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The basic tool for the manipulation of reality
is the manipulation of words. If you control
the meaning of words, you can control
the people who must use the words.”
― Philip K. Dick, Science Fiction writer
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Raise your words, not your voice.
It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
– Rumi, 13th century Sufi poet
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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,
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Morning Open Thread is looking for
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weekly. If interested, please contact
me or P Carey for more information.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 poets born in December,
speaking of war, past and future,
carelessness with our only home,
some things that matter — and a
few that don’t — but also women,
and the eyes and loneliness of cats
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December 1
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1950 – Arthur Sze born in New York City; prolific American poet and translator, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from China because of the Japanese occupation of their country. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1968-1970) before transferring to UC Berkeley to study poetry. Sze is the author of 10 collections of poetry, including Sight Lines, which won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry. He was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico (2006-2008), and a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2012, Sze was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His other poetry collections include: Dazzled; River River; The Redshifting Web; Compass Rose; and Starlight Behind Daylight. He is also noted as the translator and editor of The Silk Dragon: Translations of Chinese Poetry.
Cloud Hands
by Arthur Sze
.
A woman moves through a Cloud Hands position,
holding and rotating
.
an invisible globe—thud, shattering glass, moan,
horn blast—so many
.
worlds to this world—two men dipnet
sockeye salmon
.
at the mouth of a river—from a rooftop, a seagull
squawks and cries;
.
a woman moves through Grasp the Bird’s Tail—
someone on a stretcher
.
is wheeled past glass doors—a desert fivespot
rises in a wash—
.
and, pressing her tongue to the roof
of her mouth,
.
she focuses, in the near distance, on the music
of sycamore leaves.
.
(a desert fivespot is a flower with five pink petals, each with a red spot on it)
"Cloud Hands" from Sight Lines, © 2019 by Arthur Sze – Copper Canyon Press
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1968 – Susan Hutton born in New York City; American poet who held a two-year Wallace Stegner fellowship in poetry at Stanford University, and was director of development at Autumn House Press in Pittsburgh. Her collection On the Vanishing of Large Creatures, won Ploughshares‘ John C. Zacharis first book prize. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her other books are Later and The Selkie Girl, her retelling of a classic Celtic legend.
My List
by Susan Hutton
.
In ten years most things won't matter,
and this is the virtue of a long life.
Our sorrows fade after days and weeks,
are replaced by births, the smell of summer weeds,
a list of little happinesses.
A postwar portrait photographer in Warsaw hung a sheet
behind his subjects to hide his city in ruins.
After its return trip across the Atlantic
the Mayflower was dismantled and made into a barn.
No one remembers which barn it was.
“My List” from The Vanishing of Large Creatures, © 2007 by Susan Hutton – Carnegie Mellon University Press
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December 2
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1909 – Helen Adam born in Glasgow, Scotland, but grew up in an isolated Scottish village where her father was a Presbyterian preacher; Scottish poet, balladeer, photographer, and composer, whose first book of poems and ballads was published when she was 14. She moved to London as a young adult with her mother and sister, where she worked as a society columnist for The Weekly Scotsman for many years before the trio left for New York City in the early 1930s. By 1954, the women had arrived in San Francisco. Helen Adam became part of the literary scene in San Francisco before and during the Beat years. Adam returned to New York in the late 1960s and was a spoken word poet at the Judson Church and the Nuyorican Poets Café. She died at age 82 in September 1993.
Song for a Sea Tower
by Helen Adam
.
There lived four sisters in a tower by the sea,
Between the blue waters and the lily lea.
.
One sister was a wolf, one a gentle sheep,
One a swan, and one a fish, from the fabled deep.
.
Four sisters loved a man, beautiful was he.
He swam in blue waters beside the lily lea.
.
The sheep gave him fleecy wool to warm his lonely bed.
The swan gave him feathers to crown his curly head.
.
The fish gave him gaudy rings from wrecks of vanity.
The wolf ran all alone around the lily lea.
.
The wolf ran all alone where lilies proudly rise.
She gave the man nothing but a glance from her eyes.
.
A glance from her savage eyes beside the summer sea.
He left the wave and followed her along the lily lea.
.
Three enchanted sisters in a tower by the tide.
Where their hearts awakened, there they must abide.
.
Three spell-bound sisters, a sheep, a fish, a swan.
Floods beat against their tower. Time goes on and on.
.
“If we wait with patience, no matter what the pain,
From the green waters the God will come again.”
.
Three ancient sisters, faithfully they wait
For the young and loving man that the wolf ate.
“Song for a Sea Tower” from A Helen Adam Reader, © 2008 by the Estate of Helen Adam, edited by Kristin Prevallet – National Poetry Foundation
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1947 – Bob Perelman born in Youngstown, Ohio; American poet, critic, editor, playwright, and teacher. He originally intended to major in music, but changed to classical literature, and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop before earning a Master of Arts in Greek and Latin. His PhD is from University of California at Berkeley. He has taught at several American Universities, and at King’s College, London. He published The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History, and 16 volumes of poetry, including Primer; Face Value; Virtual Reality; The Future of Memory; and Playing Bodies, a collaboration with his wife, artist Francie Shaw, combining his poems with her paintings.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
by Bob Perelman
.
Don't write
anything new
.
and don't say
anything old
.
let’s just agree
that the sky
.
is struggling
to hold
.
its blue
plus the ice
.
is less
spectacularly cold
.
the ocean
not quite
.
as wet
what with all
.
the microplastic
creamed through it
.
the sum of the packaging
torn open
.
churned in the water
the leftovers
.
of the gleam of the new
now occupying its own
.
continent worth
of surface
.
a dull shine
when the sun’s out.
“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” © 1999 by Bob Perelman
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December 3
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1905 – Shi Zhecun born in Zhejiang province, but moved the family to Songjiang in the coastal province of Jiangsu, where his father worked as a teacher. Chinese essayist, poet, short story writer, and translator, who studied English and French at Aurora University, which had been founded in 1903 by French Jesuits. With several of his classmates, he later founded the monthly literary journal Xiandai (1932-1935). In 1937, after the Japanese invasion, he moved to Yunnan province, a mountainous area that borders on Myanmar in southeastern China. In 1947, he returned to Shanghai, and mostly wrote essays, some of which would get him in trouble with the Chinese government, and a memoir in poetry. His works were banned during the Cultural Revolution until 1980. Shi Zhecun died at age 97 in November 2003.
The Arched Bridge
by Shi Zhecun
.
A small black covered boat
In a thin autumn-morning fog
Is about to sail beneath an ancient arched bridge.
.
It’s a mysterious opening.
Who knows what will be revealed
Through the passage under the stone arch?
.
A broad turbulent river
Or an unadorned quiet town?
A pretty but bleak plain?
.
We’ve seen tallow trees: red berries,
White reeds,
Emerald kingfishers.
Thank Heaven, our voyage
Proceeds on course.
.
But while we’re smiling,
In the thin autumn-morning fog
A new arch emerges, mystery
Looming.
Another dread
Clutches at our chest
.
– translated by Dr. Zuxin Ding
© 1936 by Shi Zhecun
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1943 – Jane Munro born in North Vancouver, British Columbia; Canadian poet, writer, and creative writing teacher. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts in creative Writing from the University of British Columbia in 1978. Her poetry collections include: Blue Sonoma, which won the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize; False Creek; Glass Float; and Active Pass. Her prose memoir, Open Every Window, was published in 2022.
Salmonberries
by Jane Munro
.
Later, things will get brutish.
I will squat, tug,
swing the mattock, work my fingers
round their knobby tap roots,
fall over backwards, all
to get the god-damned salmonberries
out of the meadow. But today
I pause to see their delicate green dressing
of April’s raw flank—as if a blade had scraped
the scales off winter, then wrapped its ache
in seaweed. Salmonberry leaves like an aura
around sinewy branches. Each leaf
points towards the sky. Each flower,
a magenta bell, hangs down. A winter wren,
tail tipped up, extends and extends its song.
I turn back to the house thinking
leaves, flowers, bird—
wrapped in neat bundles like sushi.
.
“Salmonberries” from point no point, © 2006 by Jane Munro –
McClelland & Stewart
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December 4
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1875 – Rainer Maria Rilke born in Prague, Bohemia; Austrian-Swiss poet and author; one of the greatest of German-language poets. In 1902, he went to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin, who had a great impact on Rilke, leading to Rilke’s much more modern poetic style. Rilke also admired Paul Cezanne. During WWI, he escaped military duty by working in the German War Record Office (1914-1916), then spent most of the rest of the war in Munich. From 1919 on, he spent much of his time Switzerland, increasingly at a sanatorium because of health problems which were eventually diagnosed as leukemia. He died in 1926 at age 51. Rilke is known for The Book of Hours; Duino Elegies; Sonnets to Orpheus; and Letters to a Young Poet.
Black Cat
by Rainer Maria Rilke
.
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
.
just as a raving madman,when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
.
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
.
“Black Cat” from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly – Harper Perennial, 1981 Bilingual Edition
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December 5
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1945 – Joanne Burns grew up in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: Australian poet, prose writer, and teacher, who studied at the University of Sydney. She has taught English and creative writing in Australia and England. She often incorporates “found writing” in her work. In the 1980s, she was part of the Sydney Women’s Writers’ Workshop. She has published 10 poetry collections, including Footnotes of a hammock, which was a co-winner of the 2005 Judith Wright Award for Best Poetry Collection; as well as Ratz; Alphabatics; Penelope’s knees; Amphora; and Brush.
digital recording (after eliot)
by Joanne Burns
.
one thinks of all the hands
that whip money out of ATMs
quick as condoms, headache pills;
that jiggle herbal tea bags in thick
mugs like puppeteers; that fill
out lotto forms on a stream of
thin white shelves; that are
dropping shaggy track pants on
the floor beside a bed, that
press touchfones more than flesh;
that vote in cardboard booths
with short lead pencils, tied
to string like small harpoons:
that tremble at the mirror too
close to the patinas of their skin;
one thinks of all the hands, burning
teaspoons in a thousand motel rooms
.
“digital recording” from aerial photography, © 1999 by Joanne Burns – Five Islands Press
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December 6
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1886 – Joyce Kilmer born in New Brunswick, New Jersey (his father was the inventor of Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder); American essayist, editor, anthologist, literary critic, teacher, and poet. His poetry collections include: Summer of Love (1911); Trees and Other Poems (1914); Main Street and Other Poems (1917). At age 30, he enlisted in a New York infantry regiment, became a sergeant, and turned down a commission as an officer. His 5-year-old daughter died of infantile paralysis just before his deployment to France. During the Second Battle of the Marne, he was killed by a sniper at age 31.
Mirage du Cantonment
by Joyce Kilmer
.
Many laughing ladies, leisurely and wise,
Low rich voice, delicate gay cries,
Tea in fragile china cups, ices, macaroons,
Sheraton and Heppelwhite and old thin spoons,
Rather dim paintings on very high walls,
Windows showing lawns whereon the sunlight falls,
Pink and silver gardens and broad kind trees,
And fountains scattering rainbows at the whim of a breeze,
Fragrance, mirth and gentleness, a Summer day
In a world that has forgotten everything but play.
.
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1892 – Sir Osbert Sitwell, 5th Baronet, born, English writer, critic and poet; English writer, poet, art critic, supporter of the arts, Liberal Party member, and campaigner for the preservation of Georgian buildings – he was successful in saving Sutton Scarsdale Hall, now owned by English Heritage. During WWI, he served in the trenches in France near the Belgium border, which is where he began writing poetry. He is less well-known than his older sister, the poet Edith Sitwell, but he published some travel journals, five novels, short stories, his autobiography Left Hand, Right Hand!, and two poetry collections: Argonaut and Juggernaut and At the House of Mrs Kinfoo.
The Next War
by Sir Osbert Sitwell
.
The long war had ended.
Its miseries had grown faded.
Deaf men became difficult to talk to,
Heroes became bores.
Those alchemists
Who had converted blood into gold
Had grown elderly.
But they held a meeting,
Saying,
'We think perhaps we ought
To put up tombs
Or erect altars
To those brave lads
Who were so willingly burnt,
Or blinded,
Or maimed,
Who lost all likeness to a living thing,
Or were blown to bleeding patches of flesh
For our sakes.
It would look well.
Or we might even educate the children.'
But the richest of these wizards
Coughed gently;
And he said:
.
'I have always been to the front
-In private enterprise-,
I yield in public spirit
To no man.
I think yours is a very good idea
-A capital idea-
And not too costly . . .
But it seems to me
That the cause for which we fought
Is again endangered.
What more fitting memorial for the fallen
Than that their children
Should fall for the same cause?'
.
Rushing eagerly into the street,
The kindly old gentlemen cried
To the young:
'Will you sacrifice
Through your lethargy
What your fathers died to gain ?
The world must be made safe for the young!'
And the children
Went. . . .
.
“The Next War” from The Collected Satires and Poems of Osbert Sitwell – AMS Press, 1976 edition
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1970 – Joumana Haddad born in Beirut, Lebanon; Lebanese Armenian poet, cultural journalist, and human rights activist who speaks seven languages. She began working for the An-Nahr newspaper in 1997, and was its cultural editor (2005-2017). She founded Jasad, a quarterly Arabic-language arts and literary magazine (2009-2011), and in 2019, started the Joumana Haddad Freedoms Center, a youth-centered NGO. In 2020, Haddad started an International Feminisms Festival. She has published 8 poetry collections in Arabic and one in French, as well as essays and a novel in English, a children’s book in Italian. Her poem, I Am a Woman, was put to music by Maria Palatine, a German singer, harpist, and composer.
I Am a Woman
by Joumana Haddad
.
No one can guess
what I say when I am silent,
who I see when I close my eyes,
how I am carried away when I am carried away,
what I search for when I reach out my hands.
.
Nobody, nobody knows
when I am hungry, when I take a journey,
when I walk and when I am lost.
And nobody knows
that my going is a return
and my return is an abstention,
that my weakness is a mask
and my strength is a mask,
and that what is coming is a tempest.
.
They think they know
so I let them,
and I happen.
.
They put me in a cage so that
my freedom may be a gift from them,
and I'd have to thank them and obey.
But I am free before them, after them,
with them, without them.
I am free in my oppression, in my defeat
and my prison is what I want.
The key to the prison may be their tongue.
But their tongue is twisted around my desire's fingers,
and my desire they can never command.
.
I am a woman.
They think they own my freedom.
So I let them,
and I happen.
.
“I am a Woman” © 2012 by Joumana Haddad
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December 7
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1878 – Akiko Yosano born as Shō Hō in Sakai, Osaka prefecture; Japanese author, poet, pioneering feminist, and social reformer. Published in 1901, Midaregami (Tangled Hair), her first of several collections of tanka, a traditional Japanese poetry form, contained around 400 poems, the majority of them love poems. It was denounced by most literary critics as vulgar or obscene, but was widely read by free-thinkers, as it brought a passionate individualism to this traditional form, unlike any other work of the late Meiji period. The poems defied Japanese society’s expectation of women to always be gentle, modest and passive. In her poems, women are assertively sexual. These were the first tankas in which a poet had written specifically of women’s breasts, not vaguely as a symbol of child feeding and motherhood, but in terms of a woman’s sexual pleasure. In 1911, her poem “The Day the Mountains Move” announced that women are going to demand equality. She frequently wrote for the all-women literary magazine Seitō (Bluestocking.) Yosano disagreed with a prevailing opinion of Japanese feminists of the time that the government should provide financially for mothers, saying dependence on the state and dependence on men were really the same thing. Even though she gave birth to 13 children, 11 of whom survived to adulthood, she rejected motherhood as her main identity, saying that limiting a sense of self to a single aspect of one’s life, however important, entraps women in the old way of thinking. In a 1918 article, Yosano attacked “the ruling and military class which deliberately block the adoption of a truly moral system in an effort to protect the wealth and influence of their families…They hurry to invoke the power and precepts of the old totalitarian moral codes to direct the lives of Japanese citizens,” and called militarism a form of “barbarian thinking which is the responsibility of us women to eradicate from our midst.” In her later years, she supported her country’s military ambitions country, but these poems are regarded as lacking the brilliance and originality of her previous work. She died of a stroke at age 63 in May 1942.
O My Brother, You Must Not Die
by Akiko Yosano
.
O my young brother, I cry for you
Don't you understand you must not die!
You who were born the last of all
Command a special store of parents' love
Would parents place a blade in children's hands
Teaching them to murder other men
Teaching them to kill and then to die?
Have you so learned and grown to twenty-four?
.
O my brother, you must not die!
Could it be the Emperor His Grace
Exposeth not to jeopardy of war
But urgeth men to spilling human blood
And dying in the way of wild beasts,
Calling such death the path to glory?
If His Grace possesseth noble heart
What must be the thoughts that linger there?
.
– translator not credited
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1920 – Tatamkhulu Afrika born as Ismail Joubert in Sallum, Egypt to an Arab father and a Turkish mother, but orphaned in South Africa at age 3; South African poet, novelist, and artist. Fostered by family friends after his parents died, he became a soldier in the WWII North Africa Campaign, and was captured at Tobruk. His experiences as a prisoner of war are prominently featured in his writing. In the 1960s, he became an anti-apartheid activist, and a member of the armed wing of the ANC, uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation). In 1987, he was arrested for terrorism and banned from speaking in public or publishing his work for 5 years, but continued writing under the name Tatamkhulu Afrika. He served 11 years in prison until his release in 1992. Just after the 2002 publication of his final novel, Bitter Eden, he was run over by a car, and died of his injuries two weeks later.
Dark Where Loneliness Hides
by Tatamkhulu Afrika
.
Cat’s small child cries
in the dark where loneliness hides.
Cat’s small child beats
its breast in the soft
furriness of its need.
.
Cats don’t beat their breasts,
cats yell with lust
in the dark where loneliness hides?
Is it I, then, that cries,
mad child running wild?
.
Is it I that lies
in the dark where loneliness hides,
that listens as the wild geese wing
past short of the stars,
rime my roof with their dung?
.
Cat’s mewling, sky’s
sibilances, these
are the thieves of my ease?
What else waits
in the dark where loneliness hides?
.
My song has a crooked spine.
Should I break a bone
as I straighten it?
Or birth its crookedness in
the dark where loneliness hides?
.
“Dark Where Loneliness Hides” from Nightrider: Selected Poems, by Tatamkhulu Afrika – NB Publishers, 2010 edition
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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