. but it did include a lot of other stuff. it felt like my husband had picked up my computer and thrown it against the wall. to say I tapped into a feeling the opposite of happiness is an understatement (and the kicker – it didn’t even fix the problem).

yesterday morning, we were supposed to leave for colorado to spend christmas with jon’s parents and grandmother. that’s right, I said colorado. that place where they are having the blizzard. we tried to check-in and the delta kiosk computer said, “see an agent.” we had checked everything the night before but because we had to be there so early, we didn’t check it yesterday morning. we are still at home. bah humbug. our suitcases are still packed (one filled with gifts for them) and millie is still at the kennel in case we do get on a flight today/tomorrow (and i miss her). we expect though to stay here and spend another holiday unexpectedly without family. (did you read Monday’s post where I said I hadn’t decorated at all?) bah humbug. we do love spending the holidays just the two (three with millie of course) of us, but this was the year we were going to see family. with my illness last month and biopsy procedure that happened thanksgiving week, we had to cancel the plans to see my family. and now we may not see jon’s parents.

jon spent time on the phone again yesterday to try to fix the computer. yeah. still going in to standby mode while I am using it (no rhyme or reason to it).

this morning, jon went to drive my vw bug to go to the store to get milk (we had to throw it out when the power went out and I am a milk drinker but we didn’t get any knowing we would be leaving but heck, I want some today), my car would not start. nothing.

and I want to write about how there are so many things I am grateful for. because really, I know, I am so blessed. but right now, all I can muster is to light a candle and get ready to eat a doughnut and drink some milk after jonny gets back from the store. and then i will heed hafiz’s words and spend some time with some poetry…because i need to spend some time outside of myself. outside all the stuff inside my head.

(hafiz poem from the collection in the gift. shared here with permission. visit poetry thursday today to read more poetry and spend time outside yourself.)

my senses can assault {poetry thursday}

my senses can assault.

sometimes I am prepared.

smell
lily of the valley blooms in May
(and in perfume, soap, lotion)
a freshly opened tub of ponds cold cream
yes, this will be you.

hear
a line in a song by Kenny Rogers
(“if I close my eyes, it doesn’t hurt quite so bad”)
your voice as I make applesauce
it has already happened, so I am ready.

touch
two pairs of soft fluffy indigo socks
(one mine, one yours)
a long flannel nightgown
memories of past Christmas mornings.

see
the picture in my studio
(we walk on the beach holding hands)
the turquoise on my right ring finger
I know you will be here.

but taste.

even my tongue can interrupt
the simple cadence of my day.

the cold, tart cranberry juice
hits my taste buds,
a usual event.

but today
it is this flowered glass,
similar in weight, texture, color
to the small faceted juice glasses
you would fill with this sharp red liquid
and put before me at the kitchen table,
mixed with the taste of peanut butter still on my lips
and the aroma of this tangy fruit juice.

the unlikely combination that leads me back
to you.

grief has no manners
no understanding of time and place
no tact
no empathy.
they say it comes in waves,
but I think it sucker punches you
whenever the hell it feels like it.

********

I started this poem a few months ago when I was eating peanut butter on toast and drinking cranberry juice out of a new glass used for the first time. Poetry continues to be a way to push through the grief. I stopped everything and just started putting the experience and emotions down into a poem.

Revisiting a poem and stepping back from it and finding a new phrase or stripping down an idea to the image you want to convey, I am enjoying this more than I ever imagined. I love poetry.

Read more poetry on this Thursday by visiting Poetry Thursday.

a meme {poetry thursday}

I was surprised by the places this meme took me and am so glad that it was this week’s (completely and totally optional) idea at Poetry Thursday. Because of this meme I realized that I have loved poetry for much longer than I realized...

The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was "Fog" by Carl Sandburg. In fourth grade, my grandparents took me to Sandburg’s home and bought me a copy of this poem. I read it over and over again in grade school. I love the image of fog coming in as cat’s feet. Such a simple yet incredible gorgeous image. He is still one of my favorite poets.

I was forced to memorize "Theme in English B" by Langston Hughes in school and was so nervous reciting it in front of my sophomore English class that my knees were shaking (and I was sitting). I actually wasn’t forced to memorize it, I chose to. We had to memorize one poem from our literature textbook…any poem…I chose my favorite even though it was the longest. I hadn’t thought about this poem in a long, long time and reading it today, I could hear the cadence of my own voice in my head. I adore this poem and I am so moved to have found it again today.

I read poetry because it reminds me that I am not alone.

A poem I’m likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is "House of Belonging" by David Whyte and "Love After Love" by Derek Walcott and "You Reading This, Be Ready" by William Stafford.

I write poetry because I am in love with taking an image or experience or feeling and peeling back the layers until the core of it remains.

My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature in that what takes me an entire book to discover/learn/see I can find in a just a few lines in a poem.

I find poetry revealing, gorgeous, wide, full of truth, hushed, daunting, candid, laugh-out-loud funny, noisy, tear-inviting, breath-catching, blissful…I find poetry is life.

The last time I heard poetry was when I read Langston Hughes aloud today. The last time I heard someone else read poetry was last Friday evening when I heard David Whyte read poems from his new book. I will forever hear his voice when I turn to those poems. He had this incredible way of repeating certain phrases so that you could synthesize the poem as he read it. He would then read the entire poem again. I found myself nodding throughout the reading and began to notice others doing the same. The way he read, this repetition of phrases, and the rhythm of his voice made it clear that he wanted to inject all the meaning possible into us.

I think poetry is like a gift to the human experience.

(To read "Theme in English B," click here. I hope you do…it is a poem you should know.)

***

Poetry Thursday was a weekly poetry project that I created and then co-ran with another blogger back in 2006-2007. The site is no longer online.