Some poems and some poems
Jul. 2nd, 2022 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureI want to make a longer post about my wanderings and adventures today, but I also want to give you these poetry links before the end of the world. Poetry wins, so here, with a few lines here and there to captivate you, are some of the poems I listened to on my accidental 10K hike around a big lake today.
I love the way Pádraig Ó Tuama can unfold a whole landscape inside his speaking of a tiny poem, so that you're sure it must have been ten times longer. Case in point:
Margaret Noodin -- "Gimaazinibii’amoon / A Message to You" (Anishinaabemowin and English versions)
I know there are different worlds
because our ancestors sent them messages
because lost lovers now live in them
because you just said that right now.
Are you the carved shoreline
and I the sweet water sea
or am I the shifting wind
you cannot perceive?
Definitely listen to the bonus episode that follows this poem, where Noodin unpacks what she was doing and she and Pádraig have a really lovely conversation about Irish and Anishinaabemowin.
Martin Espada -- "After the Goose that Rose Like the God of Geese"
I'll give you the whole of this one, too, but cut-tagged for grief and mention of morgue activities:
After the phone call about my father far away,
after the next-day flight canceled by the blizzard,
after the last words left unsaid between us,
after the harvest of the organs at the morgue,
after the mortuary and cremation of the body,
after the box of ashes shipped to my door by mail,
after the memorial service for him in Brooklyn,
I said: I want to feed the birds, I want to feed bread to the birds. I want to feed bread to the birds at the park.
After the walk around the pond and the war memorial,
after the signs at every step that read: Do Not Feed The Geese,
after the goose that rose from the water like the god of geese,
after the goose that shrieked like a demon from the hell of geese,
after the goose that scattered the creatures smaller than geese,
after the hard beak, the wild mouth taking bread from my hand,
there was quiet in my head, no cacophony of the dead
lost in the catacombs, no mosquito hum of condolences,
only the next offering of bread raised up in my open hand,
the bread warm on the table of my truce with the world.
Esteban Rodriguez -- "22 La Bota"
A beautiful poem about a father's strength and vulnerability:
And there were nights when he would sleepwalk,
and out in the yard with nothing but underwear
on, he’d smack together the bottoms of his boots,
as if there were spirits he had to ward off,
as if his past had taken on some once human form,
and to remind him that no one is ever free
of sin, made it its duty to stalk him at home.
Full text here.
Reginald Dwayne Betts --"Essay on Re-Entry"
The first sentence here stopped me in my tracks with wonder:
At two a.m., without enough spirits
spilling into my liver to know
to keep my mouth shut, my youngest
learned of years I spent inside a box: a spell,
a kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,
but History: I robbed a man.
Full text here.
Li-Young Lee -- "From Blossoms"
I love the way Pádraig Ó Tuama can unfold a whole landscape inside his speaking of a tiny poem, so that you're sure it must have been ten times longer. Case in point:
Margaret Noodin -- "Gimaazinibii’amoon / A Message to You" (Anishinaabemowin and English versions)
I know there are different worlds
because our ancestors sent them messages
because lost lovers now live in them
because you just said that right now.
Are you the carved shoreline
and I the sweet water sea
or am I the shifting wind
you cannot perceive?
Definitely listen to the bonus episode that follows this poem, where Noodin unpacks what she was doing and she and Pádraig have a really lovely conversation about Irish and Anishinaabemowin.
Martin Espada -- "After the Goose that Rose Like the God of Geese"
I'll give you the whole of this one, too, but cut-tagged for grief and mention of morgue activities:
After the phone call about my father far away,
after the next-day flight canceled by the blizzard,
after the last words left unsaid between us,
after the harvest of the organs at the morgue,
after the mortuary and cremation of the body,
after the box of ashes shipped to my door by mail,
after the memorial service for him in Brooklyn,
I said: I want to feed the birds, I want to feed bread to the birds. I want to feed bread to the birds at the park.
After the walk around the pond and the war memorial,
after the signs at every step that read: Do Not Feed The Geese,
after the goose that rose from the water like the god of geese,
after the goose that shrieked like a demon from the hell of geese,
after the goose that scattered the creatures smaller than geese,
after the hard beak, the wild mouth taking bread from my hand,
there was quiet in my head, no cacophony of the dead
lost in the catacombs, no mosquito hum of condolences,
only the next offering of bread raised up in my open hand,
the bread warm on the table of my truce with the world.
Esteban Rodriguez -- "22 La Bota"
A beautiful poem about a father's strength and vulnerability:
And there were nights when he would sleepwalk,
and out in the yard with nothing but underwear
on, he’d smack together the bottoms of his boots,
as if there were spirits he had to ward off,
as if his past had taken on some once human form,
and to remind him that no one is ever free
of sin, made it its duty to stalk him at home.
Full text here.
Reginald Dwayne Betts --"Essay on Re-Entry"
The first sentence here stopped me in my tracks with wonder:
At two a.m., without enough spirits
spilling into my liver to know
to keep my mouth shut, my youngest
learned of years I spent inside a box: a spell,
a kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,
but History: I robbed a man.
Full text here.
Li-Young Lee -- "From Blossoms"
From blossoms comes
(Read it out loud and listen to all those turns in the line. Full text here.)
And the one I began the walk with,
Eavan Boland -- "Eviction"
A woman leaves a courtroom in tears.
A nation is rising to the light.
History notes the second, not the first.
Full text and author reading in the New Yorker here.
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.(Read it out loud and listen to all those turns in the line. Full text here.)
And the one I began the walk with,
Eavan Boland -- "Eviction"
A woman leaves a courtroom in tears.
A nation is rising to the light.
History notes the second, not the first.
Full text and author reading in the New Yorker here.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 09:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-05 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-05 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 06:25 pm (UTC)other cultures ... are struggling to survive; some languages ... are asserting themselves in a dominant way, and languages ... are seeking to live into their own vivacity and to find a way to live well again and to be spoken regularly and widely again.
I love live into their own vivacity"--what a beautiful way of saying it.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-05 03:47 am (UTC)Not one word wasted by either of those two. I will listen to that one again.
I love discussions of Anishinaabemowin -- it's such a beautifully put together language. /Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country/ by Louise Erdrich has some wonderful talk about the language, if you don't already know the book.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-05 05:31 pm (UTC)