And Now A Brief Word From Our Sponsors…

Well, not exactly sponsors. Between travel and writing I’m swamped and left with nothing but poetry for you today. .

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous ones we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be good as fingers.
They can be trusty as the rock
you sit your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.

Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren’t good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible things to repair.

–Anne Sexton

You were expecting Neruda, weren’t you? I’ll admit I had one of his all typed up—a very favorite of mine that’s guaranteed to make you weep. But, really, who wants to be morose on a Friday?

I’m off to the South Carolina Book Festival, which promises to be a rollicking good time, complete with lots of my very favorite people. Full report next week.

But in the meantime, let’s get back to poems. Got a good one you can share? Even just a couple lines?

xo
Tasha

8 Responses to “And Now A Brief Word From Our Sponsors…”

1. A coed from North Carolina…

   Wait, best not use that one.

   by J.D. Rhoades on February 22nd, 2008 at 7:21 am
   
   

2. It’s a well-known fact that I suffer from PDD. Poetry Deficit Disorder.

   by Will Bereswill on February 22nd, 2008 at 8:01 am
   
   

3. Lovely poem. Have fun in SC, darlin’.

   by JennieB on February 22nd, 2008 at 8:27 am
   
   

4. Oh, Tasha, I love when you talk poetry. I had a hard time choosing just one to share thsi snowy morning–but this one, by Theordore Roethke, seems to fit the best.

   The Waking

   I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
   I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
   I learn by going where I have to go.
   We think by feeling. What is there to know?
   I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
   I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

   Of those so close beside me, which are you?
   God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
   And learn by going where I have to go.

   Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
   The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
   I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

   Great Nature has another thing to do
   To you and me, so take the lively air,
   And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

   This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
   What falls away is always. And is near.
   I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
   I learn by going where I have to go.

   by judy larsen on February 22nd, 2008 at 9:59 am
   
   

5. Dusty and Tasha,

   You guys behave yourselves and raise a glass to those of us who would love to be there, but are slack bastards who can’t seem to get a book written.

   It’s a great festival.

   by David Terrenoire on February 22nd, 2008 at 10:05 am
   
   

6. I must know hundreds of totally filthy limericks, but somehow they seem inappropriate here.

   The end of something I read at Penn State when I was still convinced that all that was good resided there in the form of

   ’scuse me - that’s a story for another time.

   Anyhow, rom the end of a poem by, I think, Dave Kipp:

   In Dreams, the palpable, the face
   the voice, the face -
   if any was, forever then remains.

   It was publishedin a Pivot in 1960 or 1961.

   It may have been totled “If any was” but I’m no more certain - it has been a long time, and the romance around which it centered has long since died a painful death.

   by Bob Rudolph on February 22nd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
   
   

7. I was trying to find a particular poem by Sara Teasdale that has a line about the ideas that we can’t put down in writing being the best ones we have, but I can’t find it, so here’s a totally different one by her:

   Wild Asters

   In the spring I asked the daisies

   If his words were true,

   And the clever little daisies

   Always knew.

   Now the fields are brown and barren,

   Bitter autumn blows,

   And of all the stupid asters

   Not one knows.

   by Kate Hathway on February 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
   
   

8. Here’s another one I love–”The Secret” by Denise Levertov

   Two girls discover
   the secret of life
   in a sudden line of
   poetry.

   I who don’t know the
   secret wrote
   the line. They
   told me

   (through a third person)
   they had found it
   but not what it was
   not even

   what line it was. No doubt
   by now, more than a week
   later, they have forgotten
   the secret,

   the line, the name of
   the poem. I love them
   for finding what
   I can’t find,

   and for loving me
   for the line I wrote,
   and for forgetting it
   so that

   a thousand times, till death
   finds them, they may
   discover it again, in other
   lines

   in other
   happenings. And for
   wanting to know it,
   for

   assuming there is
   such a secret, yes,
   for that
   most of all.

   by judy larsen on February 22nd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
   
   

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