Wisdom comes with winters. – Oscar Wilde
______________________________________________________
“The most common way people give up their
power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
– Alice Walker
______________________________________________________
“for every revolutionary must at last will his own destruction
rooted as he is in the past he sets out to destroy”
– Diane di Prima,
from Revolutionary Letters
______________________________________________________
.
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 December,
musing on Winter, the flight
of Time; how Past is ever
Present; Revolution; the
Perversity of Cats; and
the Making of a Pie
_________________________________
December 8
__________________________________
65 BC – Horace born as Quintus Horatius Flaccus, noted Roman lyric poet, also known for satiric hexameter verses and caustic iambic poems. He lived during Rome’s momentous change from a republic to an empire. Horace served as an officer in the republican army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC. He was befriended by Maecenas, Octavian’s right-hand man in civil affairs, and became a spokesman for the new regime.
Bki: Xi Carpe Diem
by Horace
Leuconoë, don’t ask, we never know, what fate the gods grant us,
whether your fate or mine, don’t waste your time on Babylonian,
futile, calculations. How much better to suffer what happens,
whether Jupiter gives us more winters or this is the last one,
one debilitating the Tyrrhenian Sea on opposing cliffs.
Be wise, and mix the wine, since time is short: limit that far-reaching hope.
The envious moment is flying now, now, while we’re speaking:
Seize the day, place in the hours that come as little faith as you can.
– translator not credited
__________________________________________
1086 – Wang Anshi born, Chancellor (1070-1074 and 1075-1076) to Emperor Shenzong, of the Song dynasty; statesman, economist, reformer and poet. His economic reforms included increasing currency circulation, breaking up of private monopolies, and early forms of government regulation and social welfare. He also expanded the use of local militias by the military, expanded the civil service examination system, and tried to suppress nepotism in the government
New Year’s Day
by Wang Anshi
.
Amid the boom of firecrackers a year has come to an end,
And the spring wind has wafted warm breath to the wine.
While the rising sun shines over each and every household,
People would put up new peachwood charm for the old.
– translator not credited
The calendar in China is a lunar calendar, so their new year’s day falls between January 21 and February 20 on our Gregorian calendar. The Song capital was in Kaifeng, where temperatures start to rise in February after the winter cold. A peachwood charm was for good luck and longevity because of the tree’s early blossoming in the spring.
__________________________________________
1961 – Conceição Lima born on the island of São Tomé, in São Tomé and Príncipe, just north of the equator off the western coast of Africa. She is a poet, broadcaster and producer for the BBC Portuguese Language Services who studied journalism in Portugal, then worked in radio, television, for the press in São Tomé. In 1993, she founded and edited O País Hoje (The Country Today). Her first book of poetry, O Útero da Casa (The Uterus of the House) was published in 2004, followed by A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó (The Dolorosa Root of Micondo) in 2006. She also holds degrees in Afro-Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from King’s College London.
Afroinsularity
by Conceição Lima
.
They left the islands a legacy
of hybrid words and gloomy plantations,
rusted mills, breathless sterns,
sonorous aristocratic names,
and the legend of a shipwreck on Sete Pedras.
.
They arrived here from the North,
by mandate or by chance, in the service of their king:
navigators and pirates, slavers, thieves, smugglers,
simple men, rebellious outcasts too, and Jewish infants
so tender they withered like burnt ears of corn.
.
On their ships they brought compasses, trinkets, seeds,
experimental plants, atrocious sorrows,
a standard of stone pale as wheat,
and other dreamless, rootless cargos,
because the entire island was a port and a dead-end road.
All its hands were black pitchforks and hoes.
.
And there were living footprints in the fields slashed
like scars—each coffee bush now exhales a dead slave.
And on the islands they were
bold: arrogant statues on street corners,
a hundred or so churches and chapels
for a thousand square kilometers,
and the insurgent syncretism of roadside Christmas shrines.
.
And there was the palatial cadence of the ússua,
the scent of garlic and zêtê dóchi
on the témpi and ubaga téla,
and in the calulu, bay leaves blended with palm oil
and the perfume of rosemary and of basil from the gardens on our family land.
.
And the specters, tools of empire,
melted into the insular clocks,
in a structure of ambiguous clarities
and secular condiments,
patron saints and toppled fortresses,
cheap wines and shared dawns.
.
At times I think of their pallid skeletons,
their hair putrid at the edge of the sea.
Here, in this fragment of Africa
Where, facing the South,
a word rises high
like a painful flag.
.
– translated by David Shook
© 2021 by Conceição Lima and David Shook – appeared October 2, 2021, in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day in partnership with Words Without Borders
_________________________________
December 9
__________________________________
1899 – Léonie Adams born in Brooklyn NY; American poet, editor, anthologist, children’s book author, and translator. Her family was very strict – she wasn’t allowed on the subway until she was 18, and only if accompanied by her father. Adams was the 7th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1948-1949, now called U.S. Poet Laureate). Her roommate at Barnard College was Margaret Mead. Her poetry began being published in magazines while she was an undergraduate. Her first poetry collection, Those Not Elect, was published in 1925, while she was an editor at The Measure, a poetry journal. In 1928, she went to Europe, meeting literary figures such as H.D., Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. She published four more poetry collections: High Falcon; Midsummer; This Measure; and Poems; A Selection, which won the 1954 Bollingen Prize. She was also honored with the 1955 Shelley Memorial Award by the Poetry Society of America. Adams died of heart disease at age 88 in June 1988.
Thought's End
by Léonie Adams
.
I'd watched the hills drink the last colour of light,
All shapes grow bright and wane on the pale air,
Till down the traitorous east there came the night
And swept the circle of my seeing bare;
Its intimate beauty like a wanton's veil
Tore from the void as from an empty face.
I felt at being's rim all being fail,
And my one body pitted against space.
O heart more frightened than a wild bird's wings
Beating at green, now is no fiery mark
Left on the quiet nothingness of things.
Be self no more against the flooding dark;
There thousandwise, sown in that cloudy blot,
Stars that are worlds look out and see you not.
.
“Thought’s End” from Poems: A Selection © 1954 by Léonie Adams – Funk & Wagnalls
_________________________________
December 10
__________________________________
1830 – Emily Dickinson born, American’s best-known woman poet and one of the nation’s greatest and most original authors, lived the life of a recluse in Amherst Massachusetts. She wrote nearly 1800 poems, ignoring the traditional poetic forms prevailing among most of the other poets of her day. The extent of her work wasn’t known until after her death, when her younger sister Lavinia discovered her cache of poems.
She sights a Bird–she chuckles (507)
by Emily Dickinson
.
She sights a Bird - she chuckles -
She flattens - then she crawls -
She runs without the look of feet -
Her eyes increase to Balls —
.
Her Jaws stir - twitching - hungry -
Her Teeth can hardly stand -
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first -
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,
.
The Hopes so juicy ripening -
You almost bathed your Tongue -
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes -
And fled with every one –
.
“She sights a Bird – she chuckles” from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson – Pantianos Classics, 1924 edition
__________________________________________
1891 – Nelly Sachs born to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany; German-Swedish poet, playwright, and Nobel Prize laureate. She started writing as a teenager, and became a pen-pal of Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf. Shortly before Lagerlöf died in 1940, she convinced the Swedish royal family to help Sachs and her mother escape to Stockholm, as Sachs had been told to report to work at a concentration camp. They lived in a tiny apartment, and Sachs supported them by translating from German into Swedish. Sachs wrote poetry and plays inspired by family members who lost their lives in concentration camps. Best known for her first collection of poems, In den Wohnungen des Todes (In the Habitations of Death). Sachs was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966. She died at age 78 in May 1970.
What twists and turns
by Nelly Sachs
.
What twists and turns lead thinking men
to sign the death warrant
with fingers that once played a beginning in the sand
with the sea-music of shells in their ears
through the pergolas of the years
to the table in the room
of clock time
ticking into the heart –
Outside
steps that want
to get this dangerous business finished
Night approaches and night attracts
laughter – the earth is cheerful
All things pass away
even the sigh and the
signature –
.
― translation by Catterel Sommer, © 2013
__________________________________________
1925 – Carolyn Kizer born in Spokane, Washington; American poet, essayist, and translator. In 1946, Kizer married Stimson Bullitt, scion of a wealthy Seattle family, and had three children in quick succession. During this time, she nearly stopped writing poetry. They divorced in 1954. Kizer became the first editor of the journal Poetry Northwest (1959-1964). Her first book of poems, The Ungrateful Garden, was published in 1961. Through the State Department, she got a job teaching in Pakistan (1964-1965), then was the first director of literary programs for the National Endowment for the Arts (1966-1970). She won three Pushcart Prizes, the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection Yin, and in 1988 she won both the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, and the Robert Frost Medal. Her poetry collections include: The Nearness of You; Harping On: Poems 1985-1995; Pro Femina; and Cool, Calm, and Collected: Poems 1960-2000.
A Widow in Wintertime
by Carolyn Kizer
.
Last night a baby gargled in the throes
Of a fatal spasm. My children are all grown
Past infant strangles; so, reassured, I knew
Some other baby perished in the snow.
But no. The cat was making love again.
.
Later, I went down and let her in.
She hung her tail, flagging from her sins.
Though she’d eaten, I forked out another dinner,
Being myself hungry all ways, and thin
From metaphysic famines she knows nothing of,
.
The feckless beast! Even so, resemblances
Were on my mind: female and feline, though
She preens herself from satisfaction, and does
Not mind lying even in snow. She is
Lofty and bedraggled, without need to choose.
.
As an ex-animal, I look fondly on
Her excesses and simplicities, and would not return
To them; taking no marks for what I have become,
Merely that my nine lives peal in my ears again
And again, ring in these austerities,
.
These arbitrary disciplines of mine,
Most of them trivial: like covering
The children on my way to bed, and trying
To live well enough alone, and not to dream
Of grappling in the snow, claws plunged in fur,
.
Or waken in a caterwaul of dying.
“A Widow in Wintertime” from Cool, Calm, and Collected: Poems 1960-2000, © 2001 by Carolyn Kizer – Copper Canyon Press
__________________________________________
1935 – Shūji Terayama (aka Terayama Shūji) born in Hirosaki, Japan, in the northern section of Honshu, Japan’s largest island; Japanese poet, writer, film director, and photographer. His father died during WWII when he was 10 years old. He has written radio dramas, experimental television, plays for Angura (underground) theatre, and countercultural essays. He left college in the 1950s when he fell sick, but by age 18, he was the second winner of the Tanka Studies Award. He died at age 47 of liver failure in May 1983. His poetry collections include Sora ni wa hon (Book in the sky); Chi to mugi (Blood and wheat); To you, alone (Hitoribocchi no anata ni; and Kafun-koukai (Pollen voyage).
Gift
by Shūji Terayama
.
I sold a memory
and bought one jewel
.
To buy back that memory
I sold the jewel
.
To buy back the jewel
I sold a memory again
.
It gradually became more worn and soiled
.
Between the love in the memory
and the jewel which took on a new luster
the girl stood absentmindedly
.
This is all before life
teaches her about grief
.
– translated by Elizabeth Armstrong
“Gift” from Terayama Shūji shōjo shishū (Terayama Shūji Girls’ Poetry), © 1981 by Shūji Terayama – Kadokawa Corporation
_________________________________
December 11
__________________________________
1810 – Alfred de Musset born in Paris, French poet, playwright, and novelist; his first poetry collection, Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie (Contes of Spain and Italy), was published in 1829, before he was 20 years old. His second collection, La Nuit Vénitienne (The Venetian Night), was not well received, but A quoi rêvent les jeunes filles (With What the Girls Dream) was more successful. He had a brief but intense affair with author George Sand, during which they went to Venice, but he became ill, broke off the relationship, and returned to Paris. He continued to write poetry, and also wrote a number of plays, including Lorenzaccio and Les Caprices de Marianne (The Moods of Marianne). He published two novels, Confession d’un enfant du siècle (Confessions of a Child of the Century) and Histoire d’un merle blanc (published in English as The White Blackbird). De Musset’s health continued to decline, and he suffered from depression. His popularity waned, and when he died at age 46 in 1857, few attended his funeral.
I love the first shiver of winter
by Alfred de Musset
.
I love the first shiver of winter! That day
When the stubble resists the hunter’s foot,
When magpies settle on fields fragrant with hay,
And deep in the old chateau, the hearth is lit.
.
That’s the city time. I remember last year,
I came back and saw the good Louvre and its dome,
Paris and its smoke—that whole realm so dear.
(I can still hear the postilions shouting, “We’re home!”)
.
I loved the gray weather, the strollers, the Seine
Under a thousand lanterns, sovereign!
I’d see winter, and you, my love, you!
.
Madame, I’d steep my soul in your glances,
But did I even realize the chances
That soon your heart would change for me too?
.
– translated by Zack Rogow
__________________________________________
1922 – Grace Paley born in the Bronx, New York; American author, poet, pacifist, and anti-war activist. During the Vietnam War, she joined the War Resisters League, and in 1968, signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the Vietnam War. In 1969, Paley accompanied a peace mission to Hanoi to negotiate the release of prisoners of war. She was a delegate to the 1974 World Peace Conference in Moscow and, in 1978, was arrested as one of “The White House Eleven” for unfurling an anti-nuclear banner (that read “No Nuclear Weapons—No Nuclear Power—USA and USSR”) on the White House lawn. In the 1990s, Paley campaigned for human rights and against U.S. military intervention in Central America. Noted for her short story collection: The Little Disturbances of Man and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. She died at age 84 in August, 2007.
The Poet’s Occasional Alternative
by Grace Paley
.
I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper
the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor
.
everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one
.
this does not happen with poems
.
because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along
.
“The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” from Begin Again: Collected Poems, © 2001 by Grace Paley – Farrar, Straus and Giroux
_________________________________
December 12
__________________________________
1742 – Anna Seward born in Eyam, a mining village in the UK’s Peak District; English Romantic poet and novelist, she was dubbed the “Swan of Lichfield.” Her father, a clergyman, had progressive ideas about female education. Under his tutelage, she was able to recite works of Milton by age three, and he encouraged her talent for writing. After her father was appointed a Canon-Residentiary at Lichfield Cathedral in 1749, she became friends with people who in turn introduced her to a wider literary circle, mainly via correspondence, which included Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey, and several women authors and intellectuals who were part of the Bluestocking Society. She had very close friendships with women and never married, leading to speculation that she was a lesbian, but that has never been conclusively proved or disproved. Seward cared for her father during the last ten years of his life, and he provided for her in his will, leaving her an annual income of £400. She is best known for Lichfield, an elegy; Louisa, A Poetical Novel; and Original Sonnets on Various Subjects: And Odes Paraphrased from Horace. After her death at age 66 in March 1809, Sir Walter Scott edited her Poetical Works in three volumes for publication, but his editing shows considerable censorship.
December Morning
by Anna Seward
.
I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,
Winter's pale dawn; and as warm fires illume,
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Through misty windows bend the musing sight
Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white,
With shutters closed, peer faintly through the gloom,
That slow recedes; while yon gray spires assume,
Rising from their dark pile, an added height
By indistinctness given. Then to decree
The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold
To friendship or the Muse, or seek with glee
Wisdom's rich page. Oh, hours more worth than gold
By whose blest use we lengthen life, and, free
From drear decays of age, outlive the old.
_________________________________
December 13
__________________________________
1895 – Lucía Sánchez Saornil born in Madrid, Spain, to a poor working-class family; Spanish poet, essayist, and feminist activist. She was mostly self-taught, but won a place at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, and published her work under the male pen name of Luciano de San Saor. There she met América Barroso García, and their lesbian relationship lasted the rest of her life. They both worked on the anarchist magazine Umbral. Sánchez Saornil became a co-founder with Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch y Gascón of Mujeres Libres (Free Women) during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), which aimed to empower working class women, and organized childcare centers and maternity care. She made frequent trips outside Spain to campaign for international support of the Republican and feminist causes. After the fall of Catalonia, she fled with Barosso García into exile in France, where they worked to help Spanish Republican refugees, but they returned secretly to Francoist Spain when France fell to the Nazis in 1940. They eked out a living in hiding in Valencia. Sánchez Saornil died at age 74 in June 1970, five years before the death of Franco.
Mujeres Libres' Anthem
by Lucía Sánchez Saornil
.
Fists upraised, women of Iberia
towards horizons pregnant with light
on paths afire
feet on the ground face
to the blue sky.
Affirming the promise of life
we defy tradition
we mold the warm clay
of a new world born of pain.
Let the past vanish into nothingness!
What do we care for yesterday!
We want to write anew
the word WOMAN.
Fists upraised, women of the world
towards horizons pregnant with light
on paths afire
onward, onward
toward the light.
– translator not credited
_________________________________
December 14
__________________________________
1640 – Aphra Behn born, English Restoration playwright, author, and poet; one of the first women to earn her living as a writer, becoming a literary role model for future generations of women authors. There are few facts known about her origins, though conflicting stories abound. She sometimes used the pen name “Astrea” especially for her early work. Behn was recruited as an ‘intelligence gatherer’ for King Charles II, and the Crown paid for her passage to Antwerp, but when the time came for her return to England, there was no response to pleas for payment of her fare, so in December 1666 she reluctantly borrowed money to pay her own way. Back in England, the King continued to turn a deaf ear to all her requests for payment. By 1668, she had been thrown into debtor’s prison. Most 17th century women left destitute and imprisoned likely resorted to bartering their bodies for food (debtors in prison were responsible for providing life’s necessities for themselves). But Aphra Behn launched her writing career from prison, which paid her way out within two years. She became one of the most influential Restoration era playwrights, as well as a famous (and sometimes infamous) poet and novelist. In her poetry, Behn boldly tackled the sexual “double standard” and same-sex love.
Love Arm’d
by Aphra Behn
.
Love in Fantastique Triumph satt,
Whilst bleeding Hearts around him flow'd,
For whom Fresh pains he did create,
And strange Tryanic power he show'd;
From thy Bright Eyes he took his fire,
Which round about, in sport he hurl'd;
But 'twas from mine he took desire,
Enough to undo the Amorous World.
From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his Pride and Crueltie;
From me his Languishments and Feares,
And every Killing Dart from thee;
Thus thou and I, the God have arm'd,
And sett him up a Deity;
But my poor Heart alone is harm'd,
Whilst thine the Victor is, and free.
.
“Love Arm’d” from Poems upon Several Occasions: with A Voyage to the Island of Love by Aphra Behn – R. Tonson & J. Tonson, 1684
______________________________________
G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
______________________________________
