"The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus

Few poems have been as impactful as Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” something I didn’t know until this year, when a colleague and I taught a unit on ekphrastic poetry, poems written in response to works of art. She provided an art historian’s perspective on the Statue of Liberty. I brought in Lazarus’s poem, with its famous lines now written on a plaque on the sculpture’s base.

Lazarus wrote the poem as a donation to an effort to fund the statue, somewhat begrudgingly. She died in 1887, a year after the statue was dedicated. More than 15 years later, the once-forgotten poem found its home on the plaque through Lazarus’s friends, who wanted to give her a fitting memorial. But ultimately, the poem changed how people the world over view the Statue of Liberty. What was intended as a monument of “republican ideals” and the friendship between the U.S. and France became instead an international symbol of hope, of welcome, of the country’s open arms toward immigrants and refugees. And thus it remains.

Lesson over.

This is what poetry can do.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

"From Blossoms" by Li-Young Lee

How much do I love this poem? So much that I asked a friend to read it at my wedding reception, sometime after dinner and before dessert. At another friend’s wedding, I read it to the friends and family gathered around a Texas Hill Country swimming pool, not far from where farmers set out tables along the road to sell baskets of peaches. I read it to my classmates when I graduated from yoga teacher training and to my students just out of love and joy and in the spirit of sharing. And I knew it needed to go in the Poetry Box in the summer, peach season, which just happened to be the very weeks that we were out of town. It’s the first poem put up and taken down by someone else while we were gone. I wanted to share it at just the right time. I hope someone discovered it while ripe fruit waiting on the kitchen counter.

“O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days...”

"How Things Work" by Gary Soto

One of the delights of the Poetry Box is discovering other people who post poems each day or week, mostly on blogs and journals they keep sometimes for years. And thus, the delight of discovering poems I might not have found otherwise. Gary Soto’s poem “Oranges” is among my favorites and I never teach a poetry workshop without including it. But I didn’t know “How Things Work” before now, and now its quirky fun conversationalist lines will forever be part of me.

“If we buy a goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.”

"The Children" by Mark Jarman

In my experience, stories of summer are always stories of childhood. This poem captures that beautifully with its raspberries and hiding and soft fruit in the mouth. Mark Jarman was my professor in college, when I knew I loved poetry but didn’t know how to express that love. Thus, putting his work in the Poetry Box is a lovely coming full circle.

“We lie in bed at night, thinking about
The future, always the future...”

"Let the Day Go" by Grace Paley

It’s a time of peppers and basil and zinnias here, the rain departing and the heat arriving as we always knew it would. I didn’t expect to add another Grace Paley to the box so soon, but her matter-of-fact voice seemed right for this moment. In only days the leaves of the vegetables will start to crisp and the electric utilities will tell us to back off the a/c because the system can’t handle it.

“I had another day in mind
something like this one”

"To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy

This is one of those old classics, a poem that I have heard read aloud at gatherings, a poem I have been moved to have given to me by a colleague. After we rest, we get up again. We dive in again. We return to the work of the world.

“But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.”

"Coping" by Audre Lorde

It rained and rained and rained. And I chose this poem to capture it and for the little boys wondering at all the water.

“A young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch”

— Quote Source

"Da Capo" by Jane Hirshfield

There comes a time at the end of every academic year when the body and spirit are spent and it is time to begin again. And to make soup. That time for me was this week, and this is the poem I turned to.

“Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.”

"To Paula in Late Spring" by W.S. Merwin

Does it get any more beautiful than this?

“Let me imagine that we will come again
when we want to and it will be spring”

"The Good Life" by Tracy K. Smith

It was the week we had our first dinner guests, the world slowly opening up post vaccination. They were the same friends we had our final dinner party with just before the pandemic lockdown. A coming full circle. A version of the good life. And it made me think of another, earlier good life, one like the one described in this poem.

“...and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread
Hungry all the time”

— Quote Source

"I Stop Writing the Poem" by Tess Gallagher

A postcard with this poem on it has been tacked above. my spice shelf for more years than I can count. I love it for its simplicity and for its quiet celebration of womanhood and for how gently it contains deep loss. I came to know Tess Gallagher’s work through my love of her husband Raymond Carver’s work. When I was 26 years old I sent Gallagher a postcard expressing my love for Carver’s work and how it encouraged me to be a writer. And to my amazement, she wrote back. Among what she said was “Brava.”

“Nothing can stop
our tenderness”

"A Small, Needful Fact" by Ross Gay

William Carlos Williams famously wrote, “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” As I choose a poem each week for the box, I consider where poetry intersects with the news, where the concerns of the immediate moment meet the perpetual concerns of the human condition.

A verdict may come this week in the trial of the police officer who killed George Floyd with a knee to his neck. More black men have been killed by police since the trial began. Demonstrators against policy brutality take to the streets across the country. There remains so much work to be done. And there is this tender and devastating poem by Ross Gay to offer as reminder.

“...like making it easier
for us to breathe”

"A Small Moment" by Cornelius Eady

How often does a poem include the very date of the week it will be posted? And how, when you find one, do you resist? On the day I planned to post this, into my Facebook feed came a request for cheesy bread in Austin. I sent the post writer a suggestion for a Brazilian cheese bread sold at the farmer’s market. And I sent them this poem.

“It’s
April 14th. Spring, with five to ten
Degrees to go.”

Spring spring spring spring spring

"April" by Linda Pastan

The spring poems continue, as the garden greens and flowers pop up from plants that not long ago were brown and dejected. Which, of course, is why we love spring.

“I know what time and weather
will do to every leaf.”

Only, sadly, I forgot to snap the pic this week, so the poem sits in the dim light of my desk.

"Instructions on Not Giving Up" by Ada Limón

For several Sundays in a row, I’ve pulled this poem from its folder, itchy to put in the box. Bold and colorful and greedy with life, it’s everything spring offers. Little more than a month ago, yards across Austin were devastated by the worst winter storm in many decades. It seemed impossible that the plants would sprout again. But so much has seemed impossible in these months of pandemic and strife. Limón’s poem doesn’t deny “the mess of us, the hurt, the empty,” but it doesn’t deny the reasons to celebrate amid it all either—beginning with new leaves.

“...it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me”

"A Purification" by Wendell Berry

As I’ve gathered and saved poems to someday tuck into the poetry box, I’ve noticed it may be spring that elicits the most poems, or at least the most poems that remind us to revel and praise. For the start of this Spring 2021, I turn to Wendell Berry. A friend told me about making a fire to burn the old as spring arrived. Berry offers the parallel option: to dig a trench. Either way, our gazes turn toward what’s new.

“And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark”

"Ode to Drinking Water from My Hands" by Ross Gay

Truly, I just love Ross Gay. I love his sense of celebration and wonder. I love his connection to the world of gardens. I love how accessible his poems are while also saying important things. I love how wholeheartedly he laughs in every interview I hear with him. If space allowed, I would post his odes, one by one, for everyone to read. I began with this one.

“drifting while I drink
and drink and
my grandfather waters the flowers”

"Coconut" by Paul Hostovsky

I came across this charming poem somewhere unexpected and put it in the poetry box to remind us of joy. And I forgot to take its picture. The keys are from Courtney, who often knows just what a poem needs to accompany it.

“and what on earth
and where on earth
and this was happiness”

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver

To paraphrase a quote from elsewhere, Mary Oliver is always a good idea. As a difficult season moved toward its end, and I faced the ravaged remains of my garden after the freeze, I was drawn to this poem again. I read it at my father-in-law’s memorial service years ago, and I turn to it when I need to remember that letting things go is an essential part of being human.

“To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:”

"Shoulders" by Naomi Shihab Nye

The week that passed between Valentine’s Day and today was one of the more dramatic of my life, as Austin faced five back-to-back winter storms and the longest prolonged freeze in its history. There are many lessons from this time, but one of them is that we need each other. Neighbors, friends, strangers. The government may have failed us this week, but we didn’t fail each other. We held each other up. This poem entered the box with gratitude for my community, those on my street and those farther away.

“He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.”