Category: Poetry

“A Partial History of My Stupidity” by Edward Hirsch

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

Traffic was heavy coming off the bridge
and I took the road to the right, the wrong one,
and got stuck in the car for hours.

Most nights I rushed out into the evening
without paying attention to the trees,
whose names I didn’t know,
or the birds, which flew heedlessly on.

I couldn’t relinquish my desires
or accept them, and so I strolled along
like a tiger that wanted to spring
but was still afraid of the wildness within.

The iron bars seemed invisible to others,
but I carried a cage around inside me.

I cared too much what other people thought
and made remarks I shouldn’t have made.
I was silent when I should have spoken.

Forgive me philosophers,
I read the Stoics but never understood them.

I felt that I was living the wrong life,
spiritually speaking,
while halfway around the world
thousands of people were being slaughtered,
some of them by my countrymen.

So I walked on–distracted, lost in thought–
and forgot to attend to those who suffered
far away, nearby.

Forgive me, faith, for never having any.

I did not believe in God,
who eluded me.

“A Partial History of My Stupidity” by Edward Hirsch from Special Orders, Knopf.

Read a 2008 transcript of Hirsch discussing his book with Andrea Seabrook of NPR.

 

“Cutting Loose” by William Stafford

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry7 Comments

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path – but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.

“Cutting Loose” by William Stafford. Originally published as a broadside by Palaemon, 1983. Presented here as published in Dancing with Joy: 99 Poems, edited by Roger Housden. © Random House, 2009.

Credit Source: With thanks to A Year of Being Here and to Parker J. Palmer via OnBeing.

“As Befits a Man” by Langston Hughes with music by Ellis Marsalis Jr.

On By Christina's WordsIn Music, Poetry6 Comments

I don’t mind dying —
But I’d hate to die all alone!
I want a dozen pretty women
To holler, cry, and moan.

I don’t mind dying
But I want my funeral to be fine:
A row of long tall mamas
Fainting, Fanning, and crying.

I want a fish-tail hearse
And sixteen fish-tail cars,
A big brass band
And a whole truck load of flowers.

When they let me down,
Down into the clay,
I want the women to holler:
Please don’t take him away!
Ow-ooo-oo-o!
Don’t take daddy away!

“As Befits a Man,” by Langston Hughes, from Selected Poems (Vintage Books, 1974).

“He had a world view, he was always embracing the larger humanity. … not just in words, that’s who he was.” -Wynton Marsalis on his father, Ellis Marsalis Jr.

***

***

Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. (November 14, 1934 – April 1, 2020)

“Gift” by Czesław Miłosz

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

– Czeslaw Milosz as printed in Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation (Harmony Press), edited by Roger Housden.

“Calling Him Back from Layoff” by Bob Hicok

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Reader Recommended2 Comments

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been

confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was

and it turns out I’m OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars

painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that’s a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle

for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said

he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean

and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through

with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions

as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried

with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward

than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other

and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other

forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones

hear?

“Calling him back from layoff,” by Bob Hicok, from Insomnia Diary. © University of Pittsburgh Press.

***

* A big thank-you to reader Clint B. for recommending this gut-wrenching poem to us. I found a video of Hicok reading his poem; it’s personal and stark and emotional and it lingers, in other words, it’s perfect. Thank you again Clint.