"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
A quick post to share the great news with everyone.
The Writer’s Almanac archive is now back on-line!
Please share the word.
Happy Poetry Month, indeed. Thank you, Minnesota Public Radio and Mr. Keillor.
(Edited to add website link: https://www.writersalmanac.org )
It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.
Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.
Linda Pastan, “The Obligation to be Happy” from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998, published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1998 by Linda Pastan.
I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you,
that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen
the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.
Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen– it was just a matter of time
before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.
Plus, nothing happened that morning–
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside–
and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.
I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another
like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time–
me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.
“You, Reader,” by Billy Collins from The Trouble with Poetry (Random House)
Look at someone you love today,
for one minute,
as if you saw them for
the first time.
As if they were the first ray
of sunlight, caught by
the tender passion of your eye,
lighting up your whole world.
– Ron Starbuck, “Death“
You’ve lost something, your car keys, or your watch
and you have searched for what seems like hours. But
then suddenly it appears, right there on the table, not
two feet away. “If it was a snake it would have bit you,”
Mother said. That’s what you remember, a phrase,
an old saying. My sister said, “Grandma told me,
‘Never wear horizontal stripes, they make you look
fat.’ That’s one of the few things I remember about
Grandma.” Or the words disappear and an image
remains. I was getting a lecture from my parents
about riding my tricycle all the way downtown. I don’t
remember anything they said. I remember looking
out the window, it was just dark, and a block away
a man wearing a white shirt and a tie passed under
the streetlight and vanished into the night. That’s all.
Out of a lifetime, a few words, a few pictures, and
everything you have lost is lurking there in the dark,
poised to strike.
“If It Was a Snake” by Louis Jenkins from Tin Flag. © Will o’ the Wisp Books, 2013.
Words ... for the Time Being 