poems

Poem of the Week, by Lianne Spidel

Posted on by alisonmcghee

The workshops I teach, at my non-traditional, designed-for-working-adults university, are filled with all kinds of characters, with characters meaning people: tattoo artists, auto mechanics, journalists, pearl-wearing grandmothers, cops, military vets, hairdressers, graphic designers and you name it, you get the picture. Within the first class, friendships and alliances are formed. I can’t even call them unlikely alliances, because they aren’t. People are people, first and always. “A gentle affinity.”
Summer School
           – Liann Spidel
Because I needed to know for a poem,
I asked the science teacher sitting
next to me (the one they teased
about his massive chest) to explain
to me the composition of a cloud.
He had already told me he was there
only for the credit, a step up
on the salary scale. His wife
wanted a bigger house, the kids
were growing, he was overwhelmed

with bills and coaching.
I said, “When you’re my age
it will empty out.
There’s too much, then all
at once there’s almost nothing.”

When he answered me about the cloud,
his voice went soft:
“Moisture on dust,” and when
I asked him “in” or “on,”
he said it didn’t matter

either way. We never shared
a coffee and spoke only
of casual things, a still viable
jock and a graying grandmother
pretending to concentrate on the course

content, side by side through indolent
hours, easy in the peaceful co
existence a couple of prepositions
had provided–a gentle affinity,
pleasure like moisture on dust.

—

​For more information on Lianne Spidel, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lianne-spidel​

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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Patricia Smith

Posted on by alisonmcghee

When the Burning Begins
– Patricia Smith
for Otis Douglas Smith, my father

The recipe for hot water cornbread is simple:
Cornmeal, hot water. Mix till sluggish,
then dollop in a sizzling skillet.
When you smell the burning begin, flip it.
When you smell the burning begin again,
dump it onto a plate. You’ve got to wait
for the burning and get it just right.

Before the bread cools down,
smear it with sweet salted butter
and smash it with your fingers,
crumple it up in a bowl
of collard greens or buttermilk,
forget that I’m telling you it’s the first thing
I ever cooked, that my daddy was laughing
and breathing and no bullet in his head
when he taught me.

Mix it till it looks like quicksand, he’d say.
Till it moves like a slow song sounds.

We’d sit there in the kitchen, licking our fingers
and laughing at my mother,
who was probably scrubbing something with bleach,
or watching Bonanza,
or thinking how stupid it was to be burning
that nasty old bread in that cast iron skillet.
When I told her that I’d made my first-ever pan
of hot water cornbread, and that my daddy
had branded it glorious, she sniffed and kept
mopping the floor over and over in the same place.

So here’s how you do it:

You take out a bowl, like the one
we had with blue flowers and only one crack,
you put the cornmeal in it.
Then you turn on the hot water and you let it run
while you tell the story about the boy
who kissed your cheek after school
or about how you really want to be a reporter
instead of a teacher or nurse like Mama said,
and the water keeps running while Daddy says

You will be a wonderful writer
and you will be famous someday and when
you get famous, if I wrote you a letter and
sent you some money; would you write about me?

and he is laughing and breathing and no bullet
in his head. So you let the water run into this mix
till it moves like mud moves at the bottom of a river,
which is another thing Daddy said, and even though
I’d never even seen a river,
I knew exactly what he meant.
Then you turn the fire way up under the skillet,
and you pour in this mix
that moves like mud moves at the bottom of a river,
like quicksand, like slow song sounds.

That stuff pops something awful when it first hits
that blazing skillet, and sometimes Daddy and I
would dance to those angry pop sounds,
he’d let me rest my feet on top of his
while we waltzed around the kitchen
and my mother huffed and puffed
on the other side of the door. When you are famous,
Daddy asks me, will you write about dancing
in the kitchen with your father?
I say everything I write will be about you,
then you will be famous too. And we dip and swirl
and spin, but then he stops.
And sniffs the air.

The thing you have to remember
about hot water cornbread
is to wait for the burning
so you know when to flip it, and then again
so you know when it’s crusty and done.
Then eat it the way we did,
with our fingers,
our feet still tingling from dancing.
But remember that sometimes the burning
takes such a long time,
and in that time,
sometimes,

poems are born.



—

​For more information on Patricia Smith, please click here: http://www.wordwoman.ws/​


—
My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by William Butler Yeats

Posted on by alisonmcghee

The Song of Wandering Aengus
– William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.




—

​For more information on Yeats, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-butler-yeats​


—
My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Jeffrey Harrison

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Renewal
– Jeffrey Harrison

At the Department of Motor Vehicles
to renew my driver’s license, I had to wait
two hours on one of those wooden benches
like pews in the church of Latter Day
Meaninglessness, where there is no
stained glass (no windows at all, in fact),
no incense other than stale cigarette smoke
emanating from the clothes of those around me,
and no sermon, just an automated female voice
calling numbers over a loudspeaker.
And one by one the members of our sorry
congregation shuffled meekly up to the pitted
altar to have our vision tested or to seek
redemption for whatever wrong turn we’d taken,
or pay indulgences, or else be turned away
as unworthy of piloting our own journey.
But when I paused to look around, using my numbered
ticket as a bookmark, it was as if the dim
fluorescent light had been transformed
to incandescence. The face of the Latino guy
in a ripped black sweatshirt glowed with health,
and I could tell that the sulking white girl
accompanied by her mother was brimming
with secret excitement to be getting her first license,
already speeding down the highway, alone,
with all the windows open, singing.

Poem of the Week, by Ted Kooser

Posted on by alisonmcghee

A Washing of Hands
– Ted Kooser

She turned on the tap and a silver braid
unraveled over her fingers.
She cupped them, weighing that tassel,
first in one hand and then the other,
then pinched through the threads
as if searching for something, perhaps
an entangled cocklebur of water,
or the seed of a lake. A time or two
she took the tassel in both hands,
squeezed it into a knot, wrung out
the cold and the light, and then, at the end,
pulled down hard on it twice,
as if the water were a rope and she was
ringing a bell to call me, two bright rings,
though I was there.



—

For more information on Ted Kooser, please click here: http://tedkooser.net/


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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Wallace Stevens

Posted on by alisonmcghee

The Snow Man, by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.


—

For more information on Wallace Stevens, please click here:


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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Barbara Crooker

Posted on by alisonmcghee

In the Middle
– Barbara Crooker

of a life that’s as complicated as everyone else’s,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather’s
has stopped at 9:20; we haven’t had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don’t ring. One day you look out the window,
green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
and evening’s slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between,
his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We’ll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time.

—
For more information on Barbara Crooker, please click here: http://www.barbaracrooker.com/
—
My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Coleman Barks

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Hummingbird Sleep
– Coleman Barks

A hummingbird sleeps among the wonders.
Close to dark, he settles on a roosting limb
and lowers his body temperature
to within a few degrees of the air’s own.

As the bird descends into torpor,
he assumes his heroic sleep posture,
head back, tilted beak pointing to the sky,
angling steep, Quixotic, Crimean.

This noctivation, the ornithologist word for it,
is very like what bears do through the winter.
Hummingbirds live the deep drop every night.
You can yell in his face and shake the branch.

Nothing. Gone. Where? What does he dream of?
He dreams he is the great air itself, the substance
he swims in every day, and the rising light
coming back to be his astonishing body.

—

For more information on Coleman Barks, please click here: http://www.colemanbarks.com/

—
My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Archibald MacLeish

Posted on by alisonmcghee

The Young Dead Soldiers, by Archibald MacLeish

The young dead soldiers do not speak.

Nevertheless, they are heard in
the still houses: who has not
heard them?

They have a silence that speaks for
them at night and when the clock
counts.

They say: We were young. We
have died. Remember us.

They say: We have done what we
could but until it is finished it is not
done.

They say: We have given our lives
but until it is finished no one can
know what our lives gave.

They say: Our deaths are not ours;
they are yours; they will mean what
you make them.

They say: Whether our lives and
our deaths were for peace and a
new hope or for nothing we cannot
say: it is you who must say this.

They say: We leave you our deaths.
Give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We
have died. Remember us.

 

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F​or more information on Archibald MacLeish, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/archibald-macleish​

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My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

The Poetry Hut

Posted on by alisonmcghee

How to Make a Poetry Hut

First, read through some of the thousands of poems you’ve copied down over the years. Do not be surprised when you end up spending the entire morning doing this.

Find this one, by Hafiz:

With that Moon Language

Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud,
otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world
is dying to hear?

Think about it, that great pull to connect. Think about how the longer you live, the more your life winnows itself down to wanting only that. Only connection. How it happens more intensely now, maybe because when you feel that pull toward someone, you don’t try to hide it. You talk, you listen, you touch. You don’t hold back.

Decide then and there to build a poetry hut. Ask your handyman friend Doug to build one for you. Laugh when he says, “I would consider it a public service, Alison.”

Paint the poetry hut when Doug delivers it. Dig a hole in your front yard with a spade, and when the hole gets too deep to lift the dirt out, kneel down and dig it out with your hands. Dig it as deep as your arms are long. Be glad that you manage to avoid utility wires and pipes.

Nail the hut to a 4×4 post. Heave the whole thing, hut and post, into the hole. Tilt it this way and that until it’s straight. Or straight enough.

Go buy some Quik-crete. Pour it into the red pail in the basement. Add some water. Stir it up immediately  with a spoon. As soon as it’s mixed, scrape it into the post hole and mound it around the post.

Go to Hunt ‘n Gather and wander around the clutter of rooms until you find enough old children’s blocks to spell out P O E M S. Go to Bryant Hardware and buy some blue putty, the kind used to stick posters to walls. Stick a blob of blue putty on the back of each letter block and then press the puttied blocks onto the front of the poetry hut.

Go back to your labyrinth of poetry, found everywhere in your house: in books, on scraps of paper, in your computer, in your heart.

Choose a few of your favorites and jigsaw-puzzle them into a columned file labeled Poetry Hut Poems. Print them out on colored paper. Scissor them apart.

Roll them up like tiny scrolls, offerings to the gods, and tie them with scraps of ribbon. Put them in a basket. Make a sign that says “Help yourself to a poem” and put the basket and the sign in the poetry hut.

Peer into the hut every day or so. Realize that 10-15 poems are disappearing per day. Replenish the basket when the supply dwindles. Be surprised and happy when small notes start appearing in the poetry hut, thank-you’s and smiley faces and even a “Haiku 4 U.”

Watch unseen from your porch as a woman with long burnished hair walks by with her dog, stops, opens the poetry hut door, selects a poem, unscrolls it, reads it, shakes her head and smiles, puts the poem in her back pocket.

Keep thinking about it, this great pull in us, to connect.