January 12, 2021 – 11:39 pm
When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door […]
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December 6, 2020 – 5:03 pm
Dear Tomorrow, I could do it again, watch the heron carry my grandmother’s verses to its despair garden. I could be a citizen of evergreens and tend to a homeland of weeds in the forest with something resembling love. I can accept the patience white strawberries require. I can learn prayers in the spring kingdom, […]
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October 29, 2020 – 10:43 pm
This year’s title for the Hillhurst poetry-as-prayer retreat comes from the Fisherman’s Prayer as quoted by American poet Dorianne Laux, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize: Dear Lord, be good to me, the sea is so wide and my boat is so small. Please consider this invitation to shout out in your own […]
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September 1, 2020 – 10:25 pm
from Find the Poets Find the poets, my friend said. They will not speak of the things you and I speak about. They will not speak of economic integration or fiscal consolidation. They could not tell you anything about the burden of adjustment. But they could sit you down and tell you how poems are […]
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A Small Ambition To be no more than mist rising above the rushes, entering the white limbs of the trees. For just one hour to be a calmness a lifting up minus bones and muscles, minus memory and cognition and your own insistent longing to last. Lorna Crozier from THE HOUSE THE SPIRIT BUILDS, (Poems […]
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A Cento by Nancy Issenman Say Yes Sniff the naked page It is time to praise! white ash, sassafras so beautiful on the tongue waves of language across the skin (makes) all the world a page I have to say yes. I can smell this poem as one layer devours the next your calligraphic hand […]
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I Wish I Could Tell You, John Prine The time I saw you live you were opening for Arlo Guthrie but it was you I went to see. You played them all, your glorious songs, introduced an angel from Montgomery, showed us the tracks on a young vet’s arm, taught us a thing or two […]
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April 13, 2020 – 11:09 am
While writing a blog for today I came across a reference to the fabulous Brazilian poet Adélia Prado and then went searching for my blogs on her. And found this post from Easter Monday six years ago and thought too perfect, must use it again! Prado was acknowledged in 2014 with A Distinguished Lifetime Contribution […]
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December 13, 2019 – 6:55 pm
The Poetry after Li Po I found him wandering on the hill one hot blue afternoon. He looked as skinny as a nail, as pale-skinned as the moon; below the broad shade of his hat his face was cut with rain. Dear God, poor Du Fu, I thought: It’s the poetry again. Don Paterson (1963 […]
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November 21, 2019 – 3:12 am
Want Small wind tonight and my faced pressed to the flimsy screen. Owls ghost the hilltop trees, fledglings shrilling for food. They eat their own weight in rodents every night, and shriek although their sibling was found, consumed. Under their nest box, What was left: wings sheared intact From the torso, a few bones, Skull […]
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