There is such a gentleness and quiet in this poem, one that I have always loved. For some reason, it felt like the mood I wanted to strike as we entered 2021. While our first week has been anything but gentle and quiet, we can still wish for togetherness, shared meals, and the kindness of spirit evoked in this poem.
“Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road”
Getting to work with Naomi Shihab Nye was one of the great gifts of my time at the Michener Center, and she had a large influence on me and my desire to work in community settings. In this poem she invites us to leave the old year behind, something most of us are anxious to do in 2020.
“So much of any year is flammable”
What would this time of pandemic and quarantine be without our animals? Our two cats cajole, demand, burrow in, disappear, yowl in circles around our legs while we’re on Zoom, and take their places on the couch—and our laps—when we settle in for the evening. They structure our days. They offer their particular comfort. All around us, other cats are doing the same in other homes.
Jane Hirshfield, long among my very favorite poets, captures this in “A Small-Sized Mystery.”
“In this world where much is missing,
a cat fills only a cat-sized hole.”
My first year in graduate school I was fortunate enough to see the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai read at the University of Cincinnati. I don’t think I understood at that moment just what a gift that was, but when his poems cross my days I always think that I was lucky indeed to get to experience him in person in the final years of his life. This poem is one for aging, and for memory, and perhaps for the possibility of a late discovery in the hard year that was 2020.
“But the world is beautifully made for doing good
and for resting, like a park bench.”
Artwork by Courtney Tucker, poetry collaborator extraordinaire
“Oranges” is perhaps my favorite poem to teach, a poem that captures the hearts of all, no matter their age or background. And as an instructor it never fails to make its point: We can relate an experience rich in emotion and resonance without ever telling our reader what to think. We just have to evoke it through detail and description. A boy who watches the front porch light, a face bright with rouge, the jingle of the bell in a drugstore, an orange on the counter. We understand it all.
A neighbor from a few blocks over emailed me when this appeared in the poetry box. “Thank you for the beautiful poem,” she said. It is beautiful. It is a marvel.
“When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
”
Simply put, this poem makes me laugh. It’s been a long year, and we could all use some laughter as we enter December. Grace Paley’s work always holds the rare balance of glancing wryly at the absurdities of the world while maintaining a fierce commitment to making it better. This, too, is something we could all use right now.
“I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead”
I discovered Philip Terman’s poetry at the Chautauqua Institution, where he read one summer afternoon on the wide front porch of the literary arts building alongside my friend Maureen Ryan Griffin. I appreciate the soul woven through his poems, and I particularly thought this one was appropriate for a long holiday weekend when many of us will find family gatherings replaced by swaths of time.
“...Some days
you have to unplug the phone and step
out to the porch and rock all afternoon...”
The fly agrees.
Though I encountered it earlier, this poem has been making the rounds during this election season (though making the rounds is all relative, isn’t it?). It’s no wonder. This year, this season, we have been dealt so many reminders that the world can be a terrible place. That the awfulness is always with us. Is this nihilistic? Maybe, but maybe not, when we come back to hope, as this poem does in the end.
“This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.”
In September 2020 I installed a poetry box in front of my house, and every Sunday I update it with a new poem that those who walk past can read on display or by taking a copy. My hope is to share some beauty and hope and my lifelong love of poetry. Thanks for wandering by.
a tiny spot for poetry in Southeast Austin
What a week we lived! Long, difficult, requiring a kind of patience and trust few of us come to naturally. And then on Saturday evening Kamala Harris took the stage as Vice President-elect, wearing the white suit of a suffragist, claiming her mixed race heritage, her powerful voice, and offering us a new vision for the future. In her honor, along with Stacey Abrams and the legions of African American women who once again came strongly to the polls, I chose Lucille Clifton for the poetry box.
“i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand”
Election week, I let Langston Hughes have the final word. His poem, “Let America Be America Again,” speaks to the ideal we hold and fail repeatedly to realize, especially when it comes to racial equity in our country. And yet, to the polls we go, with hope again for redemption.
“We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!”
It’s been a dry autumn in Austin, but the week of 10/25 rain was in the forecast, and it seemed appropriate to offer a praise song to it. It was also appropriate to share the words of Joy Harjo, our first Native American poet laureate. Here is her poem.
“Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.”
Early voting began and lines wrapped around buildings on the first day. The U.S. brooded and waited. This poem, written for a celebration of the 19th Amendment for the Project 19 initiative, was exactly what the week called for. I saved my “I Voted” sticker for it.
“And even one letter, one
vote can make the difference for every bright thing.”
When the pandemic arrived this spring and threw us into rapid change, we scrambled to put Free Minds classes online. Our first night back in a virtual format, we wanted to offer some space for students to process the intense time we’d found ourselves in. As creative writing instructor, I set about finding a poem to guide us. I flipped through the usual sources, struggling to find what would speak to the moment. Then I pulled Ellen Bass’s Like a Beggar from the shelf and came upon “The World Has Need of You.” It was the right poem for that evening and the months to come.
“It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little.”
As I considered what poem to share for my second week in the poetry box, I got the word that Tony Abbott, beloved Davidson College professor and fixture of the Charlotte, NC, poetry scene, had died. Tony was my teacher when I was in my mid-20s, in evening classes he offered to the community, driving from Davidson to Charlotte just to be in the company of other poets. I was young and unsure of myself, desperate to learn how to express myself on the page, and Tony made a warm and embracing space for me to come to. Without question, I am the writer and teacher I am today because of the sense of welcome Tony made for me and for the way he modeled a life in which an enthusiastic love of words served as guide. I was able to be at Tony’s last poetry reading, at Main Street Books in Davidson in 2018, an event infused with love and language. Tony’s glee at sharing his poems with his community was palpable and I carried it with me back to my life in Austin, grateful to know him. His poem “Leavings” was the perfect poem to show my appreciation of Tony and all he brought to the world.
“Bless you, older brother.
May my leavings be so rich.”
Leavings
(for my father)
Outside my window a gnarled old oak
leans precariously on his elbow
snarling at his successors
wrapped smugly in their canvas diapers
and waiting
to be lowered
into the hard winter earth.
The other arm is gone,
the socket painted closed
with that preservative we use
to keep the old from rotting.
Knots bulge from his side like tumors.
Still
I think I like him better
than all those thin skinned babies
packed lightly
in their little holes.
He’s not so predictable.
In the spring he’ll flower strangely
and dance his own configurations
in the wind.
Bless you, older brother.
May my leavings be so rich.
from The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat (1989)
by Anthony Abbott, who died this week
and leaves a legacy in his great love of poems
It felt a little existential to decide the first poem that goes into the poetry box. And while I have lists and lists of things I want to include, I knew I wanted to begin with Mary Olivers’s perennial favorite, “Wild Geese.” It’s the poem I’d be most likely to tattoo on my inner arm (“soft animal” read the temporary tattoo I received from Firefly Creative Writing a few years ago and that I hold out as the perfect post-pandemic first ink). It’s the one my friends who aren’t big readers of poetry always love. It’s the one that Oliver herself said came to her as if a prayer, a bit of divine intercession. It will always be one of my favorites. You can hear her reading it and other poems on Krista Tippett’s On Being website.
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”