"Sparrow, What Did You Say?"

3 January 2020: I've been getting a fair amount accomplished these past few days, though there is still plenty of time for thinking Big Thoughts and all that. And some of that thinking (most of it?) is connected to thoughts about work, productivity, getting things done. I'm acutely aware that my life taking the shape it has has meant space for certain things that ordinarily might have been filled by other things. Anyway, this poem by Ada Limón, which I heard on the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast this morning, speaks to some of those ideas. I find it quite moving, particularly the way it pays attention to silence, freedom, and images, yet also remains a bit ambivalent about the larger questions at work.

“Sparrow, What Did You Say?”
Ada Limón

A whole day without speaking,
rain, then sun, then rain again,
a few plants in the ground, newbie
leaves tucked in black soil, and I think
I’m good at this, this being alone
in the world, the watching of things
growing, this older me, the she in
comfortable shoes and no time
for dishes, the she who spent
an hour trying to figure out a bird
with a three-note descending call
is just a sparrow. What would I even
do with a kid here? Teach her
to plant, watch her like I do
the lettuce leaves, tenderly, place
her palms in the earth, part her
dark hair like planting a seed? Or
would I selfishly demand this day
back, a full untethered day trying
to figure out what bird was calling
to me and why.

"Song"

14 October 2017:

"The world is full of loss; bring, wind, my love,
         my home is where we make our meeting-place,
         and love whatever I shall touch and read
         within that face.

Lift, wind, my exile from my eyes;
         peace to look, life to listen and confess,
         freedom to find to find to find
         that nakedness." --Muriel Rukeyser, "Song ('The World is Full of Loss')"

Heard this poem on my walk tonight and listened to a couple of times. Quite lovely.

"Sorrow is Not My Name"

21 September 2017:

"there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah." --Ross Gay, "Sorrow is Not My Name"

Came across this poem today on a fantastic episode of "Poetry Off the Shelf." It's been a tough week for the country and the world: the hurricane, the earthquake, the insidious reemergence of efforts to kill the ACA. This poem, which reminds us of sweetness and joy, gives us a bit of strength to keep going.

"Autism Screening Questionnaire — Speech and Language Delay"

17 August 2017: "Against the backdrop of the tree he looks so small." --Oliver De La Paz, "Autism Screening Questionnaire — Speech and Language Delay" (Audio here, too.)

Stumbled across this poem today--from a tweet of this other amazing line: "An insistence muscled and muscled again." It's beautiful and tender and heartbreaking. And it's a master class in what poetry can do.

"Rain on Tin"

6 August 2017:
"As I dream of the rain’s long body,
I will eliminate from mind all the qualities that rain deletes
and then I will be primed to study rain’s power,
the first drops lightly hallowing,
but now and again a great gallop of the horse of rain
or an explosion of orange-green light.
A simple radiance, it requires no discipline.
Before I knew women, I knew the lonely pleasures of rain.
The mist and then the clearing.
I will listen where the lightning thrills the rooster up a willow,
and my whole life flowing
until I have no choice, only the rain,
and I step into it." --from "Rain on Tin," by Rodney Jones (audio version here)

Just listened to this poem tonight, as a light rain falls, and as more rain is forecast for tomorrow. I love the descriptions here. Twice in the poem Jones compares his feelings for the rain for his feelings for women, which is interesting and a bit ridiculous--and I mean this in a good way. In fact, if you listen to the audio version where he reads it, he even calls the poem "idiotic," which made me laugh.

"Foul Shots: A Clinic"

27 July 2017:

"...and the lovingly unlaunched
foul shots we’re talking about now—
the clinic having served to bring us
together—circle eccentrically
in a sky of stolid orbits
as unlike as you and I are
from the arcs those foul shots
leave behind when they go in." --William Matthews, "Foul Shots: A Clinic"

Kind of a quiet day here, one spent doing a lot of thinking about writing and not as much actual writing as I would have liked. But yes, that thinking is a part of the process. I know this. And I do feel on the verge of getting done what I want to get done by the end of the month (my continued, slightly irrational pursuit of a typed to-do list I made for the month of July). Anyway, this poem, which is a process piece that anyone who has worked at a skill can relate to, spoke to me today, so here it is, today's "listening" post.

"Shattering The Blue Velvet Chair"

21 July 2017: “Well, who else is gonna do it?...When I think back to those days I think of this ferment, this activity, in people’s kitchens and living rooms…[They were women who said] ‘We’re not gonna wait. We are going to recognize ourselves and each other.’” –Joan Larkin, in the latest episode of the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast. I blogged about a previous episode here.

"when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story"

6 July 2017:

"—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday, 
And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday— 
When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed, 
Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon 
Looking off down the long street 
To nowhere, 
Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation 
And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why? 
And if-Monday-never-had-to-come— 
When you have forgotten that, I say, 
And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell, 
And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang; 
And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner, 
That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner 
To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles 
Or chicken and rice 
And salad and rye bread and tea 
And chocolate chip cookies— 
I say, when you have forgotten that, 
When you have forgotten my little presentiment 
That the war would be over before they got to you; 
And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed, 
And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end 
Bright bedclothes, 
Then gently folded into each other— 
When you have, I say, forgotten all that, 
Then you may tell, 
Then I may believe 
You have forgotten me well." --Gwendolyn Brooks, "when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story"

I heard this poem first thing this morning, listening to this audio version, and kind of took my breath away. You see the ending coming--the title gives it away--but it builds and builds through accretion of detail as this feeling of inevitable loss competes with a sense of hope. The speaker is holding onto the idea that her beloved will not forget these Sundays--she can't imagine that he would--but she's also imagining just that. And the fact that it's a war poem adds more layers of complexity. Stunning.

"What I Have"

26 June 2017:

"At lunchtime a woman famous for her ability
to praise the ineffable
                      says she can’t believe anyone returns
to where they came from.
            But of course they do. In fact
some do nothing else. & what is it they leave behind?
            Perhaps not the meaning of time,
but the time of meaning, & the fact that whatever
happens, tomorrow
                      will change it." --Seth Abramson, from "What I Have" (audio here)

"spring song"

22 May 2017:
"the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible" --Lucille Clifton, "Spring Song"

Love Lucille Clifton. This poem, though, was new to me until I heard it today on the Poem of the Day podcast. What a treat!

"Becoming Anne Bradstreet"

17 May 2017:

"We say home truths
Because her words can be at home anywhere—

At the source, at the end and whenever
The book lies open and I am again

An Irish poet watching an English woman
Become an American poet." --Eavan Boland, "Becoming Anne Bradstreet"

This poem, which I heard for the first time today on the Poem of the Day Podcast, does a fine job capturing what makes Bradstreet's poems so powerful. Four hundred years later, her poems speak across time.

"Man in Space"

11 April 2017:

"All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,

and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,

why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks." --Billy Collins, "Man in Space"

I hadn't heard this poem before, so I was delighted to hear it today while driving home from running errands. Well done, Billy Collins.

"Afternoon Happiness"

10 March 2017:

"Much as I want to gather a lifetime thrift
And craft, my cunning skills tied in a knot for you,
There is only this useless happiness as gift." --Carolyn Kizer, "Afternoon Happiness"

I heard this poem today as I caught up on the "Poetry Off the Shelf" podcast on my way home today. It's funny and sweet and just lovely. Read the whole thing here.

"Good Bones"

19 November 2016: Really feeling this poem today.

"Good Bones"
by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Three poems...

19 July 2016: Three back-to-back excellent poems on the "Poem of the Day" podcast. They delighted me on my walk today. Give them a listen.

"On Leaving the Bachelorette Brunch" by Rachel Wetzsteon

"Let Me Count the Waves" by Sandra Beasley

"The Dogs at Live Oak" by Alicia Ostriker

"Scary Movies"

6 May 2016: Today has been a good, if busy and slightly stressful day. I had my summer class in the morning and then the first A&R session all day and both went very well. Nevertheless, I found myself feeling more anxious than I thought I would, mostly likely because I had a lot to get done before tomorrow morning.

As I was taking a walk just a bit ago, I was listening to the Poem of the Day Podcast and thinking about what to blog about for today. Then this poem, Kim Addonizio's "Scary Movies," came on. I think I had heard it before (some of it was vaguely familiar), but I certainly hadn't connected to it so strongly before. If you follow the link above, you should listen to the audio version, which contains an extra stanza--actually the stanza that moved me most.

It's not that this is an uplifting or happy poem--it's not. It's about nagging (and sometimes crippling anxiety), the sort of movies of what could happen that play in your head and threaten to disrupt your life or at least your peace of mind. Again, not cheery stuff. Yet I found beauty and comfort in hearing this poem tonight because I am familiar with these kinds of moments from time to time. In fact, I was feeling them earlier in the evening.

In a lovely way, this recognition--this moment of "that sounds like me"--forms a kind of bookend to my day. In my class this morning, we were talking about what good literature can offer: sometimes tiny but powerful moments of recognition, seeing yourself, your emotions, your experiences in someone else. These are some of literature's most profound gifts to us.

"In the Thriving Season"

5 May 2014: Today I'm thankful for this moving poem by Lisel Mueller, which I hadn't heard before. I am especially appreciative of it on a lovely spring day, and on the day when a couple of old friends (poets themselves) shared the news of their baby's birth.

Coming around again...

6 March 2014: This poem came up again on the Poem of the Day podcast, just as I was pulling onto my street and then into my garage. It was instantly familiar to me and once again, felt like just what I needed to hear, just when I needed it. And sure enough, I had blogged about it before.

"The Quiet World"

2 February 2014: Today, I am thankful for this poem.

"The Quiet World"
Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look

into each other’s eyes more,

and also to appease the mutes,

the government has decided

to allot each person exactly one hundred   

and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear   

without saying hello. In the restaurant   

I point at chicken noodle soup.

I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,   

proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.   

I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,

I know she’s used up all her words,   

so I slowly whisper I love you

thirty-two and a third times.

After that, we just sit on the line   

and listen to each other breathe.

"Felix Crow"

I just heard this one again on the Poem of the Day podcast while out walking in my neighborhood, an activity that always involves some bird watching.

This is one clear case of needing to both hear and see a poem, though, as those terrific short lines don't come across as clearly in the audio version. It's a fun poem ("quid pro crow") with fun rhymes ("rudiments"/"students"). I also love the double "g"s in lines 14-16. And the (sort of) unexpected turn in the last lines. I've written before about (just a bit) about how Ryan can remind one of Dickinson, and I can't help but be reminded of Dickinson's bird, who is ultimately a bit less approachable.

"Felix Crow" 
Kay Ryan

Crow school

is basic and

short as a rule—

just the rudiments

of quid pro crow

for most students.

Then each lives out

his unenlightened

span, adding his

bit of blight

to the collected

history of pushing out

the sweeter species;

briefly swaggering the

swagger of his

aggravating ancestors

down my street.

And every time

I like him

when we meet.