"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
“I don’t think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.”
– Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
“At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.”
― Vincent van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890)
Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.
“Vincent” by Don McLean; see more at vanGoghgallery.com
The poet Donald Hall, once
a teacher of mine, has said
the best way to write a poem is
to go to sleep. But when I try
it, I find it’s difficult to concentrate,
or even hold a pen, and I remember
very little when I’m finished.
Sleep is a good companion but
if all great art is collaboration
sleep is not to be trusted not to
keep all the good stuff for itself
and, just when things look up,
send you packing alone into
the prosaic light of day.
It’s dangerous to lie down
mid-day, late March and dark,
a heavy, wet snow falling from the sky
or rising from the ground, it’s hard
to say, the day a blur
as you drift off toward sleep
rather than keeping your eye on
the great world around you
where it should be if you are
to earn the right to be
called a poet, attentive to
the details of everyday life—
the quality of light, the specific
gravity of the snow, the exact
weight of birdsong and wing.
On a day like today I should sing!
Ah, but poetry’s hard, and sleep
comes so easy, and what does the day
care if I just ignore it, and go
my easy way to oblivion, which is,
now that I think on it, such a
beautiful word.
Wild Geese
after Mary Oliver
by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
You don’t have to be crushed
under the spokes of your own desire
to be proven worthy enough.
The trophies of your hard work don’t
have to appear so freshly on your body.
Your clothes need not be torn.
Every night, you worry a new bird’s nest
from your hair. Every night, your dreams
grind you under her boot heel.
Your pendulum heart doesn’t need
to swing so hard in either direction.
Nails don’t have to be bitten to the nub.
You have to believe that the ground will
materialize under your feet the moment
you step forward. No one can tell you
if it will be rock gravel, or slick with pain.
No one can travel this road before you do.
It is yours, and it is beautiful because of it.
“Wild Geese: after Mary Oliver” by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, via The Bakery.
When I think of my youth I feel sorry not for myself
but for my body. It was so direct
and simple, so rational in its desires,
wanting to be touched the way an otter
loves water, the way a giraffe
wants to amble the edge of the forest, nuzzling
the tender leaves at the tops of the trees. It seems
unfair, somehow, that my body had to suffer
because I, by which I mean my mind, was saddled
with certain unfortunate high-minded romantic notions
that made me tyrannize and patronize it
like a cruel medieval baron, or an ambitious
English-professor husband ashamed of his wife—
Her love of sad movies, her budget casseroles
and regional vowels. Perhaps
my body would have liked to make some of our dates,
to come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl
with “None of your business!” Perhaps
it would have liked more presents: silks, mascaras.
If we had had a more democratic arrangement
we might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,
to a grudging respect for each other, like Tony Curtis
and Sidney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,
instead of the current curious shift of power
in which I find I am being reluctantly
dragged along by my body as though by some
swift and powerful dog. How eagerly
it plunges ahead, not stopping for anything,
as though it knows exactly where we are going.
“Mind-Body Problem” by Katha Pollitt from The Mind-Body Problem. © Random House, 2009.
Words ... for the Time Being 