national poetry month

Not Yet Notorious Composers

/ Janna Hill / 2 Comments

This week I’m not featuring renowned poets.
This week let’s look at future poets or should I say not yet notorious composers.
The following poem was taken from

Poems for MIT Students.

A simple cover for a deep book.

It was written [and I quote] “by MIT students, for MIT students.”

Of the 20+ poems in this little chapbook I chose Almost by Julia Kimmerly.

(I hope 🤞🏼 this links to the free PDF file.)

 

MIT_logo_black_red

 

Ahh you thought MIT was a boring technical institute with some weird shorthand logo that has occult meanings.  Maybe that was my line of  thinking? No, all I can think of  is the Bee Gees so y’all go ahead and read while I sing. 

And the lights alllll weennnt out in Massachusetts…

 

Julia Kimmerly / 2013

it’s been a while since the smile of a pen has styled my page,
ages since mental meandering, penned pondering, wistful wandering
wondering about mysteries, histories, blistering bliss stories
of sinister misters, kissed-hers, twisted listening and
tea: a small plea from me to indulge.
today is a break from the intensity.
it makes a bulge in the tense immensity of stress,
incensed duress.
Dad’s mom’s locket rests in my palm,
her psalms next to his curbed proverbs:
once begun half done
measure twice, cut once
a stitch in time saves nine
but what about when the second half is baffling,
twice doesn’t suffice,
and the stitches come undone
like poorly hitched horses looking for fodder?
what about:
everything in moderation
variety is the spice of life
everything is relative—
relative to what?
it’s all the same insane struggle,
trouble bubbling over from one night to the next.
fight the biting light, the tightening sight as eyelids sigh
sleep is nigh
the group droops with equations left unsolved
greek letters in an unresolved war
equality separating the horror.
symbols swapping sides and constants barring pi’s.
Intensity Has a Taste For Pain.
this feast of information has ceased to be fun.
the yearning of learning gone,
no longer appealing.
the feeling of prolonged gratification
empty.
the anticipation not
tempting.

teachers hold the treat just out of reach,
each time bringing me forward
toward the future, it’s
badder, better, bigger, baller, butter from the stick
but if I don’t get out of this mean fiendish routine—
color outside the confining outline—
i won’t survive.
my thriving creativity of young,
now stifled insensitively,
clung to by what grip I have left.
i want to rip away from the
numerical masochism
hysterical workaholism
compensation for lack of sensation.
i have forgotten how to live,
rotten, now oblivious to what reality does,
sacrificing who I am now, or was, for who I could be.
but that to-be she is only one possible me
a successful breast full of delicious accomplishments.
yes, enticing time now is dimes and cents to my future dollars
a smaller price to pay for a greater later
a relentless satyr of ambition
searing volition to steer myself straight to the top.
but I don’t want to wait and be
a fated one-sided, dull-minded, blind signer
i want to be alive.
strive for more than better letters and wonder numbers
get out of this slumber and
find time for stars and clouds and dimension counting
Mars and How’s and existential doubting
the so-bad-its-good idea talks
the late-night, fate-type of walks
more coffee shops and railroad stops
beer stein hops and sly eaves drops
i want to tout the now and
scout the crowd for smiles and Guastavino tiled lies
(he knows woe woven into faulted vaults).
i want to drive and be driven.
And given the chance, yes i will.
but until the game is won, tassel hassled and the famous cap flung,
i have to persevere
buckle down for my career
gear up for my dear job.
study, read, feed my mind until it wants to be fed.
beg, plead, lead my mind until it wants to be led.
heed my mind until it is ahead, not overrun.
until all is said and done.

When Lust Looks Like Love

/ Janna Hill / 6 Comments

Joseph Rudyard Kipling
30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936

Kipling-wikimedia commons
Once upon a time hit and run sex was sooo romantic.

Rudy was too sophisticated for a one night stand but give him a sensuous landscape in the hills of India and lust looks a lot like love.Jakko Hill by Michael Gomes May 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 
A Ballade of Jakko Hill

One moment bid the horses wait,
Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and straight
You climbed a year ago with me.
Love came upon us suddenly
And loosed — an idle hour to kill —
A headless, armless armory
That smote us both on Jakko Hill.

Ah Heaven! we would wait and wait
Through Time and to Eternity!
Ah Heaven! we could conquer Fate
With more than Godlike constancy
I cut the date upon a tree —
Here stand the clumsy figures still:
“10-7-85, A.D.”
Damp with the mist of Jakko Hill.

What came of high resolve and great,
And until Death fidelity!
Whose horse is waiting at your gate?
Whose ‘rickshaw-wheels ride over me?
No Saint’s, I swear; and — let me see
To-night what names your programme fill —
We drift asunder merrily,
As drifts the mist on Jakko Hill.

L’ENVOI.
Princess, behold our ancient state
Has clean departed; and we see
‘Twas Idleness we took for Fate
That bound light bonds on you and me.
Amen! Here ends the comedy
Where it began in all good will;
Since Love and Leave together flee
As driven mist on Jakko Hill!

Choosing Life Over Death

/ Janna Hill / 2 Comments

Countee Cullen
May 30, 1903 – January 9, 1946

signed cullenMr. Cullen was an award winning poet, a novelist and a playwright. His history, mystery, talents and accomplishments are far too many to mention in this small space but Modern American Poetry has an interesting bit of info.

Cullen was also a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

It’s said that he wrote this piece in response to Alan Seeger’s I Have a Rendezvous With Death.

Cullen’s rendezvous with life (though short lived) strikes me as more optimistic which I’m sure was his intention. It is also the reason I chose it.

I Have a Rendezvous With Life

I have a rendezvous with Life,
In days I hope will come,
Ere youth has sped, and strength of mind,
Ere voices sweet grow dumb.
I have a rendezvous with Life,
When Spring’s first heralds hum.
Sure some would cry it’s better far
To crown their days with sleep
Than face the road, the wind and rain,
To heed the calling deep.
Though wet nor blow nor space I fear,
Yet fear I deeply, too,
Lest Death should meet and claim me ere
I keep Life’s rendezvous.

 

Emily’s Simplicity

/ Janna Hill / 4 Comments

Emily Dickinson

(December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886)
Today I thought I’d visit the modest rhymes and musings of sweet Emily Dickinson but then I changed my mind.

Not that I don’t adore Emily’s simplicity – we were like best friends for a long time. Did you know if she hadn’t died of kidney disease or heart failure she would have been 184 years old next month? We were going to go skydiving…

Okay, back to earth and the late Emily Dickinson.

Instead of sharing the standard fluffy stuff of hopes and dreams and sugary illusions of death she is known for I decided to show her darker side with this letter and poem to her sister in law Susan Huntington Dickinson.

I heard if you invert Em’s photo you’ll see that she actually has horns. [gasp! yikes! yee gads it’s true!]

She lived and died in Massachusetts ya know.

THE LETTER

Tuesday morning – [1854]
Sue – you can go or stay – There is but one alternative – We differ often lately, and this must be the last.
You need not fear to leave me lest I should be alone, for I often part with things I fancy I have loved, – sometimes to the grave, and sometimes to an oblivion rather bitterer than death – thus my heart bleeds so frequently that I shant mind the hemorrhage, and I can only add an agony to several previous ones, and at the end of day remark – a bubble burst!
Such incidents would grieve me when I was but a child, and perhaps I could have wept when little feet hard by mine, stood still in the coffin, but eyes grow dry sometimes, and hearts get crisp and cinder, and had as lief burn.
Sue – I have lived by this.
It is the lingering emblem of the Heaven I once dreamed, and though if this is taken, I shall remain alone, and though in that last day, the Jesus Christ you love, remark he does not know me – there is a darker spirit will not disown its child.
Few have been given me, and if I love them so, that for idolatry, they are removed from me – I simply murmur gone, and the billow dies away into the boundless blue, and no one knows but me, that one went down today. We have walked very pleasantly – Perhaps this is the point at which our paths diverge – then pass on singing Sue, and up the distant hill I journey on.

I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing –
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears –
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.

Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown –
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.

Fast in a safer hand
Held in a truer Land
Are mine –
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart
They’re thine.

In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
each little discord here
Removed.

Then will I not repine,
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.

E –

 * * *

For more information on the life of Emily Dickinson check out the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Wallowing in the Words of FARMER

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment
National Poetry Month officially starts April 1st and guess who I chose?

(thanks for the suggestion “gs”)

FRIEDA HUGHES
Frieda Rebecca Hughes was born April 1, 1960 to poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. frieda

In all honesty I hadn’t read Frieda’s poetry though I did stalk her a little last year.  Not in the literal/physical sense. I’m not that disturbed – okay maybe that is debatable but anyway…

You see last April I was obsessing over her mother and the tragedies that surrounded young Frieda Hughes. Thank goodness the July heat cured me – at least I thought it did. Now I find myself wallowing in this poem.
I will not dissect FARMER or delve into the misfortunes of Ms. Hughes today. Instead I would like to point out that Frieda went on to become an artist in her own right. She is not only an author and a poet she is a [talented] painter as well.

FARMER

by Frieda Hughes

Slim, beautiful thing he was, like a dropped angel.
Eyes huge, set amazed in his face,
He wondered at the universe.
Strange man, tree watching.

She caught him young. Hollow vessel;
She saw his ownership of things, and wanted.
Saw his weaknesses early, nailed him to the floor
With an unexpected daughter.

Hooked, like a mouth-torn trout,
He was held fast by the cry and spit
Of little childhood begun so sudden, so surprised.
Mother felt her job was done.

Had used her womb like a weapon. Now her words
Beat him down, he was harvested in his own fields.
His bruises bloomed, those blue roses sank their stain
Beneath his surface, made him dumb with pain.
He learned to be silent.

In his head he hid. Green grew there,
Rocks cracked hot in the sun, his landscape
Was knitted by lizards and boulders of sheep.
She could not find him or snap a bone
With the thought that made her child,
It became her stone. Its heaviness outweighed her.
At last, she left him,
Strange man, tree watching.

***
P.S. HaPpY BiRthDaY Frieda Hughes.

Photo courtesy of friedahughes.com

 

Mark Your Books (April is National Poetry Month)

/ Janna Hill / 5 Comments

 

IV+PPP BookmarkMark your calendars and your books because… [drum roll]

April is National Poetry Month!

Last years celebration was fun and I already have several hundred   in mind for this year. If you have one you’d like to share or see dissected let me know.

Dead or alive – no poet is off limits.

😉 🙂 😀

 

 

 

 

 

The End of National Poetry Month (For Now)

/ Janna Hill / 4 Comments

April 30th is the last day of National Poetry Month and a fitting time to share Sara Teasdale’s I love You wouldn’t you agree? Sara Teasdale is said to be the first to receive the Pulitzer Prize Award for Poetry. She is known for her simplicity and (like too many others) her self-inflicted demise.

Winner of Pulitzer Prize Award 1918
Sara Teasdale 1884-1933

I Love You

by Sara Teasdale

When April bends above me

And finds me fast asleep,

Dust need not keep the secret

A live heart died to keep.

~

When April tells the thrushes,

The meadow-larks will know,

And pipe the three words lightly

To all the winds that blow.

~

Above his roof the swallows,

In notes like far-blown rain,

Will tell the little sparrow

Beside his window-pane.

~

O sparrow, little sparrow,

When I am fast asleep,

Then tell my love the secret

That I have died to keep.

 

Yoo-hoo It is Still National Poetry Month

/ Janna Hill / 8 Comments

Yoo-hoo. It is still National Poetry Month and today I am highlighting Shel Silverstein.

I rarely think of Mr. Silverstein without remembering Johnny Cash and that delightfully ridiculous song A Boy Named Sue.

He (Silverstein) wrote a lot of nonsensical poetry/lyrics but like all humans he was multifaceted. His writing ranged from silly to somber with something for everyone as evident in the introduction to Where the Sidewalk Ends as he seems to say “welcome all.”

 

If you are a dreamer, come in,

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…

If you are a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in!

Come in!

 

And we did. We opened the pages and entered the world he created and we returned again and again for the flax-golden tales that never grow old all the while wondering if he found that place Where the Sidewalk Ends…

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.

Pilgrimage

/ Janna Hill / 14 Comments
Natasha Trethewey @ Library of Congress 2013

Photo Source: Wikipedia Commons

 What I love about this poem is how easily it flows. You don’t have to be a Mississippian, a historian, a scholar or even a poetry fan to appreciate the smooth and simple beauty of Pilgrimage.

Sometimes we get so busy with the day to day ritual that we forget to read and that is a shame. It is also another reason to appreciate National Poetry Month. It serves as a reminder (at least for me) to seek out new poetry, to step away from the keyboard and open a book or a webpage or an audio device and go along for the ride if only for a few moments. This was certainly a ride worth taking.

Pilgrimage

by Natasha Trethewey

Here, the Mississippi carved

            its mud-dark path, a graveyard

for skeletons of sunken riverboats.

            Here, the river changed its course,

turning away from the city

            as one turns, forgetting, from the past—

the abandoned bluffs, land sloping up

            above the river’s bend—where now

the Yazoo fills the Mississippi’s empty bed.

            Here, the dead stand up in stone, white

marble, on Confederate Avenue. I stand

            on ground once hollowed by a web of caves;

they must have seemed like catacombs,

            in 1863, to the woman sitting in her parlor,

candlelit, underground. I can see her

            listening to shells explode, writing herself

into history, asking what is to become

            of all the living things in this place?

This whole city is a grave. Every spring—

            Pilgrimage—the living come to mingle

with the dead, brush against their cold shoulders

            in the long hallways, listen all night

to their silence and indifference, relive

            their dying on the green battlefield.

At the museum, we marvel at their clothes—

            preserved under glass—so much smaller

than our own, as if those who wore them

            were only children. We sleep in their beds,

the old mansions hunkered on the bluffs, draped

            in flowers—funereal—a blur

of petals against the river’s gray.

            The brochure in my room calls this

living history. The brass plate on the door reads

            Prissy’s Room. A window frames

the river’s crawl toward the Gulf. In my dream,

            the ghost of history lies down beside me,

rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm.

In the Aftermath of Plath

/ Janna Hill / 13 Comments

Just in case I missed telling one person in the far reaches of Idonwannaherit (which is my husband’s country of origin) April is National Poetry month.

And guess what?! I was informed this morning that I have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize Award. I’m thinking OMG! Am I so special they called me early? Turns out it was an April Fool’s joke. Damn you cruel jokester and may the winning of Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes forever be just out of your reach.

With the fool’s business out of the way I’d like to talk about Plath.

Not because of her life’s work. In all honesty it is/was her chronic obsession with death that compels me.

In reading Lady Lazarus with or without knowing Plath’s history I could have imagined a poet scribbling thoughts that were just that- thoughts.

But the [reportedly] last two pieces she wrote and the two small children she left behind. I became strangely fanatical.

photo by Rollie McKenna photo by Rollie McKenna

I tried hard not to judge her as a person and to focus only on the writing but I fell short. History, rumor and suspicion clouded my judgment.

When I read Nick and the Candlestick I imagined premeditated recklessness beyond her own ending.

In Balloons all I could see was her surveying her child at play – a child she would [knowingly?] soon leave motherless.

And in Edge… it would have been eerily sufficient without knowing Sylvia Plath Hughes had made for herself a gas chamber.

In doing so she had eliminated the need for an executioner so I became her judge, juror and examiner.

It wasn’t enough for me to obsess over the tragedy I insisted my husband partake of the mind numbing fixation.

His first response was, “You know I don’t read poetry. I don’t read anything that doesn’t have live game, a stock symbol or a machining program written on it.”

To that I handed him a beer and smiled, “Okay. I’ll read it to you and you tell me what you think.”

He agreed, though once I finished reading Edge aloud he held out his hand and ordered me to give it to him.

I graciously obliged.

Here it is in its entirety. Our discussion will follow.

Edge by Sylvia Plath 1963

The woman is perfected.
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,

The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

When he finally looked up I asked, “So what do you think?”

He took a long drink and shrugged, “She obviously wanted to be dead and she’s happy about it.”

“Yes, yes. Go on.” I urged, “What about the scrolls of her toga?”

“Sounds like the Clinton – Lewinsky thing. You know with the stained dress.”


I laughed and he continued. “Here where she says ‘it is over’ means just that – she’s finished.”

“What about the lines ‘each dead child coiled, a white serpent, one at each little pitcher of milk, now empty’ what do you think about that?”

“The Exodus? It sounds like the first Passover and the last plague in Egypt to me.” He looked back at the page in front of him and read,

“She has folded them back into her body as petals of a rose close when the garden stiffens and odors bleed from the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.”

He shook his head and returned the poem, “Did she plan to kill the kids and take them with her? I guess it doesn’t matter- It was fifty years ago, she was mentally ill and she’s glad she’s dead.”

“What about ‘the moon has nothing to be sad about, staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag’ – what are your thoughts on that?” I asked, watching as he became more uncomfortable.

“It sounds like craziness. She was obviously mentally ill. Did you say she stuck her head in an oven?”

I nodded.

“Was it butane or natural gas?”

“I have no idea. Why would that matter?”

“Well one falls and the other rises – natural gas rises. Did she live in town or in the country? If she lived in town it was probably natural gas.”

“She lived in London, a town residence once occupied by Yeats.”

“Hell, it might have been coal fuel.” He paused as if it took added effort to ask the next question. “Did she kill her kids too?”

“No.” I answered.

His face relaxed a bit until I added, “The youngest, a boy named Nicholas hung himself in 2009. The daughter who was less than three years old when it happened went on to become a painter and poet.”

“Dammit! How’s the girl doing?”

“I don’t personally know her but she was still alive the last I heard.”

“Poor thing. Damaged people leave a lot of garbage in their wake. Hopefully she’s not too messed up.”

With that he bent and twisted the empty can indicating the discussion was over.

I mumbled a thank you, delighted I had snagged him into reading a poem yet a little ashamed that I had disturbed him with the past of Sylvia Plath.

Next week maybe I will entice him with a new poet, a living poet.

I’ll choose something lighter, funnier and maybe drag out the frayed old book Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. The kids and I always enjoyed that one.

I will probably [silently] take a closer look at the works of Ted and Frieda Hughes, dissecting their psyches and torturing myself in the aftermath of Sylvia Plath.