Archive for the ‘Poems to inspire’ Category
Cindy on March 29th, 2010
Damn everything that won’t get into the circle.” — e.e. cummings
I’ve been a fan of the big top as far back as I can remember. It was the highlight of every spring when I was child. Later, as a local freelance reporter, I was thrilled when I was assigned to interview the lion tamer when the traveling Shrine Circus came to town.
And I love how E.E. Cummings (also spelled e.e. cummings) uses the circus as a metaphor for a rich and juicy life — a life bursting with color, sparkle, muscle, and magic.
In another poem in this series, Rumi reminded us to seat ourselves next to our own joy. Along these lines, Cummings rallies against the safe and the dull. His poem is a warning against those who run around putting holes in other people’s balloons. So let’s hear three cheers for the risk-takers and joy lovers — for the fearless ones who dance on the tightrope of life. – CL
Damn everything but the circus!
By E.E. Cummings
…damn everything that is grim, dull,
motionless, unrisking, inward turning,
damn everything that won’t get into the
circle, that won’t enjoy, that won’t throw
its heart into the tension, surprise, fear
and delight of the circus, the round
world, the full existence…
– Reprinted from E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems: 1904 – 1962; Liveright; Revised Edition; 1994
– Detail from “Damn everything but the circus!” (an altered book) by Cindy La Ferle –
Cindy on March 22nd, 2010
Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.” ~Carl Sandburg
Amazing, isn’t it — how small things can hold so much? With the precision of a haiku poet, Jane Kenyon delivers a heart-load of emotion in this short but powerful poem. Anyone who loves the domestic arts will fall in love with Kenyon’s poetry. She had a gift for revealing the sacred in the mundane, reminding us that even the most ordinary objects we own can represent a wealth of memories, stories, and lessons. –CL
What Came to Me
By Jane Kenyon
I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.
It was your gravy boat,
with a hard, brown
drop of gravy still
on the porcelain lip.
I grieved for you then
as I never had before.
--Reprinted from Jane Kenyon Collected Poems; Graywolf Press; 2005–
– Kitchen photo by Cindy La Ferle –
This post is part of a weekly poetry appreciation series. Want more? Check out Poems to Inspire in the CATEGORIES column at right.
Cindy on March 14th, 2010
Let us hear your faint vibrato and absorb
what is invisible, wild and nearly gone.” — Terry Blackhawk
Every time I read “Calling the Owl,” I can picture the poet standing still in a snowy meadow just before dawn, listening for that which is “wild and nearly gone.”
Terry Blackhawk is an acclaimed Michigan poet, so I’m especially proud to introduce her to readers who haven’t met her yet. She’s the founder and director of Detroit’s InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a poets-in-schools program serving over 5,000 students per year. Terry began teaching English in 1968 after graduating from Antioch College. As Terry explains it, she “took up writing poetry” when she was already teaching it to her students.
“I thought, ‘If I’m asking them to do this, I should have the same experience myself,’ ” she says. “I fell in love with it. I became a poet. It’s who I am.”
Poets, novelists, and essayists are often drawn to the unfettered beauty of nature and wildlife. Yet most of our work is carefully shaped, polished, and edited before it gets published. (This might be one reason we’re intrigued by things that cannot be captured or tamed — or face extinction?) If you could write a poem or a tribute to something in nature, what would you honor or explore? — Cindy La Ferle
CALLING THE OWL
By Terry Blackhawk
This time the owl eludes us
where we stand trying to call him in
with his own voice,
which we’ve captured on tape
to release to the predawn woods.
Press a button. The air flutters,
rushing from our black box
what is hidden from us –
wing-like quaverings –
soft bursts of song.
If light mutes him, shadows offer hope,
and we listen so intently into them
the snowy meadow
suddenly seems wider, brighter
with news from beyond its perimeter.
Don’t lift, I almost pray,
don’t disappear.
Day will break soon enough.
Let us hear your faint vibrato and absorb
what is invisible, wild and nearly gone.
Mist thickens the silence, promises
patience, echo, sound not sight.
I will let that fluty tremolo find,
fill me, give voice
to emptiness. I hold my breath to sustain
the long vowel of night.
– Reprinted from Body & Field; Michigan State University Press; 1999 –
This post is part of a weekly poetry appreciation series. Want more? Please click on the Poems to inspire section in the CATEGORIES column at right.
–Photo by Cindy La Ferle–
Cindy on March 6th, 2010
Seat yourself next to your joy.” — Rumi
We all have to start somewhere. Truth is, the beginning is often the hardest part of any worthy project, whether we’re talking about writing books, designing clothes, breaking a habit, or plotting a garden. Before we can meet a deadline or plant the first seed, we have to face the proverbial blank page or fallow field.
So what the heck is stopping us?
Always a good excuse: kids to raise; dogs to walk; bathrooms to scrub; naps to take; debts to pay; day jobs that wring us dry. Fear can be a factor, too — fear of failure or fear of success. Maybe we can’t top the last amazing thing we did. Maybe our friends and families will resent our attempts to bloom or grow or shine (as if there’s never enough good stuff to pass around the table). Maybe someone will point out our mistakes and try to shrink us back down to size. Or maybe we’ll have to break free from the sweet safety of an old comfort zone.
Rumi’s poem challenges us to forget the excuses — and to weed the naysayers from our gardens. We’re called to do what makes us happy. To wake up and begin, right now. – CL
BEGIN
By Jalal al-Din Rumi; translation by Coleman Barks
This is now. Now is. Don’t
postpone till then. Spend
the spark of iron on stone.
Sit at the head of the table;
dip your spoon in the bowl.
Seat yourself next to your joy
and have your awakened soul
pour wine. Branches in the
spring wind, easy dance of
jasmine and cypress. Cloth
for green robes has been cut
from pure absence. You’re
the tailor, settled among his
shop goods, quietly sewing.
–Reprinted from The Soul of Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks (HarperCollins); 2001
– Garden photo by Cindy La Ferle –
Cindy on March 1st, 2010
I have been dissolved and shaken / Worn other people’s faces” — May Sarton
My early introduction to May Sarton‘s work was through her diary, Journal of a Solitude. I was new to personal writing at the time, and I admired how Sarton gracefully shared her private and public worlds — her beloved garden; domestic life in New Hampshire; her conflicting needs for solitude and companionship. Reading more of her work over the years, I knew I’d found a kindred spirit.
“Now I Become Myself” first struck me as a song of elder wisdom, a declaration of authentic power. Feeling her “own weight and density,” the poet has outgrown the petty insecurities of youth — including its sense of urgency. Yet the poem speaks to readers of all ages. I gave it to a friend on her 70th birthday and was thrilled to learn it is now one of her favorites. My friend was especially moved by the line, “Now there is time and Time is young.” Which lines speak to you? –CL
Now I Become Myself
By May Sarton
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before –”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
– Reprinted from Selected Poems of May Sarton edited by Serena Sue Hilsinger and Lois Brynes; W.W. Norton & Company; 1978–
–Top photo: Detail from “Book of Shadows,” an altered book, by Cindy La Ferle –
This post is part of a weekly poetry appreciation series. To read more, please click on Poems to inspire in the CATEGORIES column at right. As always, I welcome your recommendations, too.
I’ve been a fan of the big top as far back as I can remember. It was the highlight of every spring when I was child. Later, as a local freelance reporter, I was thrilled when I was assigned to interview the lion tamer when the traveling Shrine Circus came to town.
