Elegy for the Personal Letter by Allison Joseph

 

 

Elegy for the Personal Letter
by Allison Joseph
 

I miss the rumpled corners of correspondence,
the ink blots and crossouts that show
someone lives on the other end, a person
whose hands make errors, leave traces.
I miss fine stationary, its raised elegant
lettering prominent on creamy shades of ivory
or pearl grey. I even miss hasty notes
dashed off on notebook paper, edges
ragged as their scribbled messages—
can't much write now—thinking of you.
When letters come now, they are formatted
by some distant computer, addressed
to Occupant or To the family living at—
meager greetings at best,
salutations made by committee.
Among the glossy catalogs
and one time only offers
the bills and invoices,
letters arrive so rarely now that I drop
all other mail to the floor when
an envelope arrives and the handwriting
is actual handwriting, the return address
somewhere I can locate on any map.
So seldom is it that letters come
That I stop everything else
to identify the scrawl that has come this far—
the twist and the whirl of the letters,
the loops of the numerals. I open
those envelopes first, forgetting
the claim of any other mail,
hoping for news I could not read
in any other way but this.

from My Father's Kites.

 

=====================

 

Oh, how I love letters!  I try to write them often, but I've slacked off.  Nobody seems to write by hand anymore.  I mourn future generations who will have no letters to read from their lovers or loved ones.  I remember as a child writing to my cousin and we'd write SWAK (sealed with a kiss) on the back of the envelope and then kiss it wearing some of our mothers' red lipstick.  I wish I still had those letters, but sadly, they're gone.  Who could have imagined that people would stop writing letters?  I have a notebook full of missives & cards from friends.  They're treasures.  My favorite is a postcard from Renee with the sweetest note on back...I still find it hard to believe she's gone.  But I have her letter with a photo of her to look at and remember her precious, giving soul.

 

Write someone a letter today. 

 

xo,

Marion

 

P.S.  Been busy gardening, reading and photographing flowers.  I have huge tomatoe plants in pots and some cucumbers, too.  I laugh with delight every time a seed sprouts and makes a plant.  It's a miracle I'll never get tired of watching every Spring.  I have several families of Bluebirds in our yard.  One is sitting on 5 little blue eggs.  Another miracle of Spring. 

You Know Who You Are by Naomi Shihab Nye

You Know Who You Are
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Why do your poems comfort me, I ask myself.
Because they are upright, like straight-backed chairs.
I can sit in them and study the world as if it too
were simple and upright.

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words
and not one of them can save me.
Your poems come in like a raft, logs tied together,
they float.
I want to tell you about the afternoon
I floated on your poems
all the way from Durango Street to Broadway.

Fathers were paddling on the river with their small sons.
Three Mexican boys chased each other outside the library.
Everyone seemed to have some task, some occupation,
while I wandered uselessly in the streets I claim to love.

Suddenly I felt the precise body of your poems beneath me,
like a raft, I felt words as something portable again,
a cup, a newspaper, a pin.
Everything happening had a light around it,
not the light of Catholic miracles,
the blunt light of a Saturday afternoon.
Light in a world that rushes forward with us or without us.
I wanted to stop and gather up the blocks behind me
in this light, but it doesn’t work.
You keep walking, lifting one foot, then the other,
saying “This is what I need to remember”
and then hoping you can.

from:  "Words Under the Words" by Naomi Shihab Nye, page 22

===================

Wild Spring storms here in the swamp today.  So far, Spring has been violent as if the earth is giving birth...not an "easy" birth, but a difficult, excruciating, wildly harrowing birth. 

Today is "Poem in Your Pocket" day.  April is National Poetry Month which I don't celebrate because every single hour of every day is Poetry Day here at Casa Dragonfly. 

xo,
Marion

PS:  Congratulations to the illustrious, amazingly brilliant Sharon Olds for winning the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, 2013, for her book "Stag's Leap".

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You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. ~Joseph Joubert

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Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know. ~Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest

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Mules of Love by Ellen Bass

One of my favorite books of poetry:  "Mules of Love" by Ellen Bass.  I've been away gardening, sprouting seeds, reading, writing and being depressed.  Not necessarily in that order.  xo

God and the G-Spot
by Ellen Bass

“He didn’t want to believe. He wanted to know.”
--Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s wife, on why he didn't believe in God.

I want to know too. Belief and disbelief
are a pair of tourists standing on swollen feet
in the Prado--I don't like it.
I do.--before the Picasso.

Or the tattoo artist with a silver stud
in her full red executive lips,
who, as she inked in the indigo blue, said,
I think the G-spot's one of those myths
men use to make us feel inferior.

God, the G-spot, falling in love. The earth round
and spinning, the galaxies speeding
in the glib flow of the Hubble expansion.
I'm an East Coast Jew. We all have our opinions.

But it was in the cabin at La Selva Beach
where I gave her the thirty tiny red glass hearts
I'd taken back from my husband when I left.
He'd never believed in them. She, though, scooped
them up like water, let them drip through her fingers
like someone who has so much she can afford to waste.

That's the day she reached inside me
for something I didn't think I had.
And like pulling a fat shining trout from the river
she pulled the river out of me. That's
the way I want to know God.

___________________________________

Poem to My Sex at Fifty-One
By Ellen Bass

When I wash myself in the shower
and afterward, as I am drying
with the terrycloth towel,
I love the feel
of my vulva, the plump outer lips
and the neat inner ones
that fit together trimly
as hands in prayer.  I like
the feel the slick crevice and the slight
swelling that begins
with just this casual handling.
So eager, willing as a puppy.
When I was young I could
not have imagined this
as I looked at women like me,
my waist thickened like pudding,
my rear end that once rode high
as a kite, now hanging like a
sweater left out in the rain,
skin drooping, not just the dewlaps
or pennants that flutter
under the arms, but all over,
loosening from the bone like boiled
chicken.  And it will only
get worse.  But that fleshy
plum is always cheerful.  And new.
A taut globe shining
in an old fruit tree.

From:  "Mules of Love" by Ellen Bass

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"For women the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time." ~Isabel Allende

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Litany by Billy Collins

This 3 year old recites my favorite Billy Collins' poem, "Litany" from memory.  Be still my poet-heart.  You are all my bread, knives, crystal goblets and wine....xo

LITANY
By Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.   

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"Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting." ~Robert Frost

-----------------------

"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests." ~Pablo Neruda, quoted in Wall Street Journal,, 14 November 1985

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Before Summer Rain by Rainer Maria Rilke

"When the chickens or dogs wander away, people know enough to search for them, but when the heart wanders away, they don't.

The Way of Learning is nothing other than this: searching for the heart that has wandered away." ~Confucious

======================

BEFORE SUMMER RAIN

By Rainer Maria Rilke

From:  "The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke", page 35

 

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

 

------------------------------------

 

       "Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields...." ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

 

* * * * *

 

"Isn't it time to turn your heart into a temple of fire?" ~Rumi

* * * * *

 

"The heart never becomes wrinkled." ~Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

 

* * * * *

Happy Birthday, Billy Collins!

From one of my collages. 

 

I guarantee the following poem will leave mice and matches in your head for days.  It does what a great poem should do:  mess with your head.  :-)   Here in the swamp everything is powder-yellow from the Pine pollen.  No real rain for weeks, so yellow abounds.  (It rained a tiny bit last week and left abstract yellow paintings on the concrete where the rain had washed down some of the pollen...)  My house, yard, truck, driveway, cats are all yellow.  When I walk to the mailbox, I can taste the grit of the Pine pollen.  I'm hoping today wil bring us some much-needed rain.

 

Today is also the birthday of one of my favorite authors, Louis L'Amour.  Speaking of reading, (wasn't I?) I talked to my 9 year old granddaughter yesterday for over an hour about books.  I gave her a little Kindle for Christmas with a cute pink cover.  She wears it around her arm like diamonds and never puts it down.  I gave her a gift card for her birthday on Christmas Eve to buy books and I also taught her how to download the free classics like "Little Women".  She's into the Percy Jackson series now so we had to discuss mythology and plot.  I read the books along with her so we could discuss them and I really enjoyed the stories.  Luckily, my grandson had the series and loaned them to me.  Then she related how she has to get back to the 5th Harry Potter book because her best friend is ahead of her.  She told me she's out of money to buy books, so I sent her a new gift card.  A girl must always have book money!  I'd sell all of my favorite shoes to make sure she has book money.  One must have priorities.  And what are grammy's for anyhoo?? 

 

On that note, I have to go read.  I have two new books by one of my favorite poet-bloggers, Fireblossom.

 

They both look nice and juicy:

 

 

 

Happy Spring, Happy Reading, and have a wonderful weekend. 

 

xo, Marion

 

 

THE COUNTRY

By Billy Collins

 

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?

"The Country" by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses: Poems. © Random House, 2003

Moths by Eavan Boland

My favorite Moonflower and Sphinx Moth photo taken after a rain one evening in 2007 on a hot summer night.  I spent hours (days---my entire life!!) stalking this moth and got ate up by mosquitoes in the process.  And yes, 'ate up' is correct grammar in regard to mosquitoes chewing you to pieces here in the South.

 

MOTHS

By Eavan Boland

Tonight the air smells of cut grass.

Apples rust on the branches.  Already summer is
a place mislaid between expectation and memory.

This has been a summer for moths.

Their moment of truth comes well after dark.
Then they reveal themselves at our window-
ledges and sills as a pinpoint.  A glimmer.

The books I look up about them are full of legends:

ghost-swift moths with their dancing assemblies at dusk.
Their courtship swarms.  How some kinds may steer by the moon.

The moon is up.  The back windows are wide open.

Mid-July fills the neighborhood.  I stand by the hedge.

Once again they are near the windowsill---

fluttering past he fuscia and the lavender,
which is knee-high, and too blue to warn them

they will fall down without knowing how

or why what they steered by became, suddenly,
what they crackled and burned around.  They will perish---

I am perishing---on the edge and at the threshold of

the moment all nature fears and tends towards:

the stealing of the light.  Ingenious facsimile.

And the kitchen bulb which beckons them makes

my child’s shadow longer than my own.

 From:  “New Collected Poems” by Eavan Boland, pages 220, 221

 

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(Thank you, dear Erin, for mentioning Eavan Boland to me not long ago.  I went and found 5 used books of her amazing poetry.  Once again, you feed me.)

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In winter, rabid gardeners such as myself read seed catalogues and books about gardening.  My latest favorite gardening book is “The Evening Garden, Flowers and Fragrance from Dusk Till Dawn” by Peter Loewer.  I learned, to my surprise, that of the order Lepidoptera, to which moths and butterflies belong, there are over 11,230 species and only some 800 of these are butterflies. The rest are moths.  I have been an avid night-blooming flower grower for over 20 years (my Moonflower seeds are already planted, sprouted and have two leaves on them) and am well-acquainted with moths.  I just had no idea they outnumbered butterflies by that much.  Also, night-blooming flowers smell like heaven...they have a much stronger scent that day-blooming flowers in order to attract the moths.

Here’s the conundrum I have about loving moths, especially the gorgeous Sphinx Moth, which I especially enjoy stalking and photographing:  one of their favorite meal is tomatoes---every part of the plant.  I also grow tomatoes religiously.  So, as soon as I learned this little tidbit about tomatoes being moth caviar, I began growing some extra (is there such a thing????) tomatoes for the caterpillars to devour.  I know, crazy, right?  But I’m happy to share my bounty.  And crazy runs in my family. 

 

It's almost Spring.  Do a little happy dance and plant some flower seeds.  (I found my first packet of Moonflower seeds at Wal-Mart quite by accident.  The flowers go to seed in the fall and now I have my own supply of seeds.)  I highly recommend that you grow Moonflowers, if only to have one whiff of their scent before you die... It's sweeter than Magnolias or even Jasmine. They're a member of the Morning Glory family and do well in pots.   You just have to keep the seeds extra wet until they sprout.  I've grown them in pots and in the ground and I prefer pots.  They need part shade here in the hot South, but can do well with full sun further north.  And they need a fence or trellis to climb. 

Happy March. 

 

xo,

Marion


"To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat." ~Beverly Nichols

+++++

"Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the human heart, imagining itself alone and unwatched, feels most deeply in the night-time, so seems it as if the flowers, in musing modesty, await the mantling evening....~Heinrich Heine

+++++

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks." ~Tennessee Williams

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Pretty Words by Elinor Wylie

Pretty Words
By Elinor Wylie (1885 - 1929)

Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-feathered birds:
Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver dish,
Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds.
I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;
I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees,
Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

*****************************

My own favorite pretty word is tabula rasa. 

(Tabula rasa, meaning blank slate in Latin, is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception.)

xo,
Marion

"The day will happen whether or not you get up." ~John Ciardi

Carpet of Red Petals

 

A neighbor's Camellia Tree after a storm this week.  I love the blood red carpeting of petals under the tree... I'm busy reading "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand for the first time, so laters, baby.  The sun finally appeared today for the first time in a week.  It's deliciously warm.

 

Have a wonderful Valentine's Day tomorrow, filled with love & poetry.

 

xo,

Marion

 

"There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it." ~Minnie Aumonier

 

*****

 

"We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love." ~Robert Fulghum, True Love

 

 

 

Every Single Night by Fiona Apple - Music Review

Every Single Night
By Fiona Apple, from her new album, "The Idler Wheel"

Every single night
I endure the flight
Of little wings of white-flamed
Butterflies in my brain
These ideas of mine
Percolate the mind
Trickle down the spine
Swarm the belly, swelling to a blaze
That's when the pain comes in
Like a second skeleton
Trying to fit beneath the skin
I can't fit the feelings in
Every single night's alight with my brain

What'd I say to her
Why'd I say it to her
What does she think of me
That I'm not what I ought to be
That I'm what I try not to be
It's got to be somebody else's fault
I can't get caught
If what I am is what I am, cause I does what I does
Then brother, get back, cause my breast's gonna bust open
The rib is the shell and the heart is the yolk and
I just made a meal for us both to choke on
Every single night's a fight with my brain

I just want to feel everything

So I'm gonna try to be still now
Gonna renounce the mill a little while and
If we had a double-king-sized bed
We could move in it and I'd soon forget
That what I am is what I am cause I does what I does
And maybe I'd relax, let my breast just bust open
My heart's made of parts of all that surround me
And that's why the devil just can't get around me
Every single night's alright, every single night's a fight
And every single fight's alright with my brain

I just want to feel everything
I just want to feel everything
I just want to feel everything
I just want to feel everything

 

=======================================

 

I've loved (wanted to be) Fiona Apple for years, ever since I got her first album, "Tidal" which is still one of my top ten favorite albums of all time.  I wore it out playing "Shadowboxer", "Sleep to Dream" and "Criminal" back in the late 90's.   (I still shudder deliciously right down to my Slut-Red toenails when I hear 'Criminal' and the video is beyond smokin'... those eyes!!!)  This song is from her fourth album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, frequently abridged as The Idler Wheel...

 

She looks so fragile as if she's made of glass . . . I just want to hug her and feed her. :-)   God bless brave, intrepid, wounded poet/songwriters everywhere who bleed words to heal us. 

 

xo,
Marion

 

A few reviews from Wikipedia of Ms. Apple's new album: 

 

"Like an open wound, The Idler Wheel isn't always pretty, but it pulses with life, brutal and true. Let's just hope that Apple doesn't wait so long next time to challenge us all again."^[33] Nick Krenn of Earbuddy scored the album 9.4 out of ten and said "Apple’s songwriting remains sharp, perhaps more serrated, featuring lyrical wordplay performed with impeccable flow that many rappers would envy." ^[23] Melissa Maerz of Entertainment Weekly was also very positive on the album, calling it "hard to understand" like the previous ones and gave it an A and closed her review writing: "You have to give yourself over to The Idler Wheel in a way you probably haven't done since you were a kid, before jobs and other adult responsibilities claimed the long hours you spent curled up by your stereo speakers. It isn't easy listening. But it's worth it." ^[25] Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork Media scored the album nine out of ten and called it "the most distilled Fiona Apple album yet", concluding that "even after being thrown into the media spotlight at a young age, and having to deal with crippling doubt, Fiona Apple didn't go boom. She's still here, brave enough to indulge in raw emotion and smart enough to make those feelings carry."^[29] Consequence of Sound was also very positive and called the album "one of the most daring pop records in recent history", awarding it with four-and-a-half stars out of five and said: "The risks she takes hardly even seem like risks for her anymore because the album is so well-oiled."^[34]