“My head is full of fire
and grief and my tongue
runs wild, pierced
with shards of glass.”
― Federico García Lorca
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Thirteen poets born this week, in
the 13th through 20th centuries
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June 4
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1956 – Joyce Sidman born in Hartford, Connecticut; American poet and children’s author. She has written over 19 books, including Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night was a 2011 Newbery Honor Book; The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science, winner of the 2019 Robert F. Sibert Medal; and Hello, Earth! – Poems to Our Planet was the 2022 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People.
Blessing on the Curl of a Cat
by Joyce Sidman
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As cat curls
in a circle of sun–
sleek and round,
snug and warm,
a hint of ear
cocked in readiness–
so may I find my place
in this shifting world:
secure within myself,
certain of my worth,
equally willing to
purr
or leap.
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Note: if you look at the poem sideways with its left side as the bottom, it is roughly the shape of a cat
“Blessing on the Curl of a Cat” from What the Heart Knows: Chants, Charms, and Blessings, © 2013 by Joyce Sidman – Clarion Books
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June 5
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1898 – Federico Garcia Lorca born in Granada province, Andalusia, to a landowning family; major Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. After touring the poorest areas of Spain with a classical theatre company sponsored by the Second Republic’s Ministry of Education, he began writing plays, using the theatre as a platform for societal change: "The theatre is a school of weeping and of laughter, a free forum, where men can question norms that are outmoded or mistaken and explain with living example the eternal norms of the human heart." Lorca was gay, and struggled with recurring bouts of depression. He was murdered at age 38 in August 1936 by the Franquists during the Spanish Civil War. His remains have never been found. Lorca’s books and plays were banned in Franco’s Spain until 1953, when Obras completas (Complete Works) was published – it had been censored, and it wasn’t complete. After that, some of his plays were allowed to be performed. Once Franco died in 1975, Lorca’s work reappeared in Spain uncensored.
Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint
by Federico Garcia Lorca
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Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.
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I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.
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If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,
.
never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.
.
– translator not credited
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June 6
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1799 – Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin born in Moscow into an old noble family, but his maternal great-grandfather was of African origin; Russian Romantic era poet, playwright, novelist, and journalist. Considered by many as the greatest Russian poet, and the founder of modern Russian literature. In 1837, Puskin was fatally wounded in a duel with his brother-in-law, a French officer serving in the Russian cavalry, who had tried to seduce Pushkin’s wife. He was 37 years old.
The Cloud
by Alexander Pushkin
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The last one of clouds of a scattered tempest,
Just single you’re flying in azure, the prettiest,
Just single you’re bringing the sorrowful shade,
Just single you’re saddening a day that is glad.
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In nearest past, you were storming skies, mighty,
And were quite entwined by powerful lightning,
And you were the womb for divine thunders birth,
And quenching with rain the insatiable earth.
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Enough, now vanish! Your time is not endless –
The earth is refreshed and away gone the tempest;
And now the wind, fondling leaves of the trees,
With pleasure is driving you out the sky’s bliss.
– translated by Yevgeny Bonver
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1925 – Maxine Kumin born in Philadephia; American poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and children’s author. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Up Country in 1973, the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement in 2006, and served as U.S. Poet Laureate (1981-1982). She died at age 88 in February 2014. Her poetry collections include Halfway; The Nightmare Factory; Looking for Luck; The Long Marriage; and Where I Live.
After Love
by Maxine Kumin
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Afterward, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
.
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
.
Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.
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The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar
.
and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.
.
Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when
.
the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self
.
lay lightly down, and slept.
“After Love” from Selected Poems, 1960-1990, © 1998 by Maxine Kumin
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June 7
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1917 – Gwendolyn Brooks born in Topeka, Kansas, but grew up in Chicago; highly regarded American poet, author, and teacher. She was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, the prize for poetry in 1950 for Annie Allan. She was also the first black woman inducted into the Academy of Arts and Letters, and the first black woman to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (renamed U.S. Poet Laureate in 1986, just after her 1985-1986 term). Among her many books are A Street in Bronzeville; In the Mecca; Riot; and In Montgomery.
kitchenette building
by Gwendolyn Brooks
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We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”
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But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms
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Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?
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We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.
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“kitchenette building” from Selected Poems, © 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks – Harper & Row
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1943 – Nikki Giovanni born in Knoxville, Tennessee, but her family moved first to Cleveland, Ohio shortly after her birth, and then to Wyoming when she was five. She came back to Knoxville in 1958 to live with her grandparents while going to high school, and went on, after a rocky start, to graduate from Fiske University. Giovannni is a poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Her strong, militant poetry was forged during the Civil Rights and Black Power era.
Nikki-Rosa
by Nikki Giovanni
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childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
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“Nikki-Rosa” from Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment, © 1970 by Nikki Giovanni – HarperCollins Publishers
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1954 – Louise Erdrich, American novelist, poet, and children’s book author, was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, but grew up in North Dakota, where her Chippewa mother and German-American father taught at a boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She describes the land as a place where the “earth and sky touch everywhere and nowhere, like sex between two strangers.” Erdrich was the oldest of seven children. Raised Catholic, she spent some time in a Catholic School. She has written over 18 works of fiction, and 3 poetry collections. Her novel The Night Watchman won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Passion
by Louise Erdrich
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Your dog gnaws the rug you made love upon
for the last time.
When your lover left
and you rolled yourself inside the rug
to sleep in agony
your dog stayed with you.
Your dog chews out the armpits of your lover’s shirt
and shreds the underwear
you were wearing when he touched you.
That’s devotion.
The dog chews your pen and stains his tongue
then licks the white pillows.
His way of writing you a poem.
He eats the spout off the blue plastic watering can.
He starts on the porch,
a rotted board, and soon that board rips
away from the wicked red nails.
Your dog eats the nails
and does not die.
Although you have no porch,
no lover, no rug, no underwear,
you understand.
The dog is trying to eat your grief.
In helpless longing
to get close to you
he must destroy what’s close to you.
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“Passion” appeared in The New Yorker December 16, 2019
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June 8
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1920 – Gwen Harwood born in Tasmania; one of Australia’s finest poets whose early work was published under various pseudonyms, including Walter Lehmann, Francis Geyer, and Miriam Stone; librettist for over a dozen works by prominent Australian composers. She won many awards for her poetry, including the 1977 Robert Frost Medallion. She died at age 75 in December 1995. The Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize was created in her memory in 1996.
"Thought is Surrounded by a Halo"
by Gwen Harwood
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Show me the order of the world,
the hard-edge light of this-is-so
prior to all experience
and common to both world and thought,
no model, but the truth itself.
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Language is not a perfect game,
and if it were, how could we play?
The world's more than the sum of things
like moon, sky, centre, body, bed,
as all the singing masters know.
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Picture two lovers side by side
who sleep and dream and wake to hold
the real and imagined world
body by body, word by word
in the wild halo of their thought.
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"Thought is Surrounded by a Halo" from Collected Poems © 1991 by Gwen Harwood – Oxford University Press
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1937 – Gillian Clarke born in Cardiff, the capital of Wales; Welsh poet, playwright, Welsh-speaker and translator; co-founder in 1990 of Tŷ Newydd, the National Writing Centre of Wales, which offers residential creative writing, courses in Welsh and English, retreats, seminars, and forums. She held the pole of National Poet of Wales (2008-2016), and in 2010 became the second Welsh poet to be awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In 2011 she was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards (Welsh-speakers who have contributed Welsh culture), and in 2012 she received the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award.
Blue Hydrangeas
by Gillian Clarke
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You bring them in, a trug of thundercloud,
neglected in long grass and the sulk
of a wet summer. Now a weight of wet silk
in my arms like her blue dress, a load
of night-inks shaken from their hair –
her hair a flame, a shadow against light
as long ago she leaned to kiss goodnight
when downstairs was a bright elsewhere
like a lost bush of blue hydrangeas.
You found them, lovely, silky, dangerous,
their lapis lazulis, their indigoes
tide-marked and freckled with the rose
of death, beautiful in decline.
I touch my mother’s skin. Touch mine.
.
“Blue Hydrangeas” from Gillian Clarke: Collected Poems, © 1997 by Gillian Clarke –
Carcanet Press
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1969 – Deborah Poe American poet, author, and creator of handmade book objects. Her published work includes keep; the last will be stone, too; Hélène; Elements; and Our Parenthetical Ontology. She co-edited Between Worlds: An Anthology of Contemporary Fiction and Criticism.
Exile (or Waking, 23 May)
– after Maged Zaher’s The Consequences of My Body
by Deborah Poe
I told him not to pet the sea lion
Circumstances on the ocean are different
He has such tenderness for animals
This includes for me
The body is a sea of refugee boats
Tanker ballasts and cruise ships
That kind of need displaced empathy
We march millions into exile—
say amen.
“Exile (or Waking, 23 May)” from Our Parenthetical Ontology, © 2008 by Deborah Poe – WordTech Communications
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June 9
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1891 – Cole Porter was born in Peru, Indiana; prolific American songwriter and composer. Known for witty and urbane lyrics, many of his songs became standards, and his scores were very successful on Broadway and in films. He was the only surviving child of a His wealthy family, and he was expected to practice law, but he studied English, music, and French at Yale. He had a long-lasting marriage of convenience, maintaining a close friendship with his wife, but had many homosexual affairs. After living for several years in France, he returned to the U.S. in 1928 with his first hit musical Paris, followed by a string of hit shows. A horse riding accident in 1937 left him disabled and in constant pain, and he underwent 34 operations but he continued to work until 1958, when his right leg had to be amputated. His last score was for the 1958 CBS television special Aladdin. He died of kidney failure in 1964 at age 73.
Night and Day
by Cole Porter
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Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom
When the jungle shadows fall
Like the tick, tick-tock of the stately clock
As it stands against the wall
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Like the drip, drip, drip of the raindrops
When the summer shower is through
So a voice within me keeps repeating you, you, you
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Night and day, you are the one
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun
Whether near to me or far
It's no matter darling where you are
I think of you
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Night and say, day and night, why is it so
That this longing for you follows wherever I go?
In the roaring traffic's boom
In the silence of my lonely room
I think of you
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Night and day, night and day
Under the hide of me
There's an oh, such a hungry yearning, burning inside of me
And its torment won't be through
'Til you let me spend my life making love to you
Day and night, night and day
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written in 1932, © WcMusic Corp.
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June 10
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1213 – Fakhr al-Dīn Ibrahīm ‘Iraqi born in Persian Iraq, part of the Khwarazmian Empire at the time; Sufi philosopher, poet, and mystic. As a youth, he joined some qalandars – wandering dervishes – and traveled to India, where he became a disciple of a leader within the Sufi order of Suhrawardiyya. After his master died, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca, then lived in Konya in Anatolia (Asia Minor) until 1277. He moved to Cairo, then settled in Damascus, where he died in 1289. His work is known though the Muqaddima (“Introduction”), a collection of short poems called divans, and the Lama’at (“Divine Flashes”).
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The first step in love
is losing your head.
After the petty ego,
you then give up your life
and bear the calamity.
With this behind you, proceed:
polish the ego's rust
from the mirror
of your self.
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– translator not credited
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1904 – Lin Huiyin born in Hangzhou, China; Chinese architect, poet, essayist, architectural historian, playwright, and translator. Born into a wealthy family, Huiyin traveled extensively with her father, and reached a level of education rare for women of the time, including a degree from the University of Pennsylvania (in Fine Arts – as a woman, she was refused admittance to Penn’s School of Architecture) and she also enrolled in stage design classes at Yale University. She was the first woman architect in modern China and her husband Liang Sicheng was known as the "Father of Modern Chinese Architecture." They both worked as founders and faculty of the Architecture Department of Northeastern University in 1928 and, after 1949, as professors in Tsinghua University in Beijing. She studied ancient Chinese architecture, and with her husband began restoration work on China’s cultural heritage sites during the Republican Era of China, until the 1937 Japanese invasion. They fled with their children and other faculty members before the invading forces. By 1940, Huiyin was suffering from tuberculosis. After the war, she took part in the standardization of Beijing city planning. She died of tuberculosis in 1955. The American artist Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is her niece.
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When will there be again
That piece of silence;
Dissolved in the spring breeze,
Facing the mountains, facing the small rivers?
When will it still be like that
Full of hope;
Cloaked in new green, whispered poetry,
Climb the tower and listen to the bell?
When, and when, heart
I can really understand
The distance of this time; the years of the mountains and rivers;
Yesterday's silence, the bells
Yesterday's people
How to draw a shadow in today's day!
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– translator not credited
– from Collection of Poems by Talented Women over the Century – Yilin Press, English-Chinese bilingual version, 2011 edition
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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