What We Might Be, What We Are
- - by X. J. Kennedy
If you were a scoop of vanilla
And I were the cone where you sat,
If you were a slowly pitched baseball
And I were the swing of a bat,
If you were a shiny new fishhook
And I were a bucket of worms,
If we were a pin and a pincushion,
We might be on intimate terms.
If you were a plate of spaghetti
And I were your piping-hot sauce,
We’d not even need to write letters
To put our affection across,
But you’re just a piece of red ribbon
In the beard of a Balinese goat
And I’m a New Jersey mosquito.
I guess we’ll stay slightly remote.
This was part of a web poetry project someone (S. Krutsch?) developed.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Valentine for Ernest Mann
You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.
Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.
Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.
Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1952 to a Palestinian father and an American mother. A good deal of her poetry focuses on her life as an Arab American. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas.
This was lifted entirely from Poem of the Week after a mention at Americablog.
You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.
Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.
Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.
Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1952 to a Palestinian father and an American mother. A good deal of her poetry focuses on her life as an Arab American. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas.
This was lifted entirely from Poem of the Week after a mention at Americablog.
Friday, February 01, 2008
From Duino Elegies
- - - Rainer Maria Rilke
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,
which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
...
This is a translation - there are others with different flavors.
Here is a bio - the original sites are impossible with pop-ups.
Writer and poet. He was born in Prague. A crucial fact in Rilke's life was that his mother called him Sophia. She forced him to wear girl's clothes until he was aged five - thus compensating for the earlier loss of a baby daughter.
Rilke's parents separated when he was nine. His father sent him to the military academy. Rilke did not enjoy his stay at academy and he was sent to a business school in Linz. He also worked in his uncle's law firm. Rilke continued his studies at the universities of Prague, Munich, and Berlin.
As a poet he made his debut at the age of nineteen with "Leben und lieder". In 1899. Rilke traveled in Russia visiting among others Tolstoy. During this period he started to write "The Book of Hours: The Book of Monastic Life" which appeared in 1905. He spent some time in Italy, Sweden, and Denmark, and joined an artists colony at Worpswede in 1903.
In 1901 Rilke married the young sculptress, Clara Westhoff. They had a daughter, Ruth, but marriage lasted only one year. During this period Rilke composed in rhymed the second part of "The Book of Hours". After he had separated from Clara, he settled in Paris to write a book about Rodin and to work for his secretary (1905-06). He also wrote "The Tale of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke". During his Paris years Rilke developed a new style of lyrical poetry.
Rilke kept silence as a poet for twelve years before writing "Duino Elegies" and "Sonnets to Orpheus". In 1913 Rilke was forced to return to Germany because of the First World War. After 1919 he lived in Switzerland, occupied by his work and roses in his little garden. For time to time he went to Paris for a few months or to Italy. He had suffered from leukemia and spent much time at the Val-Mont sanatorium, but he died of an infection he contracted when he pricked himself on a rose thorn. - by Jelena.
- - - Rainer Maria Rilke
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,
which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
...
This is a translation - there are others with different flavors.
Here is a bio - the original sites are impossible with pop-ups.
Writer and poet. He was born in Prague. A crucial fact in Rilke's life was that his mother called him Sophia. She forced him to wear girl's clothes until he was aged five - thus compensating for the earlier loss of a baby daughter.
Rilke's parents separated when he was nine. His father sent him to the military academy. Rilke did not enjoy his stay at academy and he was sent to a business school in Linz. He also worked in his uncle's law firm. Rilke continued his studies at the universities of Prague, Munich, and Berlin.
As a poet he made his debut at the age of nineteen with "Leben und lieder". In 1899. Rilke traveled in Russia visiting among others Tolstoy. During this period he started to write "The Book of Hours: The Book of Monastic Life" which appeared in 1905. He spent some time in Italy, Sweden, and Denmark, and joined an artists colony at Worpswede in 1903.
In 1901 Rilke married the young sculptress, Clara Westhoff. They had a daughter, Ruth, but marriage lasted only one year. During this period Rilke composed in rhymed the second part of "The Book of Hours". After he had separated from Clara, he settled in Paris to write a book about Rodin and to work for his secretary (1905-06). He also wrote "The Tale of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke". During his Paris years Rilke developed a new style of lyrical poetry.
Rilke kept silence as a poet for twelve years before writing "Duino Elegies" and "Sonnets to Orpheus". In 1913 Rilke was forced to return to Germany because of the First World War. After 1919 he lived in Switzerland, occupied by his work and roses in his little garden. For time to time he went to Paris for a few months or to Italy. He had suffered from leukemia and spent much time at the Val-Mont sanatorium, but he died of an infection he contracted when he pricked himself on a rose thorn. - by Jelena.
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