Sunday Salon: Reading Journal

Good morning! The sun is just starting to come up while the clouds are slowly moving in. Today's forecast calls for rain which is perfect for me. Later on I'm leaving to celebrate my grandmother's birthday but until then I plan on reading and relaxing.

My plan last week was to stay off the internet and get some homework done. It didn't happen. I love being online. There's so many things to read and learn about. Thanks to fellow bloggers, I found a ton of books to put on my TBR list and pile and ordered several books this week.

I've been dipping into Language for a New Century: Contemporary from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond all week. It's a massive anthology of poetry from more than 400 poets, from sixty different countries, translated from fifty languages. One of the goals of the book is to introduce readers to poets they would never hear about otherwise. The book has been receiving criticism because it can only give you one poem per poet. I say the book is an introduction. If you want to read more from a poet then go and find their books and help support translated works.

The foreword by Carolyn Forsche gave me goosebumps and made me read it aloud:

We know, from the mellifluous litany of poets' names, who wrote these poems, but we might also consider what wrote them: the urge to sing, pray, cry, announce, and whisper; to write cultures into visibility; to write not after events but in their aftermath, through collisions in time and space, exile within and without; to walk around in the ruins of wars, awake. What wrote them was a determination to revolt against silence with a bit of speaking. What wrote was an upwelling of poetic apprehension of world.

Forsche calls the book "a field guide to the human condition". I think it's a perfect description for all poetry.

Reading this book made me think of my relationship with poetry. As a teenager it was all I read. I checked out the Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson hundreds of times in eighth grade. "Because I could not stop for death/He kindly stopped for me. . ."

After Dickinson I read and reread the haikus of Richard Wright before moving on to Alice Walker's Her Blue Body Everything we Know. "Good night, Willie Lee, I'll see you in the morning" is a favorite poem from that collection. From there I arrived at Chitra Divakaruni's Black Candle. It stayed next to my bed for months as I read and reread it, raking up library fines.

I wonder what happened, what made me neglect poetry for years? Now Language for a New Century is leading me back to the collections I've loved. Right now Black Candle and the Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson are sitting at my nightstand once again, while Her Blue Body is on its way to me. This week poetry has become the first and last things of my day.

What do you think of poetry? Do you read it? If so, what are your favorite poems? Who are your favorite poets? If not, why?

Rain

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my live over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

Raymond Carver, All of Us: The Collected Poems

The Best Time of the Day

Cool summer nights.
Windows open.
Lamps burning.
Fruit in the bowl.
And your head on my shoulder.
These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours,
of course. And the time
just before lunch.
And the afternoon, and
early evening hours.
But I do love

these summer nights.
Even more, I think,
than those other times.
The work finished for the day.
And no one who can reach us now.
Or ever.

Raymond Carver

Joy

The last seven days have been so stressful for me with going to school full-time and dealing with my personal relationships. For some reason tonight I reached for one of my favorite books, Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor. Good poems is an anthology of poetry from many poets like Anne Sexton and Raymond Carver to Ginger Andrews and Mary Oliver. It is one of the few books I own more than one copy of. "Welcome Morning" by Anne Sexton helps me to remember the little things that help lift my spirit throughout the day. Though I have read about four books this week I rather give you a poem.

Welcome Morning
Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup, upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

the way it is now

I'll tell you
I've lived with some gorgeous women
and I was so bewitched by those
beautiful creatures that
my eyebrows twitched.

but I'd rather drive to New York
backwards
than to live with any of them
again.

the next classic stupidity
will be the history
of those fellows
who inherit my female
legacies.

in their case
as in mine
they will find
that madness
is caused by not
being often enough
alone.

Charles Bukowski

Be of love

be of love (a little) more careful
than of everything
guard her perhaps only
A trifle less (merely beyond how very)
closely than nothing
remember love by frequent
anguish (imagine
her least never with most
memory)
give entirely each
forever its freedom


(dare until a flower,
understanding ceaselessly sunlight
open what thousandth why and
discover laughing)


- e. e. cummings, be of love (a little)

Poetry Tuesday or anyday I feel like posting poetry

The Orange
Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I brought a huge orange-
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave-
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist.

Weekly Geek #3

I think Maxine Hong Kingston said it best "Without you, I am nothing". Though she was talking about her relationship to her readers, I'm taking about books. I cannot fathom where I would be right now without books. Just as I breathe, I read to live. There is no other way to say how much I love books and feel kinship to other bookworms.

I grew up poor, dirt poor. My family barely had enough money for the basics. Sometimes we didn't have the basics, but my mom still managed to put books into my hands. I cannot thank her enough for introducing me to my childhood favorites Alexander and the terrible, no good, very bad day, Where the wild things are, and Little Women. My mother was not a reader but she still feed me books and watched as my love for them grew. I can spend the rest of my life trying to pay her back, but my debt to her will never be paid in full.

Spending my life immersed in books and sharing my love of them with others is the closest I will ever get. Some of my favorite books growing up were The Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin. I loved the whole gang of pre-teen girls who were smart, funny, and sure enough of themselves to start their own company, helping their community in return. They were girls who I identified with and would have loved being friends with.

I discovered the Judy Blume when I was a teenager and loved so many of her books. Tales of a fourth grade nothing and Double Fudge are still the funniest books I have ever read. Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret helped me get through adolescence while Iggie's House, a quiet but profound story of friendship and racism is still in my head, so many years later.

In eighth grade I discovered The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson. It was a new edition that was never checked out by anyone. Except me. At my school's library you could only keep a book for a week. I used to turn it in and then check it right back out, just a second later. I read and reread that book for almost a year. One of my favorite poems is "If I can stop one heart from breaking". I realized how true this poem is just this weekend.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again

I shall not live in vain.

Late Fragment

Rest In Peace
Gloria Jean Floyd
May 4, 1945 - May 3, 2008


And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

-Raymond Carver

A Day of Poetry

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
hav ebeen otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Jane Kenyon, from "Otherwise" (19997)

Untitled

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions


back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you


over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks taht use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you


with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is


W.S. Merwin