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“Read poems to yourself in the middle of the night.
Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone
in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps
next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the
early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a
place where silence reigns and the din of the culture —
the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us — has
momentarily stopped. These poems have come
from a great distance to find you.”
― Edward Hirsch, poet and author of How
to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry
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Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post
with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic
for the day's posting. We support our community,
invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful,
respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 poets born this week
in America, India, Poland,
Ireland, the Netherlands,
Guyana, Belgium, Japan,
and one in an empire
that war extinguished
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January 14
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1914 – Dudley Randall born in Washington DC; African-American poet and poetry publisher. From age nine, he grew up in Detroit, where his first poems were published in the Detroit Free Press. He worked in Ford’ River Foundry before serving in the South Pacific during WWII. Randall earned a BA in English from Wayne University and a MA in library science from the University of Michigan, and became the reference librarian for Wayne County. He was fluent in Russian; visited Europe, Africa, and Russia; and later translated many Russian poems into English. Between 1965 and 1977, he was the founder, editor, and publisher of Broadside Press, which became a forum for almost every major Black poet who began their careers during those years, among them Melvin Tolson, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Etheridge Knight, and Margaret Walker. His own poems appeared in collections which included Poem Counterpoem; Cities Burning; More to Remember: Poems of Four Decades; and After the Killing. He died at age 86 in August 2000.
On Getting A Natural
(For Gwendolyn Brooks)
.
by Dudley Randall
.
She didn't know she was beautiful,
though her smiles were dawn,
her voice was bells,
and her skin deep velvet Night.
.
She didn't know she was beautiful,
although her deeds,
kind, generous, unobtrusive,
gave hope to some,
and help to others,
and inspiration to us all. And
beauty is as beauty does,
they say.
.
Then one day there blossomed
a crown upon her head,
bushy, bouffant, real Afro-down,
Queen Nefertiti again.
And now her regal woolly crown
declares,
I know
I'm black
AND
beautiful.
.
“On Getting A Natural” from More to Remember: Poems of Four Decades, © 1971 by Dudley Randall – Third World Press
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1919 – Kaifi Azmi born to a Shia Muslim family of artists in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India; Indian Urdu language poet, writer, and lyricist-songwriter. He wrote his first ghazal when he was 11, but his first poetry collection, Jhankar, was published in 1943 when he was 24. During the partition of India in 1947, he was hounded by the British police for being a "card-carrying communist," and was denied a visa for Pakistan for several years. Many of his lyrics and songs were written for over 50 films, from 1951 until 2003, and he is regarded as the one who brought Urdu literature to Indian motion pictures. In 2000, he was conferred the first Millennium Award by the Government of Delhi and the Delhi Urdu Academy. He died in May 2002 at age 83.
One moment (Ek lamha)
by Kaifi Azmi
.
What we call life, is but a few moments—
and within them that one moment—
when a pair of expressive eyes
look up from a teacup
and drown in the heart—
drowning, say:
today, you should keep your silence—
today, I will keep mine.
Let us just sit,
hand in hand
with our mutual gift of grief,
with our shared heat of emotions.
Who knows in this moment
on some distant mountain—
the snow might start to melt.
.
“One Moment” from Selected Poems, by Kaifi Azmi, translation © 2002 by Pavan K. Varma – Penguin Random House India
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1968 – Caroline Maun born in Lansing, Michigan, but her family moved to Englewood, Florida, when she was a toddler; American poet, author, lyricist, and musician. She earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1998, and teaches creative writing at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her poetry collections include: The Sleeping; What Remains; and Greatest Hits. Her partner had a serious motorcycle accident in March 2012. This is the first poem in her book, Accident, about the accident and its aftermath.
The Dangers of an Early Spring
by Caroline Maun
.
Before the bees arrived,
poppies bloomed in your head.
Daffodils wobbled gape-mouthed,
dirt on their torn shins.
.
When I first saw you,
you called me Sweetie. Each rib
cracked in its bed of flesh,
shifter-toes crumpled
in spite of steel, your neck
not yet released.
.
Are you staying? said the nurse,
who asked again who I was.
Some sweeties walk away
when the man, what’s left,
can’t find the right name.
.
“The Dangers of an Early Spring” from Accident, © 2019 by Caroline Maun – Alice Greene & Co
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January 15
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1891 – Osip Mandekstam born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland; Russian poet. His father was a successful leather merchant, and the family moved to St. Petersburg when Osip was an infant. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Returning to Russia, he began contributing poems to Apollon, a leading literary journal. In 1913, his first poetry collection Kamen (Stone) was published, and drew much positive attention. Though he had supported the Bolsheviks during the revolution, when they began to pressure writers to bend their work toward political propaganda, he persisted in writing poetry from his humanist perspective. In 1922, in defiance of the Soviet state, he published Tristia, a collection of poems celebrating the individual over the masses and love over comradeship. He was labeled a subversive, and inspired a few others not to conform. When his poetry stopped being published in literary journals, he wrote children’s books to support himself. He did manage to publish The Noise of Time, a poetry collection, then a novella, some essays on poetry, and The Egyptian Stamp, a surrealist prose work. Nikolay Bukharin, a highly-placed bureaucrat, who admired Mandekstam’s poetry, sent Osip and his wife to Armenia as journalists in 1930. When they returned, Osip wrote Journey to Armenia. After it was published, he was banned from publishing in the Soviet Union. When he wrote a poem showing Stalin as a gleeful killer, he was arrested, and tortured. Once again, Bukharin interceded, and got him and his wife consigned to a remote village in the Ural mountains. But after the torture he had suffered, he fell in a deep depression, and attempted suicide. In 1937, the couple returned to Moscow, but their home had been seized by the government. Poverty and stress led to two heart attacks, and he went to a sanatorium, where he was arrested again, then disappeared into the Soviet gulag. In December 1938, it was announced he had died of heart failure. He was 47 years old.
I was washing at night out in the yard
by Osip Mandekstam
.
I was washing at night out in the yard—
the heavens glowing with rough stars.
A star-beam like salt upon an axe,
the water barrel brimful and cold.
.
A padlock makes the gate secure,
and conscience gives sternness to the earth—
hard to find a standard anywhere
purer than the truth of new-made cloth.
.
A star melts in the barrel like salt,
and the ice-cold winter is blacker still,
death is more pure, disaster saltier
and earth more truthful and more terrible.
.
''I was washing at night out in the yard'' from Black Earth, by Osip Mandekstam, translation copyright © 2021 by Peter France – New Directions Publishing
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1898 – Rachel Häring Korn born in Podliszki in the former Galicia region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now divided between Ukraine and Poland; Canadian Yiddish language poet and author. Her father died when she was 12. During the First World War, her mother moved with Rachel and her two brothers to Vienna, where Rachel became fluent in German. After completing her education, she moved to Poland. Her first published poems were written in Polish. But after she married Hersh Korn, he taught her Yiddish, and she wrote in Yiddish from then on. When Poland was invaded by Germany in 1939, the family fled, but she and her daughter became separated from her husband, and went to Russia, where her daughter married. In 1945, Rachel returned to Poland. She was the first Jewish writer invited to become a member of the first PEN club in Stockholm, Sweden, where she lived until 1948, when she moved to Montreal, Canada. She died in Montreal at age 84 in September 1982.
I Shall Take With Me
by Rachel Häring Korn
I’ll take green meadows with me,
Scents of the grape-blossom from father’s
Orchard,
The narrow lanes between the rye,
Where my childish footsteps linger.
I shall take white, feathery clouds,
Where my head may find a softer place,
And as a head-rest for The Silence,
My mother’s weary, tender smile.
And with me shall I take the breath of
Words,
Their softest form, their purest sorrow,
And,
With the final tear,
First love.
– translated by Edward Ginsburg
“I Shall Take With Me” was published in its original Yiddish in Yiddish Poetry: Baskertkeit (Kismet), © 1949 by Rachel H. Korn – published in Canada
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January 16
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1816 – Frances Browne born in Stranorlar, County Donegal, Ireland; Irish poet, novelist, and children’s short story writer. Stricken with small pox when she was 18 months old, she lost her sight. Frances learned from her siblings reciting their lessons aloud in the evening, and doing their chores to bribe them to read to her. She memorized everything she could. She composed her first poem at age 7, but her work began to be published in 1841, by the Irish Penny Journal and then the London Athenaeum. Browne’s first volume of poetry was published in 1844. By 1845, she was a regular contributor of short stories to Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal. A second book of poems was printed in 1847, and she became known as 'The Blind Poetess of Ulster.' That same year, she moved to Edinburgh with one of her sisters as reader and amanuensis. Browne was welcomed in the city’s literary circles and wrote essays, reviews, stories, and a third poetry collection, this time for children, Pictures and Songs of Home. In spite of increasing health problems, she moved to London in 1852, where Browne wrote her first novel, My Share of the World, and was a regular contributor to the Ladies Companion magazine. Her last poem, “The Children’s Day” was written shortly before her death in August 1879 at age 63.
To a Beautiful, Vain Young Lady
by Frances Browne
.
Your request, my dear girl, is a delicate task;
Pray what would you wish me to say? let me ask.
Must I tell you your eyes are of heavenly blue?
That your face and your features are beautiful, too?
Must I tell you all this? Nay, more, must I say
These serve but your sweetness and sense to display?
No! a flatterer might tell you all this, but a friend,
Believe me, will ne’er to such meanness descend.
.
A beautiful person, we constantly find,
Is not always adorned by a beautiful mind;
And though a fair face admiration excite,
The effect it produces is transient and slight;
Disappointed, we turn with contempt and disdain
From a form, though angelic, if heartless and vain;
But if mind and if heart correspond with the face,
To love and esteem admiration gives place;
’Tis the mind which alone can illumine the whole;
Beauty attracts the sight, but sweetness wins the soul.
.
“To a Beautiful, Vain Young Lady” from Frances Browne’s book Poems
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1980 – Ester Naomi Perquin born in Utrecht and grew up in Zierikzee in the Netherlands; Dutch poet, editor, and columnist. She worked for the prison service to pay for her studies at the school of creative writing in Amsterdam. Perquin was the 2017-2019 Dichter des Vaderlands (Poet of the Fatherland – similar to Poet Laureate) and had also served as Rotterdam’s City Poet. She has also been editor of the literary journal Tirade, and wrote a column for the De Groene Amsterdammer weekly news magazine. Her poetry collections include Servetten Halfstok (Napkins At Half Mast); Namens de ander (On Behalf of the Other); and Celinspecties (Cell Inspections). In 2010, she was honored with the Anna Blaman Prijs, a poetry prize for body of work.
One Day You Slap the Child
by Ester Naomi Perquin
.
It is coincidence that the child no longer fits its recently
purchased shoes.
Coincidence that it left its wet swimming gear on the stairs
to cultivate a selection of fungi.
.
It is coincidence that the child has grown taller than your
belly button,
developed opinions and poor table manners. That on the
white wall,
in very small letters, it has written its name.
.
After all, it doesn’t get slapped for getting too big
or because of what it’s done wrong.
.
It gets slapped because the tenderness has run out.
Everything falters.
‘Tenderness brought us a long way,’ you say. ‘But the tank
is empty. The engine coughed and died.’
.
And you look down. And you slap the child.
– translated by David Colmer
“One Day You Slap the Child,” © 2017 by Ester Naomi Perquin, from Meervoudig afwezig (Multiple Absences) – Van Oorschot publishing
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January 17
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1893 – Evelyn Scott born as Elsie Dunn in Clarksville, Tennessee; American novelist, poet, and children’s author. She spent most of her younger years in New Orleans. When she was 20 years old, she met Dr. Frederick Creighton Wellman, who was age 40, and head of tropical medicine and hygiene at Tulane University. In December 1913, Wellman abandoned his second wife to run away with Elsie to New York, where they took the aliases of Cyril Kay-Scott and Evelyn Scott. But since Elsie was still a minor, her parents reported him to the police for violating the Mann Act. They fled to London, then Rio de Janeiro, where he took a job as a bookkeeper. As “the Scotts” they lived in Rio on the edge of poverty for six years. In 1919, they returned to New York because she was in need of medical treatment. As Evelyn Scott, she wrote about their life together in her memoir, Escapade. Their common-law marriage ended in 1928, and she married British author John Metcalfe in 1930. They were married until her death at age 70 in August 1963. She wrote a dozen works of fiction, three books for children, and two poetry collections: Precipitations (1920) and The Winter Alone (1930). The Collected Poems of Evelyn Scott, edited by Caroline Maun, were published in 2005.
Eyes
by Evelyn Scott
.
There are arms of ice around me,
And a hand of ice on my heart.
If they should come to bury me
I would not flinch or start.
For eyes are freezing me--
Eyes too cold for hate.
I think the ground,
Because it is dark,
A warmer place to wait.
.
“Eyes” from The Collected Poems of Evelyn Scott – National Poetry Foundation 2005 edition
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1914 – William Stafford born, American poet and pacifist; the 20th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1970-1971). His many poetry collections include Traveling Through the Dark, which won the 1963 National Book Award [the title poem is one of my all-time favorites]; Another World Instead; Ask Me; Down in My Heart; The Darkness Around Us is Deep; and Stories That Could Be True. Stafford died at age 79 in 1993.
Ask Me
by William Stafford
.
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
.
“Ask Me” from Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems of William Stafford © 2014 by the Estate of William Stafford, Gray Wolf Press
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January 18
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1950 – Grace Nichols born in Georgetown, Guyana; Guyanese poet, teacher, journalist, and novelist; she moved to the UK in 1977. Her first poetry collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman, won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Her other poetry collections include: The Fat Black Woman's Poems; I Have Crossed an Ocean; Passport to Here and There; and Asana and the Animals – a collection of poems for children.
Cat-Rap
by Grace Nichols
.
Lying on the sofa
all curled and meek
but in my furry-fuzzy head
there's a rapping beat.
Gonna rap while I'm napping
and looking sweet
gonna rap while I'm padding
on the balls of my feet
.
Gonna rap on my head
gonna rap on my tail
gonna rap on my
you know where.
So wave your paws in the air
like you just don't care
with nine lives to spare
gimme five right here.
.
Well, they say that we cats
are killed by curiosity,
but does the moggie mind?
No, I've got suavity.
When I get to heaven
gonna rap with Macavity,
gonna find his hidden paw
and clear up that mystery.
.
Nap it up
scratch it up
the knack is free
fur it up
purr it up yes
that's me.
.
The meanest cat-rapper you'll ever see.
Number one of the street-sound galaxy.
.
“Cat Rap” from Everybody Got a Gift, © 2006 by Grace Nichols –
A & C Black
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January 19
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1809 – Edgar Allan Poe born, major American author, poet, short story writer, and master of the macabre. He was one of the first Americans to live by writing alone, but he was hampered by the lack of an international copyright law. American publishers often refused to pay their writers or paid them much later than they promised, and Poe repeatedly resorted to humiliating pleas for money and other assistance. On October 3, 1849, Poe was found semiconscious in Baltimore, “in great distress, and… in need of immediate assistance”, according to Joseph W. Walker, who found him. He was taken to the Washington Medical College, where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning. Poe was not coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition or why he was wearing clothes that were not his own.
Alone
by Edgar Allan Poe
.
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—
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1859 – Marie Nizet born in Brussels, Belgium, to a literary family; poet and author of the novel Le Capitaine Vampire (Captain Vampire), which was overshadowed by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, both published in 1897. Some Romanian émigrés and students lodged with her family, and influenced her interest in their country. Her poetry collections, Moscou et Bucharest, and România (chants de la Roumanie), were published during the Romanian War of Independence. But her career as a writer was cut off when she married in 1879. The marriage ended in an acrimonious divorce, and she was left to raise her son alone. She died at age 63 in March 1922. A collection of love poems, dedicated to Nizet's late lover Cecil-Axel Veneglia, were published posthumously in 1923 as Pour Axel de Missie.
The Mouth
by Marie Nizet
.
Neither his thought, flying towards me over so many leagues,
Nor the ray which runs on his forehead of light,
Nor his beauty of a young god which first
tempted Me, nor his eyes - these two blue caresses;
.
Neither his neck nor his arms, nor anything we touch,
Nor anything we see of him is worth his mouth
Where we die of pleasure and who persist in biting,
.
His mouth of freshness, of delight, of flame,
Flower of voluptuousness, lust and disorder,
Who empties your heart and drinks you to the very soul…
.
“The Mouth” from Pour Axel de Missie (For Axel from Missie) – published independently in 1923
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January 20
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1885 – Ozaki Hōsai born as Ozaki Hideo in Tottori, in the westernmost region of Japan’s Honshu Island; Japanese poet of the late Meiji and Taishō periods, during the beginning of modern free verse haiku. Ozaki attended the prestigious Tokyo Imperial University, graduating in October 1909. During this period, he proposed to Yoshie Sawa , a long-time friend and distant maternal relative, but her older brother opposed the marriage. Ozaki's heavy drinking, which spiraled into alcoholism, began soon after this rejection. After graduation, he was quickly fired from his first job for incompetence, but in 1919, he was hired by the Tōyō Life Insurance Company, and did well for a time, being promoted several times, and marrying. But as his drinking problem grew worse, he left the company in 1920, becoming a lay mendicant monk. In 1926, he settled on the island of Shōdoshima, in the Inland Sea, as rector of a small hermitage at the temple of Saiko-ji. He wrote over 4,000 haiku between 1916 and 1926. In the only book of his poetry, Daikū (大空, Big Sky), the poems were selected by Ogiwara Seisensui. The book was published posthumously in 1926.
there it was
by Ozaki Hōsai
.
there it was my face
I bought the tiny mirror
and came home
“there it was” from Right under the big sky, I don't wear a hat, English translations © 1993 by Hiroaki Sato – Stone Bridge Press
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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Photo: budding grape flowers