Alison McGhee’s Poem of the Week | Alison McGhee

Poem of the Week, by V. Penelope Pelizzon

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 September 9 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

Poem of the Week, by Tony Hoagland

Posted on September 2 by alisonmcghee

Four spots open in Memoir in Moments: Writing Your Life, next Friday, September 8, 1-4:30 CT. To register, please click and scroll down. I’d love to see you in the zoom room.

Eight years ago, on a whim, I sat down at my dining table and hand-wrote myself a letter. Dear Alison, it began, here are some things you did in 2015. Each entry, such as loved your children and wrote and rewrote that book and stayed in good shape despite plantar fasciitis, holds within it an arc of emotion and effort and accomplishment. I read it again just now. Everything I tried to do that year came rushing back over me, along with a sense of being just one of a long line of humans who are all just trying.

Which brings me to this beautiful farewell poem by Tony Hoagland, especially the ending lines, which I had to read twice to understand were not an admonition but a gentle acknowledgment to himself that he had been a good man who should have been kinder to himself.

Distant Regard, by Tony Hoagland

If I knew I would be dead by this time next year
I believe I would spend the months from now till then
writing thank-you notes to strangers and acquaintances,
telling them, “You really were a great travel agent,”
or “I never got the taste of your kisses out of my mouth.”
or “Watching you walk across the room was part of my destination.”
It would be the equivalent, I think,
of leaving a chocolate wrapped in shiny foil
on the pillow of a guest in a hotel–
“Hotel of earth, where we resided for some years together,”
I start to say, before I realize it is a terrible cliche, and stop,
and then go on, forgiving myself in a mere split second
because now that I’m dying, I just go
forward like water, flowing around obstacles
and second thoughts, not getting snagged, just continuing
with my long list of thank-yous,
which seems to naturally expand to include sunlight and wind,
and the aspen trees which gleam and shimmer in the yard
as if grateful for being soaked last night
by the irrigation system invented by an individual
to whom I am quietly grateful.
Outside it is autumn, the philosophical season,
when cold air sharpens the intellect;
the hills are red and copper in their shaggy majesty.
The clouds blow overhead like governments and years.
It took me a long time to understand the phrase “distant regard,”
but I am grateful for it now,
and I am grateful for my heart,
that turned out to be good, after all;
and grateful for my mind,
to which, in retrospect, I can see
I have never been sufficiently kind.

Click here for more information about beloved poet Tony Hoagland.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Rainer Maria Rilke

Posted on August 26 by alisonmcghee

I’d love to see you in one or both of next week’s afternoon workshops, The Intuitive Leap or Memoir in Moments. Click here and scroll for all the details.

That woman sitting on the bar stool with a martini and a magazine, or alone on her couch spinning imaginary people into books, or flying solo around the world: she is me. But won’t you be lonely? is a question I’ve heard a lot in my life, and I don’t know how to answer it, because isn’t everyone, somewhere inside themselves, lonely?

It’s rare to be deeply understood. Rare to meet a kindred spirit who understands when you need to jump in your car and drive alone for thousands of miles, or go to a movie alone, or hike alone. Falling in love doesn’t change this conundrum. It took me a long time to understand that my heart’s silent, fierce response to a disappointed partner —What you want from me I cannot give you–did not mean I was at fault. Thirty years ago I might not have understood this beautiful poem below, but I do now.

Pathways, by Rainer Maria Rilke

Understand, I’ll slip quietly
away from the noisy crowd
when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.

I’ll pursue solitary pathways
through the pale twilit meadows,
with only this one dream:

You come too.

Click here for more information about Rainer Maria Rilke.

*Today’s post first appeared in 2019.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Joseph Fasano

Posted on August 19 by alisonmcghee

I’d love to see you in our Freedom of Form workshop next Thursday, August 24. Four hours, $100 or pay as you’re able. Click and scroll for all the details.

I volunteer as a trained crisis counselor via text. Everyone who reaches out to us is in pain, much of it hard to witness. The other day I talked with a teen who’s being bullied in a particularly vicious way. In our time together I shared resources and we brainstormed ways they could find relief and build connections. The teen’s quiet, hurting resolve went straight to my heart. Over and over I told them how courageous and self-aware they were.

What I wanted to do was hold that child close and reassure them they are perfect exactly as they are. In the days following our conversation I keep sending invisible messages to them through the invisible air, tiny lamps to light their way, hoping they can somehow feel the love beaming toward them.

Urgent Message to a Friend in Pain, by Joseph Fasano

I have to tell you
a little thing about living
(I know, I know, but hear me)
a little thing I’ve carried
in the dark:
Remember when you saw the stars of childhood,
when you knelt alone and thought
that they were there for you,
lamps that something held
to prove your beauty?
They are they are they are they
are they are.

Click here for more information about Joseph Fasano.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Annie Kantar

Posted on August 12 by alisonmcghee

Our summer and fall four-hour workshops are coming right up. I’d love to see you in one! Click here and scroll down for all the details.

Last week my daughter and I were naming dreams that won’t happen because of time, because of choices, because we can only live one life at a time. Like my dream of living in Vermont, I said, and my other dream of living on an island off the coast of Maine, and my other other dream of being a forest ranger in the Adirondacks.

Sometimes other selves rattle around inside me, wanting out, wanting to live those other lives. But decades and decades into this one life, here I am, still trying to write something beautiful, still trying to learn how to live with all my imperfections.

First Thing’s, by Annie Kantar

—to make the person

who’ll write the poems,

the poet said—and, answering

a question I

must have asked

but can’t recall: You learn

to live with your imperfect

self—then went

back to her dinner,

as if that were all.

Click here for more information on poet and translator Annie Kantar.

alisonmcghee.com.
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Posted on August 5 by alisonmcghee

My new book Dear Brother is in the world as of Tuesday! Click here for more info and/or to register for its launch party.

Maybe you, like me, talk to the people you love who aren’t on the planet anymore. Maybe you look up and oh, there she is, coming toward you at the end of the block, waving…but wait, no, it’s just someone who looks like her. Maybe you see a cardinal, or an eagle, or a small red fox, and that’s the sign you and your loved one agreed upon, so you know they’re still with you.

And maybe you’re also like me in that sometimes a sign isn’t enough. Sometimes you just want them right back there in the room with you, nodding off in the big chair, or telling you a story, because you need their presence, their courage, their steady-as-a-rock-ness.

The Courage That My Mother Had, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!—
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

Click here for more information about Edna St. Vincent Millay.

alisonmcghee.com

My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Faith Shearin

Posted on July 29 by alisonmcghee

Click here to peruse our summer and fall one-day online writing workshops. I’d love to see you in the zoom room.

There is a town in North Ontario
Dream comfort memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there

College is the place I go in my heart when I need a place to go: Maple leaves ironed between wax paper. Mountains turned to flame in the fall. My mailbox for four years: 2947. My i.d. #: 84337. Blue sky winter afternoons. A narrow bed with a blue wool blanket. A library carrel. The language lab, headphones over my ears. Dancing at the Alibi. Chinese characters written over and over and over. The boy who wore the army jacket and set up a shrine to John Prine in his dorm room. The girl who laced her hiking boots with red laces.

For me it was college, but it doesn’t have to be. A person, a place, an experience, a single moment: and suddenly the roof of your life lifts off and blows away.

Directions to Your College Dorm, by Faith Shearin

All hallways still lead to that room
with its ceiling so high it might have been

a sky, and your metal bed by the window,
and your crate of books. First,

you must walk across the deep
winter campus to find your friend

throwing snowballs that float
for years. Then, open our letters:

shelves of words. You will find
our coats, our awkwardness, the tickets

from the trains that witnessed
our confusion. Love was the place

where we became as naked
as morning; it was dangerous and

dappled and we visited its shores
with suitcases and maps from childhood.

I remember our shadows growing
on your wall while a candle

swallowed itself. You kept a single
glass of water on a desk and it trembled

whenever we danced.

Click here for more information about Faith Shearin.

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter (my poetry podcast)

Poem of the Week, by Danusha Laméris

Posted on July 22 by alisonmcghee

Twin Citians, please come to my Dear Brother book party at the Red Balloon on Tuesday, August 8 at 6:30 pm. I’d love to see you there!

The other day a wave of missing my friend John Zdrazil, who died two years ago, flooded through me and I just wanted to hear his voice and that big laugh. Feel the sun of his presence shining on me. So I picked up my phone and scrolled through a few of our many years of texts. My God, he was hilarious. And soulful. And smart. And he just loved me so much, exactly as I am, which is so rare in life.

I miss you, Z’driz, I texted him, and listened to the swoosh as it sent itself to wherever he is now.

Late that night I picked up my phone again to read more of our messages to each other, but everything was gone, erased, deleted, except those four words: I miss you, Z’driz. All our conversations, all our laughter, all the books we loved and everything we said about them, invisible now. Floating somewhere in the scrim between worlds.

How Often One Death, by Danusha Laméris

How often one death carries another. Like when
my painting teacher, Eduardo, died, and the cat

he’d had for years succumbed the same month
to the same rare ailment. Or how when they buried

my friend’s grandfather in Japan, the pond-full of koi
he’d tended all his life, sickened, turned belly-up.

Who or what is in our keeping? A house, unoccupied,
quickly turns itself, sinks earthward.

Long-married couples are known to give up
the ghost within hours of each other.

Think of the hum that holds the walls together,
the roof high, keeps the rot at bay a little longer.

As surely as we, too, are pinned here by others,
whose presence urges our cells to replicate, our lives

more single than we imagine. Even the woman
I can’t see, who lives in a studio on the other side

of the wall. She washes a dish and the water runs through
the pipes between us, like blood through the arteries

of a single heart.

Click here for more information about the wondrous Danusha Laméris.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Cecilia Woloch

Posted on July 15 by alisonmcghee

Click here for a list of our summer and fall half-day workshops. I’d love to see you in the zoom room.

When I first moved to Minneapolis, I taught Mandarin at a big city high school where many of my students were recent immigrants from South Asia. I was especially close to a boy from Laos, a boy full of laughter and jokes, intensely smart and talented, who longed for his home country. He used to tell me stories about its beauty, the colors and fruits and simplicity of his life there despite a near-total lack of money. Once he told me that when he was sick, his mother would feed him a precious egg to help him get better.

A single egg.

All these years since, I’ve thought of my student and that story. As I sit here in my kitchen, where I cook myself two eggs nearly every day, I’m thinking of him again.

Ghost Hunger, by Cecilia Woloch

Sometimes when I wipe the bowl with my bread
when I scramble one egg, two eggs, with milk
when I stir the kasha until it’s thick
when I sit at the table and bow my head
I think of how my father ate
how he bowed his head—though he didn’t pray
at least not in the usual way of grace
but always that posture over his plate
of supplication, gratitude—
the hungry shoulders of the boy
who’d stuffed his mouth with pulled grass once
who never got over that there was enough
Sometimes I wipe the bowl with my bread
Sometimes I feed his ghost this prayer

Click here for more information about Cecilia Woloch.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter