“Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.” – Gloria Steinem
___________________________________________________
“If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say
of this or that event, it never happened— that, surely,
was more terrifying than mere torture and death?”
— George Orwell, 1984
___________________________________________________
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence
will not protect you. But for every real word
spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to
speak those truths for which I am still seeking,
I had made contact with other women while
we examined the words to fit a world in which
we all believed, bridging our differences.”
― Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals
___________________________________________________
.
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.
Morning Open Thread is looking for
contributors — either occasional, or
weekly. If interested, please contact
me or P Carey for more information.
__________________________________________
So grab your cuppa, and join in.
__________________________________________
13 poets born in November,
with a mix of poems that
challenge and comfort,
reflecting the new dark
and last light of this
unsettling month.
_________________________________
November 24
__________________________________
1891 – Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska born in Kraków, Poland; prolific Polish lyric poet and dramatist, who published 12 volumes of poetry. Dubbed the “Polish Sappho,” she is considered one of the most innovative poets and playwrights of Poland’s interwar period. She spoke out in favor of birth control, and caused scandals when she used taboo themes like abortion, extramarital affairs, and incest in her plays. In 1937, she wrote Baba-dziwo (“Woman of Wonder”), an anti-Nazi play. She moved to the UK at the onset of WWII in 1939, and died at age 53 of bone cancer in 1945 in Manchester, England.
An Unsuccessful Séance
by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
.
The Ouija board was baffling tonight...
The entire circle had become impatient...
But one hand whiter than a white carnation
trembled, as a man’s hand held it tight.
.
Nobody saw the fading ectoplasm...
The table became motionless and froze.
From the white hand to the man’s there passed a spasm
and love materialised instead of ghosts.
– translated by Barbara Plebanek and Tony Howard
“An Unsuccessful Séance” from Butterflies: Selected Poems, by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska – Wydawn Literackie, 2000 edition
__________________________________________
1913 – Carlos Bulosan born in Pangasinan, Luzon, Philippines; English-language Filipino novelist, essayist, short story writer, poet, laborer, and activist who immigrated to the U.S. in 1930. Best-known for his semi-autobiographical book America is in the Heart, a vivid account of the discrimination and violence he faced while never giving up his belief in America as an “unfinished ideal.” He was active in labor movement along the Pacific coast of the United States and edited the 1952 Yearbook for International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 37, a predominantly Filipino American cannery trade union based in Seattle. By 1936, Bulosan was suffering from tuberculosis. He spent two years at the Los Angeles County Hospital, undergoing three surgeries, and constantly reading and writing in the convalescent ward. After his recovery, he was a labor organizer, but was blacklisted during the Second Red Scare in the 1950s. Unable to find work, or published his writing, he died in Seattle from malnutrition and bronchopneumonia at age 42 in September 1956.
Monuments
by Carlos Bulosan
.
All night the sea rushed in monosyllables
To the shore, where the rocks and reefs loomed
Majestically and silence stood without shoes;
And the foam crept to the edges of darkness
Burning its inflammable garments, whereon
Water activities showed delight and humor.
.
Silence, imperial silence, I have felt your beauty
In the hour of formlessness; it cupped me up
Like an autumn wind moving into space.
Monumental silence, I too have something to tell,
I too have a passion to arise, and the honor
To possess this passion ―
.
All night the sea rushed in silence and knelt
In the darkness, complaining in monosyllables.
“Monuments” from Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan, edited by E. San Juan – Temple University Press, 1995 edition
__________________________________________
1952 – Parveen Shakir born in Karachi, Pakistan; Urdu poet, teacher, and Pakistani civil servant; published six collections of poetry, often using the Urdu first-person, feminine pronoun in her verses which, though common in prose, was rarely used in poetry, even by female poets, before her; recipient of Pakistan’s distinguished Pride of Performance award for outstanding contributions to literature in 1976. She was killed at age 42 in a car accident in 1994.
When the Wolves Come
by Parveen Shakir
.
Moments before
The wolves come
A sharp stench
Shoots through the woods.
Today, in my house too
My sixth sense
Has picked up
A similar stench.
In this short time alone
Three or four times already
Every corner of the house
With rose petals I have strewn.
These shields of roses
Will they save me
When the wolves come?.
“When the Wolves Come” from Defiance of the Rose: Selected Poems by Parveen Shakir – translation © 2019 by Naima Rashid – Oxford University Press
_________________________________
November 25
__________________________________
1890 – Isaac Rosenberg born in Bristol, UK; British Jewish writer, poet, and painter who was killed during WWI at age 27 in April 1918 while fighting near Arras, France. From childhood on, he had suffered from chronic health problems, particularly bronchitis. He took evening classes at Birbeck College, before attending University College’s Slade School of Fine Art in London. Rosenberg spent 1914 in South Africa, where the climate helped improve his health, but returned to England in 1915, and in spite of his skepticism about the war, he enlisted in the British Army in October 1915. "I never joined the army for patriotic reasons. Nothing can justify war. I suppose we must all fight to get the trouble over." Self-portraits by Rosenberg hang in the National Portrait Gallery, and in 1985, he was listed among 16 Great War Poets on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner. His 3 poetry collections are Night and Day; Youth; and his best-known work, Poems from the Trenches.
The Troop Ship
by Isaac Rosenberg
.
Grotesque and queerly huddled
Contortionists to twist
The sleepy soul to a sleep,
We lie all sorts of ways
And cannot sleep.
The wet wind is so cold,
And the lurching men so careless,
That, should you drop to a doze,
Wind’s fumble or men’s feet
Is on your face.
“The Troop Ship” from The Collected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg ― CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013 edition
__________________________________________
1967 – Rachel Wetzsteon born in New York City; American writer and poet, daughter of Ross Wetzsteon, a Village Voice editor. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with an MA, and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University, then taught at Barnard College, William Paterson University, and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street YMCA. Her work appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, and The Village Voice, and she was poetry editor of The New Republic. She won the 2001 Witter Bynner Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Deeply depressed after the breakup of a 3-year relationship, in December, 2009, she committed suicide at age 42. Her poetry collections include: The Other Stars; Home and Away; and Silver Roses, published posthumously in 2010.
Rain at Reading
by Rachel Wetzsteon
We had gathered under a tent in the park
for some words before lunch and after separate mornings,
and when—twice—the poet said “capital,”
the lightning bolts that followed the noun
had me bolting too; I’d always suspected
God’s communist leanings, but now I regretted
how few exchanges we know
between craft and climate:
.
imagine a rhyme inciting a rainbow,
blood feuds bruising the sky,
hymns of forgiveness bringing a soft
new light to the faces watching the last act,
waltzes and songs and declamations—
this would be capital entertainment!—
locked in a clinch with open air.
.
But the lightning was as quick as it was loud.
The clouds dispersed,
and then so did the crowd.
“Rain at Reading” from Sakura Park, © 2006 by Rachel Wetzsteon – Persea Books
_________________________________
November 26
__________________________________
1954 – John Matshikiza born in Johannesburg, South Africa; South African, theatre and film director, playwright, actor, newspaper columnist, and poet. His father, Todd Matshikiza, was a jazz pianist and composer, known for the musical King Kong, which had an all-Black cast, including Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela at the beginning of their careers. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1961, and the banning of the political organizations and a media crackdown, Todd Matshikiza went on tour to Britain with King Kong, taking his family with him. In 1964, they went to Lusaka, Zambia, where Todd Matshikiza became head of broadcasting services for the newly independent country, until his death in 1968. John Matshikiza studied at London’s Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, then, after training with the Royal Shakespeare Company, he worked for the Glasgow Citizens Theater Company. He was also active in Mayibuye, the cultural and communication arm of African National Congress, and traveled in the U.S., the Netherlands, and several African countries. While building a reputation as a film actor, including appearing in Cry Freedom and playing Walter Sisulu in Mandela, he also published his poetry South Where Her Feet Cool on Ice, and Prophets in the Black Sky. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Matshikiza Matshikiza returned to South Africa from his 30 year self-exile. He worked in Johannesburg writing, directing, and acting in theatre and film. He also wrote a column which appeared in multiple newspapers, and won several journalism awards. Matshikiza died of a heart attack at age 54 in September 2008.
And I Watch It In Mandela
by John Matshikiza
It is not for the safety of silence
That this man has opened his arms to lead.
The strength of his words hangs in the air
As the strength in his eyes remains on the sky;
And the years of impatient waiting draw on
While this man burns to clear the smoke in the air.
There is fire here,
Which no prison
Can kill in this man;
And I watch it in Mandela.
“And I Watch It in Mandela” © 1974 by John Matshikiza
__________________________________________
1963 – Heid E. Erdrich born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, and raised in Wahpeton, North Dakota; an Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain, she is a poet, editor, anthologist, and author. Novelist and poet Louise Erdrich is her sister. Heid Erdrich earned a Ph.D. in Arts and Sciences in Native American Literature and Writing from Union Institute in Los Angeles. She edited the anthology New Poets of Native Nations, and is a guest editor at Yellow Medicine Review. She also curates art exhibits. Her poetry collections include Fishing for Myth; The Mother’s Tongue; Cell Traffic; and Little Big Bully.
Truth Myth
by Heid E. Erdrich
.
Tell a child she is composed of parts
(her Ojibway quarters, her German half-heart)
she’ll find the existence of harpies easy
to swallow. Storybook children never come close
to her mix, but manticores make great uncles,
Sphinx a cousin she’ll allow, centaurs better to love
than boys—the horse part, at least, she can ride.
With a bestiary for a family album she’s proud.
Her heap of blankets, her garbage grin, prove
she’s descended of bears, her totem, it’s true.
And that German witch with the candy roof,
that was her ancestor too. If swans can rain
white rape from heaven, then what is a girl to do?
Believe her Indian eyes, her sly French smile,
her breast with its veins skim milk blue—
She is the myth that is true.
“True Myth” from Fishing for Myth, © 1997 by Heid E. Erdrich – New Rivers Press
_________________________________
November 27
__________________________________
1924 – Nina Cassian born as Renée Annie Cassian-Mătăsaru to a Jewish family in Galați, Kingdom of Romania; Romanian poet, children’s author, translator, journalist, and film critic. Her family moved to Bucharest in 1935. She was multi-lingual, but wrote her first poetry collection and several children’s stories in Romanian, which were translated into English after she came to the U.S. in 1985 as a visiting professor. While she was in America, a friend of hers back home was arrested and beaten to death. Several of her poems were in his diary, which the Communist regime deemed inflammatory, so she was granted asylum in the U.S., and later became an American citizen. She began writing her poems in English, which were published in magazines like the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly. Her English-language poems have been collected in Life Sentence and Take My Word for It. She died at of a heart attack at age 92 in April 2014.
Ordeal
by Nina Cassian
.
I promise to make you more alive than you’ve ever been.
For the first time you’ll see your pores opening
like the gills of fish and you’ll hear
the noise of blood in galleries
and feel light gliding on your corneas
like the dragging of a dress across the floor.
For the first time, you’ll note gravity’s prick
like a thorn in your heel,
and your shoulder blades will hurt from the
imperative of wings.
.
I promise to make you so alive
that the fall of dust on furniture will deafen you,
and you’ll feel your eyebrows like two wounds forming
and your memories will seem to begin
with the creation of the world.
– translated by Michael Impey and Brian Swann
“Ordeal” © 1986 by Nina Cassian – from The Penguin Book
of Women Poets – Penguin Books, 1986 edition
_________________________________
November 28
__________________________________
1757 – William Blake born in Soho, London, UK; major and prolific English poet, mystic, visual artist, and printmaker; best known for Songs of Innocence and Experience. Although his formal schooling ended when he was 10 years old, he was an avid reader. Blake was apprenticed to an engraver at age 15 in 1772, and was a professional engraver by age 21. During his apprenticeship, he was sent to Gothic churches in London to copy images, and spent many hours in Westminster Abbey, where he claimed to have experienced visions of Christ and his Apostles, and a procession of chanting monks. In 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy, but disliked the prevailing painting style of the period, preferring the classical style of Michelangelo and Raphael. He married Catherine Boucher in 1782, taught her to read and write, and trained her as an engraver. She helped to color his illuminated works. In 1783, he published Poetical Sketches, and in 1784, he and another engraver opened a print shop. Radical publisher Joseph Johnson, whose authors included Joseph Priestly, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of their frequent customers. Blake illustrated Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life. Blake himself was a radical thinker, believing in racial and sexual equality, and abhorring slavery. By 1788, he was experimenting with relief etching as a faster means of producing his illuminated books. He died at age 69 in August 1827. Among his poetry collections are: Songs of Innocence and of Experience; The Book of Thel; The French Revolution; and A Song of Liberty.
The Tyger
by William Blake
.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
.
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
.
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
.
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
.
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
.
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?.
“The Tyger,” often printed now as “The Tiger,” is from Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
__________________________________________
1894 – Genevieve Taggard born in Waitsburg, Washington, but raised in Hawaii; American poet, critic, anthologist, and short story writer; co-founder and editor of The Measure: a Journal of Verse. She taught at Mount Holyoke College (1929-1930), became a professor at Bennington College (1932-1934), and then at Sarah Lawrence (1934-1947). She was a socialist, whose radical political and civil rights views were often reflected in her poetry. Taggard died of complications from high blood pressure just before her 54th birthday in November 1948. Her poetry collections include: For Eager Lovers; Words for the Chisel; Not Mine to Finish; Slow Music; and Origin: Hawaii. She also wrote the biography The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson.
Ode in Time of Crisis
by Genevieve Taggard
.
Now in the fright of change when bombed towns vanish
In fountains of debris
We say to the stranger coming across the sea
Not here, not here, go elsewhere!
Here we keep
Bars up. Wall out the danger, tightly seal
The ports, the intake from the alien world we fear.
.
It is a time of many errors now.
And this the error of children when they feel
But cannot say their terror. To shut off the stream
In which we moved and still move, if we move.
The alien is the nation, nothing more nor less.
How set ourselves at variance to prove
The alien is not the nation. And so end the dream.
Forbid our deep resource from whence we came,
And the very seed of greatness.
.
This is to do
Something like suicide; to choose
Sterility—forget the secret of our past
Which like a magnet drew
A wealth of men and women hopeward. And now to lose
In ignorant blindness what we might hold fast.
.
The fright of change, not readiness. Instead
Inside our wall we will today pursue
The man we call the alien, take his print,
Give him a taste of the thing from which he fled,
Suspicion him. And again we fail.
How shall we release his virtue, his good-will
If by such pressure we hold his life in jail?
The alien is the nation, nothing more nor less.
And so we fail and so we jail ourselves.
Landlocked, the stagnant stream.
So ends the dream.
.
O countrymen, are we working to undo
Our lusty strength, our once proud victory?
Yes, if by this fright we break our strength in two.
If we make of every man we fail the enemy.
If we make ourselves the jailer locked in jail.
Our laboring will, our brave, too brave to fail
Remember this nation by millions believed to be
Great and of mighty forces born, and resolve to be free,
To continue and renew.
“Ode in Time of Crisis” from To Test the Joy: Selected Poetry and Prose, by Genevieve Taggard – Boiler House Press, 2023 edition
_________________________________
November 29
__________________________________
1818 – William Ellery Channing born in Newport, Rhode Island; American Unitarian minister and liberal theologian, known for his impassioned sermons and public speeches. He inspired the Transcendentalists, but found many of their views too extreme. His childhood caregiver was Duchess Quamino, a formerly enslaved woman, leading him to speak out for abolishing slavery. He graduated from Harvard College in 1789. He was elected by fellow students to give the commencement address, but forbidden by the faculty to mention any political subjects. In 1803, he began his ministry at the Federal Street Church in Boston, becoming the primary spokesperson and interpreter of Unitarianism in the U.S. He died of typhus at age 62 in October 1842.
My Symphony
by William Ellery Channing
.
To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
and wealthy not rich.
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes,
and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
__________________________________________
1973 – Sarah Jones born in Baltimore, Maryland to two physicians, an African American father and Euro-American/Caribbean mother. She is a Black American playwright, poet, lyricist, and actress. Originally planning on a career in law, she was educated at the United Nations International School and Bryn Mawr College, but left school and became a regular at the Nuyorican Poets Café poetry slams. The first of her trademark one-woman multi-character live shows was Surface Transit, which debuted at the Nuyoican in 1998. Jones was then commissioned by Equality Now to write and perform Women Can’t Wait!, which premiered at the International Beijing + 5 UN Conference on Women’s Rights in2000. Next came Bridge & Tunnel, produced Off-Broadway by Meryl Streep, then went on to Broadway and won a Special Tony Award. It was followed in 2005 by A Right to Care, advocating for healthcare access for minorities. She has since been doing shows for HBO and Netflix. When her song “Your Revolution” was played by a Portland radio station in 2001, the station was fined by the FCC for airing an “indecent” song. Jones launched an appeal. She was joined by the NYCLU and ACLU, and after a two-year process, the FCC rescinded its initial notice, and the song became available for air play.
Your Revolution
by Sarah Jones
.
Your revolution will not happen between these thighs
The real revolution ain’t about booty size
The Versaces you buys, or the Lexus you don’t drive
And though we’ve lost Biggie Smalls
Baby your notorious revolution
Will never allow you to lace no lyrical douche, in my bush
Your revolution will not be you killing me softly, with Fugees
Your revolution ain’t gonna knock me up without no ring or no plans
And produce little future emcees
Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs
And your revolution will not find me in the backseat of a jeep
With LL, hard as hell, doin’ it and doin’ it and doin’ it well
Your revolution will not be you smacking it up, flipping it, or rubbing it down
Nor will it take you downtown or humpin around
Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs
And your revolution will not have me singing, ain’t no nigga like the one I got
And your revolution will not be your ass sending me for no VD shot
And your revolution will not involve me, feelin your nature rise
Or helping you fantasize
Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs
Oh, my Jamaican brother, your revolution will not make you feel bombastic
And really fantastic
And have you groping in the dark for that rubber wrapped in plastic
You will not be touching your lips to my triple dip of french vanilla
Butter pecan, chocolate deluxe
Or having Akinyele’s dream, a 6-foot blowjob machine
You want to subjugate your queen?
Think I’m a put it in my mouth, just cuz you made a few bucks?
Please
And your revolution will not be you dying your hair platinum blonde
Sing about what we gon’ do all night long
Cause all you could see is the thong-tha-thong-thong-thong
Cause that revolution will not happen between these thighs
But, your revolution makes me wonder where could we go
If we could all drop the empty pursuit of props and the ego
And revolt back to our roots, use a little Common Sense
On a quest to make love De La Soul, no pretense
But your revolution will not be you flexing your little sex and status
To express what you feel
Your revolution will not happen between these thighs
Will not happen between these thighs
Will not be you shaking and me *yawn* eventually faking between these thighs
Because, why? Because the revolution, when it finally comes
It’s gonna be real
“Your Revolution” from Your Revolution, © 2000 by Sarah Jones – self published
_________________________________
November 30
__________________________________
1915 – Robert Lax born in Olean, in southeast New York state; American mystic, “minimalist” poet, writer, and circus juggler. He was the unofficial resident poet of the Greek island of Patmos from 1962 to 2000. He went back to his hometown in September 2000, and died in his sleep at age 84 shortly after his return. His poetry collections include The Circus of the Sun; Circus Days and Nights; and A Thing That Is.
The Alley Violinist
by Robert Lax
.
if you were an alley violinist
and they threw you money
from three windows
.
and the first note contained
a nickel and said:
when you play, we dance and
sing, signed
a very poor family
.
and the second one contained
a dime and said:
I like your playing very much,
signed
a sick old lady
.
and the last one contained
a dollar and said:
beat it,
.
would you:
stand there and play?
.
beat it?
.
walk away playing your fiddle?
.
“The Alley Violinist” from Love Had a Compass, © 1996 by Robert Lax – Grove Press
_____________________________________
G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
______________________________________
Picture: An Ojibwa Bear
