Showing posts with label poem. Show all posts

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Poem by Mary Oliver
Photography by Olivia Rae James.

I had nothing to lose and I had nothing to prove

Yesterday my friend met up with me during my lunch break to check out the Poetry Foundation's free exhibit, Images of Afghanistan. The exhibit showcased landays, a form of oral folk poetry that is often one of the few forms of expression for women in Afghanistan. The exhibit is over now, but definitely check out the articles on Pulitzercenter.org because these poems should be read.

The exhibit was small and simple but informative. What I really enjoyed was the space, the physical building of the Poetry Foundation. I had applied for an internship there a few years ago to no success so that's a little awkward now. But man, wouldn't it be amazing to work in that space. I will definitely have to come back during my lunch breaks to sit and read some Adrienne Rich in that library. Yep, Chicago has some gems.

Post title from I Wanna Go by Summer Heart.

To be idle and blessed

This weekend I picked rasberries and fed goats.

Now a poem for you.

Tell me

Tell me,
what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver (The Summer Day)

Ode to junior year.

I am
a series of
small victories
and large defeats
and I am as
amazed
as any other
that
I have gotten
from there to
here

-Charles Bukowski

Our past is pressing up against us

our hearts are off beat

and if we took just a moment to tune into the sound of our breath

we’d be able to hear our divinity

pulsing up our feet through the concrete streets of our cities

and we would remember

that we be stars brilliant suns that shine at high noon

earth shattering revelations eclipsed on the edge of new moons

but we give up too soon

leave our dreams dead and deferred on the side of a road

and forget that while our bodies may have been property

our souls could never be sold

that’s why we’re the greatest story ever told

—	Remember by Mayda del Valle

Wait in that space

there is a place in the heart that

will never be filled

a space

and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times
times

we will know it

we will know it
more than
ever

there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and

we will wait
and
wait

in that space.

- Charles Bukowski

I'll be here til the colors fade

My friend and I have recently started a wordpress for writing (Waiting for an Echo). Basically we are trying to write more. My friend Jody is actually quite talented, so do check it out. Side note, reading and writing writing poetry is extremely therapeutic. Everyone should do it.

Hope you enjoy your Wednesday! I be wishing I was outside in this beautiful weather instead of writing this paper.

Post title from Sing Loud by Alpha Rev. They are great live. Beautiful art by Richard Leach.

Blood was running down his face

Let's talk about how Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes met. The following comes from her journal... I don't know about you but I definitely do not write in my journal this eloquently. But then again, I don't think I've ever had to write down an experience quite like this.

"Then the worst thing happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room, but no one told me, came over and was looking hard in my eyes and it was Ted Hughes. . . .

And then it came to the fact that I was all there, wasn't I, and I stamped and screamed yes. . . and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hair band off, my lovely red hairband scarf which had weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked.

And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face."

Trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner.

I'm taking a 20th century feminist poetry class, and it may be the best class I've ever taken at Northwestern. We recently read Gwendolyn Brooks, and oof that woman is a genius. The following is particularly haunting and eye-opening, part of her collection of poems entitled "Annie Allen."

Beverly Hills, Chicago
"and the people live till they have white hair" –E.M. Price

The dry brown coughing beneath their feet,
(Only a while, for the handyman is on his way)
These people walk their golden gardens.
We say ourselves fortunate to be driving by today.

That we may look at them, in their gardens where
The summer ripeness rots. But not raggedly.
Even the leaves fall down in lovelier patterns here.
And the refuse, the refuse is a neat brilliancy.

When they flow sweetly into their houses
With softness and slowness touched by that everlasting gold,
We know what they go to. To tea. But that does not mean
They will throw some little black dots into some water and add sugar and the juice of the
cheapest lemons that are sold,

While downstairs that woman's vague phonograph bleats, "Knock me a kiss."
And the living all to be made again in the sweatingest physical manner
Tomorrow....Not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble.
Merely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner.

Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease to be. And
Sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours.
It is just that so often they live till their hair is white.
They make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers....

Nobody is furious. Nobody hates these people.
At least, nobody driving by in this car.
It is only natural, however, that it should occur to us
How much more fortunate they are than we are.

It is only natural that we should look and look
At their wood and brick and stone
And think, while a breath of pine blows,
How different these are from our own.

We do not want them to have less.
But it is only natural that we should think we have not enough.
We drive on, we drive on.
When we speak to each other our voices are a little gruff.

What secrets do your bones hold?

Abuela, how did you pray before someone told you who your god should be?
How did you hold the earth in your hands and thank her for its fecundity?
Did the sea wash away your sadness?
How did you humble yourself before your architect?
Did your lower yourself to your knees or rock to the rhythm of ocean waves like I do?
Grandma, how did you pray ?

Some say faith is for the weak or small minded, but I search for your faith everywhere,
I need it to reassemble myself whole from these shards of Chicago ice and island breezes
So I can rewrite the songs of your silence and pain,
Your lonely fists broken toothed smile and burdens into a medley of mantras.

- Faith Like Yours by Mayda del Valle

I love Descendancy and To All the Boys I've Loved Before. I've been listening to these on repeat. Some people are so so talented.

The in between bits

1. Yesterday I watched Like Crazy for the second time and finished The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood... I would not recommend doing those two things on the same day. I was an emotional mess. You know that feeling you get when all you can do is lay in bed and listen to The Trapeze Swinger by Iron & Wine on repeat? Oh wait... ugh why do I have so many feelings?

The poem from Like Crazy:
I thought I understood it
That I could grasp it
But I didn’t, not really
I knew the smudgeness of it
The pink-slippered-all-containered-semi-precious eagerness of it
I didn’t realize it would sometimes be more than whole
The wholeness was a rather luxurious idea
Because its the halves that halve you in half
Didn’t know, don’t know about the in between bits
The gory bits of you
And gory bits of me

2. Alright enough with the feelings. I really like this music video of We Found Love by Rihanna. Please don't judge me. This music video is actually really good... its like a condensed episode of Skins (and reminds me slightly of this music video).

Your life is your life

I love this commercial and the poem by Charles Bukowski (The Laughing Heart). Yeah I know, they are just trying to sell you jeans, but it's working on me, and their jeans are great. Check out this one too, my other fav.

The Dead Woman

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall live on.

For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but
I shall stay alive,
because above all things
you wanted me indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.

-Pablo Neruda