Monday, November 29, 2010

Waiting For My Life by Linda Pastan

Of all my new poetry finds, this is a favorite.  Every poem is awesome.  Buy poetry and support poets!!!



Waiting For My Life
By Linda Pastan

I waited for my life to start
for years, standing at bus stops
looking into the curved distance
thinking each bus was the wrong bus;
or lost in books where I would travel
without luggage from one page
to another; where the only breeze
was the rustle of pages turning,
and lives rose and set
in the violent colors of suns.

Sometimes my life coughed and coughed:
a stalled car about to catch,
and I would hold someone in my arms,
though it was always someone else I wanted.
Or I would board any bus, jostled
by thighs and elbows that knew
where they were going; collecting scraps
of talk, setting them down like bird song
in my notebook, where someday I would go
prospecting for my life.

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"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." ~Emily Dickinson

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There Are Poems
By Linda Pastan

There are poems
that are never written,
that simply move across
the mind
like skywriting
on a still day:
slowly the first word
drifts west,
the last letters dissolve
on the tongue,
and what is left
is the pure blue
of insight, without cloud
or comfort.

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"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance." ~Carl Sandburg


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What We Want
By Linda Pastan

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names---
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

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In a dream you are never eighty. ~Anne Sexton

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The lovely, shy, unique, blushing flowers of my Angel Wing Begonia plant.  I first heard about this plant in a fabulous book that I re-read every year, "The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue" by Barbara Samuel.  The main character had a greenhouse attached to her kitchen (swoon) and had a huge Angel Wing Begonia plant.  I immediately began searching for one and found a tiny, ratty one at a Wal-Mart garden center.  I brought it home and nursed it to health and I now have 5 plants which I propagated from this one.  They're easy to grow and so beautiful. 

Here's a shot of the 'wings' of my plant.  I mean leaves, of course.  It's about 3 feet tall and sits in a tomato cage to hold the heavy limbs up.  She blooms every Fall but I have to look for the flowers as they hide under the leaves.  There's also a varitey with bright green leaves, but I haven't been able to find one of those yet.  It's warm and humid here today, typical Louisiana weather. 

My potted tomato plant is still thriving with 17 tomatoes on it.  I cover it with a sheet on cold nights.  This is the longest I've ever kept a tomato plant alive.  Hell, I might be picking 'maters at Christmas! 

I hope you all have a wonderful week, full of love, family and friends.

Love & Blessings,

Marion

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I've read all of Ms. Samuel's books and, although this is my favorite, they're all fabulous reads.

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"For friends... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble." ~Francis Bacon

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"The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters. ~Ross MacDonald

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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

A Poem & Mama's Sweet Potato Soufflé Recipe



House, Garden, Madness
By Cate Marvin

Meeting his mouth made it so I had house again.
I called him garden and drew him so, grew
his long lashes like grasses so I could comb
them with my stare. Some evenings a low cloud
would arrive, hang its anxiety over the yard.

Having his mouth at mine again gave me back
home. The walls painted themselves blue
flowers grew larger than my head, stared
at me with wide eyes through the windows.
I was surrounded. A cloud stretched gray arms.

His mouth and mine again built something back
up with heat. The house was home again, wherever
I lived. The flowers grew fat, fed on weeds
around them. Ladybugs tucked their red luck
beneath petals' chins. The cloud came home again.

His eyes were closed but mine kept swinging open.
I saw him in the garden, surrounded by its light.
The flowers cut their own stalks, handed themselves
over to him in bunches. He kissed their bouquets,
and petals raptured. A cloud lowered, dark with fury.

I pressed my mouth to palm, closed my eyes
to find the garden, then saw: window shut in fright,
roots drowned, flower stalks broken, their heads dead
in puddles. Startled, I looked around. The cloud
descended, prepared to hemorrhage in my arms.

From: "Poetry Daily", page 173
first published in The Paris Review, no. 158, Spring, Summer 2001
also from "World's Tallest Disaster" by Cate Marvin

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Madness is highly underrated.

I'd like to share my favorite Thanksgiving recipe passed down to me by my Mama which she got from her Mama.  As most Southern cooks do, I add or subtract spices to suit my taste.  (We're the best cooks in the world down here in God's Country.) It tastes like a dessert, but it's a yummy side dish, best served with deep fried turkey, cornbread dressing, giblet gravy, homemade rolls and green bean casserole.  Oh, and don't forget the cranberry sauce.  It's the only thing I get to cook ever since my daughters took over cooking dinner.  They "let" me make this every year. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with love, family and friends.

Love & Blessings to you all, 

~Marion

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Mama's Sweet Potato Soufflé

3 cups mashed sweet potatoes (I used canned yams, but you can use fresh)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon of cinnamon  (you can also add nutmeg if you like)
1/2 teaspoon cardamom (my secret ingredient)
½ cup butter or margerine, melted

Mix the above ingredients well using hand mixer and pour into oven-safe casserole dish.

TOPPING:  (mix in separate bowl)

1 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 cup finely chopped pecans (or walnuts)
1/3 cup butter or margerine

Melt butter in mircrowave.  Mix all topping ingredients together with a fork. It will be crumbly. Sprinkle mixture evenly over top of casserole mixture. Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees or until golden brown on top.  Enjoy!!!
 
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"The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving." ~H.U. Westermayer
 
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For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence." ~Erma Bombeck

*****

"O Lord that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness."  ~William Shakespeare

*****

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

God's Justice by Anne Carson

November, 2009 Dragonfly by Marion


God’s Justice
By Anne Carson

In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks.
On the day He was to create justice
God got involved in making a dragonfly

and lost track of time.
It was about two inches long
with turquoise dots all down its back like Lauren Bacall.

God watched it bend its tiny wire elbows
as it set about cleaning the transparent case of its head.
The eye globes mounted on the case

rotated this way and that
as it polished every angle.
Inside the case

which was glassy black like the windows of a downtown bank
God could see the machinery humming
and He watched the hum

travel all the way down turquoise dots to the end of the tail
and breathe off as light.
Its black wings vibrated in and out.

From: “Glass, Irony and God” page 49

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This entire book is purely amazing.  I wish I could buy a copy for everyone I know.  I got it today and read it straight through.  If you love poetry, you must own this book.  (I discovered Ms. Carson through Dorianne Laux's poem, "Mugged By Poetry".)  Reading poetry leads to buying more poetry.  :-)

~Marion

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Sunday, November 7, 2010

Two Poems I Discovered Last Week

My doodled dragonfly tree


ENOUGH
by Jeffrey Harrison

It's a gift, this cloudless November morning
warm enough for you to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing
of your feet through fallen leaves should be
enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you
when you catch yourself telling off your boss
for a decade of accumulated injustices,
all the things you've never said circling inside you.

It's the rising wind that pulls you out of it,
and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day
were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
for this moment at least, let it all go.

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Witch-Wife

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

She is neither pink nor pale,
and she never will be all mine;
she learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
and her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
in the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
and her ways to my ways resign;
but she was not made for any man,
and she never will be all mine.

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