The Planet On The Table

for April's National Poetry Month I've been sharing some of my favorite poems....

Installment 10 by Toni Pepe from the series The Gesture of Tradition

The Planet On The Table
by Wallace Stevens


Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.
His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.


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A note on the photograph, I went to school with Toni and she is a dedicated, passionate artist. I love her work! I'm like the president of her fan club! You should totally join too...

Hope you are enjoying the poems- I didn't realize I posted them back to back, but I'm really loving pairing the imagery with words....

Secrecy

for April's National Poetry Month I've been sharing some of my favorite poems....

Secrecy
by Margaret Atwood


Secrecy flows through you,
a different kind of blood.
It's as if you've eaten it
like a bad candy,
taken it into your mouth,
let it melt sweetly on your tongue,
then allowed it to slide down your throat
like the reverse of uttering,
a word dissolved
into its glottals and sibilants,
a slow intake of breath—

And now it's in you, secrecy.
Ancient and viscious, luscious
as dark velvet.
It blooms in you,
a poppy made of ink.

You can think of nothing else.
Once you have it, you want more.
What power it gives you!
Power of knowing without being known,
power of the stone door,
power of the iron veil,
power of the crushed fingers,
power of the drowned bones
crying out from the bottom of the well.

Images: top, Sally Mann "At Warm Springs" 1991via NYTimes
bottom, Sally Mann "Untitled (#30)" 1998 From the "Deep South" series © Sally Mann via Art21

The Museum of Stones....

I'm sharing some of my favorite poems for April's National Poetry Month....

The Museum of Stones
by Carolyn Forche

This is your museum of stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,

collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir,
stones loosened by tanks in the streets
of a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linen,

schoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse,
pebble from Apollinaire's oui,
stone of the mind within us
carried from one silence to another,
stone of cromlech and cairn, schist and shale, hornblende,
agate, marble, millstones, and ruins of choirs and shipyards,
chalk, marl, and mudstone from temples and tombs,
stone from the silvery grass near the scaffold,
stone from the tunnel lined with bones,
lava of the city's entombment,
chipped from lighthouse, cell wall, scriptorium,
paving stones from the hands of those who rose against the army,
stones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown,
those that had flown through windows and weighted petitions,
feldspar, rose quartz, slate, blueschist, gneiss, and chert,
fragments of an abbey at dusk, sandstone toe
of a Buddha mortared at Bamiyan,
stone from the hill of three crosses and a crypt,
from a chimney where storks cried like human children,
stones newly fallen from stars, a stillness of stones, a heart,
altar and boundary stone, marker and vessel, first cast, lode, and hail,
bridge stones and others to pave and shut up with,
stone apple, stone basil, beech, berry, stone brake,
stone bramble, stone fern, lichen, liverwort, pippin, and root,
concretion of the body, as blind as cold as deaf,
all earth a quarry, all life a labor, stone-faced, stone-drunk
with hope that this assemblage, taken together, would become
a shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immovable and sacred,
like the stone that marked the path of the sun as it entered the human dawn.

Bright Objects Hypnotize the Mind....

April is National Poetry Month. I'll be sharing some of my favorites throughout the month. I love this poster designed by Stephen Doyle - the swampy setting (NY Botanical Garden!), neon signage, and reflection in the water. The poster is an interpretation of Elizabeth's Bishop's poem A Word with You....

A Word with You
Elizabeth Bishop

Look out! there’s that damned ape again
sit silently until he goes,
or else forgets the things he knows
(whatever they are) about us, then
we can begin to talk again.

Have you tried playing with your ring?
Sometimes that calms them down, I find.
(Bright objects hypnotize the mind.)
Get his attention on anything –
anything will do – there, try your ring.

The glitter pleases him. You see
he squints his eyes; his lip hangs loose.
You were saying? – Oh Lord, what’s the use,
for now the parrot’s after me
and the monkeys are awake. You see

how hard it is, you understand
this nervous strain in which we live -
Why just one luscious adjective
infuriates the whole damned band
and they’re squabbling for it. I understand

some people manage better. How?
They treat the creatures without feeling.
- Throw books to stop the monkeys’ squealing,
slap the ape and make him bow,
are firm, keep order, – but I don’t know how.

Quick! there’s the cockatoo! he heard!
(He can’t bear any form of wit.)
- Please watch out that you don’t get bit;
there’s not a thing escapes that bird.
Be silent, – now the ape has overheard.