Dragonfly: Any of various large insects of the order Odonata or suborder Anisoptera, having a long slender body and two pairs of narrow, net-veined wings that are usually held outstretched while the insect is at rest. Also called regionally darner, darning needle, mosquito fly, mosquito hawk, needle, skeeter hawk.
Poetry: The art or work of a poet.
Prolixity: Excessive wordiness in speech or writing; longwindedness
My newest poet-crush is Mary Biddinger. I say this often, but it's always a great day when you discover an amazing new poet. Support poets! Buy Poetry!
This is one of my favorite poems from this book. I had a really hard time choosing just one poem to post because they're all superb. This is my favorite because I love the imagery:
Girl In Chair
By Mary
Biddinger
The
streets sew themselves
a
beaded mat you can buy
every
night.Catfish in bed
with
the rushes.Everything
sleeping
deep together.
Needlepoint
is half blood
most of
the time.You miss
once,
twice, by the window.
How
else to stitch flowers,
or the
red mailbox waiting
for a
postman’s blue vest.
All a
game of in and out.
Blood
waiting to dump
its
oxygen, the mosquito
and
waxwing, storm fronts
quaking
above as moths.
A
seam-ripper hacks
the
work in seconds, string
cut to
a quarter.Your love
is the
one sunk, midnight
in the
Monongahela.How
did you
not wake when
the
river broke like a pane?
A page
slits your fingertip
but you
keep turning.Now
the
cicadas start their fall
from
tree to lawn.Cherry
blossoms
ride the gutters.
Lightning
on the air, men
chasing
their hats home.
From:“Prairie Fever” by Mary Biddinger, pages 53,
54
(The Monongahela is a river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-central West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania.)
+ + + + + + + + + +
"Saint Monica" by Mary Biddinger
+ + + + + + + + + +
and her newest book, coming soon: "O, Holy Insurgency"
+ + + + + + + + + +
"Poetry is life distilled." ~Gwendolyn Brooks
+ + + + + + + + + +
Happy Thanksgiving!
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
I potted this tiny plant in March. I watered it and cared for it all summer. I was patient. Yesterday, November 16, 2012, it produced one perfect white flower. I went outside this morning and it was pink. I swear to you, my heart lifted. I live for surprises like this.
xo,
~Marion
* * * * *
"I slept the afternoon, but you know what Breton says: I was not in the mood for visitors. Picture yourself inside that word. And yes, my house is a word, but my words, aren’t they words also? Today, the sky just wouldn’t happen. Today, I was blind-sided. Neither pain, nor its powdered absence. Like most days, I became the kitchen sill. I’m simply saying what I always say: what is lace-winged cannot be strong."
Olena Kalytiak Davis, from: "And Her Soul Out Of Nothing", page 3
* * * * *
"I'm feeling terrifically heavy.
I'm feeling as well-grounded as the dead." ~Olena Kalytiak Davis, page 19
* * * * *
"Oh, my cloud covered heart." ~Olena Kalytiak Davis, page 3
I love Ms. Verlee's book, "Racing Hummingbirds" from which this poem, "40 Love Letters" comes. I'm on my second copy because I tore out several poems and sent to friends. :-)
Enjoy! Support Poets. BUY POETRY!!!
~Marion
40 Love Letters
By Jeanann Verlee
Dear Dennis, I still think of you.
Dear Andre,
I saw you kiss her.
I haven’t looked back.
Dear Patrick,
You’re just too young.
Dear Eric,
I said horrible things about
you.
Your teeth are fine,
it’s the rest of you I don’t
like.
Dear Greg,
Thank you for the poem, for
every single scar.
Dear William,
I love you, simple.
I like that we will never be we.
Dear Jay,
The bruises fell off
eventually.
Dear Michael,
I’ll never be enough to fill
the shoes
that will one day stand at
your side.
Dear Ben,
I did read your letters.
All of them.
Dear Freeman,
I’ll never stop looking over
my shoulder,
boots laced, ready to run.
Dear Jon,
I’ll always love you.
You are all there ever was.
Dear Derek,
There was no one thing,
your everything is
impossible.
Dear Eddie,
We are refracting magnets.
We will battle this to the
end.
Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.
Dear Ryan,
I love you, simple.
Sex under the streetlight was
a delicious accident.
Dear Kevin,
Your kiss came too late.
My lips were already dancing
in the other room with Jon.
Dear Ethan,
No.
Dear Joseph,
I said you were too pretty.
They said to try it anyway.
They are fools.
Dear Avery,
You are the definition of unrequited.
Dear Skippy,
I’m sorry about the whiskey
and the tampon.
I’m sorry I never called you.
Dear Nate,
Until you mocked my smile, I
was yours.
Dear Marc,
I like your wife too much.
Is your brother still single?
Dear Mitch,
You were my biggest mistake.
I’m sure that only makes your
smile more sinister.
Dear Allen,
While you poured Guinness for
Patrick,
I pictured you bending me
over the bar.
Dear Graham,
I’d have swallowed that
bullet.
Dear Miguel,
You said a man never forgets
his first redhead.
What color are my eyes?
Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.
Dear Francis,
I’d have broken you in half.
Dear Chris,
I’m sorry I stalked you.
I’d try to forget me, too.
Dear Dex,
I can’t be with you again.
Just accept it.
Dear Dr. Matthews,
No.
I’ll have you fired.
Again.
Dear Aiden,
I wrote a poem about you.
It’s everyone’s favorite.
I find it trite.
Dear Logan,
I think I finally stopped
wanting you.
Dear Cynthia,
I was drunk.
I thought you were, too.
Dear Ricky,
Maybe it was the red dress
or because I was fifteen.
Your brother married my
mother
on the same day I first
touched your cock.
Maybe you’re still a pervert.
Call me.
Dear Jeff,
I was your biggest mistake.
Dear Robert,
You are more than beer and
vomit.
You are more than I could
ever put into a poem.
Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.
Dear Dennis,
I keep your photos in a box.
Each
one, still in its frame.
I'm on my fourth or fifth reading of "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss. This book is in my top five favorite books of all time, ever. This book led me to my #1 favorite book:
"The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories" by Bruno Schulz. This book has no equal. Do not die having NOT read this book. It will change your life. I weep all the way through it every time I read it because it is too much---too beautiful, too rich, too unique. After reading one chapter, I realized that I looked at the world through new eyes. (Also, knowing that Mr. Schulz was shot in the head at age 50 by a Nazi and that his magnum opus, "The Messiah" was lost just breaks my heart into a million pieces.) But reading this book is like falling into a lake of color & words & otherness & mystery & magic. It is like no other book on earth. And then I read that Ms. Krauss is married to the writer, Jonathan Safran Foer, which led me to fetch my copy of:
"Tree of Codes" by Jonathan Safran Foer which is more a work of art than a simple book because he took "The Street of Crocodiles" and selectively cut out words to create a new book which is in itself a miracle and a wonder. And then I read more books by Ms. Krauss and Mr. Foer.
One tree is
black. One window is yellow as butter.
A woman leans down to catch a
child who has run into her arms this moment.
Stars rise. Moths
flutter. Apples sweeten in the dark.
from "In a Time of Violence",
1994 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
____________________________________
I shared this poem with a friend last week. It was the first poem I'd ever read by Eavan Boland and I fell instantly in love with her poetry. It's a great day when you discover a new poet. This moment is all we have, so cherish it. It's what I'm trying to do.
I added a used tube ticket, kleenex, several Polo mints (furry), a tampon, pesetas, a florin. Not wishing to be presumptuous, not trusting you either, a pack of 3. I have a pen. There is space for my guardian angel, she has to fold her wings. Passport. A key. Anguish, at what I said/didn’t say when once you needed/didn’t need me. Anadin. A credit card. His face the last time, my impatience, my useless youth. That empty sack, my heart. A box of matches.
from: "Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times" edited by Neil Astley, page 116
florin - a former British coin worth two shillings or a gold coin formerly used in Eurpoe pesetas - monetary unit of Spain before the Euro anadin - a brand of painkiller sold in the UK
Sunny morning
You can hear it
Siren's warning
There is weather on both sides
And I know it's coming
Just like before
There's a black dog
That scratches my door
He's been growling my name saying
You better get to running
Can you make it better for me
Can you make me see the light of day
Because I got no one
Who will bring me a
Big umbrella
So I'm watching the weather channel
And waiting for the storm
It's just sugar
Just a pill to make me happy
I know it may not fix the hinges
But at least the door has stopped it's creaking
I got friends
They're waiting for me to comb out my hair
Come outside and join the human race
But I don't feel so human
Can you make it better for me
Can you make me see the light of day
Because I got lab coats
Who will bring me a panacea
While I'm watching the weather channel
Waiting for the storm
You won't want me
Hanging around the birthday pony
Even though it's just a game
You know we are the same
But you're the better faker.
=================
Enjoying some cold weather here in the swamp today and cooking gumbo. It's interesting to watch a hurricane that's not headed for us here in the Gulf. Those of you on the East Coast, hunker down and beware of Frankenstorm Sandy.
This is one of my favorite songs by Sheryl Crow. She wrote it when she was going through a bout of depression.
PS: The word "Panacea" is one of my favorite words on earth. So full of meaning and fun to say. (Pronounced pan-a-see-a with emphasis on the see).
Panacea: a remedy for all diseases or ills; a cure-all;
October, An Elegy
By Sue Goyette The whole month of October
is an elegy, a used bookstore
getting rained on. This weather
makes me read endings first. Partings
and farewells, the way we're baffled, startled
when happiness falls. Let me tell you something about darkness,
though,
because there's been enough about light. But first
about the handwritten poem copied out in the back
of a Rilke translation. It begins with beloved,
I'm tempted to tell you, or with rest,
and is written in the kind of couplets that are made
for each other, lines with stories of how they first met,
and I'm tempted to say that after I read it, light didn't matter,
nor darkness, that poetry somehow gathers
them both into one word. O, how often we are baffled,
startled by our own happiness. I read the poem
and kept its last three unresolved lines: our
line break hearts. There is a pause always around the word heart, the history
of leaving, the small right-angled scars of loss. Another line break
then into, a space, then the words: like small trees.
We are made up
of small trees, limbs that reach for each other, forest
of longing, root systems of light, small blossoms of darkness
and there is a poem handwritten after pages of Rilke and, after Rilke,
how can our hearts be anything but small trees. The book was
used. The lines unresolved. It was raining so I sat in the store and read
the ending first. Here happiness falls, sometimes
the only difference between our
and hearts is a line break after a long elegy. This is the
season that begins
by ending. The space between light
and darkness is unresolved
as the space between our hearts
and small trees. Beloved, rest. It's
true. I read the ending first
but I kept reading it until I got all the way back
to the beginning.
From: "Undone" By Sue Goyette
Lizard eating a butterfly in my backyard. I was following the butterfly around the yard with my camera to my eye and BAM! the lizard came out of nowhere and ate my butterfly. Oh, what a metaphor for life. :-)
Tear It Down
By Jack Gilbert
We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows. By
redefining the morning, we find a morning that comes just after
darkness. We can break through marriage into marriage. By insisting on
love we spoil it, get beyond affection and wade mouth-deep into love. We
must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. But going back toward
childhood will not help. The village is not better than Pittsburgh. Only
Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh. Rome is better than Rome in the same way
the sound of racoon tongues licking the inside walls of the garbage tub is
more than the stir of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not enough.
We die and are put into the earth forever. We should insist while there is
still time. We must eat through the wildness of her sweet body already in
our bed to reach the body within the body.
I love the poet, Linda Gilbert, and Jack is her ex-husband. (This poem is sort of a mindfuck, but I love it.) I was reading some of her poetry online and found this poem several years ago. It caused quite a lot of discussion when I first posted it.
Enjoy!
~Marion, enjoying rare, cool October weather here in the swamp on opening weekend of hunting season.
Woman Writing Letter by Henry O'Hara Clive (1881 - 1960)
Dearest Rose,
For
the first time I understand why men mortgage their souls for a diamond the size
of a skipping stone.I understand why
dragonflies mate on the wind, their abdomens a perfect flying heart.I know the thrill of the match as it lights
the fire---and the fire’s joy as it consumes all it touches.I even know the ashes’ ache as it smears your
fingertips and touches your face as you wipe away your tears.
For
the first time I feel.
I am
the needle on the Victrola and you, the record.Together, we become music.
Rose,
you are the elusive drop of joy wrung from the heart of the Poppy making my
brain a dream collage.
My
heart becomes heavy.I know this can’t
last.I weep as you shake your head
smiling and capture my tears in a tiny cobalt blue bottle.You say you will use them to season your
stuffed zucchini blossoms and feed them back to me to negate my sorrow.
And how shall we speak of love except in the splurge or roses, and
the long body of the river shining in its silk and froth;
and what could be more wonderful
than the agility and the reaching of
the fingers of Hannah, who is only seven days old;
and what could be more comforting
than to fold grief
like a blanket--- to fold anger like a blanket, with neat corners--- to put them into a box of words?
From:“The Leaf and the Cloud”, page 13
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Another raggedy dragonfly visiting me, 2012
From the poem “Gravel” by Mary Oliver
The high-piled plum-colored
storm-heavy clouds
are approaching. The fly mumbles against the glass. This is the world. The hot little bluebirds in the box
are getting ready to fly. This is the world.
The sweet in the parsnip waits for our praise.
The dragonfly lives its life
without a single error, it also waits for our praise.
The pale-green moths are pressing
against the screen, fluttering, they
are dying to get in to press their papery
bodies into the light.
This is the world.
From:“The Leaf and the Cloud”, page 43 --------------------------------------------------------
I love Mary Oliver. She has a grasp on the natural world like no other poet I've ever read. She speaks to my heart today from her book, "The Leaf and the Cloud", an amazing book length poem in seven parts.
xo, Marion
"Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars...
and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is
joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are
not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to
become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers -
for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are." ~Osho
=====================
"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere
and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But
any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back." ~Alice
Walker, The Color Purple, 1982
=====================
"I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of
trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which
is infinite, which is yes." ~e.e. cummings
Over
the Blue Ridge. Mothers
are calling their children in,
mellifluous
syllables, floating sounds.
The
traffic shimmies and settles back.
The
doctor has filled his truck with leaves
Next
door, and a pair of logs.
Salt
stones litter the street.
The
snow falls and the wind drops. How
strange to have a name, any name, on this poor earth.
January
hunkers down,
the
icicle deep in her throat---
The
days become longer, the nights ground bitter and cold, Single
grain by single grain Everything
flows toward the structure,
last
ache in the ache for God.
1995
---------------------------------------------
I awoke shivering this morning because I went to bed with all the windows wide open last night. It was a luscious, humidless 57 degrees. I felt as if I'd been transported to another place and time. It was near 100 degrees all last week.
My orange cat brought me a baby rabbit almost as big as he was to the back door. I thanked him, then rescued the poor, scared little bunny. I sat in the cool sunlight and picked up my heavy "Norton Anthology of Poetry", all 1,376 pages of it, and it fell open to this poem. Poetry has saved my life over and over and over again. Few understand this, but the ones who do have also changed my life.
Happy almost Autumn,
~Marion
--------------------------------------------
"Ink runs from the corners of my mouth There is no happiness like mine. I
have been eating poetry." ~Mark Strand, "Eating Poetry," Reasons for
Moving, 1968
A battered, tattered, curious old river dragonfly visiting me last summer.
I've spent most of my life along the Red River in Louisiana and this poem just brings out the river-love in me. My uncle who raised us was a carpenter and fisherman and made a living from the river. I often went with him to run the nets and he'd drop me off at a sandbar to play while he baited lines. Today I live a few miles from the river but I think of it every day. ~Marion, reading Anne Michaels on this rainy day in Louisiana. xo
The Towns We Know and Leave Behind, The Rivers We Carry with Us - By Richard Hugo
— for James Wright
I forget the names of towns without rivers.
A town needs a river to forgive the town.
Whatever river, whatever town –
it is much the same.
The cruel things I did I took to the river.
I begged the current: make me better.
Your town, your river, or mine –
it is much the same.
A murdering man lives on the land
in a shack the river birds hate.
He rubs the red shriek of night from his eyes.
He prays to water: don’t let me do that again.
Let’s name your river: Ohio.
Let’s name all rivers one in the blood,
red stream and debris in the blood.
Say George Doty had a wrong head.
Say the Ohio forgives what George did
and the river birds loved his shack.
Let’s name the birds: heron and sweat.
Let’s get away from the mud.
The river is there to forgive the town
and without a river a town abuses the sky.
The river is there to forgive what I did.
Let’s name my river: Duwamish.
And let’s admit
the river birds don’t hate my home.
That’s a recent development, really
like mercury in the cod.
Without a river a town abuses the air.
The river is there to forgive what I did.
The river birds hate what I did
until I name them.
Your river or mine –
It is much the same.
A murdering man lived on the bank.
Here’s the trick;
We had to stay drunk
to welcome the river
to live in a shack
to die on the bank
beneath the bigoted sky
under the river birds
day after day
to murder away
all water that might die.
A murdering man is dead on the bank
of your new river, The East,
on mine, The Clark Fork.
It is much the same.
Your river has gulls and tugs.
Mine has eagles and sky.
I rub last night from my eyes.
I ask bright water what’s happened.
The river, I am not sure which one,
Says water has no special power.
What should I do?
Or you?
Now water has no need to forgive
what shall become of murder?
How shall we live
when we killed, when we died by the word?
Whatever the name of the river,
we both had two women to love,
one to love us enough we left behind
a town that abuses the day.
The other to love the river we brought with us,
the shack we lived and still live in,
the birds, the towns that return to us for names
and we give them names knowing the river
murders them away.
I found this beautiful photo at Pinterest. I don't know the source, but the way the sunlight touches the wood of the open window breaks my heart and reminds me of Autumn. I think of the past, of friends, of a woman in a window, and I grieve and I don't know why. Time, which used to pass like molasses being poured from a cold cup, is now a runaway train.
But Autumn seems possible once again. I hope, in the autumn of my life.
Love,
Marion
*****
The
foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and
there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a
beauty who has seen one season too many. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
*****
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would
fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot
*****
The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages
you've been. ~Madeleine L'Engle
*****
How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last
days. ~John Burroughs
*****
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through
chinks that time hath made. ~Edmund Waller
Thank you, Annie, for introducing me to Ray. (Snicker...) I'm seriously in love with him. xoxo
Drunken Poet’s Dream
By Ray Wylie Hubbard
I got a woman
who's wild as Rome
She likes being naked and gazed upon
She crosses a bridge then sets in on fire
She lands like a bird on a telephone wire
I'm gonna hollar, and I'm gonna scream
I'm gonna get me some mescaline
Then I'm gonna rhyme that with gasoline
It's a drunken poet's dream
There some money on the table and a pistol on the floor
A few paperback books by Louis L'amour
Whisky bottles are scattered like last night's clothes
Cigarettes, papers and Oreos
My harmonica's got a busted reed
My lips are chapped and about to bleed
She says, that's nothing when she was a kid
She danced with the dead at the pyramids
I'm gonna hollar, and I'm gonna scream
I'm gonna get me some mescaline
Then I'm gonna rhyme that with gasoline
It's a drunken poet's dream
I'll never pay back my student loan
Smelling like Coors and cheap cologne
She tells me not to worry about Judgment Day
She says dying to get to heaven's just not our way
I'm gonna hollar, and I'm gonna scream
I'm gonna get me some mescaline
Then I'm gonna rhyme that with gasoline
It's a drunken poet's dream
I got a woman who's wild as Rome
She likes bein naked and gazed upon
