Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
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Bibliophiles Unanimous!: Favorite Women Poets with Deborah & Katie
January 3, 2021 - January 16, 2021
Dear Bibliophiles
On Sunday, January 3rd, Deborah Buchanan and Katie Radditz hosted a conversation about Favorite Women Poets on Zoom. We had a good turnout. It’s a big subject! They began talking about Japanese women poets:
Tankas from 4th – 19th century Japan
Ono no Komachi
While, waiting for you,
My heart is filled with longing,
The autumn wind blows—
As if it were you—
Swaying the bamboo blinds of my door.
Tanka stresses the beauty of life and nature, but there is a strong feeling of yearning in many tanka. The shortness of life, the transient nature of seasons and love.
First known poetry perhaps is the tanka written as letters between women in Japan who were basically imprisoned at home. They started writing letters to one another in simple haiku with hidden messages, the recipient would write back in two lines. Forming a tanka from the Haiku.
Izumi Shikibu. author of The Diary of Izumi Shikibu and was considered to be the finest poet of the time. She also wrote The Tale of Genji considered the first novel. It is full of hundreds of Tankas.
“To the lonely nights
when a robe comes between us,
would you then, you say,
have me add more layers yet
to keep us further apart?”
“Without showing a change in colour
The thing that fades
In this world
Is the flower
Called the human heart.”
“The colour of the cherry blossom
Has faded vainly
In the long rain
While in idle thoughts
I have spent my life.”
“Without a thought
For my black hair’s disarray
I throw myself down,
Already longing for the one
Who ran his fingers through it.“
“On the bamboo leaves
A fine ice fall
Patters and patters.
How bitter
To try to sleep alone!”
Then, Deborah and Katie talked about Emily Dickinson. They read this poem:
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –
Johnny recited one of his favorite Emily Dickinson poems:
The Infinite a sudden Guest
Has been assumed to be —
But how can that stupendous come
Which never went away?
Deborah talked about Diane Di Prima and read this poem by her:
Poem in Praise of My Husband
I suppose it hasn’t been easy living with me
either,
with my piques, and ups and downs, my need for
privacy
leo pride and weeping in bed when you’re
trying to sleep
and you, interrupting me in the middle of a
thousand poems
in the middle of our drive over the nebraska
hills and
into colorado, odetta singing, the whole world
singing in me
the triumph of our revolution in the air
me about to get that down, and you
you saying something about the carburetor
so that it all went away
but we cling to each other
as if each thought the other was the raft
and he adrift alone, as in this mud house
not big enough, the walls dusting down around us, a fine dust rain
counteracting the good, high air, and stuffing
our nostrils
we hang our pictures of the separate worlds:
new york college and san francisco posters
set out our japanese dishes, chinese knives
hammer small indian marriage cloths into
the adobe
we stumble thru silence into each other’s gut
blundering thru from one wrong place to the
next
like kids who snuck out to play on a boat
at night
and the boat slipped from its moorings, and
they look at the stars
about which they know nothing, to find out
where they are going.
Deborah and Katie shared this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye:
Shoulders
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
Nancy Yeilding read this poem by Barbara Crooker:
It’s Monday Morning
mid-November, the world turned golden,
preserved in amber. I should be doing more
to save the planet—plant a tree, raise
a turbine, put solar panels on the roof
to grab the sun and bring it inside. Instead,
I’m sitting here scribbling, sitting on a wrought
iron chair, the air cold from last night’s frost,
the thin sunlight sinking into the ruined
Appalachians of my spine. I know it’s all
about to fall apart; the signs are everywhere.
But on this blue morning, the air bristling
with crickets and birdsong, I do the only thing
I can: put one word in front of the other,
and see what happens when they rub up against
each other. It might become something
that will burst into flame.
Dave Duncan read the first two stanzas of “The Cry of the Children” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Ere the sorrow comes with years ?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, —
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows ;
The young birds are chirping in the nest ;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows ;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west—
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly !
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so ?
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago —
The old tree is leafless in the forest —
The old year is ending in the frost —
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest —
The old hope is hardest to be lost :
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland ?
Here’s a poem from Wisława Szymborska that Katie and Deborah chose:
Possibilities
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
And here’s a poem by Wisława Szymborska that Jude Russell read:
The Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.
Jeffrey Sher read a poem by Mary Oliver:
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Here a poem by Ada Limon:
The Raincoat
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
Nancy Yeilding didn’t know if she could get through this poem by Denise Levertov without crying. She was encouraged to give it a try:
The Fountain
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched-but not because
she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,
it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.
Here’s a poem by Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature:
Riches
I have a faithful fortune
and a fortune lost.
One’s like a rose,
the other a thorn.
What was taken from me
I still possess:
the faithful fortune
and the fortune lost,
and I’m rich in purple
and unhappiness.
Oh how I love the rose
and how the thorn loves me!
Like round twin apples
after the frost:
the faithful fortune,
the fortune lost.
(tr. Ursula K. Le Guin)
Here’s a poem by our current national Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo:
Perhaps the world ends Here
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
*
Nancy Yeilding also recommends:
“Late August” by Mary Chivers
“For a Friend Lying in Intensive Care Waiting for Her White Blood Cells to Rejuvenate After a Bone Marrow Transplant” by Barbara Crooker
“A Gift” and “Witness” by Denise Levertov
Deborah and Katie also recommend:
“A New National Anthem” by Ada Limon
“Sweetness,” “Give Me Your Hand” and “Song of Death” by Gabriela Mistral
“Some People” by Wisława Szymborska
“The Burying Beetle” by Ada Limon
Deborah asked me to add this:
There were lots more poems! You shoulda been there! Maybe you were.
Deborah recently published three books of poetry: The World A Well, Layers of Sediment and Moment Before. You can order them from her at: dlbadger@gmail.com.
We ended our Zoom gathering with Deborah reading one of her unpublished poems:
Unannounced
The grass moved
inhalation exhalation
as the animal slept
still but for breath
covered by the sky’s night
wind in the orchard
deeper shadows under dark firs
We find the grass bowl
in early morning, still warm
stalks flattened not by wind
but impress of being
a nest one might say
yet in soil not air
a vibrant emptiness
While we slept unaware
another life another world
passed by
inextricably connected
yet unknown
how many each moment
these transparent threads
Breathing the same air
walking so closely
Details
- Start:
- January 3, 2021
- End:
- January 16, 2021