During NPM this year, I'm spring-cleaning my desktop, and getting rid of tabs that have been open too long. I found two poems about grief.
The first one is by Emily Dickinson.
‘Tis good — the looking back on Grief —
To re-endure a Day —
We thought the Mighty Funeral —
Of All Conceived Joy —
Here's the second:
Grief
by Barbara Crooker
is a river you wade in until you get to the other side.
But I am here, stuck in the middle...
Sarah Grace Tuttle added to the Progressive Poem today.
This "Ode to Teachers," by Pat Mora, has been open on my desktop for a while. It starts like this:
Click through to read the rest.
In keeping with the teacher theme, here's another poem on my desktop:
Prompts (for High School Teachers Who Write Poetry
by Dante Di Stefano
Write about walking into the building
as a new teacher. Write yourself hopeful.
Write a row of empty desks. Write the face
of a student you’ve almost forgotten;
he’s worn a Derek Jeter jersey all year.
Do not conjecture about the adults
he goes home to, or the place he calls home.
Write about how he came to you for help
each October morning his sophomore year.
Write about teaching Othello to him;
write Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven.
Write about reading his obituary
five years after he graduated.
I've been posting somewhat less than daily during this National Poetry Month, doing some spring-cleaning of poetic links that are open on my desktop. Some of the links have been there a long time and need to be closed.
Today I have a couple of quarantine links. The first one is a poem published in 2008.
Quarantine
by Eavan Boland
In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
The other link is a crowdsourced poem from NPR, published in May 2021. Kwame Alexander put together lines sent in by listeners to create the poem, and I noticed right away that Poetry Friday regular Margaret Simon was among the contributors.
The poem begins like this:
"I Wake with Wonder"
Every Morning
I wake with wonder
and dive into the day
I grasp for my phone like a lifeline, a buoy,
I rise among the displaced dreams of yore
Supplanted plans, disrupted from the year
So distanced from all social life before
I was just thinking this week how long it's been since I took a moment to be grateful for the fact that I no longer have to teach online or wearing a mask.
Today Denise Krebs is adding her line to the Progressive Poem.
Book #21 of the year was Emily P. Freeman's latest book, How to Walk Into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away. I pre-ordered this (using birthday money), so I got it the day it came out, and once I started reading it I couldn't stop. I devoured it, and I know I will go back and re-read it more slowly.
Most of the reviews I have read said some version of "I wish I had had this during the time when I left my job/moved to a new city/took my kid to college." I felt the same as I read it, that it would have been so helpful during innumerable transitions I've made in my life, particularly in the last few years. But it is still useful to go back and reflect on those events using Emily's excellent questions. She writes beautifully about dealing with all kinds of decisions and changes, and she also shares some of her own experiences as examples and inspiration. A taste:
"First, you can't always take with you the kind of clarity that comes from setting the story straight. If the ending you get is one that involves systems, community, business, family, money, or love (which is almost all endings), then there's a good chance you'll have to contend with multiple perspectives, different renditions of the story, misinformed opinions, and straight-up gossip. Even if things ended reasonably well, you may still have various versions of the when, why, and how of your exit. The story is too sticky, too webbed, too large for the kind of explanations you hoped for. Versions will keep revealing themselves that you didn't even know existed. You thought the story was easy enough to tell. But there's no linear narrative that holds all the perspectives of everyone involved, and before you reach the door you realize the chatter has risen to a roar. You thought you'd found the perfect box to bring your closure with you, but what you thought was managed just pops right out: no corners, too round, extra sharp, a little pokey, and also, it's leaking. There is no box that will contain it, no bag that will cover it, no arms large enough or strong enough to carry it. The reality is, you can only rarely take clarity with you, and you can't always leave the full story behind. You wanted closure, but you get this sideways ending instead, something hanging in the air, tears by the elevator, a bag left at your door, an unanswered text, an ending without a goodbye."
Whew. Amen to all of that.
Book #22 was Shark Heart: A Love Story, by Emily Habeck. Wren's husband has just been diagnosed with a Carcharodon carcharias mutation. That is, he's turning into a shark. You can imagine that might be hard, and it sure is.
Book #23 was Trust, by Hernan Diaz, winner of last year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction. This book made me think of that quote from Emily P. Freeman's book above, because it's about different versions of the same story and how we often don't ever know the whole story about the people around us.
Book #24 was The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff. I couldn't stop reading this, and when I was done gulping it down, I just kept saying, "What did I just read?" The story is gruesome beyond belief, and contains starvation, horrible disease, violent assault, abuse of various kinds, and more. I am not sure I would have read it if I had known everything that was in it, but I guess it was effective, since it left me in a daze for hours.
Book #25 was Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt. This is a sweet, charming story, kind of the opposite of The Vaster Wilds. It has an octopus narrator, a tough old lady, and an old mystery that is solved by a series of coincidences and of course the octopus. I enjoyed it immensely.
Book #26 was Happiness Falls, by Angie Kim. I couldn't put this one down; it was intense and twisty. I read it quickly and then put Kim's other book on my TBR. This book, like several I've read lately, is set during the pandemic.
This morning (Thursday) I'm going back to work after an Easter break that got extended an extra day by Eid being a day later than the calendar said.
Here's a poem that's been open on my desktop for a long time.
Origin Story
by Leah Naomi Green
"What is dying is the willingness to be in denial." angel Kyodo williams
The heron flew away
and I wanted to tell someone
how long it stayed,
how close I got,
how much I missed it
even as it stood
to watch me,
large-eyed animal
that I am, terrible
at believing what I can't see.
Here's the rest. This poem won the 2019 Walt Whitman Award.
Today I'd like to share a Jim Daniels poem that has been open on my desktop for a long while. (That's what I'm doing this NPM: spring-cleaning the open tabs on my desktop. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you how many there are.)
Jim Daniels poems are often about one ordinary moment that has deeper resonance. In this 2019 NPM post I shared a couple of his pieces. This one, like both of those, introduces the situation in its title:
I'd like to borrow a line from this poem to write about, and here it is:
"We may never brush our teeth together again."
"We may never ________________ together again."
Today Linda is adding her line to the Progressive Poem.
I'm not sure how long this poem has been open on my desktop. It was posted on the Writer's Almanac in 2008, but I'm sure I haven't been reading it since then -- or have I? In any case, I love this poem about being where we are and appreciating the glory that is already around us. This morning I didn't go anywhere amazing to see birds; I just took a quick walk to the junior campus of the school where I work, and saw eighteen species. There was a Woodland Kingfisher on a soccer goal, and there were lots of birds munching on the flying ants whose discarded wings made a carpet under my feet.
is not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled
overlooks, towering clouds, but doing errands on a day
of driving rain, staying dry inside the silver skin of the car,
160,000 miles, still running just fine.
I've participated in the Progressive Poem every year starting with the first one in 2012. I was thinking that this year was my earliest appearance, but when I went back and looked at all of them, I saw that I wrote the seventh line in 2020. That was the year we used song lyrics. And this year we're writing couplets.
It's always hard to find the balance between lyrical description and making something happen. There's also a bit of a pattern to follow, so I'm thinking I want some kind of off-rhyme at least. I know that morning is coming, and we're starting to see colors (red and brown) as the sun comes up. While sunrise is always beautiful, the light increases the danger. There's a border ahead, and there's a group going there. Courage is required, and fortunately, they're carrying that.
Here's the poem so far, as it came to me, with my couplet in bold at the end.
cradled in stars, our planet sleeps,
clinging to tender dreams of peace
sister moon watches from afar,
singing lunar lullabies of hope.
almost dawn, I walk with others,
keeping close, my little brother.
hand in hand, we carry courage
escaping closer to the border.
My feet are lightning;
My heart is thunder.
Our pace draws us closer
to a new land of wonder.
I bristle against rough brush —
poppies ahead brighten the browns.
Morning light won’t stay away —
hearts jump at every sound.
You can keep following the poem's journey by visiting the blogs below:
April 1 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 2 Jone MacCulloch
April 3 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 4 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
April 5 Irene at Live Your Poem
April 6 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 7 Marcie Atkins
April 8 Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a God Forsaken Town
April 9 Karen Eastlund
April 10 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 11 Buffy Silverman
April 12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 13 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 14 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
April 15 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 16 Sarah Grace Tuttle
April 17 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
April 18 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
April 19 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
April 20 Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 21 Janet, hosted here at Reflections on the Teche
April 22 Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 23 Tanita Davis at (fiction, instead of lies)
April 24 Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone
April 25 Joanne Emery at Word Dancer
April 26 Karin Fisher-Golton at Still in Awe
April 27 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
April 28 Dave at Leap of Dave
April 29 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 30 Michelle Kogan at More Art for All
We went away for a few days and although I had scheduled some posts for while I was gone, I missed this month's SJT (Spiritual Journey Thursday). Our host, Bob, chose the topic "Everyday Miracles," and posted here.
It felt miraculous to get some much-needed time off at Lake Nabugabo, a beautiful and birdy spot. I took lots of pictures, and it's surprising how many of them were of the sky. (I didn't take any at night because I knew I couldn't do justice to the starscape, but take my word for it: that was gorgeous too!) Staring at the sky, so far above us, is therapeutic when so much down here on earth is challenging. So here are some of my sky photos and Mary Chapin Carpenter's song "Sometimes Just the Sky." Her words will also serve as poetry for today's National Poetry Month post.
Margaret has today's line for the Progressive Poem. Mine's coming up on Monday!
