Alison McGhee’s Poem of the Week

Poem of the Week, by Joyce Sutphen

Posted on by alisonmcghee

I’d love to see you in one (or both!) of our two remaining fall four-hour Zoom workshops this coming week: The Intuitive Leap on November 14, and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, on November 17. Click here and scroll down for all the details.

I read it in one sitting, my daughter said about a book. Here, you can have it. I too read it in one sitting and texted her this photo. What did you think? she asked, and I sensed her trepidation – what if I hadn’t liked it?

Broke my heart, I wrote. So beautiful and so painful.

I sensed her relief through the ether. The things and places and people we love can be hard to share, because what if others don’t feel the same way? This is why I can’t be in a book club, and why I usually don’t tell people my favorite movie because it’s often scorned. It hurts to think how I must have hurt people in my life by unknowingly scoffing at the things they hold dear.

Forgive Me John Keats, by Joyce Sutphen

The day we read your “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
I wasn’t able to make them see it.

I couldn’t get them to hear your voice, to
imagine you standing in a bare room,

slowly circling the urn, noticing
the lovers and the piper and the town,

and how it occurred to you that not one
detail would change; no one would ever grow

old there, the leaves would never fall. I tried
to get them to think about Art and Life–

how one is long and the other is short,
how death may be the mother of beauty.

But forgive me John Keats, I failed to let
them see your hand (still warm) held out to us.

Click here for more information about the wondrous poet Joyce Sutphen.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Posted on by alisonmcghee

I’d love to see you in one (or both!) of our two remaining fall four-hour Zoom workshops: The Intuitive Leap on November 14, and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, on November 17. Click here and scroll down for all the details.

We all walk around with a stone in our shoe, my writer friend G told me long ago, something I keep reminding myself of these days especially, as I watch people take sides, take sides, take sides, as if suffering and death are somehow more painful or more justified for some people than others.

We all hurt. We all hurt so much. We all carry so much, visible and not. There is no end of reasons to treat each other with great tenderness.

Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.

Click here for more information about poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Keith Leonard

Posted on by alisonmcghee

I’d love to see you in one (or both!) of our two remaining fall four-hour Zoom workshops: The Intuitive Leap on November 14, and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, on November 17. Click here and scroll down for all the details.

Last year, my parents sold The Homestead (150 acres of woods and fields and creeks and ancient farmhouse in far upstate New York), a huge endeavor which meant many hours of sorting through sixty-plus years of belongings, including a number of little ceramic bowls and planters with my initials on the bottom.

As I held them memory came back to me: of my high school pottery class and of the semester in college when I bought a pass to the basement pottery studio, hours of calm and peace spent sitting at the wheel, shaping clay into bowls.

I too was once my own storm–okay fine, I still am–but these tiny bowls remind me that calm and peace also live somewhere inside me.

Keel, by Keith Leonard

That half-moon smooth beam,
I think someone made it because
they had a spine and wanted
to make a stronger one,
and they sent the little skiff
out to sea for years,
and it went on boot-thudded
and shoal-scraped,
and it went on boot-thudded
and shoal-scraped, and it held
all the while like it holds
in the boatyard, though
it is belly-up on blocks
to keep out the rain, now,
and it does rain here,
and did again this morning
when I was walking your dog,
Love, thinking how I, too, 
have been boot-thudded
by love, I was my own
storm once, so young
and eager to raise the sail
of my wanting, and I just wanted
to tell you I love this old boat,
this settled-in thing.

Click here for more information on poet Keith Leonard.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Joseph Fasano

Posted on by alisonmcghee

There’s still room in both our two remaining fall four-hour Zoom workshops: The Intuitive Leap on November 14, and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, on November 17. Click here and scroll for all the details.

For me the moments of giving birth and adoption weren’t love, exactly, they were something way bigger than that. The instant knowledge, in my bones, that I’d do anything to keep this child alive. Give up my own life without hesitation. Protect this child against any threat, any danger. Do anything, anything to keep them safe, or make them feel safe. Even if I had to lie.

Words Whispered to a Child Under Siege 

No, we are not going to die.
The sounds you hear knocking the windows and chipping the paint
from the ceiling, that is a game
the world is playing.
Our task is to crouch in the dark as long as we can
and count the beats of our own hearts.
Good. Like that. Lay your hand
on my heart and I’ll lay mine on yours.
Which one of us wins
is the one who loves the game the most
while it lasts.
Yes, it is going to last.
You can use your ear instead of your hand.
Here, on my heart.
Why is it beating faster? For you. That’s all.
I always wanted you to be born
and so did the world.
No, those aren’t a stranger’s bootsteps in the house.
Yes, I’m here. We’re safe.
Remember chess? Remember
hide-and-seek?
The song your mother sang? Let’s sing that one.
She’s still with us, yes. But you have to sing
without making a sound. She’d like that.
No, those aren’t bootsteps.
Sing. Sing louder.
Those aren’t bootsteps.
Let me show you how I cried when you were born.
Those aren’t bootsteps.
Those aren’t sirens.
Those aren’t flames.
Close your eyes. Like chess. Like hide-and-seek.
When the game is done you get another life. 

Click here for more information on Joseph Fasano.


alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Louise Glück*

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Still room in both our two remaining fall four-hour Zoom workshops: The Intuitive Leap on November 14, and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, on November 17. Click here and scroll for all the details.

Half a row of a bookshelf here in the House Made of Books is dedicated to books from my childhood. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Heidi. Bambi. My Side of the Mountain. The Trumpet of the Swan. A strange little book called Editha’s Burglar. I don’t re-read these books; they’re embedded in my bones. Once in a while I run my fingers along their tattered, fraying covers.

A while ago I realized that these books are about children alone in the world, either literally or because they can’t find their place. Children like that sometimes grow up to be writers, sending words into the darkness, trying to un-lonely the lonely.


from October, by Louise Glück

I was young here. Riding
the subway with my small book
as though to defend myself against

this same world:

you are not alone,
the poem said,
in the dark tunnel.

*I wrote this blog a few days ago and found out late last night that Louise Glück died yesterday. I’ve loved her work forever and am so sad she’s gone. Click here for more information about her life and poetry.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Roger Robinson

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Click here for info on Baby Be, my brand-new book for parents and the little kids they’re crazy about. (I loved writing this book.) 

Everyone walks around with a stone in their shoe, my friend GE told me a long time ago, and ever since I’ve thought about that saying, and the rueful way he smiled when he said it. It softens me, when I’m out in the world, to look at everyone I meet as the keepers of secret stories I know nothing about.

There’s a treehouse high in an oak tree where I go in my mind, an imaginary place where nothing bad can reach me, a place I’m always safe. Because I carry a stone or few in my shoes too. Don’t you?

A Portable Paradise, by Roger Robinson

And if I speak of Paradise,
then I’m speaking of my grandmother
who told me to carry it always
on my person, concealed, so
no one else would know but me.
That way they can’t steal it, she’d say.
And if life puts you under pressure,
trace its ridges in your pocket,
smell its piney scent on your handkerchief,
turn its anthem under your breath.
And if your stresses are sustained and daily,
get yourself to an empty room – be it hotel,
hostel or hovel – find a lamp
and empty your paradise onto a desk:
your white sands, green hills and fresh fish.
Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope
of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.

Click here for more information about British poet Roger Robinson.

alisonmcghee.com

My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Justyna Bargielska

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Two new online half-day workshops just added to November’s schedule: The Intuitive Leap on November 14 and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame on November 17. For details, please click and scroll down. I’d love to see you in the zoom room!

In second grade one of my classmates died of a common childhood disease that most of us weathered without incident. One day he was at his desk in the row next to the door, and the next he wasn’t. In my mind I see him as he was in his Picture Day photo: dark hair parted on the side, sweater over shirt.

At seven, I thought about him every day. He and my grandfather shared the same old-fashioned first name, and it seemed strange that my grandfather could still be alive when my classmate wasn’t. I still think about that boy. When I became a mother I thought about his mother, and the silence surrounding his empty desk. When I read this poem below, I thought about him again. How we can know only the number of days we’ve already lived, not the number of days remaining.

The Great Plan B, by Justyna Bargielska (translated from the Polish by Maria Jastrzębska)

On my ninth birthday the scoutmaster
gave me a card with the number of days
I’d already lived. It was an extraordinary number
shimmering and dancing, one of those numbers
you can’t save
in notches on a wolf’s bone
or in letters or digits, you can only
speak it onto a recordable postcard or carve it in basalt.
Do you know what our odds are? Zero.
But I’ve learnt to play for time
as it’s the body no less which is left on the battlefield.

For more information about Polish poet Justyna Bargielska, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com

My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by David Hernandez

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Two spots still open in our nuts and bolts “how to move from draft to finished book” Plotting for Pantsers workshop on Tuesday, October 3, 6-9:30 pm CT. To register, and to check out our other two remaining November workshops, please click and scroll down. I’d love to see you in the zoom room!

I grew up waaaay out in the country in upstate New York, no town, no streetlights, nada. At night the sky glittered with thousands of stars. The Milky Way. The Big Dipper. Orion. Once in a while the Northern Lights.

If I stared at the sky long enough, stars were suddenly not stars but portals into another world. Pinpricks punched into black paper, that if somehow I could peer into would bring answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask.

Sincerely, the Sky, by David Hernandez

Yes, I see you down there
looking up into my vastness.

What are you hoping
to find on my vacant face,

there within the margins
of telephone wires?

You should know I am only
bright blue now because of physics:

molecules break and scatter
my light from the sun

more than any other color.
You know my variations—

azure at noon, navy by midnight.
How often I find you

then on your patio, pajamaed
and distressed, head thrown

back so your eyes can pick apart
not the darker version of myself

but the carousel of stars.
To you I am merely background.

You barely hear my voice.
Remember I am most vibrant

when air breaks my light.
Do something with your brokenness.

Click here for more information about poet and writer David Hernandez.

alisonmcghee.com

My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by V. Penelope Pelizzon

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Three spots still open in Plotting for Pantsers, Tuesday, October 3, 6-9:30 pm CT. To register, please click and scroll down. I’d love to see you in the zoom room!

Yesterday I had breakfast with my college Chinese teacher. He and his wife were in town from Vermont and we sat and talked softly about life, about teaching, about all the years between then and now. I told him that when I think of the word “teacher,” it is he who comes to mind. I still remember the first day of Chinese 101, freshperson year in college, a long table with twenty other teenagers. A tall man strode into the room and looked each of us in the eye.

“Nimen hao!” he barked.

In my memory, we all sat straight up, frozen with attention, half terrified, half transfixed. Next day, only eight students returned. I was one of them. Now the memories of tracing characters over and over, the hours and hours spent in the basement of Sunderland Language Lab, earphones clamped on my head, are like a dream. A dream of youth, and time, and a new world opened almost unknowingly because of a man who singlehandedly changed the course of my life with the power of his astonishing teaching.

To Certain Students
–  V. Penelope Pelizzon

On all the days I shut my door to light,
all the nights I turned my mind from sleep

while snow fell, filling the space between the trees
till dawn ran its iron needle through the east,

in order to read the scribblings of your compeers,
illiterate to what Martian sense they made

and mourning my marginalia’s failure to move them,
you were what drew me from stupor at the new day’s bell.

You with your pink hair and broken heart.
You with your knived smile. You who tried to quit

pre-law for poetry (“my parents will kill me”).
You the philosopher king. You who saw Orpheus

alone at the bar and got him to follow you home. You
green things, whose songs could move the oldest tree to tears.

Click here for more information on V. Penelope Pelizzon.

alisonmcghee.com.

My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Michael Bazzett

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Three spots still open in Plotting for Pantsers, Tuesday, October 3, 6-9:30 pm CT. For more details and to register, please click and scroll down. I’d love to see you in the zoom room!

The night we brought him home he sat on my lap, trembling, watching as we played gin rummy and drank Negronis. When I went to the kitchen he slipped a card off the draw pile and covered it with his paw. Then he took a sip of my cocktail. Now he’ s taught himself to speak Human and I’ve taught myself to speak Dog. We communicate via hoots, trills and barks on his side, tone of voice on mine, and without words we know exactly what the other is saying: Come out on the porch and sit with me, he says, and I’m going out for a little bit, but I’ll be back, I say.

Sometimes I put on music, pick him up in my arms and dance him around the living room. He loves it. So do I.

Moon, by Michael Bazzett

The night you climbed in bed and curled up close
because your hair’d been shorn and the cool
air of the winter house had found bare skin,
you fell asleep and grumbled into dreaming
like an old farmer after too much wine
until scrabbling toenails on the roof lifted
your head alertly in the dark. “Raccoon,”
I said. Your tail thumped twice under the sheets.
If you did not realize you were a dog
until that moment, I’m unsurprised. You looked
at me then said, “Imagine if I’d lain up there
in ambush.” Your glinting humor is so gentle
as to disappear at times, like how you fall
abashed when singing love songs to the moon.​ 

​Click here for more information about Michael Bazzett.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter