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“For if Men are to be precluded from
offering their Sentiments on a matter,
which may involve the most serious
and alarming consequences, that
can invite the consideration of
Mankind, reason is of no use to us;
the freedom of Speech may be taken
away, and, dumb and silent we may
be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”
— George Washington,
Address to the Officers of the Army,
March 15, 1783
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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
feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 Poets born this week,
three in March, but
none of them April Fools
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March 31
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1914 – Octavio Paz born near Mexico City into a prominent liberal political family; Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat. He wrote many volumes of poetry, as well as a prolific body of remarkable works of nonfiction on subjects as varied as poetics, literary and art criticism, politics, culture, and Mexican history. Paz was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature. In the 1960s, he was Mexico’s Ambassador to India, then became Simón Bolívar Professor at Cambridge University (1969-1970). Among his many poetry books is his best known collection Piedra del Sol (Sunstone). He died of cancer at age 84 in 1988.
The Street
by Octavio Paz
.
Here is a long and silent street.
I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall
and rise, and I walk blind, my feet
trampling the silent stones and the dry leaves.
Someone behind me also tramples, stones, leaves:
if I slow down, he slows;
if I run, he runs I turn : nobody.
.
Everything dark and doorless,
only my steps aware of me,
I turning and turning among these corners
which lead forever to the street
where nobody waits for, nobody follows me,
where I pursue a man who stumbles
and rises and says when he sees me : nobody.
.
“The Street” from The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz – 1957-1987, © 1988 by Octavio Paz – New Directions Books
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1934 – Kamala Das born as Kamala Madhavikutty in what was the Malabar district in British India. She was an Indian author, short story writer, and columnist who published poetry in English. She was married off at age 15 to a bank official who was blatantly unfaithful. Das escaped into writing, much of it for magazines and newspapers. In 1948, she became a major figure in launching the national liberal and secular political party Lok Seva Party, which promoted social reform. Her autobiography, My Story, was published in 1976. Her books in English include Summer in Calcutta, The Descendants, and Only the Soul Knows How to Sing. She died of pneumonia at age 75 in May 2009.
Words
by Kamala Das
.
All round me are words, and words and words,
They grow on me like leaves, they never
Seem to stop their slow growing
From within... But I tell my self, words
Are a nuisance, beware of them, they
Can be so many things, a
Chasm where running feet must pause, to
Look, a sea with paralyzing waves,
A blast of burning air or,
A knife most willing to cut your best
Friend's throat... Words are a nuisance, but
They grow on me like leaves on a tree,
They never seem to stop their coming,
From a silence, somewhere deep within ...
.
“Words” from Kamala Das: Selected Poems, edited by Devinda Kohli – 2014 – India Penguin Modern Classics
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1936 – Marge Piercy born in Detroit, Michigan; prolific American poet, novelist, playwright, anthologist, editor, and social activist. Her working-class parents were Jewish, and they lived in a predominately black neighborhood, where the Great Depression hit hard. She became the first in her family to go to college, on a scholarship to the University of Michigan, where she joined and became an organizer for Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and was active in Anti-Vietnam War/Pro-Peace groups. Piercy is a feminist, a Marxist, and an environmentalist. She has published almost 20 novels and over 20 books of poetry, as well as plays, several volumes of nonfiction, a memoir, and she edited the anthology Early Ripening: American Women’s Poetry Now. Piercy also explores Jewish issues, and was poetry editor of Tikkun Magazine.
The Cats of Greece
by Marge Piercy
.
The cats of Greece have
eyes grey as the plague.
Their voices are limpid,
all hunger.
As they dodge in the gutters
their bones clack.
Dogs run from them.
In tavernas they sit
at tableside and
watch you eat.
Their moonpale cries
hurl themselves
against your full spoon.
If you touch one gently
it goes crazy.
Its eyes turn up.
It wraps itself around your ankle
and purrs a rusty millenium,
you liar,
you tourist.
.
“The Cats of Greece” from Circles on the Water, © 1982 by Marge Piercy – Alfred A. Knopf
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April 1
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1902 – Maria Polydouri born in Kalamata, Greece; Neo-Hellene poet whose first notable poem “O Ponos tis Manas” (“The Pain of the Mother”) was published when she was 14. When she was 20, both her parents died within 40 days of each other, then she fell in love with poet Kostas Karyotakis, but he found out he had syphilis, incurable at the time, and they parted. The poems which are regarded as her most important were written during the last four years of her life while she was suffering from consumption (tuberculosis). Polydouri was devastated when Karyotakis committed suicide in July 1928. She died in a sanatorium at age 28 in April 1930. Her two collections of poetry are The Trills That Die Out, and Echo in Chaos.
Near you (Konta sou)
by Maria Polydouri
.
The winds are not wild near you.
Near you is peace and light.
In our mind the golden rod
there’s a wrapped meditation.
.
Near you silence looks like laughter
watering eyes tenderly
and if we ever talk, it rages,
somewhere beside us the unemployed joy.
.
Near you sadness blooms like a flower
and passes unsuspectingly into life.
Near you all is sweet and everything is like fluff,
like a caress, like a dew, like a breath.
.
“Near You” from Kariotakis – Polydouri: The Tragic Love Story, translation © 2006 by Manolis Aligizakis – Libros Libertad
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1949 – Gil Scott-Heron born in Chicago, Illinois, American jazz and spoken word poet, singer, and musician – the son of an African-American opera singer and a Jamaican father who was the first Black player recruited by the Celtic Football Club in Glasgow, Scotland. Scott-Heron’s collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson fused jazz, blues, and soul with lyrics about social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melisamatic vocal styles. He referred to himself as a "bluesologist." Scott-Heron's music, most notably on the albums Pieces of a Man and Winter in America during the early 1970s, influenced and foreshadowed later African-American music genres, including hip hop and neo soul. His poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is considered a major influence on hip hop music. Gil Scott-Heron served two prison terms for cocaine-related charges, and told New York magazine in 2008 that he had contracted HIV. He died at age 62 in May 2011. His poetry collections are So Far, So Good and Now and Then: The Poems of Gil Scott-Heron. His memoir, The Last Holiday, was published in 2012.
I Think I’ll Call It Morning
by Gil Scott-Heron
.
I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
and paint it all over my sky.
Be no rain. Be no rain.
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
and make them sing it just for me.
Be no rain.
And I think I'll call it morning from now on.
Why should I survive on sadness
convince myself I've got to be alone?
Why should I subscribe to this world's
madness
knowing that I've got to live on?
.
I think I'll call it morning from now on.
I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
and paint it all over my sky.
Be no rain. Be no rain.
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
and make them sing it just for me.
Why should I hang my head?
Why should I let tears fall from my eyes
when I've seen everything that there is to see
and I know that there ain't no sense in crying!
I know that there ain't no sense in crying!
I think I'll call it morning from now on.
.
Song by Brian Jackson and Gil Scott-Heron – ‘I Think I’ll Call It Morning’ lyrics © Carlin America Inc
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April 2
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1884 – J. C. Squire born in Plymouth in southwest England as John Collings Squire; British writer, editor, literary critic, journalist, poet, historian, and captain of the Invalids, a literary cricket team. Though as a young man, he joined the Social Democratic Federation, and then identified as a “Fabian liberal,” by the time he was in his 40s, he had joined the January Club, a discussion group connected with the British Union of Fascists, but fortunately he was quickly disillusioned. He was knighted in 1933. Squire was known to be a heavy drinker, and Virginia Woolf described him as "more repulsive than words can express, and malignant into the bargain." However, he wielded a lot of power as founder and editor of the London Mercury, a major literary magazine of the interwar period, which promoted many new writers. His copious published works include: Poems and Baudelaire Flowers; Imaginary Speeches And Other Parodies in Prose And Verse; The Three Hills; The Survival of the Fittest; Collected Parodies; and Water-Music: Or a Fortnight of Bliss. J.C. Squire died at age 74 in December 1958.
A Dog’s Death
by J. C. Squire
.
The loose earth falls in the grave like a peaceful regular breathing;
Too like, for I was deceived a moment by the sound:
It has covered the heap of bracken that the gardener laid above him;
Quiet the spade swings: there we have now his mound.
.
A patch of fresh earth on the floor of the wood's renewing chamber:
All around is grass and moss and the hyacinth's dark green sprouts:
And oaks are above that were old when his fiftieth sire was a puppy:
And far away in the garden I hear the children's shouts.
.
Their joy is remote as a dream. It is strange how we buy our sorrow
For the touch of perishing things, idly, with open eyes;
How we give our hearts to brutes that will die in a few seasons,
Nor trouble what we do when we do it; nor would have it otherwise.
.
“A Dog’s Death” from Poems: Second Series, by J.C. Squire – published by William Heineman Limited in 1922
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1945 – Anne Waldman born in Millville, New Jersey; American poet, performer, scholar, and cultural/political activist. In 1965 she attended the Berkeley Poetry Conference, where the Outrider voices she encountered inspired her to commit to poetry and she co-founded Angel Hair, a small press that briefly published a magazine by the same name and numerous books into the 1970s. In 1974, Waldman and Allen Ginsberg founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. In 1996, she was honored with the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award.
To the Censorious Ones
by Anne Waldman
(Jesse Helms & others...)
I'm coming up out of the tomb, Men of War
Just when you thought you had me down, in place, hidden
I'm coming up now
Can you feel the ground rumble under your feet?
It's breaking apart, it's turning over, it's pushing up
It's thrusting into your point of view, your private property
O Men of War, Censorious Ones!
get ready big boys get ready
I'm coming up now
I'm coming up with all that was hidden
Get ready, Big Boys, get ready
I'm coming up with all you wanted buried,
All the hermetic texts with stories in them of hot &
dangerous women
Women with lascivious tongues, sharp eyes & claws
I've been working out, my muscles are strong
I'm pushing up the earth with all you try to censor
All the iconoclasm & bravado you scorn
All the taunts against your banner & salute
I'm coming up from Hell with all you ever suppressed
All the dark fantasies, all the dregs are coming back
I'm leading them back up now
They're going to bark & scoff & rage & bite
I'm opening the box
BOO!
“To the Censorious Ones” from In the Room of Never Grieve: New and Selected Poems, 1985-2003, © 2003 by Anne Waldman – Coffee House Press
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April 3
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1946 – Lil Milagro Ramírez born Lil Milagro de la Esperanza Ramírez Huezo Córdoba in San Salvador, El Salvador; Salvadorian poet, writer, and a founding member of the Resistencia Nacional. Her poetry was being published when she was 19. She earned a law degree from the University of El Salvador, but was appalled by the corruption throughout the judicial system, and helped start the resistance. By 1971, she had gone completely underground. She was also writing poetry, but only about 20 of her poems which she had sent to her mother survived. Ramírez was captured in 1976, but it was kept secret, so she was listed as one of “the disappeared.” She spent three years in brutal conditions in a clandestine jail. Others imprisoned with her who survived said she was an inspiration even in the harshest of circumstances, developing a form of Morse code so she could communicate with other detainees and reciting poems from memory. She was killed by the Salvadoran National Guard in October 1979 at age 33.
Awakening
by Lil Milagro Ramírez
.
I was gentle and peaceful,
A flower.
But gentleness isn’t a wall
That hides misery –
And I saw injustice,
And strikes and rebellions
By ordinary people
Exploded before my astonished eyes.
.
And instead of absurd pity
And sympathetic hypocrisy
My indignation burst forth
And I felt myself united with my sisters
and brothers,
And every strike hurt me,
And every cry struck me
Not only in my head or ears
But in my heart.
My white gentleness fell,
Dead at the feet of hunger,
I undressed myself, weeping at its veils
And new clothing clung to my flesh.
My arms now in the springtime of struggle,
My red-hot blood protesting,
My body olive-green,
An incendiary passion consumes me
… and nevertheless
I keep feeling as before,
A lover of Peace,
I want to fight for it – desperately –
Because from the beginning
I have dreamt of Peace.
“Awakening” by Lil Milagro Ramírez appeared in Volcan: Poems from Central America, edited and translated by Alejando Murgía and Barbara Paschke – City Lights Publishers
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1954 – Sarah Arvio born – her birthplace was undisclosed; American poet, essayist, and translator. She has lived in Caracas, Mexico City, Paris, Rome, and New York. Arvio works as a translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland. She has also taught poetry at Princeton. Her work appears in many journals, magazines, and anthologies. She won the 2003-2004 Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Her translation of Poet in Spain, by Federico García Lorca, was published in 2017. Her own poetry collections include: Visits from the Seventh; Sono: Cantos; and Cry Back My Sea.
olivia de havilland
by Sarah Arvio
.
I tell olivia I would rather die
than let them throw my suitcase overboard
while the boat rocks & the spray splashes up
everyone’s suitcase must go overboard
but my case is more dire more desperate
because I have nothing left in the world
only my suitcase & the drenching deck
she says she will help me I weep & wail
if I lose my suitcase I’ll go overboard
her last name is havilland which means
have a land meaning will you have some land
& land is what I need to do & have
I’m far out to sea on the lurching deck
I need a remedy to suit the case
.
“olive de havilland” from night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis, © 2023 by Sarah Arvio – Borzoi/Alfred A, Knopf
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April 4
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1661 – Uejima Onitsura born in Itami, Honshu Island, Japan, to a family of brewers. He showed exceptional talent for poetry from an early age. When he was 25, he moved to Osaka, and began to make his mark in haiku and other poetic forms. Though he had few disciples, he nevertheless was a major poet of the Danrin school of haiku, founded by Niahiyama Sōin, which opposed the more formal “bookishness” prevailing in haiku at the time. Danrin translates as ‘talkative forrest’ and adherents preferred plain language, everyday subjects, and the use of humor. Matsuo Bashō would become the most famous poet of this school. Later in life, Onitsura worked as a masseur before becoming a priest. He considered makoto (sincerity) the key to writing poetry. Uejima Onitsura died at age 77 in August 1738.
Believed to be Uejima Onitsura’s first poem – composed at age 8:
.
come here! come here!
I cry, but the fireflies
just fly away
.
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1928 – Maya Angelou born in St. Louis, Missouri; American poet, writer, memoirist, and civil rights activist; known for her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In 2000, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton. In 2010, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her poetry collections include: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diie; And Still I Rise; and I Shall Not Be Moved. Maya Angelou died after a long illness at age 86 in May 2014.
Refusal
by Maya Angelou
.
Beloved,
In what other lives or lands
Have I known your lips
Your Hands
Your Laughter brave
Irreverent.
Those sweet excesses that
I do adore.
What surety is there
That we will meet again,
On other worlds some
Future time undated.
I defy my body's haste.
Without the promise
Of one more sweet encounter
I will not deign to die.
.
“Refusal” from The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, © 1994 by Maya Angelou – Random House
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April 5
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1977 – Charles Jenson born in Eagle, Wisconsin; American poet, editor, and podcast host. He earned an MFA from Arizona State University, and published his poetry collection, Little Burning Edens, in 2005. Former director of the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, he is the founding editor of LOCUSPOINT, an online journal of poetry. His other poetry collections include The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon; Living Things, winner of the Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award; and First Risk. Charles Jensen currently lives in Los Angeles, where he directs the Writers’ Program and hosts the Write Process podcast for UCLA Extension.
Between Division and Future Streets
by Charles Jenson
.
— for Julie Perkins and Chip Phillips
.
I move into a one bedroom
overlooking Glassell Park and
.
the Los Angeles River and
the 5 and the hills of Echo Park
.
between Division and Future
Streets. Division runs drunk
.
through the neighborhood,
splitting Mount Washington
.
into two separate lives. Future
Street rises straight up the face,
.
turns sharply and then goes down
to just one lane, makes a 90 degree
.
curve and, from time to time,
gets lost in the spaghetti of streets
.
only to reappear suddenly on the
far side of the hill, shunning
.
drivers with its abrupt end
in a one-way alley. The apartment
.
gets a lot of light, and at night
the yellow glow of porch lamps
.
and street lamps dot the dark
landscape like a pattern for the
.
Lite Brite I played with as a child,
plugging in plastic pegs to make
.
something beautiful appear,
something I could turn on when
.
the night set in, something to
give comfort when the future
.
was an unknowable beast beneath
the bed and when sleep divided me
.
from the world I knew, replaced with
a world I could not fathom.
.
“Between Division and Future Streets” from Breakup/Breakdown, © 2016 by Charles Jenson – Five Oaks Press
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April 6
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1921 – Marie Ponsot born in Brooklyn, New York, as Marie Birmingham; American poet, essayist, critic, and translator of Chinese and Russian fairy tales and works by Jean de La Fontaine and Hans Christian Anderson. In 1956, her first poetry collection, True Minds, was released by Lawrence Ferlinghetti as part of the same pocket-size series that featured Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Then Marie Ponsot set aside her career to raise her seven children. After a divorce, she supported her children as a translator, writer for radio and television, and college professor who mentored young poets, but carved out at least 10 minutes each day to write, scribbling lines of poetry on notebooks, napkins, and the backs of envelopes, which filled her desk drawers. Then 25 years after her first book, she turned these scraps into Admit Impediment, published in 1981. Her other poetry books include: The Green Dark; The Bird Catcher, which won the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award; and Collected Poems. Among many other awards, she was honored by the Poetry Foundation with the 2013 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, awarded to a U.S. poet whose “lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.” Marie Ponsot suffered a stroke at age 89, and lost all her words, but was determined to recapture them. The first words she got back were the Pater Noster – in Latin, learned by heart as a child. Over the next several months, she was able to recover her skills in both English and French. Marie Ponsot died in July 2019 at age 98.
Among Women
by Marie Ponsot
.
What women wander?
Not many. All. A few.
Most would, now & then,
& no wonder.
Some, and I’m one,
Wander sitting still.
My small grandmother
Bought from every peddler
Less for the ribbons and lace
Than for their scent
Of sleep where you will,
Walk out when you want, choose
Your bread and your company.
She warned me, “Have nothing to lose.”
She looked fragile but had
High blood, runner’s ankles,
Could endure, endure.
She loved her rooted garden, her
Grand children, her once
Wild once young man.
Women wander
As best they can.
.
“Among Women” from Springing: New and Selected Poems, © 2002 by Marie Ponsot – Alfred A. Knopf
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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