The Gryphon's Feather Studio

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 219

a column by TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, available to be shared.



Marginalia

Finding an old book on a basement shelf—   

gray, spine bent—and reading it again,   

I met my former, unfamiliar, self,   

some of her notes and scrawls so alien   

 

that, though I tried, I couldn't get (behind   

this gloss or that) back to the time she wrote   

to guess what experiences she had in mind,   

the living context of some scribbled note;   

 

or see the girl beneath the purple ink   

who chose this phrase or that to underline,   

the mood, the boy, that lay behind her thinking—   

but they were thoughts I recognized as mine;   

 

and though there were words I couldn't even read,   

blobs and cross-outs; and though not a jot   

remained of her old existence—I agreed   

with the young annotator's every thought:   

 

A clever girl. So what would she see fit   

to comment on—and what would she have to say   

about the years that she and I have written   

since—before we put the book away?

Deborah Warren

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Deborah Warren, whose most recent book of poems is "Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit," University of Evansville Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from the "Hudson Review," Vol. LXI, no. 3, Autumn 2008, and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.

American Life in Poetry

"Here’s a lovely picture of a small child learning the laws of physics. The poet, Joelle Biele, lives in Maryland." - Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006


To Katharine: At Fourteen Months

All morning, you’ve studied the laws   

of spoons, the rules of books, the dynamics   

of the occasional plate, observed the principles   

governing objects in motion and objects   

at rest.  To see if it will fall, and if it does,   

how far, if it will rage like a lost penny   

or ring like a Chinese gong—because   

it doesn’t have to—you lean from your chair   

and hold your cup over the floor.   

It curves in your hand, it weighs in your palm,   

it arches like a wave, it is a dipper   

full of stars, and you’re the wind timing   

the pull of the moon, you’re the water   

measuring the distance from which we fall.

Poem copyright ©2007 by Joelle Biele, whose most recent book of poetry is White Summer, Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. Poem reprinted from West Branch, Fall/Winter, 2007, by permission of Joelle Biele. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation.

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry

Ted Kooser writes: "We who teach creative writing have been known to tell our students that there is no subject so common and ordinary that it can’t be addressed in a poem, and this one, Spitwads, by Michael McFee is a good example of that. "

Spitwads

Little paper cuds we made

by ripping the corners or edges

from homework and class notes

then ruminating them into balls

we’d flick from our fingertips

or catapult with pencils

or (sometimes after lunch)

launch through striped straws

like deadly projectiles

toward the necks of enemies

and any other target where they’d

stick with the tiniest splat,

I hope you’re still there,

stuck to unreachable ceilings

like the beginnings of nests

by generations of wasps

too ignorant to finish them

or under desktops with blunt

stalactites of chewing gum,

little white words we learned

to shape and hold in our mouths

while waiting to let them fly,

our most tenacious utterance.

Poem copyright ©2005 by Michael McFee, whose most recent book of poetry is The Smallest Talk, Bull City Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from Shinemaster, Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press, 2006, by permission of Michael McFee and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation.

American Life in Poetry: Column 321

features poetry selected by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006. The poem selected for this column is How You Know by Joe Mills.

How You Know

How do you know if it’s love? she asks,

and I think if you have to ask, it’s not,

but I know this won’t help. I want to say

you’re too young to worry about it,

as if she has questions about Medicare

or social security, but this won’t help either.

“You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth,

“when you still want to be with them

the next morning,” would involve too

many follow-up questions. The difficulty

with love, I want to say, is sometimes

you only know afterwards that it’s arrived

or left. Love is the elephant and we

are the blind mice unable to understand

the whole. I want to say love is this

desire to help even when I know I can’t,

just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars,

the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes,

fingernails, coconuts, or the other things

she has asked about over the years, all

those phenomena whose daily existence

seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head.

I don’t even know how to match my socks.

Go ask your mother. She laughs and says,

I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.

Poem copyright ©2010 by Joe Mills, whose most recent book of poetry is Love and Other Collisions, Press 53, 2010. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 16, no. 1, Summer 2010, by permission of Joe Mills and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. 

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry:

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Here’s our Halloween poem for this year, in the thin dry voice of a ghost, as captured by Katie Cappello who lives in Northern California.

A Ghost Abandons the Haunted

You ignore the way light filters through my cells,
the way I have of fading out—still
there is a constant tug, a stretching,
what is left of me is coming loose. Soon,

I will be only crumbs of popcorn,
a blue ring in the tub, an empty
toilet paper roll, black mold
misted on old sponges,

strands of hair woven into
carpet, a warped door
that won’t open, the soft spot
in an avocado, celery, a pear,

a metallic taste in the beer, a cold sore
on your lip—and when I finally lose my hold
you will hear a rustle and watch me spill
grains of rice across the cracked tile.

Love Story by James Doyle : American Life in Poetry

In an earlier post, I recommended some great poetry resources available through the Library of Congress. One resource is this weekly column by former Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser. 

 

American Life in Poetry: Column 288

(column content and photo reprinted here with permission.)

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE 

I’ve spent my seventy years on The Great Plains and have lived all that time amidst vivid and touching stories about the settlement of our area, lots of them much like this one, about a long ago courtship and marriage, offered to us in a poem by James Doyle, who lives in Colorado. 

Love Story 

The kitchen door opens onto dirt

and the second half of the country

all the way to the Pacific. Rusted

prairie trains out of the tall weeds

elbow the last century aside, rumble

from every direction towards Chicago.

My great-grandfather, who would be

150 years old today, put on his one

tall hat and took the big trip

to Omaha for my great-grandma

with the family ring on his vest

and winter wheat lying wait in seed.

He gave her all the miles he had

and she gave him the future I walk

around in every day. The mountains

were too far west to count so they

doubled back over the land and century

and the real weather kept coming from them.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by James Doyle, whose most recent book of poetry is Bending Under the Yellow Police Tapes, Steel Toe Books, 2007. Poem reprinted from theNimrod International Journal, Vol. 53, no. 1, Fall/Winter 2009, by permission of James Doyle and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. 

 

EAT THIS POEM

How to Eat a Poem

by Eve Merriam

Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

 

The Library of Congress offers a couple wonderful program related to poetry that were designed by our former Poet Laureates.

The Poet Laureate, a position began in 1937, I think, is charged to "serve as the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans." During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.  They receive a stipend of $35,000 for their year of service.  During their one-year tenure, some Poet Laureates create programs designed to foster a love of poetry and a way of broadening the audience for this art form.

One of these programs, called Poetry 180, was designed by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins,  and offers a poem a day for 180 days. This program was designed for high school students - hence the format of 180 days (the length of the typical US school year).   Subscribe by email, and enjoy a poem each morning.  These hand-picked poems are delicious with morning coffee and a sweet roll. To subscribe, follow the link above the photograph of Billy Collins.

.

Today's selection:

Numbers

Mary Cornish

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.

And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.

There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

 

Another program, called American Life in Poetry, was designed by former Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser for newspapers.  A free, weekly column that includes a poem by a contemporary American poet, and an accompanying brief introduction to that poem by Ted Kooser.  To have this delivered to your inbox, sign up here.

This week's column:

American Life in Poetry: Column 287

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

I love to sit outside and be very still until some little creature appears and begins to go about its business, and here is another poet, Robert Gibb, of Pennsylvania, doing just the same thing.

For the Chipmunk in My Yard

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over. All afternoon
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,
While all about him the great fields tumble
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky
To be where he is, wild with all that happens.
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

 

 

Robert Pinsky, another former Poet Laureate, created The Favorite Poem Project. Robert Pinsky this beautiful project during his time as Poet Laureate, where Americans from ages 5 to 97 submitted their favorite poems for consideration.  Many were recorded onto video and there are compilations and other materials available.

Be sure to watch fifth-grader Karen Mechler reading Roethke's The Sloth. Okay, perhaps I am partial to confident middle-schoolers. and oh, her hat!! (...sending prayers to the One that I do raise children who are so confident in their fabulousness... )

The Library of Congress Poetry home page offers video and audio records for viewing online, as well as webcasts, resources for teaching, learning, writing and of course, poetry to read.

GO!!