"Among Women" by Marie Ponsot -- and more

While this newsletter has been quiet these past months of recovery and finding my way back after losing my mom, the Poetry Box has had its share of poems. They’ve mostly come from the suggestions of others. The surprise gift of a book of Czeslaw Milosz’s poems in the mail led me to put “Encounter” in the box for several weeks.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

A friend emailed me Mary Oliver’s “Trilliums,” a poem I remember reading aloud at a writing retreat in the early 1990s, a weekend when I would meet women who remain some of my closest friends to this day. Into the box I put it, in honor of spring and friends who stay connected over the miles.

Oh, I wanted
to be easy
in the peopled kingdoms

And for the past week or so, I’ve had Marie Ponsot’s “Among Women” in there. Once upon a time, I had a copy of this poem tucked into my daily planner. It traveled back and forth with me to the office while I dreamt of wandering, as many of us do. I was so glad to rediscover it recently.

What women wander?
Not many. All. A few.

It’s a rainy afternoon in Austin. I’ve spent time gathering up poems to post in the weeks to come—some old and familiar, some brand new to me, one a piece of prose so poetic it deserves its place above the ceramic letters that spell out POETRY. I look forward to sharing them with you.

"Psalm for Sunrise" by Susan Kelly-DeWitt

Happy New Year, friends. I’ve been away from the poetry box newsletter for a few months while I focused on caring for my mother in the last stage of her life. A few poems went into the box during that time (Antonio Machado and the unlikely Ogden Nash) but I didn’t have it in me to get the newsletter out. Meanwhile, the election, then the holidays, then the new year came and went.

Now on the other side of her loss and the long journey toward it, I’ve wondered what poem to post next. Fortunately, my friend Abriel Louise Young writes a wonderful Substack that I often turn to for poetic sustenance. Through her, I found this poem by Susan Kelly-DeWitt. In my life, and perhaps in some of yours, it is a time for tidying the quilts, seeking nourishment, and rambling home slowly. Let’s step forth gently, with our hearts strong, into 2025.

"Wild Geese" + Four Years of the Poetry Box

I put my first poem in the poetry box on this day in 2020, choosing Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” because there is no better poem for starting an ongoing conversation with your neighbors through poetry. Today I put the poem back in the box, along with a note of thanks for four years of reading and sharing.

A number of people have asked me over the years about installing their own poetry box, to which I always say a resounding “Do it!” and share a link to where I bought my own. Four years in, I can say that this is one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever undertaken. Through it I’ve met neighbors I might have never met, engaged in conversations I’d have never had, and reclaimed my relationship to poetry itself through the act of poring through books and magazines and websites in search of the right choices for the moment. Back in my 20s and 30s I wrote a number of articles about the value of sharing poetry with the world. I couldn’t have imagined that a primary way I’d do this was through a cedar box on the curb.

I installed the poetry box in the first year of the pandemic, back when we were still scared to be close to each other. We were bombarded by vitriol in the lead-up to a tumultuous election, as we are today. I hoped it might offer a means of a connection, a little sweetness on the way down the street. I think we need that now more than ever. In the end, we are all “soft animals,” as Mary Oliver so perfectly put it. We need to be reminded that through it all, the world “offers itself to [our] imagination.”

Thanks for reading along.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”

And four years later…clearly with less water on the garden.

"How Dark the Beginning" by Maggie Smith

On one of our final nights in Taos earlier this month, my husband and I went out to the patio of our rental house with some chair cushions and a blanket and lay down to stare at the gloriously black sky peppered with stars. It was an experience that we just can’t have living in the city with its street lamps and security lights, the same way that Taos offers us the daily wonder of sunrise and sunset that we so often miss at home.

This isn’t what this poem by Maggie Smith is about, but it’s what it made me think of—the “good dark” and how rarely we pause to acknowledge it.

“So many hours between the day
receding and what we recognize

as morning, the sun cresting
like a wave that won’t break...”

"What You Missed That Day You Were Absent in Fourth Grade" by Brad Aaron Modlin

One of the gifts of this time of year is getting to see all the pics of kids heading back to school in their first-day outfits. It’s such an optimistic moment, though one that reminds me of the years passing. How is that baby now in fourth grade? That lanky child now starting their senior year?

In honor of back-to-school time, I’ve shared this piece by Brad Aaron Modlin in the poetry box. At last weekend’s Write Together Saturday we let it guide us into free writes about the things we wished we’d learned and the things we had to teach ourselves. As the poem suggests, there is much to be learned in school, but sometimes the lessons the classroom can’t teach us are the ones that stay with us longest.

“The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.”

"For the Sake of Strangers" by Dorianne Laux

We are confronted constantly by a rhetoric that tells us how divided we all are, and of course there is truth in this. But it isn’t the whole story. We also meet each other so often as humans first, offering a hand or a smile or the example of a tender engagement with the day. This poem by Dorianne Laux doesn’t deny all that is difficult, but allows for how in our passing connections we tether each other to the world.

“All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another—a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path”

"Against Panic" by Molly Fisk

The poet James Crews has edited lovely anthologies of poetry, including The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. I often recommend his books to people who are seeking a path into poetry, and I turn to them myself for solace and poetic companionship.

The title of today’s poem is what grabbed me when I pulled the anthology off the shelf. You don’t have to look very far to know why. The news is hard and overwhelming, and I believe our task is to pay attention while not losing sight of the good. It turns out that the poet’s original title for this poem was “Against Panic and Pandemic.” She published it on her Patreon page on March 11, 2020.

“...and you so sure the end was here, life a house of cards
tipped over, falling, hope’s last breath extinguished ”

"Everything Is Going to Be All Right" by Derek Mahon

Sometimes you just want a poem to soothe you, and many of us have needed soothing of late. Just look around. And so it seems a good time to pull out this much-anthologized gem of a poem from the late Irish poet Derek Mahon.

You can hear Mahon read his poem here and you can also hear the actor Damian Lewis read it (with greater theatrics but less lilt) here. Mahon’s poem became popular during the early months of the pandemic, and he himself died in the fall of 2020. Lewis dedicated the night of poetry that this performance is part of to his own late wife Helen McCrory. In both voices we know that “there will be dying” as well as a “riot of sunlight” to carry us through.

Or, if you prefer, let Bob Marley sing you his version. It’s soothing too.

“The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.”

"The Washing Never Gets Done" by Jaan Kaplinski

Sometimes the day to day demands of the domestic feel life-giving and grounding to me. Sometimes they just feel overwhelming. There’s been more of the latter than the former of late over here, which may be why this poem by Estonian poet Jaan Kaplinski reached out and grabbed me.

I feel relief when I read “One can’t keep everything in mind.” It echoes the epiphany of the late great Nora Ephron, a bit of wisdom I return to often, “We can’t do everything.” So some days it’s another attempt at the unfinishable laundry. Others it’s admiring the zinnias and cosmos that bloom so noisily this June.

Happy last week of spring, friends.

“Life is like a ball which one must continually
catch and hit so that it won’t fall.”

"This Moment" by Eavan Boland

My neighbors have a daughter who goes to preschool at a church up the hill. Late afternoons her dad takes off with an empty stroller to fetch her. When they round the corner onto our street, her mom runs down the street, arms wide open, to meet them. Every once in a while, I catch this little scene and am overcome with delight.

I thought of them when I came across this poem by the late Irish poet Eavan Boland. It’s such a gentle poem, quiet, and evocative of summer evenings and ripening fruit.

“A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms”

"In Praise of Dreams" by Gary Soto

I’ve been using the word “dream” this week because my long dreamed of backyard pathway is finally built and I can hardly believe it after years of talking about it. So the title of this poem caught my eye. But mostly I share it because Gary Soto is entirely charming—his poem “Oranges” is a favorite to share with classes—and we all need to be reminded to dream a little weird and a little wild.

In the very least, a little gratitude for the refrigerator light can’t hurt.

“Picture me swimming with dolphins.
Picture me with these dolphins
Sitting in lawn chairs.”

Some Quotes About Poetry for National Poetry Month

My favorite way to start a new poetry class is by having students read aloud a miscellaneous gathering of quotes about poetry. Once we invite all these ideas about poetry into the room—the lofty ones and the technical ones, the ancient ones and the contemporary ones—we can set about the task of discovering what a poem is for us.

As we wrap up National Poetry Month, I thought I’d share some of those quotes in the poetry box, shaking things up a little. For the record, when I ask students which quote is their favorite, inevitably someone chooses Leonard Cohen and heads around the room start nodding. Truth: I still don’t really know what that quote means.

What’s your favorite quote about poetry?

“Poetry has been eating all my problems.”

"What Issa Heard" by David Budbill

Sometimes when there’s so much clamoring for our attention, it’s nice to have a simple, straightforward poem to offer us clarity. Here then is David Budbill’s little gift of a poem and its echoes of Japanese haiku master Issa, whose portrait I included in the box.

“Two hundred years ago Issa heard the morning birds
singing sutras to this suffering world.”

Spring Poems by Ross Gay and Billy Collins

Several weeks back I got to see Ross Gay read at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center, one of those readings where the whole audience was so swept up in the poetry and the poet that we could have sat all night and listened. I raced to put more of his words in the poetry box and excerpted his “Sorrow Is Not My Name” for the start of spring. Well, a little late.

And soon it was time to swap him out. As I pored through options, I stumbled on this Billy Collins poem. Today we had one of those days Collins writes of. A friend and I had lunch on the patio of a Mexican restaurant and then stood as we said goodbye just taking in the perfection of the afternoon—blue skies and soft breeze and trees all greening out. It was what Chris’s uncle would call a “10-er.”

Here's to a season of 10-ers and neighbors who sing like angels. Happy Spring.

“And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,”

— Ross Gay, "Sorrow Is Not My Name"

"At the train station" by Brianna Cheng

It’s been a winter of coyotes here on our little hill. The neighborhood listserv has been flooded with sightings. A lone coyote, clearly a nursing mother, trots up and down the street in broad daylight. At dusk we hear a pack yipping and howling, an eerie din rising from the brush near six-lane Riverside Drive. These urban coyotes are nothing new—here and elsewhere—but they still come as a shock. And a reminder that wildness is never that far away.

I discovered this poem through the lovely Chris at Firefly Creative Writing, whose newsletters always offer wisdom and balm alongside their (fabulous!) class offerings. I’d love this poem even if I didn’t have coyotes roaming my street. But because I do, I knew my neighbors would love it too.

“and passengers looked up from their thermoses
swallowing surprise as if
all the world was holding their breath”

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider

Our year started off with a lot of movement – Chris gone while I was home, me gone while Chris was home. Finally we’re together in one place for a stretch, and I’m grateful for the comforting normalcies of everyday life with our everyday things. Or, as Pat Schneider names them in this week’s poem, our “ordinary things.”

Last night, cleaning up after dinner, Chris said, “Your mug is at the front of the cabinet,” knowing exactly which one I would reach for in the morning. And this morning, the sky brighter than it was even yesterday, I found it there waiting for me.

“It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea”

"The Best Poem Ever" by Brian Doyle

I loved Brian Doyle’s writing from the first time I read it, and I admire the deep sense of humanity and spirit infused in it. One sadness in his early death is that we don’t get more of his quirkily beautiful essays and poems. (If you don’t know him, try this or this or all of these.)

In this sweet poem, Doyle offers us a child’s voice arguing for the poetry that exists beyond the words we give to it. It’s got me looking around for those poems.

Last night I went shell crafting with my mom in the community center where I took dance lessons as a kid. There were plenty of poems in that room where people turned shells—big and tiny, white and pink and aqua and striped—into flowers, sometimes mounting them into bouquets. But maybe the poem without words existed in the intention with which they bent over the shells, glue guns in hand, imagining them into something new.

Or maybe I’m just trying once again to give language to what doesn’t require it. What wordless poems are in the air of your life this week?

“Maybe there are a lot of poems that you can’t write
Down. Couldn’t that be?”

"Torn Map" by Naomi Shihab Nye

This morning, apropos of nothing, I was thinking of a time 25 years ago when my friend Chuck and I were in my car in Cincinnati. Where had we gone? I have no idea. But on the way home we needed to make a detour, and I handed Chuck my map of the city, torn in half right down the middle. So really, I handed him two maps, one west and one east. Chuck was dumbfounded. But on we drove, crisscrossing back and forth from one map to the other as we wound our way south.

Some months later when I prepared to leave Cincinnati, Chuck gave me the perfect going-away gift: a laminated map of Austin. It rode with me for years, until eventually Google took its place. But I still have it, and it’s still in one piece.

Here's a poem from Naomi Shihab Nye that takes the torn map to metaphorical places. It’s from her book Come with Me: Poems for a Journey, a book for children that still has plenty to say to us adults with all that we know now of time and distance.

“Now all the roads
ended in water.”

"Mornings at Blackwater" by Mary Oliver

Last week I participated in a workshop titled Dreaming Big in 2024, that led to me gluing favorite quotes and images on a piece of blue posterboard and committing to early mornings in my studio again. Hello, January.

The facilitator opened the session with this poem by Mary Oliver, one I’d never read before. Like many of Oliver’s poems, it offers an instruction, one ideally suited for the turn of a calendar.

I hope you’ll find yourself drinking with gusto from that metaphorical pond this year. And I hope at least once that you’ll refer to yourself as a “darling citizen” too.

“the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is”

"I Am Running into the New Year" by Lucille Clifton

Happy 2024, friends! Lucille Clifton is graciously back in the poetry box to accompany us into the new year. Wishing you health, peace, laughter, community, and poems.

“i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind”