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“Capitalism is the astounding belief
that the most wickedest of men
will do the most wickedest of things
for the greatest good of everyone.”
– John Maynard Keynes,
author of The Economic
Consequences of the Peace
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“It is a government of the people,
by the people, for the people no longer —
it is a government of corporations,
by corporations, for corporations.”
– Rutherford B. Hayes,
U.S. President (1877-1881)
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Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post
with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic
for the day's posting. We support our community,
invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful,
respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a
feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 Poets born at August’s End,
seekers on journeys away
from and into their past,
eyeing their present with
both hope and distrust.
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August 25
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1836 – Bret Harte born as Francis Brett Hart in Albany NY; American short story writer and poet, best known for his stories about the California Gold Rush. He also wrote plays, editorials, book reviews, and parodies of famous novels. His formal schooling ended when he was 13, and at age 17, he went to California, where he worked as a miner, teacher, messenger for the Well Fargo & Co. Express, a printer’s devil (apprentice), journalist, and even secretary of the San Francisco Mint. By 1860, he was the editor of the San Francisco newspaper The Gold Era. Harte’s first short story to be published appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in October 1863. He became editor of The Overland Monthly, a new literary magazine, where his story “The Luck of Roaring Camp” first appeared, which reprinted in many times, bringing him fame across the U.S. and in Europe. He returned to the East Coast in 1871, and signed a contract with The Atlantic Monthly for $10,000 a year, an unprecedented sum at the time, but as his popularity waned, he found himself struggling to get published, earning more by giving lectures on the gold rush than from his writing. He was appointed in 1878 as U.S. Consul in Krefeld, Germany, and spent the rest of his life in Europe serving as a consul, but he never stopped writing. Eventually he was sent to London, were he died of throat cancer at age 65 in May 1902. The Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte were published posthumously in 1912.
Coyote
by Bret Harte
.
Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew,
Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through;
Loath ever to leave, and yet fearful to stay,
He limps in the clearing, an outcast in gray
.
A shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall,
Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall,
Lop-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway
A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray.
.
Here, Carlo, old fellow,—he 's one of your kind,—
Go, seek him, and bring him in out of the wind.
What! snarling, my Carlo! So even dogs may
Deny their own kin in the outcast in gray
.
Well, take what you will—though it be on the sly,
Marauding or begging,—
I shall not ask why,
But will call it a dole, just to help on his way
A four-footed friar in orders of gray!
.
“Coyote” from Stories and Poems, by Bret Harte – originally published in 1915
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1910 – Dorothea Tanning born in Galesburg, Illinois; American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. She moved to Chicago in 1930 to work as a commercial artist, and there she first encountered Surrealism at Chicago’s Museum of Modern Art. Her work for Macy’s department store so impressed their art director that he introduced her to gallery owner Julien Levy, who mounted solo exhibitions of her work in 1944 and 1948. Levy introduced her to other painters allied with his New York gallery, including Max Ernst, who left his wife, Peggy Guggenheim, for Tanning. They were married in 1946 in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner, and remained married for 34 years, living for many years in France, where she remained after his death in 1976. Her return to New York in the 1980s precipitated a shift in focus to her writing, which had been a secondary pursuit for most of her life. She wrote two memoirs, a novel, and four books of poetry before her death at age 101 in January 2012.
Zero
by Dorothea Tanning
.
Now that legal tender has
lost its tenderness,
and its very legality
is so often in question,
it may be time to consider
the zero—
long rows of them,
empty, black circles in clumps
of three,
presided over by a numeral
or two.
Admired, even revered,
these zeros
of imaginary money
capture
the open gaze of innocents
.
like a vision of earthly paradise.
.
Now the zero has
a new name:
The Economy.
.
As for that earthly
paradise—well…
.
“Zero” from Coming to That, © 2011 by Dorothea Tanning – Graywolf Press
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1944 – Sherley Ann Williams born in Bakersfield, California, eldest of three daughters of migrant worker parents. She and her sisters often had to work with their parents to earn enough to put food on the table. Williams is an African American poet, novelist, and social critic. She earned a bachelor's degree in English at California State University, Fresno, then a master's degree at Brown University in 1972. Her poetry collections The Peacock Poems and Some One Sweet Angel Chile were both nominated for National Book Awards. She is also known for her novel Dessa Rose, and the non-fiction Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study of Neo-Black Literature.
Any Woman's Blues
every woman is a victim of the feel blues, too.
by Sherley Ann Williams
.
Soft lamp shinin
and me alone in the night.
Soft lamp is shinin
and me alone in the night.
Can't take no one beside me
need mo'n jest some man to set me right.
.
I left many peoples and places
tryin not to be alone.
Left many a person and places
I lived my life alone.
I need to get myself together.
Yes, I need to make myself to home.
.
What's gone can be a window
a circle in the eye of the sun.
What's gone can be a window
a circle, well, in the eye of the sun.
Take the circle from the world, girl,
you find the light have gone.
.
These is old blues
and I sing em like any woman do.
These the old blues
and I sing em, sing em, sing em. Just like any woman do
My life ain't done yet.
Naw. My song ain't through.
.
“Any Woman’s Blues” © by Sherley Anne Williams, appeared in An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, © 2002 edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes – University of Michigan Press
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August 26
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1922 – Elizabeth Brewster born in Chipman, a logging village in New Brunswick, Canada; Canadian poet, author, and academic. The youngest of five children born to a poor family, her frail health kept her out of school for first few years, but she was a voracious reader. When she was 12, her first poem was published in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal. In 1942, she earned an entrance scholarship to the University of New Brunswick. In 1945, she co-founded the literary journal The Fiddlehead. She earned her BA in 1946, and a Master of Arts from Radcliffe College in 1947. On a Beaverbrook overseas scholarship, she studied at King’s College, London (1949-1950), then earned a Bachelor of Library Science from the University of Toronto, and completed a Ph.D. at Indiana University Bloomington in 1962. As a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, she taught creative writing from 1972 until her retirement in 1990. Brewster published over 20 poetry collections, including In Search of Eros; Entertaining Angels; Wheel of Change; Footnotes to the Book of Job; Bright Centre; and Time and Seasons. She also wrote two novels, three short story collections, and two memoirs. She died at age 90 in December 2012.
The Silent Scream
by Elizabeth Brewster
.
When I was seven, playing by myself
near the edge of the woods,
I was almost buried in a pile of sawdust
that gave way spongily into quicksand.
As I sank up to my neck, struggling,
I opened my mouth to scream.
But my voice had gone.
.
I got out. I survived. Did not tell my mother
Or anyone else for over twenty years.
Dreamed, however,
many times of being buried alive,
nose and mouth choked with earth or sawdust,
no voice ever
because I could not scream.
.
I wonder if that is why all the reviewers
say I am such a quiet poet.
.
“The Silent Scream” from Collected Poems of Elizabeth Brewster, © 2004 by Elizabeth Brewster – Oberon Press
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1957 – Nikky Finney born in Conway, South Carolina; American poet and academic; her father was a lawyer, and her mother, a teacher. They were both active in the Civil Rights Movement, and Finney has long been an advocate for social justice and cultural preservation. She was the Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky (1993-2013), and is currently the Bennett Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Head Off & Split, and the 1999 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Her poetry collections include On Wings Made of Gauze, Rice, Heartwood, The World is Round, and Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry.
Heirloom
by Nikky Finney
.
Sundown, the day nearly eaten away,
.
the Boxcar Willies peep. Their
inside-eyes push black and plump
.
against walls of pumpkin skin. I step
into dying backyard light. Both hands
.
steal into the swollen summer air,
a blind reach into a blaze of acid,
.
ghost bloom of nacre & breast.
One Atlantan Cherokee Purple,
.
two piddling Radiator Charlies
are Lena-Horne lured into the fingers
.
of my right hand. But I really do love you,
enters my ear like a nest of yellow jackets,
.
well wedged beneath a two-by-four.
.
But I really didn't think I would (ever leave),
stings before the ladder hits the ground.
.
I swat the familiar buzz away.
My good arm arcs and aims.
.
My elbow cranks a high, hard cradle
and draws a fire. The end of the day's
.
sweaty air stirs fast in a bowl, the coming
shadows, the very diamond match I need.
.
One by one, each Blind Willie
takes his turn Pollocking the back
.
fence, heart pine explodes gold-leafed in
red and brown-eyed ochre. There is practice
.
for everything in this life. This is how
you throw something perfectly good away.
.
“Heirloom” from Head Off & Split: Poems, © 2011 by Nikki Finney –TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press
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August 27
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1953 – Gjertrud Schnackenberg born in Tacoma, Washington; American poet. She began writing poetry at Mount Holyoake College and won the school’s Glascock Prize in 1974 and 1975. After graduating, she was a Writer-in-Residence at Smith College and visiting fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. She has published six poetry collections, including The Throne of Labdacus; A Gilded Lapse of Time; Supernatural Love; and Heavenly Questions, which won the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Signs
by Gjertrud Schnackenberg
.
Threading the palm, a web of tiny lines
Spells out the lost money, the heart, the head,
The wagging tongues, the sudden deaths, in signs
We would smooth out like imprints on a bed,
.
In signs that can’t be helped, geese heading south,
In signs read anxiously, like breath that clouds
A mirror held to a barely open mouth,
Like telegrams, the gathering of crowds—
.
The plane, an X in the sky spelling disaster:
Before the whistle and hit, a tracer flare;
Before rubble, a hairline crack in plaster
And a housefly’s panicked scribbling on the air.
.
“Signs” appeared in the June 1974 issue of Poetry magazine – © 1974 by Gjertrud Schnackenberg
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August 28
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1749 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe born in the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt, then part of the Holy Roman Empire; German poet, playwright, novelist, critic, statesman, lawyer, theatre director, and philosopher. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.
The Traveller’s Night Song II
by Goethe
.
Over all the hill-tops
Is Rest,
In all the tree-tops
You can feel
Scarcely a breath:
The little birds quiet in the leaves.
Wait now, soon you
Too will have peace.
.
– translation by A.S. Kline, © 2004
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1952 – Rita Dove born in Akron, Ohio, African American poet, essayist and academic; she was the youngest appointee as U.S. Poet Laureate (1993-1995) to that date, and was a Special Consultant in Poetry (1999-2000) for the celebrations of the Bicentennial Year of the Library of Congress. Dove is also the second African American to receive the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for Thomas and Beulah. Her poetry collections include: The Yellow House on the Corner, Mother Love, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, American Smooth, and Collected Poems: 1974-2004, a finalist for a 2016 National Book Award.
Used
by Rita Dove
.
The conspiracy’s to make us thin.
Size threes are all the rage,
and skirts ballooning above
twinkling knees are every man-child’s
preadolescent dream.
Tabula rasa. No slate’s that clean–
.
We’ve earned the navels sunk in
grief when the last child emptied us
of their brief interior light.
Our muscles say
We have been used.
.
Have you ever tried silk sheets?
I did, persuaded by postnatal dread
and a Macy’s clerk to bargain
for more zip.
.
We couldn’t hang on, slipped to
the floor and by morning the quilts
had slid off, too. Enough of guilt–
It’s hard work staying cool.
.
“Used” from Collected Poems: 1974–2004, © 1980, 2016 by Rita Dove – W.W. Norton Company
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August 29
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1929 – Thom Gunn born in Gravesend, Kent, UK; English poet who lived most of his adult life in San Francisco, where he moved in the 1950s to live with his American partner Mike Kitay. They had met as students at Trinity College, Cambridge. Gunn taught writing at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. His poems are frequently explorations of drug ecstasy, homosexuality, and life in the ‘60s and ‘70s in San Francisco. Later Gunn wrote wrenching poems about the AIDS crisis. He died at age 74 in April 2004. His many poetry collections include: Fighting Terms; Touch; Moly; The Man With Night Sweats; and Old Stories.
Apartment Cats
by Thom Gunn
.
The Girls wake, stretch, and pad up to the door.
They rub my leg and purr;
One sniffs around my shoe,
Rich with an outside smell,
The other rolls back on the floor –
White bib exposed, and stomach of soft fur.
.
Now, more awake, they re-enact Ben Hur
Along the corridor,
Wheel, gallop; as they do,
Their noses twitching still,
Their eyes get wild, their bodies tense,
Their usual prudence seemingly withdraws.
.
And then they wrestle; parry, lock of paws,
Blind hug of close defense,
Tail-thump, and smothered mew.
If either, though, feels claws,
She abruptly rises, knowing well
How to stalk off in wise indifference.
.
“Apartment Cats” © by Thom Gunn, appeared in The Great Cat: Poems About Cats – Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series, 2005 edition
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1952 – Karen Hesse born in Baltimore, Maryland; American children’s and young adult author. Out of the Dust, a free-verse novel, won the Newbery Medal, a story told in the voice of a young girl growing up in the Depression-era Dust Bowl. In her 2001 verse novel Witness, she tells a story of an attempt by the Ku Klux Klan to take over a small Vermont town in the 1920s. Hess is also known for her novel The Music of Dolphins.
Not Too Much To Ask
by Karen Hesse
.
We haven’t had a good crop in three years,
Not since the bounty of ’31,
and we’re all whittled down to the bone these days,
even Ma, with her new round belly,
but still when the committee came asking, Ma donated:
three jars of apple sauce and some cured pork,
and a feed-sack nightie she’d sewn for our coming baby.
.
(February 1934)
“Not Too Much to Ask” from Out of the Dust, © 1997 by Karen Hesse – Scholastic Inc
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August 30
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1871 – Kunikida Doppo born in Choshi, Chiba, Japan; Japanese Meiji period novelist and poet, noted as one of the originators of Japanese naturalism. His family moved to Ikakuni, a city on the western tip of Honshu Island, in 1874. He went to English at Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō in 1889, but was expelled in 1891 for his defiant attitude. In 1892, Kunikida became a Christian, and founded the magazine Seinen bungaku (Literature for Youth). He earned additional income teaching English, math, and history before becoming a war correspondent for the newspaper Kokumin Shinbun (The Nation) during the First Sino-Japanese War. In 1895, he became editor of the magazine Kokumin no Tomo (The Nation’s Friend). He also edited an anthology, and published his own poems and short stories. He contracted tuberculosis in 1907 and died at age 36 in June 1908. Eleven of his short stories were translated by Mono Mitobe and published as Selected Stories of Doppo Kunikida in 1917.
Entering Into the Woods
by Kunikida Doppo
.
The far snow-capped mountains
excited my young blood.
Longing for freedom
I entered into the deep woods.
.
I was lured by a girl
who sweetly called me.
My heart was moved
and I strayed out of the woods.
.
Unforgetful of the woods
I was not happy
with the girl in the city
where money was all.
.
Ah my love
my heart broken
my blood frozen
I step into the deeper woods.
.
“Entering into the woods,” translation by James R. Morita
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August 31
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1908 – William Saroyan born as Saroyani jahnvi in Fresno CA, the son of Armenian immigrants from what is now Turkey; Armenian-American novelist, playwright, screenplay writer, short story writer, and poet. His play The Time of Your Life won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and he won the 1943 Oscar for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. When Saroyan was age 3, his father died, and he and his brother and sister were sent to an orphanage in Oakland. Five years later, they were reunited with their mother, who was working at a cannery in Fresno. He worked to support himself and continue his schooling, and began writing short stories, some published under the name Sirak Goryan. He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during WWII and was posted to London in 1942. His breakthrough as a writer came in 1943 when Story magazine published his story “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” and it was re-published in an anthology. He wrote the lyrics for his cousin’s song “Come On-a My House” in 1939, which unexpectedly became a huge hit for Rosemary Clooney in 1951. Several of his poems have appeared in Poetry magazine. He struggled with alcohol, but died of prostate cancer at age 72 in May 1981.
from To Write a Poem
by William Saroyan
.
To write a poem is rapid transit.
.
Poets come and poets go. There are poets who come out of
the ground and poets who come out of the woodwork. There
are poets who go out through the front door and there are
poets who go out through the back door. There are poets
who sit by the fire until somebody discovers they are no
longer breathing whereupon their poems are collected and
published with an introduction by a friend. These poets
are not necessarily immortal, although they are dead. There
are poets many people have never met. There are poets many
people have never read. And there are many poets
who have never seen many people. One day there was a
poet who said I am going to see every man in the world or
know the reason why. He looked at his father who said the
reason you will never see every man in the world is that you
cannot see one man. I see you the poet said to his father
and his father said in two words something perfect that
meant his son did no such thing. These words did not please
the poet because he like to use refined words but they
pleased the old man who roared with laughter and said go
on you bum hit the road. The two words were a wonderful
poem that is not apt to appear in print for a long time. A
poet will very often have trouble with his father and the
old man will very often wonder why he had such poor luck
in the matter of sons.
.
To write a poem is to examine, eat or throw eggs.
.
This excerpt from “To Write a Poem” appeared in Poetry magazine’s October 1948 issue
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1919 – Amrita Pritam born as Amrita Kaur in Gujranwala, British India; Indian novelist, essayist, and poet, who wrote in Punjabi and Hindi. Her career spanned over six decades, and she produced more than 100 books of poetry, fiction, biographies, essays, a collection of Punjabi folk songs, and an autobiography that were all translated into several Indian and foreign languages. Her mother died when she was eleven, and she was married at age sixteen. In 1947, a million people – Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims – died during the violence that followed the partition of India. Pritam became a Punjabi refugee, leaving Lahore and moving to New Delhi. Her work is much admired in both India and Pakistan. In 1956, she became the first woman to win the Sahitya Akademi Award for her long poem, Sunehade (Messages). After her divorce in 1960, her work became more feminist. Many of her stories and poems drew on the unhappy experience of her marriage. She worked for All India Radio, and edited Nagmani, a monthly Punjabi literary magazine. For the last forty years of her life, she lived with artist and writer Imroz. He designed most of her book covers and made her the subject of several paintings. Pritam died in her sleep, after a long illness, in October, 2005.
Empty Space
by Amrita Pritam
.
There were two kingdoms only:
the first of them threw out both him and me.
The second we abandoned.
.
Under a bare sky
I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,
he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.
.
Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years.
He held my hand with a trembling hand.
‘Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile.
Look, further on ahead, there
between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.’
.
– translated from Punjabi by D.H. Tracy and Mohan Tracy
“Empty Space” appeared in Poetry magazine’s September 2011 issue
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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section from KC Skyline #4 by Bri Buckley
