2 poems.

I think these poems go together like peaches and white wine. Free verse is the peaches; wine is the sonnet. Meaning to say, they go together well, in an under appreciated, understated way. I’ve written too many essays to feel like composing one now. Let’s just enjoy these poems. Maybe you’ll appreciate them as a pair too. xo, m

The Laughing Heart
Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Archaic Torso of Apollo
Rainer Maria Rilke

We never knew his head and all the light
that ripened in his fabled eyes. But
his torso still glows like a candelabra,
in which his gazing, turned down low,

holds fast and shines. Otherwise the surge
of the breast could not blind you, nor a smile
run through the slight twist of the loins
toward the center where procreation thrived.

Otherwise this stone would stand deformed and curt
under the shoulders’ invisible plunge
and not glisten just like wild beasts’ fur;

and not burst forth from all its contours
like a star: for there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

poems for a rainy day.

I love days like today. xo, m

Eel-Grass
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

No matter what I say,
All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
Nothing in this place.

November Night
Adelaid Crapsey (1878-1914)

Listen…
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.

My November Guest
Robert Frost (1874-1963)

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow;
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

hope.

Just wanted to share a favorite poem of mine with you… I keep this on a bulletin board next to my desk and read it often. I’ve always thought it was remarkable in its simplicity and positivity, in part because it was written by Emily Dickinson, whose collection of work is often much darker than this poem might suggest. The fact that a poet as troubled [and talented] as Dickinson wrote this makes it more powerful, I think, and I hope it brings you a bit of happiness. Wishing you all a lovely weekend. : ) xo, m

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

langston.

I’m currently working on a group project for graduate school, designing a few units of curriculum for high school sophomores. We’re designing a unit on the Harlem Renaissance, and I was excited to dive into my old Langston Hughes anthology… I love this poem. Hear Hughes read it here. xo, m

L.H.

‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.