"drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care." (Ted Kooser via Annafair) MArj I too read some of Flying yesterday. You know actually, aside from the joy I find in waking each morning, one of my favorite parts of the day is bringing it to a close, away from the outside world...even my thoughts being drawn in away from anything outside of my own inner experiences, as in your "about how we turn on lights earlier as fall in the USA brings darkness earlier and that action brings my home into my "system of care"

The poem I chose is from Flying at Night:

I have an Aunt Helen who is in her nineties and she lives nearby my son and d-i-l and when I go up to see them this month hope and pray to see her--if she's there, I will--for she is a poet and has always been my mentor. She earned her GED at the age of 78 and shortly afterwards went to visit my cousin in Alaska and was so overwhelmed by its beauty that she began writing her poetry. She also makes the world's BEST peanut butter fudge and also sweet bread!! And she was always busy, busy, busy! The following reminded me of Aunt Helen.

Carrie

"There's never an end to dust
and dusting," my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There's never an end to it.

I don't think there's any more that I will say just now...

Alliemae

""Ted Kooser is a major poetic voice for rural and small town America..."

Oh, how I look forward to this month. In autumn my thoughts always turn to 'home'...the small towns in Mass and Maine where I was raised until we came to Philly. And small town life and values are never far from my mind.

Welcome Ted Kooser...you will be with us at just the right time!

Alliemae

paddling ahead. He has extended his neck
to its full length, and his chin, hard as a break,
breaks the cold surf. He's got his baseball cap on

backward as up he crawls, out of the froth
of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,
and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

"Delights & Shadows" ~ Ted Kooser

Interesting portrait of today's student. I especially like the lines: "backward as up he crawls out of the froth/of a hangover and onto the sand of the future/and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library."

And "Often I think about the time when people stayed in one place." Hats, you always say things that bring out my sense of nostalgia. Now that you mention it, when I was a little girl it would never have occurred to me that I would ever move away from Pleasant Street in Northampton, Mass!!

Thanks, Hats, for the inspiration and the memories!!

Alliemae

"Delights & Shadows" ~ Ted Kooser (via Scrawler)
The descriptions…the mood of the subject…are so incredibly portrayed. How many times have I seen my older son look exactly like that, going to school in the cold, wind and snow (hopefully without the hangover!). ”…and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.”…how wonderfully real. Thank you Mr. Kooser….and thank you Scrawler for bringing this poem to the group. My son is 47 now and I find myself filled with the feel of him as he was at 17.

Seems I have lots more reading to do…be back later on…Latin to translate (yes, did drop the class but am having a great time translating [well trying] On Old Age by Cicero. I picked it up at the conference last June and thought it was rather ironically appropriate!

Later all…Alliemae

~ "Delights & Shadows" ~ Ted Kooser

What a delightful poem! That's the way I feel sometimes as I walk about (in the daylight). I'm not really searching for anything new or old. I'm just adjusting myself toward the future and sometimes wishing for the past as I wonder about and see my natural surroundings.

I'm a "rat-pack" myself. It seems I can't get rid of anything especially books.

Hats I didn't even notice that! Now I'll go read that poem again. Very interesting observation! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Alliemae

Scrawler I think I know what you mean...

I must read this some more. I am learning in this group that I'm going to have to read poems many times for my first impressions are almost always very subjective and then I have to go back and see what else may be being told to me. The minute I started reading this poem a picture of my dad popped into my head, "...Pantcuffs rolled, and in old shoes,"...fishing at the breakwater in Rockland and 'midwifing' a mama dogfish in a big puddle he made in an indentation of one of the rocks. A tender man was my dad!

By the end the poem was about me...like Scrawler expressed... I'm off to just read the poetry for a few hours and will post more maybe tomorrow. I'm so homesick...

Alliemae

A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.

~ "Delights & Shadows" Ted Kooser

What a beautiful poem this is! So often in this day and age we tend to turn our faces away from someone we see in a "wheel chair" but through Ted Kooser's poem you see beyond the first impression and into the woman who she really is. I thought it wonderful to compare her to a musician playing a difficult piece of music.

I really choked up on this one. This is love...pure and simple.

Alliemae

How much longer, I wonder, is it going to take for me to remember to just sit and 'notice'. I do believe since I'm now able to be in this month's discussion more actively, I may learn to. This is a much needed month for me so far.

Alliemae

~ "Delights & Shadows" ~ Ted Kooser

I like his poems about nature, but the ones about 'human life' are especially gems to me.

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

from Delights & Shadows

...and how we love and feel for them at this stage--for we know...

Alliemae

This morning as I sat in my shower I realized there was nothing to do but weep and pray. As the police chief had said, "There were no winners here today."

May all the little ones, as well as the tormented man rest in peace, and may all of their families find peace and the will to go on.

Alliemae

Slap of the screen door, flat knock
of my grandmother's boxy black shoes
on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep
of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride
out to the edge and then, toed in
with a furious twist and heave,
a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands
and hangs there shining for fifty years
over the mystified chickens,
over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,
the clay slope down to the creek,
over the redwing blackbirds in the tops
of the willows, a glorious rainbow
with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.

~ "Delights & Shadows" Ted Kooser

This poem reminded me of my Irish great-grandmother. When I was a little girl I used to visit her in the Mission district of San Francisco. Even to this day I always remember how she smelled of "homemade soap." I thank God every day for my mechanical devices like diswashers and washing machines, but there was something about that "dishpan" hanging in the kitchen and the smell of soap that...well, I can't quite come up with the words.

Love it!!

Alliemae

Maybe Ted or Marj can tell me. Anyway...I like the visual aspect of this poem.

I was especially struck by this line: "The bigger the window, the more it trembles." I felt somehow insecure on a couple of levels but I don't know why.

Thanks!

Alliemae

His hands fluttered like birds,
each with a fancy silk ribbon
to weave into their nest,
as he stood at the mirror
dressing for work, waving hello
to himself with both hands.

~ "Delights & Shadows" ~ Ted Kooser

I picked this poem because it reminded me of my son. Once when he was in junior high school I peeked into his room to see why he was taking so long dressing for a school dance and found him struggling with his necktie. After a few mintues of "spying" on him in amusement, I took piety on him and helped him with it.

...another winning line!!!

And Scrawler what a tender memory. I have two boys myself and two girls as well. Thanks for sharing your memory of your son when he was young!

Alliemae

Just four lines and I'm five years old again on Memorial Day at Look Park with all of our family and friends...and all of us kids holding a tiny American flag...

And the photos I still have from those precious days were all taken with this same type of camera, now made famous in a poem.

Mr. Ted Kooser, how many lives and hearts must you have touched with your poetry? You are immortal now, you know! Not a bad state of being...

Alliemae

A farmhouse window far back from the highway
speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice
Against this stillness, only a kettle's whisper,
and against the starry cold, one small blue ring of flame.

~ "Delights & Shadows" ~ Ted Kooser

Although I'm a city gal myself, I can certainly appreciate what imagery this speaks of!

I have been, over the past few years (has it been that long), writing a book of vignettes for my children and grandchildren about our family as I saw them through my eyes as a child. I hope you will indulge me but this is an exerpt of the story I've been telling them about my mother's mother, Grandmom a.k.a. Elvie (for Elvira)...and also referred to by her children and grandchildren as 'the Queen'...

"She always wore an apron, or so I remember…and those little 'old lady' black shoes that tied up the front (I understand that Lauren Hutton swears by them!). She smelled very faintly of a wisp of soft, expensive cologne...and Italian cooking.

I remember wondering as a pre-teen and teen why Grandmom chose such muted colors for her dresses and aprons. I loved those soft shades. I'd seen housedresses and aprons a lot. They sold them at the larger 5 & 10 Cent Stores and at department stores and also at the Dry Goods Store. The patterns were all like Elvie’s patterns but the ones in the stores looked so garishly bright.

Finally, today, while ironing, at 64 years old, I understood about those aprons and those dresses. They were faded. They were faded from years of wearing and washing but always pressed so nicely I thought Elvie bought them in those lovely colors.

Oh, now do you know why this woman had made such a strong impression on me? Even faded aprons and dresses were elegant on Elvie!"

This month's poems seem to be filled with such reminiscences. At least I hope that's the case. Sometimes the memories elicited by Ted Kooser's poetry make me wonder if my life is passing right before my eyes...and we all know what that might mean! (sorry...superstitious here...must insert a 'tsu tsu'!!)

Alliemae

Circling above us, their wing-tips fanned
like fingers, it is as if they are smoothing

one of those tissue-paper sewing patterns
over the pale blue fabric of the air,

touching the heavens with leisurely pleasure,
just a word or two called back and forth,

taking all the time in the world, even though
the sun is low and red in the west, and they

have fallen behind with the making of shrouds.

~ "Delights & Shadows" ~ Ted Kooser

That last line makes me shiver a little. I've never seen a turkey vulture up close and personal, but I have seen a goose. Not to long ago as I was resting by the swimming pool I saw a flock of geese fly overhead and the leader honked and one goose flew down very close to where I was and "eyed" me the way birds do. Than he honked several times and when I didn't respond he flew away to join his friends.

~ "Delights & Shadows" Ted Kooser

This poem reminds of the pegboard that was above my father's workbench. Not only did he have the tools that he used, but he also kept his father's tools as well. And woe to anyone who borrowed a tool and did not put it back in its proper place.

If someone were to ask me what this poem means I wouldn't be able to explain what it said to me. But there is a feeling...some poignancy at some deeper level of myself...that is struggling to express a feeling akin to love of and gratitude toward our ancients and how, with so little, they gave so much to the world as we found their contributions to those of us who followed.

Alliemae

Has anyone else in here besides me ever wished there really was a 'Time Tunnel'? That was my favorite tv show when I was growing up...well...that and Gene Autry movies!!!

Alliemae

Alliemae

Alliemae

I am thinking this is, in my opinion, one of Mr. Kooser's most poetic of poems and I wish I knew more about the mechanics or something so that I could express this better.

There are a couple of phrases I thought especially 'remember-able' but I'm going to ask your indulgence once again and copy the entire poem and just underline or bold those lines.

Fifty or sixty small gray birds each with crests
in a bare hackberry tree this morning early,
not one of them making a sound
or even the neat black silhouette of a sound
against the rising sun. They let me
walk up close, then one by one
they leapt from their perches and dropped
and caught the air and swung away
into the north, becoming a ribbon first,
and then , in the distance, confetti,
as they sprinkled their breathtaking silence
into another bare tree.

Guess you may all know by now that this is on my 'To Memorize' list!

Alliemae

http://forestry.about.com/od/hardwoods/ss/hackberry.htm

http://www.survivaliq.com/survival/edible-and-medicinal-plants-hackberry.htm

alliemae

~ Ted Kooser ~ "Delights & Shadows"

I think it interesting that we today are product of the past. Not just the past of our own families, but the whole past and like the "horse" described above we have inherited many atributes both good and not so good in our own time. Hoppefully we stand watchful a sentry for our time.

~ Ted Kooser "Delights & Shadows"

Perhaps we all should take a page from nature and not cast out our faith but rather nurture it the same way a butterfly does toward a flower.

This is not so much a dictionary
as it is an atlas for the old,
in which they pore over
the pink and gray maps of the body,
hoping to find that wayside junction
where a pain-rutted road
intersects with the highway
of answers, and where the slow river
of fear that achingly meanders
from organ to organ
a finally channeled and dammed.

~ Ted Kooser ~ "Delights and Shadows"

This poem reminds me of my days working as a disability claims adjuster for the state of California. I can't tell you how many times I used just such a book to help explain to injured and frightened people about what was happening to them. There were so many times that even the book didn't have the answers these people needed. It was than that I had to rely on common sense to help them.

that takes off some of the pressure,
keeping the weight of the unknown

from breaking through
and washing us all down the valley.

Because of this small tube,
through which a cold light rushes

from the bottom of time,
the depth of the stars stays always constant

and we are able to sleep, at least for now,
beneath the straining wall of darkness.

Ted Kooser ~ Delights & Shadows"

This poem has both a gentleness to it because of its rhythm and also a more serious side when we think about the words: "that takes off some of the pressure/keeping the weight of the unknown/from breaking through/ and washing us all down the valley."

After I read the poem about the horse I've been busily looking at horse pictures and reading exerpts about horses that I'd read before. I love horses...they have really been our partners in this world! So now I have decided to do a paper for our Classics newsletter, Ecce!, about the role of the horse in Ancient Greece and Rome.

I see I have quite a lot of catching up to do and look forward to reading all the posts here during my absence...

Be back later!

Alliemae

and precisely the color of dust, of the roads
lending back across the dying fields
into the '30s. Walking the cracked lane

past the empty barn, the empty silo,
you hear them tinkering with irony,
slapping the grass like drops of rain.

~ Ted Kooser "Delights & Shadows"

I'm beginning to understand how Kooser got his interesting title: "Delights & Shadows". You see in this poem both the delights of the grasshoppers and than the shadows they make as well.

4:30 a.m.

On mornings like this , as hours before dawn
I walk the dark hall of the road
with my life creaking under my feet, I sometimes
take hold of the cold porcelain knob
of the moon, and turn it , and step into a room
warm and yellow , and take my seat
at a small wooden table with a border of painted pansies
and wait for my mother to bring me my bowl

Ted Kooser Winter Morning Walks

Thanks for posting this one anna...

Alliemae

Ted Kooser ~ "Delights & Shadows"

When I was a little girl and we would vacation near the Russian River in California I used to sit on the porch steps of our cabin and listen to the "night sounds." Being a city gal the country seemed to quiet for me especially at night, but the "owl" was always there and it was like he was playing hide and seek with me. I could hear him calling, but I didn't know where he was.

and yet the early bird
is out there chirping,

chirping its sweet-sour
wooden-pulley notes,

pleased, it would seem,
to be given work,

hauling the heavy
bucket of dawn

up from the darkness,
note over note,

and letting us drink.

~ Ted Kooser "Delights & Shadows"

I like this little gem. I especially like the words: "chirping its sweet-sour/wooden-pulley notes."

~ Ted Kooser ~ "Delights & Shadows"

I don't know about the rest of you, but I as I grow older I tend to have dreams of the distant past especially when it is raining outside when I go to sleep and than when I first awaken I think I'm really back in the past for a few seconds until I'm fully awake and realize where I am. I like this small poem very much.

By the toe of my boot,
a pebble of quartz,
one drop of the earth's milk,
dirty and cold.
I held it to the light
and could almost see through it
into the grant explanation.
Put it back, something told me,
put it back and keep walking.

~ Ted Kooser "Delights & Kooser"

Ah! Yet another poem that reminds me of my childhood rock collection. I just collected rocks because I liked the feel of them and I liked running my fingers over the smooth or rough edges. Yes, and there was always that "voice" who told me to "put it back and keep walking", but to me that was my mother's voice and I doubt she was thinking of the environment in the 1950s.

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood in the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

~Ted Kooser "Delights & Shadows"

Wow! What imagery and how sad that he had no one to tell.

Yes, how sad...and that one person walking away can sometimes mean that there is 'no one' to tell...I know the feeling.

Alliemae

I also see a boy...but a boy on his own, whose daddy had passed away when he was only nine years old and this young boy would be thinking of the poem he was writing and maybe kicking a stone or two. I think part of my dad's strength came from the quarries in Rockland.

And, knowing my dad...I'm sure he could feel his dad's presence on these early morning walks.

There was always a store or two just like Tilden’s Store up in the highlands of Rockland...and a proprietor just as kind!

Oh how I love this poem!

Alliemae

~Ted Kooser "Delights & Shadows"

What a gentle poem, but what a wonderous thought!

"A Quarter Moon Just Before Dawn" (TK via annafair)

This is such a poetic poem that I don't understand it really. But I am touched by

"big peasants hands
with night under their nails."
hidden deep in the 'stretched-out pockets' of her cardigan.

Alliemae

~ Ted Kooser "Delights & Shadows"

This is the last poem in the book "Delights & Shadows" and how appropriate it is showing both the delights of reading & than the shadows that follow. And also I assume the end of a very happy birthday - day!

So many of you do, oh 'fellow readers of poetry' and Hats, you are definitely one of those. Not only are you gifted in metaphors but you have that very special knack of presenting your interpretation simply so that people like me can understand it.

"We have always called the sliver of moon before it turns dark or when it just returns from dark a toe nail moon..." (Barbara)

And you, Barbara, also have a special talent. I've just read your interpretation and it's like prose poetry...and I love 'digging out' the meanings...like a tussle with fried chicken and boiled crabs to get all the meat on a warm summer evening with the neighbors on the front porch!

alliemae

I love this gem. It saddens me that now children are given expensive computer toys that don't stretch their imagination like a simple piece of cloth. When I was a child it seemed that we used our imagination more and produced far more rewarding things from simple objects than can ever be done on a computer. Reading and imagination came hand and hand and add to that the simple objects and oh the fun one could have.

When my day is done, birthday or otherwise, this poem reminds me that I have a habit of 'smoothing' out my sometimes 'unreadable' mind by smoothing my temples and forehead...

It's so easy to connect to Ted Kooser's poems...

alliemae

I do miss my wild animals that I used to see in my other apartment complex. Here there are too many dogs and cars for the safety of these animals; not to mention the humans. I still see an occasional cat while I make my rounds and my indoor cat got a lesson from the kitchen window the other day on how to catch a bird or perhaps more appropriately how not to catch a bird from an outside cat. I'm just as glad that the bird got away, but the cat's viewpoint might be different. I love the last line of this poem!

A deer of gray vapor steps through the foreground,
under the dripping, lichen-rusted trees.

Halfway across the next field,
the distance (or can that be the future?)
is sealed up in tin like an old barn.

~Ted Kooser "Winter Morning Walks"

As I look across the street now I can see the illumination of a window coming from the back of the movie theatre across the street. It does indeed look like something "from the future" - it seems to be a red glow coming from I know not what, perhaps in my imagination the glow is from a flying saucer that just landed and the little green men have yet to come out. You can see where my imagination goes sometimes, but aren't movie theatres producers of such. Now tell me have you ever seen a real flying saucer in the middle of a town - no on second thought don't tell me -

See how the gardens
wade into the edge of the hayfield
the cucumbers crawling out under the lilacs
to be in the sun (annafair)

I like the way Ted Kooser portrayed the affirmation of Nature's creation's 'knowing' how to survive...

alliemae

Hugs, alliemae

~ Ted Kooser ~ "Winter Morning Walks"

The bright red berries remind me of watching the birds picking at them at this time of year. Evidently the berries make the birds drunk and its hilarious to watch them as they try and walk a straight line. But you have to be careful that the cats don't get to them, although every once in awhile a "drunk" bird will go right up to a cat or a human and chirp its head off at them.

~ Ted Kooser "Winter Morning Walks"

I don't like to drive in fog, but I enjoy watching the fog from the window. Like the poem suggests sometimes you "think" you see something that is only across the street and than suddenly you look "and both sky and roof [go] blank". It is an eerie feeling especially around Halloween.

~ Ted Kooser "Winter Morning Walks"

What a delightful thought of the "sun" looking for me, having seen me cheerfully walking along the road. I've had that happen to me. I'll leave my house to go for a walk and it will be cool and cloudy and than when I return I'll look around and it will seem that the sun was indeed following me home and is streaming through my window.

But in fog they come closer. You can feel them
there by the road as you slowly walk past.
Still as fence posts they wait, dark and reproachful,
each stepping forward in turn.

~Ted Kooser " Winter Morning Walks"

How true this is. There does seem as you walk in fog that something is there waiting in the dark. I once took a walk in the fog and as I walked I thought I heard footsteps, but when I turned around no one was there. I shrugged it off as being just my imagination and yet I felt that there was something following me. I'd like to think that perhaps it was only the past, reproachful yes, but the past that can't hurt you unless you let it.

~ Ted Kooser "Winter Morning Walks"

What Imagery! We don't have snow here, but its cold & wet & I wouldn't be surprised if it snowed. Yesterday I was watching a hummingbird as it fluttered around & around two cats. Both cats after awhile lay down on the ground as if they were dizzy from watching the bird & the bird was off fluttering around some place else.

I think when I read alone I can read the poetry with feeling if something in the poem touches me subjectively. I'm afraid I've never tried to develop my visual imagination even though I can appreciate the works.

What plunged me into this repeat of a pastime I have enjoyed all through this month was the part in Winter about the snowflake deciding not to spread its wings so as not to make it even more difficult for the birds at the already crowded bird feeder. I thought to myself, "What kind of person can notice this sort of thing and then be able to express it?" It would never occur to me for a snowflake to either fold or open its wings (which it doesn't have anyway) and so off I went to listen to the man himself.

I wonder if being a Sagittarius who sees the whole picture rather than the tiny details, which through reading and listening to Ted Kooser are positively and delightfully stuffed with meaning, means that I'll have to wait for another reincarnation in another sign...

Alliemae

A curled, brown leaf lies on its back,
lifting its undistinguished edges
into the glory of frost.

~Ted Kooser "Delights & Shadows"

I too am sorry to leave Ted Kooser, but in many ways thanks to you & this discussion I won't be leaving him at all. Just like the man in this poem when I go for my walks and see "a curled, brown leaf [laying] on its back" I'll think of Ted Kooser.

As it is only a couple of hours from Hallowe'en here on the East Coast, I would like to post a short poem written by my dad, partly because it's Hallowe'en and partly because I think if Ted Kooser would read it he would be amused as well.

FUNNY FACE

There are lots of funny faces,
I have surely seen a pile;
But I have one I wear myself
That beats them all a mile.

If you'd a sense of humor,
You'd surely laugh to see,
The Hallowe'en contraption
I wear in front of me.

It's really unbelievable;
I stand out in a crowd;
Why my friends they don't smile at me,
They just laugh right out loud.

But there's one good thing about me;
I'm not two-faced I'll say.
'Cause if I had another one
I'd throw this one away!

by Frank E. Knight

After one of my favorite BritComs they play the New Jersey Lottery and as I watched the numbered balls hurled into the air by whatever they use--I think some kind of forced air--all I could think of was 'a flurry of frenzied fleas jumping in a cacaphony of directions over a rotting garbage heap!!'.

Now I know that this is not poetry, but just knowing that doing this 'noticing' exercise whenever I want (at least six times a day) will surely entertain me and is a certain cure for the doldrums!!

Alliemae

~ Ted Kooser "Winter Morning Walks"

I am so glad he wrote these poems & I am so glad that we were able to discuss & share them. Sharing is I think something that has been forgotten in our day & age. I'm sure you can remember your mothers telling you to share with younger siblings & friends. If only "sharing" were to become popular once again, what a world this would be.

We are in one of my favorite playing fields with this poem, music being second only to nature in my life perhaps.

Understand this poem and you will understand me, dear friends...

"Something of heavens ever burns in it,
I like to watch its wondrous facets' growth."

and...

"As if all flowers began to talk in gardens."

Yes...that's it...not about my mother or my father or even about my children or grandchildren or even friends or memories...this poem is me.

Alliemae

Well, princes are good at such speeches,
As a girl is quick to tears,-
But may those words stream like an ermine mantle
Behind him for ten thousand years. ~ 1909, Kiev from Evening Anna Akhmatova

What words of wisdom this poem reflects. Is the poet suggesting that it is far better to go to a nunnery than marry a fool? And princes do sometimes make fine speeches that bring a girl to tears. But I found the last few lines most potent: "But may those words stream like an ermine mantle/behind him for ten thousand years."

"In 1910, she married the boyish poet Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for hunting lions in Africa, the battlefields of the World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes." ~ Wikipedia

And the room, where the light strikes through slits,
Cherishes love, for here it is still new.
A bed, with a French inscription over it,
Reading: 'Seigneur, ayez pitie de nous.'

Of such a lived-through legend the sad strokes
You must not touch, my soul, nor seek to do...
Of Sevres statuettes the brilliant cloaks
I see are darkening and wearing through.

Yellow and heavy, one last ray has poured
Into a fresh bouquet of dahlias
And hardened there. And I hear viols play
And of a clavecin the rare accord.

~ "From Evening" ~ Anna Akhmatova

I too am feeling history here, but this poem also might have a contemporary feel as well. "Yellow and heavy, one last ray has poured/into a fresh bouquet of dahlias" might refer to the last rays of the sun that I was surprised at pouring through my window when it had poured rain almost the entire day yesterday, but the rest is history.

I do wish that I knew the meaning of the French words over the bed: "Seigneur, ayez pitie de nous." Anyone here know French? In the past people read not only read French but also Latin and I'm finding that as I read volumes written in centuries past that I'm at a loss because although I did take four years of Latin I can't remember anything and I never did take French. In my days Spanish was considered a foreign language and that's what I took. But alas even that is somewhere in the creases of my cobwebbed brain.

It caught my eye because in so many Central Asian Turkic countries under Soviet rule for so long, the Turkic name (in this case Akhmat) had to have an 'ova' placed at the end to Sovietize or Russianize it.

Then, reading through her poems, so many of them too heavy for me, yet intriguing, about the prisoners and the revolution...anyway, too heavy for this bright and sunny Saturday...I found this:

To Boris Pasternak 1960

2.
"The echo-bird will give me answer" -----------B.P.--------

"It ceased – the voice, inimitable here,
The peer of groves left forever us,
He changed himself into eternal ear...
Into the rain, of that sang more than once.

And all the flowers, that grow under heavens,
Began to flourish – to meet the going death…
But suddenly it got the silent one and saddened –
The planet, bearing the humble name, the Earth."

Anna Akhmatova

(Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, February, 2001)

Such a touching tribute to a fellow poet...colleague and cohort...

["The writer Boris Pasternak, who was already married, had proposed her numerous times."]

Please note: I couldn't exactly understand if Pasternak had proposed marriage to her numerous times or had proposed her for an award the way it was worded in the quote. I, romantic that I am, think it was referring to marriage proposals (something I find enormously more romantic in literature than in real life, by the way!)...

Can anyone shed more light? She was not mentioned in the biography I just looked up on Pasternak but that was a very short one.

I glanced through the many and thoughtfilled posts before posting this and want to go back now and read all of the poems and thoughts you have all posted.

I have a feeling this is going to be a fulfilling month of poetry with AA.

Alliemae

Water becoming ice is slowing in
The narrow channels.
Nothing at all will happen here again,
Will ever happen.

Against the sky the willow spreads a fan
The silk's torn off.
Maybe it's better I did not become
Your wife.

Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
What is is? - Dark?
Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us
In the night.

~ 1911 Kiev, Anna Akamatova

It is great sadness that I feel from this poem, but also a passion of the heart almost as if you can hear a heart breaking.

Having been born in 1889 and this poem being written in 1911, what strikes me so deeply is the accepted dejection of one so young.

And her life's experiences as she matured were certainly not improving. It makes me feel honor-bound to read more about the Russian Revolution...any reco's?

Alliemae

Thanks much to you both...Alliemae

It seemed that there were many steps
- I knew there were only three.
An autumn whisper between the maples
Kept urging: 'Die with me.

Change has made me weary,
Fate has cheated me of everything.'
I answered: 'My dear, my dear!
I'll die with you. I too am suffering.'

It was a song of the last meeting.
Only bedroom-candles burnt
When I looked into the dark house,
And they were yellow and indifferent.

~ 1911, Tsarskoye Selo "From Evening" Anna Akhmatova

This poem struck a chord with me. In reading it I remembered the first time I entered my darkened house after my husband had passed away.

Allimae, I don't know if these books will help you understand the Russian Revolution, but they certainly may help you understand the Russion people.

The best book I know about the Revolution is "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak. But my personal favorite concerning the Russian people was "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy. Than there is always "War and Peace" by Tolstoy. And if you have the energy there is also "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The poem you posted seems to have been absorbed right into my essence and especially when you said "I remembered the first time I entered my darkened house after my husband had passed away." Those words seem to hang in the heavy, bewildering despair portayed in AA's poem...never dropping to the floor, but surrounding you as you walked through your empty home.

Hugs, Alliemae

I have an email pal I'd like to send that link to when she comes home from her son's this week if that's ok with you, Marj. She is part Native American and I thought of her when I saw, "The Cheyenne have many legends of brave warriors whose skill and success was in part due to their identification with the wolf." In fact, much of her email stationery has beautiful pictures of wolves on it.

I also liked the way the writer of the article pointed out the way the wolf is portrayed through some of our famous sayings and how they would differ if other animals had been used.

As for me...I think wolves are very handsome...almost regal. But then, I'm part Native American too.

This touched me, "And a definite feel of Russia with the ice and snow." (MarjV) as it did you. I could feel the cold to the point I could almost see and smell the crisp, moist condensation of my exhalations into the cold...

Alliemae

To decide to go to bed
Seeing the fields fade in
The sunset murk of pine-needles,
And to know all is lost,

That life is a cursed hell:
I've got drunk
On your voice in the doorway,
I was sure you'd come back.

~ 1911, Tsarskoye Selo "From Evening" Anna Akhmatova

What an interesting and sad poem with all the poet's mood swings. It has the feeling of loss until I presume the lover comes back to the poet at the end. Or does the poet still lose even though the lover returns.

I too enjoyed the article about the "wolves." It is interesting to note that in the first part of the 20th century the white man almost hunted the wolf to extinction until we learned from the Indians to appreciate the wolf.

When my mom died I had to do all the arrangements...my dad was shattered and so was my brother and my sister had a houseful of small children. I was lucky and had my husband's support through the whole thing.

The day after the funeral the minute I woke up I turned to Jim and said, "Thank God that's over...I can't wait to go visit Mom...I haven't seen her for days!" And even after she had been gone for almost a year and a half, the first time I dressed my new baby girl in her little white hand-embroidered cotton lawn dress I lifted her up and said, "Now let's go show Grandmom how pretty you look."

Sometimes I think we just don't realize that they are gone and 'are sure they will come back.'

Alliemae

Now this, in fact this whole poem, to me, is 'making love'.

Alliemae

I have, although not Jewish myself, always been fascinated by the Orthodox Jewish keeping of the Sabbath. It started with, believe it or not, "Fiddler on the Roof" and I was reminded again in Joe Lieberman's campaign in 2000. And I, like Barbara, wanted to do that with radio, tv and computer. Alas...no success yet. I think it must help to not be living alone. For instance, I can't even imagine a Sunday morning without Chris Matthews and Tim Russert and then what's left of Stephanopolous. And as for the computer...well...lots of my world is also wrapped up in it!!

I have noticed one thing though. When I feel overstressed...and it's usually from electonic overstimulation...I only have to turn off tv, radio and computer and lights and lie down in a darkened room and within minutes I am completely relaxed.

I wonder if we'll ever know how that constant barrage of voices upon voices upon voices is truly affecting our nervous systems.

MarjV you mention about being reminded of "Dr. Zhivago"...I have had that feeling also, over and over again in these winter poems.

Alliemae

There's nothing to be sad about.
Sadness is a crme, a prison.
A strange impression, I have risen
From the grey canvas like a sheet.

Up-flying arms, with a bad break,
Tormented smile - I and the sitter
Had to become thus through the bitter
Hours of profligate give and take.

He willed it that it should be so,
With words that were sinister and dead
Fear drove into my lips the red,
And into my cheeks it piled the snow.

No sin in him. I was his fee.
He went, and arranged other limbs,
And other draperies. Void of dreams,
I lie in mortal lethargy.

1912 ~ "From Evening" Anna Akhmatova

This poem reminds me of one Edgar Allan Poe's stories - "The Oval Portrait." It is a story about a beautiful young woman who marries a portrait painter. As the painter paints he draws all the passion and emotion as well the beauty from his young wife so that when the story is finished she is found dead. According to some sources Oscar Wilde drew on Poe's story for his own "Portrait of Dorian Grey."

Birthday HUGS to each of you!!

As always, Alliemae

It goes on without end - the day, heavy and amber!
How impossible is grief, how vain the waiting!
And with a silver voice, again the deer
Speaks in the deer-park of the Northern Lights.
And I believe that there is cool snow,
And a blue font for those whose hands are empty,
And a small sledge is being widly ridden,
Under the ancient chimes of distant bells.

We're all drunkrds here. Harlots.
Joylessly we're stuck together.
On the walls, scarlet
Flowers, birds of a feather,

Pine for clouds. Your black pipe
Makes strange shapes rise.
I wear my skirt tight
To my slim thighs.

Windows tightly shut.
What's that? Frost? Thunder?
Did you steal your eyes, I wonder,
From a cautious cat?

O my heart, how you yearn
For your dying hour...
And that woman dancing there
Will eternally burn.

~ 1 January 1913 "From Rosemary"

Passion and more Passion! Can't you feel the mood in the lines of the poem. And I do wish I knew who M. Lozinsky was.

The evening was windless, chained
Solidly under a cloudbank,
As if someone had drawn the Bois de Boulogne
In an old album in black indian ink.

A mingled smell of lilac and benzine,
A peaceful watchfulness.
His hand touched my knees.
A second time almost without trembling.

~ 1913, May "From Rosemary" Anna Akhmatova

This poem sends chills up and down my spine the way she discribes the ride - I love the portrait she paints with her words. But I wish I knew to whom she was talking about - a lover perhaps or maybe a friend. The line: "A mingled smell of lilac and benzine" puzzles me.

Hats, a good research site is: answers.com. Just type in Russian Revolution in the box.

And there he was, under
the green lamp, and
With a corpse's smile
he whispered, 'Your voice

Is strange, Cinderella...'
Fire dying in the hearth,
Cricket chirping. Ah!
someone's taken my shoe

As a souvenir, and with
lowered eyes given me
Three carnations
Dear mementoes,

Where can I hide you?
And it's a bitter thought
That my little white shoe
will be tried by everyone.

~ 1913 "From Rosemary" Anna Akhmatova

"In Europe, the earliest Cinderella-type tale is attributed to Giambattista Basile. It appeared in his "Pentamerone", under the title "The Hearth Cat." A widely traveled poet, soldier, courtier, and administrator from Naples, Basile composed firty stories, all supposedly related to him by Neapolitan women. His Cinderalla, named Zezolla, is a victim of child abuse.

The Basile story opens with the unhappy Zezolla plotting to murder her wicked stepmother; she eventually breaks the woman's neck. Unfortantely, her father marries an even more vindictive woman, with six vicious daughters who consign Zezolla to toil all day at the hearth.

Desiring to attend a gala festa, she wishes upon a magic date tree and instantly finds herself in regal attire, astride a white horse, with twelve pages in attendance. The king is bewitched by her loveliness. But at midnight, he is left holding an empty slipper - which fits no one in the land except, of course, Zezolla." ~"Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things"

A tale of child abuse - a little different than the one we are used to, but does it fit with the poem! I can see abuse in this poem. I thought the lines: "with a corpse's smile/ he whispered, 'Your voice/Is strange, Cinderella...' very telling and what about the last lines: "That my little white shoe/will be tried by everyone."

The first thing that flashed in my mind when I read this poem was the evening that the daughter was just about forced to attend an party with her mother's 'gentleman friend' in Dr. Zhivago.

The hesitancy in AA's recounting of the 'romantic nature' in the poem was almost tentative to me...a feels good/but not good kind of scary feeling an inexperienced girl might have felt at the attentions of a very subtle and highly experienced predator.

I have seen a lot of things, as we had mentioned before I think, that reminded me of Dr. Zhivago in AA's writing and as she wrote her poetry before Pasternak wrote his book I keep getting confused about the timing.

Alliemae

Alliemae

That quite relieves my mind...too spooky for me, that first impression was...

Alliemae

That's why even the snow
Outside my window is warm,
Why I, sleepless, have slept
Like a communicant.

~ 8 November 1913 "From Rosemary" Anna Akhmatova

In the Greek Orthodox religion a person's saint's day is celebrated like the western world celebrate's a person's birthday. Thus when I was a child my family celebrated St. Anne's Day instead of my birthday. I think the Russian Orthodox religion is similar in tradition. It is interesting that this poem is more cheerful than some of her other poems.

Marj, I too like March Elegy. Isn't it interesting that our "mind treasures" of the past come to us more often the more we age. Perhaps than is the time in which we really treasure them.

I have also learned something new...read more than one translation of a poem. Thank you.

Alliemae

She enters now. Pushing her veil aside,
She stares through me with her attentiveness.
I question her: 'And were you Dante's guide,
Dictating the Inferno?' She answers: 'Yes.' ~ 1924 "from Reed" Anna Akhmatova

I wonder what Dante's Inferno had to do with Anna Akhmatova's own life that she used it in a poem. Perhaps sometimes she felt she too was in an inferno on her way to hell. I think of all the poems so far I appreciate this one. It seems to speak to all who have a muse by their side as they create.

Simply to think of it, the faintest drowse
Already has led me into your parks
Where, fearful of every turning, I lose
Consciousness in a trance, seeking your tracks.

Shall I go under this vault, transfigured by
The movement of your hand into a sky,
To cool my shameful heart?

There I shall become forever blessed,
There my burning eyelids will find rest,
And I'll regain a gift I've lost - to weep.

~1924 "from Reed" Anna Akhmatova

I feel that the poet is getting lost in the painting of the artist. Wandering as if in a trance and feeling the passion of the art.

~ 1930s "from Reed" Anna Akhmatova

"During the whole period from 1925 to 1952, Akhmatova was effectively silenced, unable to publish poetry..." ~ Wikipedia

"Stalin replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s with Five-Year Plans in 1928 and collective farming at roughly the same time. The Soviet Union was tansformed from a predominantly peasant society to a major world industrial power by the end of the 1930s.

Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders conributed to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in the key agricultural regions of the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and North Caucasus that resulted in millions of deaths. Many peasants resisted collectivization and grain confiscations, but were repressed...". Wikipedia

Bearing in mind what happened in Russia in the 1930s under Stalin, doesn't Anna Akhmatova's poem bring a whole new meaning. Perhaps we can translate the "black ewe" into the peasants who suffered as a result of Stalin's orders. And maybe 'Padishah' is Stalin himself. When I first read the poem I thought it referred to her own son, but the more I think about it maybe it represents all the peasants who resisted and lost against Stalin's Five-Year Plans and collective farming.

Alliemae a.k.a. Nana : )

As I said, I'll have to check historical dates.

But Anna Akhmatova lived in a very large world and she knew how to connect events and create the metaphor.

Alliemae

Oh, I am worried now. Seriously worried. My 'senior moments' have been coming on slowly but they have stepped up this week to the point that I am terrified.

Please forgive my error...and please pray for me.

Thanks, Alliemae

He did not return, even after his death, to
That ancient city he was rooted in.
Going away, he did not pause for breath
Nor look back. My song is for him.
Torches, night, a last embrace,
Fate, a wild howl, at his threshold.
Out of hell he sent her his curse
And in heaven could not forget her.
But never in a penitential shirt did
He walk with a lighted candle and barefoot
Through beloved Florence he could not betray,
Perfidious, base, and self-deserted.

~ 1936 "From Reed" Anna Akhmatova

"Stalin did not achieve absolute power until the Great Purge of 1936-38." ~ Wikipedia

"[Sir Isaiah] Berlin identifies the fundamental connection between Akhmatova's personal fears as a subject of Stalin's regime and her charismatic self-image. The paranoia, more or less legitimate under the circumstances, develops into a mania grandiosa, which, in turn, energizes her personal myth, in an instructive instance of the paradoxical opposition/symbiosis between dissident poet and totalitarian leader..." ~ "The obverse of Stalinism: Akhmatova's self-serving charisma of selflessness" ~ Alexander Zholkovsky

"In every revolution, the main issue is power" ~ V.I. Lenin

"Poetry is power," Osip Mandelstam once said to Akhmatova in Voronezh, and she bowed her head on its slender neck. Banished, sick, penniless and hounded, they still would not give up their power." Nadezhda Mandelstram.

Dante was banished from is beloved Florence. Akhmatova had many things in common with Dante - poetry being only one of them. She too was banished, sick, penniless and hounded - and both had the "power" of their poetry. As much power as Stalin had, he was defenseless against this kind of power much the same as those back in the days of Dante were.

I think that women like us who think a lot and have used our brains a lot have gotten so used to multi-tasking that we refuse to realize that we may have to just slow down on these 'balding tires of our minds' to prevent a 'blow-out'.

Maybe it's time for us to affect that 'slow, calm, self-contained, mysterious air' that always intrigued me in my professors and mentors!!!

Yes...we'll all go through this together and oh what fun we'll make of it all!

Spread. And enter the last hostage to her glamour.
'He'll lead me, then, in triumph?' "Madam, he will,
I know't.'Stately, he has the grace to stammer...
But the slope of her swan neck is tranquil still.

Tomorrow, her children...O, what small things rest
For her to do on earth - only to play
With this fool, and the black snake to her dark breast
Indifferently, like a parting kindness, lay.

1940 "from Reed" Anna Akhamatova

"Her son spent his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she even resorted to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release. Their relations remained strained, however." ~ Wikipedia

Do you think that perhaps this poem is just such a poem that AA published in praise of Stalin? To me the black snake at her breast might be a representation of Stalin as is the Roman Eagle.

An Unparalleled Autumn (More mid-Octoberish than today's mid-Nov, perhaps)

An unparalleled autumn erected a glorious dome;
All the clouds were commanded to leave it undarkened and
.....pure.
And men marveled; September is gone, and yet where are the
.....days
Shot with dampness and chill? How long can this wonder
.....endure?
In the turbid canals the mild waters shone emerald-clear,
And the nettles had fragrance more rich than the roses to give;
And the sunsets that laid on the air their unbearable weight
Of demoniac crimson, we shall not forget while we live.
Like a rebel who enters the capital, thus the proud sun,
Which this autumn, so springlike, was hungry to smile at and
.....woo,
Till it seemed any moment a snowdrop, transparent, would
.....gleam--
Then I saw, on the path to my door, stepping quietly, you.

P.S. - This might have already been explained here. I wonder how it is that AA's poems often rhyme in English. Did she write them in English; or is some talented Russian-to-English translator to be accredited for this?

~ 1940 " from Reed" Anna Akhmatova

I don't know about the rest of you, but I had this happen to me after my son died. After the funeral I came home and held his photo & when I looked closely at it; it did seem to be different - I thought he was smiling more - telling me he was okay. I thought maybe it was my own imagination until I read this poem.

I loved the autumn poems. In the back of my book I came across this bit concerning the poem: "Imitation from the Armenian." Under the thin disguise of the title, the poem obviously refers to the arrest of Akhmatova's son." xz(my cat said hi as she walked across the keyboard)

I laughed so hard when you wrote that about your cat...thanks again!!

Alliemae

And now - over stricken Paris
Silence is winging.

~ In 1940 Part I: "From The Seventh Book" Anna Akhmatova

In 1940: Part II:

To the Londoners

Shakespere's play, his twenty-fourth -
Time is writing it impassively.
By the leaden river what can we,
Who know what such feasts are,
Do, except read Hamlet, Caesar, Lear?
Or escort Juliet to her bed, and christen
Her death, poor dove, with torches and singing; Or peep through the window at Macbeth,
Trembling with the one who kills from greed -
Only not this one, not this one, not this one,
This one we do not have the strength to read.

"In 1940 Akhmatova's personal suffering did not stop her feeling grief for the fate of Paris and London." ~ back of book

Happy Thanksgiving, fond forum friends!

O.Mandelstam

Tallest, most elegant of us, why does memory
Insist you swim up from the years, pass
Swaying down a train, searching for me,
Transparent profile through the carriage-glass?
Were you angel or bird? - how we argued it!
A poet took you for his drinking-straw.
Your Georgian eyes through sable lashes lit
With the same even gentleness, all they saw.
O shade! Forgive me, but clear sky, Flaubert,
Insomnia, the lilacs flowering late,
Have brought you - beauty of the year
'13 - and your unclouded temperate day,
Back to my mind, in memories that appear
Uncomfortable to me now. O shade!

Shade: In 1940 Anna Akmatova

"In 1940 Akhmatova's personal suffering did not stop her feeling grief for the fate of Paris and London. This leads to a memory of one of her friends of 1913 (the year celebrated and condemned in "Poem without a Hero), Salome Andronnikova, who was living in London. Mandelstram, in a famous poem about her, had punned on her name with a reference to drinking through a straw, (in Russian, solominka means 'little straw'). The epigraph to "Shade" is taken from a poem by Mandelstam that address another emigre, Olga Vaksel, who had committed suicide in Norway." (back of book)

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!

I'm glad your weather is getting a little better too. We had rain all Thanksgiving day but luckily my daughter took us in her car to the lovely THANKSgiving buffet my son had invited us to. My grandaughter is 8 years old which of course brought us all to memories of when we were 8 and oh my, how we laughed and laughed!

I can understand how grateful you were not to have to cook--both my daughter and myself felt the same way. What a lovely feeling it is to let someone take care of us after all these years of being Kitchen Kommanders!!

I've always loved the poem/song "Over the River and Through the Woods" and I remember singing it with the All-Philadelphia Senior High School Chorus and somewhere in between all the traditional verses they had written in:

"First comes a big bowl of steaming hot soup;
Then celery and olives and toast.
Gravy boats swimming and glasses a-brimming with cider that we loved the most

Tho' we hardly have space for the many good things;
And must pass up a few with a sigh.
Each nephew and niece saves room for a piece
Of our grandmother's pie--Good pumpkin pie!

Now dinner is through, and who wants to play?
Who wants to romp, and who wants to race?
On Grandfather's lap, curled up for a nap,
Are dear cousin John...and sweet cousin Grace.

Suddenly Mother looks out of the window nearby,
And turns to us all with a sigh.
It's starting to snow; I think we should go,
Or the drifts may turn out too high.

Father arises and goes to the barn,
To harness the faithful old bay.
We put on our caps--and button our wraps,
We all bundle up, and get into the sleigh.

And then it returns to the ending refrains from the actual poem and ends with "Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!!

Isn't it funny how the mind can still remember things from the 1950's. I love it!!

I am truly grateful for you all!

Hugs, Alliemae

Thank you so much for posting the link here.

Alliemae

1942, Transhkent Anna Akhmatova

"'That's how I am...' Flown out of Leningrad under siege, by a strange whim of the authorities, Ahmatova spent the next three years in Transhket. She regarded this fresh experience with a mixture of joy, delirium - she became seriously ill with typhus - and recongnition (see 'It is your lynx eyes, Asia...'). Akhmatova draws a parallel between her own condition and the fate of Marina Tsvetaeva. Tsvetaeva, an emigre since 1922 returned to Russia in 1939, to find that her husband, who had preceeded her, had been shot, and her daughter arrested. She hanged herself in 1941, an event which greatly affected Akmatova." ~ back of the book

I think this poem is an indication of how much her act to remain "silent" cost her both physically and mentally. If I remember correctly she kept silent and than wrote poems prasising Stalin in the hopes of getting her son our of prison and in the end lost him as well.

The souls of those I love are on high stars.
How good that there is no-one left to lose
And one can weep. Tsarskoye Selo's
Air was made to repeat songs.

By the river bank the silver willow
Touches the bright September waters.
Rising from the past, my shadow
Comes silently to meet me.

So many lyres, hung on branches, here,
But there seems a place even for my lyre.
And this shower, drenched with sun and rare,
Is consolation and good news.

Alliemae

Alliemae

"Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—

Ah...but how to do it?

I think the answer probably lies in the tone of the next verse...at least the first two lines of it.

I think this does not just happen with lost loves or loss of country.

Marj I so agree with you when you say, "AA could tell it exactly like it is. Conflicting thoughts. They can happen."

Alliemae

But sometimes a madcap air in spring,
Or a combination of words in a chance book,
Or somebody's smile, suddenly
Draws me into that non-existent life.
In such a year would such have taken place,
Something else in another: travelling, seeing,
Thinking, remembering, entering a new love
Like entering a mirror, with a dull sense
Of treason, and a wrinkle that only yesterday
Was absent...
But if, from that life, I could step aside,
And see my life such as it is, today,
Then at last I'd know what envy means...

~ Leningrad, 1944 ~ "from Northern Elegies" Anna Akhmatova

"Only a few people in the West suspected that she was still alive, when she was allowed to publish a collection of new poems in 1940. During the Great Patriotic War, when she witnessed the nightmare of the 900-Day Siege, her patriotic poems found their way to the front pages of the Pravda. After Akmatova returned to Leningrad following the Central Asian evacuation in 1944, she was disconcerted with "a terrible ghost that pretended to be my city". ~ Wikipedia

"Northern Elegies": Akhmatova conceived seven elegies, but some are fragmentary, and the seventh, evidently particularly important to her, appears to be lost all together...

(Fifth) Anna Gorenko adopted the name Akhmatova when she was seventeen, from a real or imagined Tatar great-grandmother. She grew to resent not having a 'real' name; Akhmatova, she said was 'Tatar, backwards, coming from nowhere, cleaving to every disaster, itself a disaster'. Another allusion in the poem is to her always-muddled martial status as a married/single/homeless/widow woman.

Two years after this poem was written, the age grew harsher. During the war, her poems had been appearing in magazines, and a "Selected Poems" was published in Tashkent. In 1945, to her surprise and joy, her son returned from the front - he had been released from exile to fight in the war. A selection of her work was printed in Moscow in 1946, but it was never published. Stalin, having dealt with the enemy outside, turned again to destroy the 'enemy within', and Akhmatova bore the first virulence of the attack on 'ideologically harmful and apolitical works'. She was expelled from the Writers' Union, shadowed wherever she went, and, worst of all, her son was re-arrested. He was to spend seven more years in a prison camp. Following Stalin's death, Akhmatova's situation improved, and in the last ten years of her life she was able to live more freely, even visiting the West, and her poetry, though still subject to censorship, was published." ~ (back of book)

Thank you all for your wonderful posts.

Alliemae

Or maybe these...

"But sometimes a madcap air in spring,
Or a combination of words in a chance book,
Or somebody's smile, suddenly
Draws me into that non-existent life.

And Scrawler, how much I appreciate the history and other details you have included at the end. For I feel Anna has become our friend on some strange level and I am hungry to know more about her. So thank you for these details.

Alliemae

By the way, I had donated all those books to the library in our apartment complex...maybe I'll be able to borrow the appropriate book back if it's not out. But like you say, Robby does write it all out which is great for those of us who, like me, pop in and out, unable to break the fascination of knowing where we've come from.

Alliemae

M. Tsvetaeva

I have turned aside from everything,
From the whole earthly store.
The spirit and guardian of this place
Is an old tree-stump in water

We are brief guests of the earth, as it were,
And life is a habit we put on.
On paths of air I seem to overhear
Two frinedly voices, talking in turn.

Did I say two?...There
By the east wall's tangle of raspberry,
Is a branch of elder, dark and fresh.
Why! it's a letter from Marina.

~ November 1961 (in delirium) "from Northern Elegies" Anna Akhmatova

"There are Four of Us: The three poets referred to, besides Akhmatova, are Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva. The title is that used in the first publication of the peom, which was in an American-Russian language publication, "Paths of Air". In later Soviet editions of her work, the poem is entitled "Komarovo Sketches." Akhmatova spent much time in her last years at Komarovo, fifty miles from Leningrad on the Karelian isthmus, and she is buried there. The epigraph, 'O Muse of Weeping', is the first line of a poem to Akhmatova written in 1916." ~ (back of book)

I love the lines: "We are brief guests of the earth, as it were/And life is a habit we put on..." To me we are all put on this earth for a purpose and it is in the journey to discover the reason that we live our lives. I have always felt that it is the journey that is most important. That as we travel we take with us bits and pieces of our past and blend them together to form our future.

Lord! can't you see I'm weary
Of this rising and dying and living.
Take it all, but once more bring me close
To sense the freshness of this crimson rose.

Komarovo, 1962 "from Northern Elegies" ~ Anna Akhmatova

"Last Rose: Morozova was a seventeenth-century dissenter who resisted the reformed ritual of the Orthodox Church and was forcibly removed to Siberia. Akhmatova recited this poem to Robert Frost when the American poet visited the Soviet Union in 1962." ~ (back of book)

I can see why she might have associated herself with the dissenter Morozova after living under Stalin's dictatorship.

Barbara, I love your thoughts. I think we are closer to nature than most of us care to think. We are a part of the revolution of nature and like the poem would suggest our association with nature is what brings on our fresh and new ideas.

Barbara, thank you for pointing out your thoughts about us within nature.

I must say though, that whilst I just make the odd comment or two, the rest of you are such 'writers'...it's amazing and adds so very much to the discussion. All of your opinions and insights on the poetry and research on the poets make this site a great place to learn about poetry and poets, something that has added great joy to my life since coming here.

Alliemae

Komarovo, 9 September 1964 "from Northern Elegies" Anna Akhmatova

"In "Memory of V.C. Sreznevskaya": Valeriya Srenevskaya was one of the poet's oldest and closest friends. They had played together as children at Tsarskoye Selo." ~ (back of book)

I believe that this may be her best poem that I have read so far. It is simple and direct, but tells the truth - "But your clear voice is calling and it asks me not/to grieve, but wait for death as for a "miracle."

In the fearful years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day somebody 'identified' me. Beside me, in the queue, there was a woman with blue lips. She had, of course, never heard of me; but she suddenly came out of that trance so common to us all and whispered in my ear (everybody spoke in whispers there): 'Can you describe this?' And I said: 'Yes, I can.' And then something like the shadow of a smile crossed what had once been her face. ~ 1 April 1957, Leningrad

"Forward: 'The Yezhov terror', or yezhovshchina, is the name Russians give the worst period of the purges (1937-38), when Nikolai Yezhov was the official whom Stalin entrusted with the operation." ~ (back of book)

"'Can you describe this?' And I said: 'Yes, I can.' And then something like the shadow of a smile crossed what had once been her face." Perhaps, these lines more than anything reminds us that poetry, essays, and stories are not only for entertainment, but also to relate and write what REALLY is happening in our world and its people.

After reading Anna Akhmatova's poetry and reading bits and pieces of her biography I am glad that such censorship doesn't exit here in America. Although there were times when it came close as during the 1950s. And I for one truly believe that we must fight to keep our freedom of thought and word. It is a privilege to have such freedoms and we shouldn't take them for granted.

("thousands - killed in action")

You need the untranslatable ice to watch.
You need to loiter a little among the vague
Hushes, the clever evasions of the vagueness
Above the healthy energy of decay.
You need the untranslatable ice to watch,
The purple and black to smell.

Before your horror can be sweet
Or proper.
Before your grief is other than discreet.

The intellectual damn
Will nurse your half-hurt. Quickly you are well.

But weary. How you yawn, have yet to see
Why nothing exhausts you like this sympathy.

"Selected poems - Gwendolyn Brooks"

It is true that Anna Akhmatova's poems were indeed sad and spoke of a hard and difficult time that for me is only found in my history books. But Gwendolyn Brooks speaks of our own horrors in our own time or at least in the not to distant past.

And isn't it true that in order to understand what is happening sometimes we need the winter's "ice" and "purple and black" to realize the true meaning of this particular poem.

Deep in that place, among the roots
Of sumac, oak, and wintergreen,
We would remember the freedoms of summer,
And we would begin to breathe together -
Hesitant as singers in the wings -
A shy music,
Oh! a very soft song.

While pines cracked in the snow above,
And seeds froze in the ground, and rivers carried
A dark roof in their many blue arms,
We would sleep and dream.
We would wake and tell
How we longed for the spring.
Smiles on our faces, limbs around each other,
We would turn and turn
Until we heard our lips in unison shighing

The family name.

"Twelve Moons" ~ Mary Oliver

I love the imagery of this poem. I would love to cuddle with a she-bear deep in a cave during the Winter. Although I'm not sure the bear would like it. Does anyone here know what the last two lines of this poem mean? Does it perhaps refer to the fact that we are two different species - one human and the other animal.

by Oliver Herford

"I was fussing up a storm around here..." (Barbara)

Oh, Barbara...I am sooooooo happy to know that I'm not the only one who has temper tantrums and wants to 'kick the can around'...when you think of it, as we become more and more men and women of 'mature years' we have plenty to be ticked off about...especially when we are still young inside!!

Alliemae

And it occurred to me last night why in 'the olden days' people used to wear night caps and flannel around their necks and even bed jackets to at least cover the shoulders. But then I get too sweaty...I may still try a light cap with a long back. There's a draft coming somewhere from my balcony door that is only cold it seems when I sleep. I've had a stiff neck all day today! grrrrrrrr

First it was only the winter trees -
their boughs eloquent at midnight

with small but mortal explosions, and always a humming
under the lashings of storm.

Nights I sat at the kitchen door
listening out into the darkness

until finally spring came, and everything
transcended. As one by one

the ponds opened, took the white ice
painfully into their dark bellies,

I began to listen to them shore-slapping and rock leaping
into the growl of creeks,

and then of course the ocean, far off,
pouring everything, over and over,

from jar to enormous jar. You'd think
it would stop somewhere, but next it was rocks

flicking their silver tongues all summer, panting
a little on their damp under-sides.

Now I listen as fall rides
in the wagons of the wind, lighting up the world

with red, yellow, and the long-leaved ash
as blue as fire, and I know

there's no end to it, the kingdoms
crying out - and no end

to the voices the heart can hear once
it's started. Already like small white birds

snow is falling from the ledges of the north, each flake
singing with its tiny mouth as it wings out

into the wind, whispering about love, about darkness
as it balances in the clear air, as it whirls down.

"Twelve Moons" ~ Mary Oliver

I love this "winter" poem; especially the lines: "and then of course the ocean, far off, pouring everything, over and over,". That's just how I remember the "ocean" as I lay in my warm bed as a child anxiously waiting for Christmas to get here.

It was not quite spring, it was
the gray flux before.

Out of the black wave of sleep she turned,
enormous beast,

and welcomed the little ones, blind pink islands
no bigger than shoes. She washed them;

she nibbled them with teeth like white tusks;
she curled down
beside them like a horizon.

They snuggled. Each knew what it was:
an original, formed
in the whirlwind, with no recognitions between
itself and the first steams

of creation. Together they nuzzled
her huge flank until she spilled over,

and they pummeled and pulled her tough nipples, and she
gave them
the rich river.

"Twelve Moons" ~ Mary Oliver

I love this poem. It makes me want to snuggle up against something warm and soft. Here kitty, kitty!

~ Emily Dickinson

This winter poem was shared by a friend in another poetry discussion group that I'm in and I wanted to share it with you folks. I love the imagery of Winter in this poem especially the apple playing in the cellar.

Anna, thanks for the holiday poems.

dozens lie coiled together.
Touch them: they scarcely

breathe; they stare
out of such deep forgetfulness

that their eyes are like jewels -
and asleep, though they cannot close.

And in each mouth the forked tongue,
sensitive as an angel's ear,

lies like a drugged muscle.
With the fires of spring they will lash forth again

on their life of ribs!-
bodies like whips!

But now under the lids of the mute
succeeding snowfalls

they sleep in their cold cauldron: a flickering broth
six months below simmer.

~ "Twelve Moons" Mary Oliver

Personally, I think that snakes have gotten a bad rap from the image given to us by some of the Bible stories. Just like all creatures in this world they too serve a purpose. They keep the rat population down and thus keep diseases that rats carry down as well.

I love all of your posts.

Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch-deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow,
The stiff rails were softened to swan’s-down
And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, “Father, who makes it snow?”
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snow-fall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o’er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plunged woe.

And again to the child I whispered,
“The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!”

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.

"Twelve Moons" Mary Oliver

I'm not sure that I agree with this poem - especially the reference to the "drab" middle age. But it does remind me of the winter of our lives where we face "fallen gardens" and "empty houses". And of course the imagery of the "sea" makes me shiver.

I'll eat my hat
and that's that!

[now that is NOT a 'real' poem...because I am NOT a 'real' poet.]

But I do recognize lovely poetry and I loved your words in Snow, anna...

Alliemae

But I must say that only Mary Oliver has portrayed them positively. I really, really liked that poem. And, Scrawler, I guess you have a point about the mice but I do still prefer a cat for that job. : )

Miles away, under the stinging rain,
In my youth, in my vulgar good health,
I am thinking of you. I am thinking:
Enough is enough. You have a tender face.
I am your godchild, and there are no gods.

Probably, sooner or later, it will snow.
The white flakes will fly over the hillsides
Smoothing out everything, settling
Calm as a sheet over a tired body.
Probably, sooner or later, you will die,
And men will find the cure for cancer.
Menwhile, you breathe on toward Christmas -
The birthday, they say, of charity and hope.

~ "Twelve Moons" ~ Mary Oliver

This in many ways is a sad poem and it reminds me of when my son went to the hospital on December 26. He made it through Christmas, but he died the following March. But it is also a poem about hope and charity. As we look toward the days before Christmas let us also hope that Men [and women] do find a cure for Cancer and that in the centuries to come this disase will be eradicated not unlike small pox or measles of centuries past. I'm proud of the fact that my daughter is studying to become a research scientist - maybe she'll be the one to discover that cure.

At Christmas, when we all come home
The table's stretched with boards and laid
With linen; in a festive ring
We sit like heroes trading tales.
But lately in a little while,
Among the talk of art, or war,
A kind of hesitation comes;
A silence echoes everything.

Afterward we rise and file
Behind our mother to the fire.
With stiffened hands she thumps away
In honor of the holy day;
Hymns and carols rise and hold
As best they can on blasted scales.
We listen, staring at the night
Where faith and failure sound their drums,
And snow is drifting mile on mile.

Our mother's kingdom does not fall,
But year by year the promise fades;
Dreams of childhood warp and pall,
Caught in the dark fit of the world.
Now, less than what we meant to be,
We watch the night and feed the fire.
We listen as the bent chords climb
Toward alleluias rich but wrong;
We sing, and grieve for what we are
Compared with the intended song.

~ "Twelve Moons" ~ Mary Oliver

Oh! How this poem brings back memories - my mother at the piano playing and all of us singing Christmas hymns and carols. My grandfather would accompany her with his guitar. Everyone in my family is musically inclined except for yours truly. My daughter and husband both played the violin and my sister played the guitar. Even my son played sax for a time. As for me when I tried to play the piano my father would gently but firmly suggest that I find something else to do since the neighborhood dogs were howling again!

I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold
I cracked back the barn door and peered in.
From town the church bells spilled their midnight music,
and the beasts listened -
yet they lay in their stalls like stone.

Oh the heretics!
Not to remember Bethlehem,
or the star as bright as a sun,
or the child born on a bed of straw!
To know oly of the dissolving Now!

Still they drowsed on -
citizens of the pure, the physical world,
they loomed in the dark: powerful
of body, peaceful of mind,
innocent of history.

Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas!
And you are no heretics, but a miracle,
immaculate still as when you thundered forth
on the morning of creation!
As for Bethlehem, that blazing star

still sailed the dark, but only looked for me.
Caught in its light, listening again to its story
I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled
my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me
the best it could all night.

"Twelve Moons" ~ Mary Oliver

I like this Christmas Poem very much. I know for me that whenever I'm depressed all I have to do is pet my cat and her purring helps me to overcome my emotions. I especially like the lines: "I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled/my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me/ the best it could all night." I think there is a reason the animals were there at the first Christmas.

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

...for this is the carol/poem which will get me through Christmas yet again during another vicious war...

You lean your arms on the sill
And stare down. But all you can see
Are bits of wilderness attached to him -
Twigs, loam and leaves,
Vines and blossoms. Among these
You feel his eyes, and his hands
Lifting something in the air.

He has a gift for you, but it has no name.
It is windy and woolly.
He holds it in the moonlight, and it sings
Like a newborn beast,
Like a child at Christmas,
Like your own heart as it tumbles
In love's green bed.
You take it, and he is gone.

All night - and all your life, if you are willing -
It will nuzzle your face, cold-nosed,
Like a small white wolf;
It will curl in your palm
Like a hard blue stone;
It will liquefy into a cold pool
Which, when you dive into it,
Will hold you like a mossy jaw.
A bath of light. An answer.

~ "Twelve Moons" Mary Oliver

I like to think she is talking about "hope" - a bath of light - an answer!

As far as war is concerned - yes, it is hard, but to me the aftermath of war - the occupation of a country and the return of veterans to their native lands is what is very difficult. The scars take a long time to heal and sometimes they never do. I used to say that although my husband died in 1995 he had already died when he was in Vietnam. I sent a boy out in the 1960s full of the passion and hunger for war and he returned a man who never was able to find his way again except through his paintings.

It seems that when our 'enemies' feel this way and act out of it, it's Jihad...but when we feel this way and act out of it, it's Patriotism.

And the thought kept popping into my head..."Looks like, in this world, one side's 'victim' is another's 'collateral damage'...

I even began to wonder what we were on the verge of the American Revolustion...were we Patriots?...Radical Fringe?...Insurgents???

Makes one think...

Loving one another is not always possible, at least for me it's not.

Being a constantly and consistently peaceful person is also not so possible for me. There are times when I bicker with myself!!!

I've been thinking lately that what we might be able to start with 'civility' and then 'good manners'...and then go for the bigger stuff like 'liking' and 'loving'...does this make sense to anyone but me?

I'm a singer. I love music and harmony and this used to kind of be my 'trademark' song...this and 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother'...

I haven't done much singing in the past couple of years...don't know why...some spark got real dim inside of me. I remember the first time I heard this song again by Vince Gill and his daughter Jenny (I think that's her name) and the first time I heard it I cried and cried. I had not only lost my passion but my purpose (well, however inverted it would seem to follow, wouldn't it?). Thanks again, Marj

Found, on the gravel road I walked this morning,
one beer can, part full of frozen tobacco juice
that when I shook it came apart like chunks of amber,
and a quarter-sized piece from a fluted china plate,
with a soft pink rose the size of a pencil eraser
and a curl of flying, pale blue ribbon. In a nearby tree,
five noisy crows who had seen me stooping there
were busy creating a plausible story.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

I can't say that here in Hillsboro, Oregon it is cold and sunny. On the contrary it is wet and raining. But I know what he means about what you can find on a walk on a winter's day. If you look closely there are so many interesting treasures, if only we take the time to look. And I like the "five noisy crows - who are busy creating a plausible story".

I never thought before how nature looks at US - maybe its the same way my Cat looks at me or at least that's what it seems to me when she stares intently at what I'm doing and swishes her tail back and forth as if she's busy creating a plausible story for what I'm doing. Usually she just shakes her head and walks away with her tail in a question mark!

These lines just reminded me that I miss Ted Kooser!

Alliemae

Thank you, Hats

Alliemae

Baskets of smells. Earth fresh from
A warm spring shower.
Damask roses intoxicating scent,
Carnation’s fragrance, hyacinths,
Heady aroma of new mown grass,
All to envelope me in winters dark

Every year I decide I'm going to really get ready for winter, but it always means having enough stores in so I don't have to shop, getting the apartment ready to regulate heat and fresh air, etc--but now, reading your poem--I have found what was missing!

I need to first fill up boxes of those important things you mention. I think I found this one of my favorite of your poems that you have posted here since I joined the group.

Alliemae

just as a dancer, turning and turning,
may fill the dusty light with the soft swirl
of her flying skirts, our weeping willow...
now old and broken, creaking in the breeze...
turns slowly, slowly in the winter sun,
sweeping the rusty roof of the barn
with the pale blue lacework of her shadow.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

Can't you see the "pale blue lacework of her shadow" on the "rusty roof of the barn"? I can see the same shadows outside my own window, but the shadows are of the oak trees that line the avenue. In the darkness they seem like so many "old, skinny, shriveled, haunted arms"- ghosts - trying to come in to my warm apartment.

Anna great poem. I think before we can have peace throughout the world - we must first find peace within ourselves. Peace is there - but like a fine wine it must be cultivated slowly.

When I was a little girl I used to make up whole stories and movies and ballets based on the shadows coming into my sister's and my bedroom window...I miss that.

Thanks, Scrawler for reminding me to 'just notice' shadows once again!

Alliemae

The weight of my old dog, Hattie--thirty-five pounds
of knocking bones, signs, tremors and dreams--
just isn't enough to hold a patch of sun in its place,
at least for very long. While she shakes in her sleep,
it slips from beneath her and inches away,
taking the morning with it--the music from the radio,
the tea from my cup, the drowsy yellow hours--
picking up dust and dog hair as it goes.

~ "Winter Morning Walks": Ted Kooser

This reminds me of my old cat sleeping on the rug. She tries to move with the sun, but unfortuantely the sun "slips from beneath her and inches away" and it does seem like as the sun goes it does it in time to the music and that you can see the dust and in my case cat hair as it goes.

An old moon, lying akilter
among a few pale stars,
and so quiet on the road
I can hear every bone in my body
hefting some part of me
over its shoulder. Behind me,
my shadow stifles a cough
as it tries to keep up,
for I have set out fast and hard
against this silence,
filling my lungs with hope
on this, my granddaughter's
birthday, her first, and the day
of my quarterly cancer tests.

"Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

I think this is a wonderful poem - a poem of hope for the future as you live in the present.

Last night we had a terrible storm here in Hillsboro, Oregon with wind gusts of over 60 mile an hour. The oak trees that I described just recently were shaking their skinny branches and desperately trying to get in to my apartment. I thought I was in the middle of a old-fashioned horror flick with my lights blinking on and off and the sound of the thrashing storm outside. This morning when I went out I had an obstacle course to manuver around oak branches laying on the street. And now its as if nothing had happened - it is clear, sunny and the temperature is dropping very fast - they expect snow tomorrow.

"Delights & Shadows" ~ Ted Kooser

Thanks Joan for your concern. I'm fine although very cold! - 28 degrees and dropping - Burrr!

I like this little poem - such imagery from such simple things!

Someone in the sky last night
Had an awful pillow fight,
And when I woke today I found
All the feathers on the ground.

A Winter Surprise
Solveig Paulson Russell

Last night while I was sleeping
The snow came softly down
And slipped on all the shrubbery
A shining snowflake gown.

I guess that every little bush
Felt startled with surprise,
To find itself a cotton plant
On opening up its eyes.

There was nothing but the URL which might give a clue. Snow Poems Heartland

I think I would always love Christmas no matter what my beliefs. The purity and unconditional, all-encompassing love evoked by any new born babe is what gives me hope that good is possible.

This is a poem from a book called "A Child is Born" which is filled with famous works of art with poetry on some of the facing pages.

"Thy smiles the calm of heaven bestow
And soothe the bitterest sense of woe!
As bees, that suck the honeyed stone
From silvery dews, on blushing flower,
So on thy cheek's more lovely bloom
I scent the rose's quick perfume.
Thine ivory extended arms,
To hold the heart--what powerful charms!

On Viewing Her Sleeping Infant by Mary Frances Cecilia Cowper 1726-97

(Facing page: Le Berceau, Berthe Morisot)

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/morisot.html#images

(Of the first two pictures, it's the one on the left as you've probably already noticed.)

A cold wind out of the wes all night,
Where our row of Norwegian pines
lines the road, there were lots of joined pairs
of needles this morning, blown over the grass
and onto the shoulder, every pair
an elongated V, coated with frost,
and each pointing east southeast,
where, sure enough, the sun was rising.

"Winter Morning Walks" Ted Kooser

Brrr! It's cold! 20 degrees and dropping fast - but like the poem the sun was rising and now its sunny but far from warm. Last night not only did I loose power, but it dropped down into the teens right in the middle of my hockey game. (grrrrrrrrrrr) My cat and I snuggled under the covers until about midnight when the TV and lights came back on.

Sunlight like honey this morning,
and a stiff wind speading it smoothly
over the bluestem. Two miles down wind
from Hartmann's quarry, I hear the exuberant
backing-up song of a dump truck,
and directly above me, a red-tailed hawk
responds with its lispy whistle.
Burnt red seed-heads of buckbrush,
green duckweed over the beaver pond,
Todd Halle's red combine parked on a hilltop
as if to show the sun the way...
the eye contains the world, in a space
no bigger than a baby's fist.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" Ted Kooser

Yes, we have Power! But it is still cold - 28 this morning.I miss my beaver pond that I had over at the other apartment. But I do have some birds here that drop by the pool during the summer - not so much in the winter. They eye me the way birds can only do. I saw a Heron and a Stork one time - not together though and there are always lots of ducks and geese - all wondering why I'm on the ground and not in the air. I can imagine that they feel sorry for me.

The cedars in the roadside ditches
are nearly black against the many grays
of this winter morning, but unlike
most things with darkness at their centers
they don't turn an impenetrable shell
to the light. Rather, like ink on wet paper,
their dark limbs bleed into the light,
reaching farther and farther
into the whiteness of lightly falling snow.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

What imagery! And how gentle this poem is.

The beaver's mound of brush and cornstalks
stands at the edge of silence this morning,
a pyramid on an untracked desert of snow
with black, open water shining beyond it.
Somewhere inside are the hidden mysteries:
an old yellow-toothed paroah, wrapped up
in bandages of sleep, and on his shallow breath,
oily odor of tanbark and the priceless perfume
of summer willow leaves.

~ "Winder Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

Yesterday I saw a remarkable thing. We took my cat to the vet and while we were driving we came upon an area that was covered in Snow. It was only a few blocks, but the whole area was covered. On the one side was a mall with snow capped roofs and sidewalks and on the other was an empty lot with snow covered grasses bent over by the weight of the snow. It was really a remarkable sight and than we turned the corner and it was gone; the rest of the way was gray and dark but not one speck of snow. I don't know how that could happen when one area has snow and another none and to make sure I wasn't imagining it we saw it again driving back.

"Love will do the stitching if she’ll only be my match."

Last night I watched the movie "Emma" (Jane Austin's) so I was just in the mood for this poem this morning...

Perfectly still this solstice morning,
in bone-cracking cold. Nothing moving,
or so one might think, but as I walk the road,
the wind held in the heart of every tree
flows to the end of each twig and forms a bud.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

My daughter designs her own quilts on the computer. She has special paper for her printer that she uses to transfer her design from the computer to the paper and than puts the paper on the material she is going to use. It's very cool when its all complete.

Happy Winter Solstice!

The cold finds its way through the wall
by riding nails, common ten-penny nails
through a wall so packed with insulation
it wouldn't admit a single quarter-note
from the wind's soprano solo. Yet you can touch
this solid wall and feel the icy spots
where the nails have carried the outside
almost into the house, nickel-sized spots
like the frosty tips of fingers, groping,
and you can imagine the face
of the cold, all wreathed in flying hair
its long fingers spread, it thin blue lips
presed into the indifferent ear
of the siding, whispering something
not one of us inside can hear.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

Oh! Yes, trees are the symbol of life. Every morning I watch as the oaks across the way seem to come to life to me. Now they are so many skinny arms blowing in the wind - they remind me of old women going to the market with their heads bowed talking and laughing with each other. I like this poem too. Such imagery - I never thought about the cold coming in through the nails!

As if to spare the birds at the feeder
any more competition that they already have,
a snowflake drops right past the perches
crowded with finches, nuthatches, sparrows,
and without even thinking to open its wings
settles quietly onto the ground.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

Anna loved the poems. I know what you said about your friend. I had to literally sit on my husband to try and stop him from getting out of bed on his own. I finally had to sleep in a chair next to his bed and sometimes this didn't do any good either because I was so tired I'd fall asleep and than I'd hear him in another room and run to see what happened. I was on pins and needles most of the time. We finally had to put him in a nursing room where he died shortly there after. But tell your friend that there will be plenty of time for him to get up on his own, but it takes time and patience. Peace to you both.

I just love the imagery in this poem: "snowflakes" dropping right past the perches etal. How wonderful!

All night I heard tapping,
like a teacher at a blackboard:
a bad bearing, I guessed,
in the furnace fan.
But early this morning,
passing the kitchen window,
I discovered the fancy
football plays of frost
chalked onto the cold black glass.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" Ted Kooser

I discovered frost playing "football" on my car this morning. When you look closely they do remind me of football plays that coaches chalk on a board for the players to see how they are supposed to run the various plays.

Looking forward to Maya Angelou in January, 2007...see you all next year!!

Hugs, Allie

Sometimes, when things are going well,
the daredevil squirrel of worry,
suddenly leaps from the back of my head
to the feeder, swings by his paws
and clambers up, twitching his question mark tail.
And though I try the recommended baffles...
tin cone of meditation, greased pipe
of positive thought---every sunflower seed
in this life is his if he wants it.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

Interesting analogy but how true the words.

"My Sphere"

I know that I, in my little circling sphere,
....Can move the world but small.
Perchance I may speak better if I say
....I move the world at all.
My dull, faint blows upon its anvil iron rebound
And when I look thereon, impression is not found.

But like the waves that beat upon the strand,
....So shall my strokes be lent--
A crack--a niche--in time the rock-bound shore
....Yields to their battlement.
So shall I blaze away, so shall I strike each blow
With fervent faith and prayer and hope that all may know.

Some little deed, some word upon the tongue
....May joy to others give.
Some chanceful thought may hurl dynamic power
....That other souls may live.
O God! Why should I grieve my sphere's so seeming small,
When there's for me no earthly bound prescribed at all.

And here I am, 58 years later, reading the thoughts of an obviously educated old man who likely died badly, a pauper in basement of a rooming house in St Louis shortly after 1948. His voice...doesn't seem out there on I-net today. Finding his descendants hasn't been successful for me either.

If I've intrigued anyone here, you might opt to read his rather long "Ode on the Atomic Bomb" (written after A-bomb but before H-bomb, so is now a bit dated). But seems to me an honest 1948 lament on A-bomb. http://home.thirdage.com/Reading/jimva/stahl1.htm

A little snap at one side of the room,
and an answering snap at the other;
Stiff from the cold and idleness, the old house
is cracking its knuckles. Then the great yawn
of the furnance. Even the lampshade is drowsy,
its belly full of a warm yellow light.

Out under the moon, though, there is at least
one wish against this winter sleep: A road
leads into the new year, deliberate as a bride
in her sparkling white dress of new snow.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" Ted Kooser

I love the personas he gives to the "old house". Sometimes I listen at night when I can't sleep and it does seem that my apartment is talking to itself with all its creaks and groans - like two old ladies talking in the night. And than I also like the analogy of the new year as a bride in her "sparkling white dress of new snow".

Jeff I don't know if this will help, but you might try the publisher of Mr. Stahl's book. They probably don't have a data base, but I think they might have information on the various authors in their files. I know with my book that my information will be retained for 50 years after my death, but I have no idea when that practice started.

For the past two years there's been
a white chenille bedspread
caught up in a barbed wire fence
along the road to the quarry.
For a while it looked like a man
who had fallen asleep on a sofa,
sad bachelor uncle of a man
the soft ball of his bald head fallen
long thin arms stretched out
along the back and trembling.
But today that was gone, torn away
by the wind, and there was no one
but me on the road. My heart
flapped like a rag in my ears.

"Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

This poem seems very sad ~ "...and there was no one but me on the road. My heart flapped like a rag in my ears".

There are days when the world
has a hard time keeping its clouds on,
and its grass in place, and this
is one of them, tumbleweeds
huddled up under the skirts
of cedars, oak trees
joining hands in the windy grove.
Even the dawn light, blocky
with pink and yellow and blue
like a comics section, quickly
fluttered away, leaving a Sunday
the color of news.

"Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

I know what the poet means. We had some nice gentle rain at the beginning of the week and it warmed up, but now it has dropped down to 27 degrees. It was an ordeal just to get to my mailbox with winds blowing all around and than when I got there all I had was junk mail!

"The Bells

Poem lyrics of The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe.

Hear the sledges with the bells
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells>BR> On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarm bells
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now - now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!,BR. What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows:
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells

This poem expresses so many of my thoughts and feelings about the atomic bombing of Japan...in ways I never could have expressed them.

C. Victor Stahl seems both a poetic genius and a very deep philosopher and I hope if you find other poetry by him you will share it with us.

Good luck in your search. You can be sure if I find anything I will post it right away.

Thank you so much for introducing this poet to the room.

Alliemae

All night, in gusty winds,
the house has cupped its hands around
the steady candle of our marriage,
the two of us braided together in sleep,
and burning, yes, but slowly,
giving off just enough light so that one of us,
awakening frightened in darkness,
can see.

~ "Winter Morning Walks" ~ Ted Kooser

I know just how the poet felt. I felt that way myself with gusty winds rattling my windows last night. Some protector my cat was - she practically pushed me out of bed to get underneath the covers.

Ted Kooser's Career:

"On August 12, 2004, he was named Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Librarian of Congress to serve a term from October 2004 through May 2005. In April 2005, Ted Kooser was appointed to serve a second term as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. During the same week Kooser received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book "Delights and Shadows" (2004).

Kooser lives in Garland, Nebraska, and much of his work focuses on the Great Plains. Like Wallace Stevens, Kooser spent much of his working years as an executive in the insuarnce industry, although Kooser sardonically noted in an interview with the "Washington Post" that Stevens had far more time to write at work than he ever did. Kooser graduated from Iowas State University in 1962 and received a master's degree from the University of Nebraska in 1968. Kooser has won two NEA Litery Fellowships (in 1976 and 1984), the Pushcart Prize, the Nebraska Book Awards for Poetry (2001) and Nonfiction (2004), the Stanley Kunitz Prize (1984), the James Boatwright Prize, and the Pultizer Prize for Poetry (2005)." ~ Wipipedia