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“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?
In small places, close to home – so close and
so small that they cannot be seen on any
maps of the world … Unless these rights have
meaning there, they have little meaning
anywhere. Without concerned citizen action
to uphold them close to home, we shall look
in vain for progress in the larger world.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt, Chair of the first
UN Commission on Human Rights,
which developed the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights
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“Man is endowed with reason and the power
to create, so that he may increase that which
has been given him, but until now he has not
created, but demolished. The forests are dis-
appearing, the rivers are running dry, the wild
life is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and
the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day ...”
– Dr. Astrov, in Uncle Vanya,
written by Anton Chekhov
and first performed in 1899
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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 in August,
chroniclers, inspirers,
lovers, rescuers,
survivors, and
sometimes
just reluctant
witnesses
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August 4
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1913 ― Robert Hayden born in Detroit, Michigan; American poet, essayist, and educator. He was raised by adoptive parents who changed his name from Asa Bundy Sheffy to Robert Hayden. His eyesight was so near-blind it prevented him from playing outside with other children. His adoptive mother had to fight for his right to attend classes for the partially sighted, but poverty limited the resources available. He learned to read holding books inches from his face. At age 23, he went to work (1936-1940) for the Federal Writers Project, researching black American history and folk life, which became recurring themes in his poetry. In 1940, he married Erma Morris, and converted to his wife’s religion — the Baha’i faith, another influence on his work. 1940 was also the year he published his first book of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust. His other poetry books include Words in a Mourning Time; Angle of Ascent; and American Journal. Hayden was the first African American to serve as Consultant in Poetry (1976-1978) to the Library of Congress (appointment renamed ‘U.S. Poet Laureate’ in 1986)
Frederick Douglass
by Robert Hayden
.
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
.
“Frederick Douglass” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher – © 1966 by Robert Hayden, Liveright Publishing
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1950 ― Sapphire born as Ramona Lofton in Fort Ord, Calfornia; African-American author and performance poet. Her parents separated, and she and her siblings moved with their abusive father to California. She dropped out of high school, and moved to San Francisco in the 1960s, earned a GED, took some classes at City College of San Francisco, and then became a hippie. In 1977, she moved to New York City, joined United Lesbians of Color for Change (she identifies as a bisexual), and became part of the Slam Poetry movement. She took the pen name “Sapphire,” from a character on The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show whose name became slang for “belligerent black woman.” She self-published her first poetry collection Meditations on the Rainbow in 1987, followed by American Dreams, published by High Risk Books in 1994. Her first novel Push became a bestseller in 1996, and was the basis for the 2009 film Precious.
August 9th
by Sapphire
.
Hate, black teeth, half an
eyeball, torn light, green grass, dirt
wings. Sick, blind angel.
“August 9th” from Black Wings & Blind Angels, © 1999 by Saffire/Ramona Lofton – Alfred A. Knopf
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1958 ― Allison Hedge Coke American poet and editor born in Texas, raised in North Carolina and Canada, of Native American and European heritage. She dropped out of high school to be a field worker and sharecropper in North Carolina, but earned her GED, and took some classes at North Carolina State University, before fleeing from domestic violence to California. She later earned an AFAW in creative writing at the old Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and an MFA from Vermont College. Her poetry collections include Dog Road Woman, winner of the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award; Blood Run; Off-Season City Pipe; and Year of the Rat. She has been a mentor and teacher on reservations, in urban areas, in juvenile facilities, mental institutions, in prisons, with migrant workers and at-risk youth. Hedge Coke also founded and directed youth and labor outreach programs in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Measuring Up
by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
.
It wasn’t socks missing from his feet,
not elbow cloth unraveled unilaterally,
not equal displacement of chin and brow,
nor the eye that sat a bit lower on the right,
it was his knuckle that made me weep,
clove corners gone wayside, like minuscule meat
hooks clawed away bits of him each shift he made,
invisible a timeliness unfurled. It was his muscle
torn through, festering, the prosthetic hand, finger-
width dismay all across his attempted grin, left
there just like that, for anyone to see—it was his mercy.
In the end we’re rarely beautiful, mostly placed
away from compromising situations into poses
offsetting what has become of us in some gawker’s
unnerving eyes. Yet, he was, is, still here in mine,
and I’m human because of it. Maybe only. Maybe.
"Measuring Up" from Streaming, © 2014 by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke – Coffee House Press
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August 5
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1934 – Wendell Berry born in Henry County, Kentucky; American essayist, novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic and 5th generation farmer. In 1958, he won a fellowship to Stanford University’s creative writing program. Berry published his first novel, Nathan Coulter, in 1960. He has gone on to write more novels, essay collections, and several books of poetry. Berry has long been an opponent of war, nuclear power, and the increasing human plundering of the planet’s natural resources. He has been honored with dozens of awards, including the National Humanities Medal in 2010, and the 2016 Sidney Lanier Prize.
Water
by Wendell Berry
.
I was born in a drouth year. That summer
my mother waited in the house, enclosed
in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,
for the men to come back in the evenings,
bringing water from a distant spring.
veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.
And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemys soul.
Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.
I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.
.
“Water” by Wendell Berry, from The Ecopoetry Anthology, Trinity University Press, 2013
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August 6
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1934 – Diane di Prima born in Brooklyn; American poet, writer, translator, anti-war, women’s rights and social justice advocate. Her first book of poetry, This Kind of Bird Flies Backward, was published in 1958. She was born and grew up in New York, and became part of the Beat Movement. She was co-editor (1961-1969) of The Floating Bear with Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), a co-founder of the New York Poets Theatre, and founder of the Poets Press. On several occasions she faced charges of obscenity by the United States government due to her work with the New York Poets Theatre and The Floating Bear. In 1961 she was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for two of her poems which were published in The Floating Bear. She moved to San Francisco in 1968. City Lights Books published her Revolutionary Letters in 1971. She is known for her long poem, Loba, and her poetry collections, Pieces of a Song, The Poetry Deal, and Haiku. In 2009, she became San Francisco’s poet laureate. She was also awarded the National Poetry Association’s Lifetime Service Award. She died October 25, 2020, in San Francisco, at age 86.
Song for Baby-O, Unborn
by Diane di Prima
.
Sweetheart
when you break thru
you’ll find
a poet here
not quite what one would choose.
.
I won’t promise
you’ll never go hungry
or that you won’t be sad
on this gutted
breaking
globe
.
but I can show you
baby
enough to love
to break your heart
forever
.
“Song for Baby-O, Unborn” from Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems, © 1990 by Diane di Prima – City Lights Books
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1954 – Lorna Dee Cervantes born in the Mission District of San Francisco, of Mexican and Chumash ancestry; American Chicana feminist poet, writer, editor, and activist. Her parents insisted on the family speaking English-only at home. Her struggle to find her identity inspired many of her early poems. She earned a BA in Creative Arts from San Jose State University in 1984, and did work toward a PhD in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. She was co-founder and co-editor with Orlando Ramiriez of Mango, a literary journal that was first to publish work by Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, and Ray Gonzalez. She joined the Librotraficante protests against the 2012 decision to remove books from Arizona public schools that "… foster racial and class-based resentment, favor one ethnic group over another, or advocate ethnic solidarity." Librotraficante’s caravan transported over 1,000 banned books to Arizona, and was reprised in 2017 when banning ethnic studies courses was before the Arizona Supreme Court. Media attention led to ethnic studies courses being introduced in California and Texas. Cervantes gave a poetry reading at the 2012 American Library Association conference, and the ALA’s 2013 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award went to Librotraficante. Her poetry collections include: Sueño: New Poems; Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems, and Emplumada, a 1982 American Book Award winner. She has also been a co-editor on anthologies of Latino, cross-cultural, and women’s poetry.
Cannery Town in August
by Lorna Dee Cervantes
.
All night it humps the air.
Speechless, the steam rises
from the cannery columns. I hear
the night bird rave about work
or lunch, or sing the swing shift
home. I listen, while bodyless
uniforms and spinach specked shoes
drift in monochrome down the dark
moon-possessed streets. Women
who smell of whiskey and tomatoes,
peach fuzz reddening their lips and eyes—
I imagine them not speaking, dumbed
by the can’s clamor and drop
to the trucks that wait, grunting
in their headlights below.
They spotlight those who walk
like a dream, with no one
waiting in the shadows
to palm them back to living.
.
“Cannery Town in August” from Emplumada, © 1981 by Lorna Dee Cervantes – University of Pittsburgh Press
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August 7
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1843 – Charles Warren Stoddard born in Rochester, New York, but his family soon moved to New York City; American writer, poet, journalist, novelist, and travel writer, best known for his books about Polynesia. When Stoddard was 11, the family moved to San Francisco, where in 1862 his work was first published, under the pen name “Pip Pepperpot,” in The Golden Era newspaper. Poor health kept him from going to college. In 1864, he traveled to the South Seas, and wrote a series of letters to a friend, later published as South Sea Idyls in 1873. He made four return trips, and visited Molokai, where he met Father Damien, and wrote The Lepers of Molokai. Stoddard later converted to Catholicism. As a special correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, he then traveled through Europe and the Middle East. In 1885, he became chair of English literature the University of Notre Dame, but resigned, officially because of malaria, but it may have been because he was a homosexual. After a near-fatal illness, he returned to San Francisco in 1903, but became a refugee in Monterey after the 1906 earthquake. Diagnosed with heart disease, he remained in Monterey until his death at age 65 in April 1909. His poetry was published posthumously in 1917 in Poems of Charles Warren Stoddard, Poet of the South Seas, collected by Ina Coolbrith.
Wind and Wave
by Charles Warren Stoddard
.
O, when I hear at sea
The water on our lee,
I fancy that I hear the wind
That combs my hemlock tree:
.
But when beneath that tree
I listen eagerly,
I seem to hear the rushing wave
I heard far out at sea.
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August 8
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1884 – Sara Teasdale American poet, born in St. Louis, Missouri into a devout family. She was in poor health as a child, and was home-schooled until she was nine. At age 23, Teasdale published her first poetry collection, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems (1907). She traveled frequently to Chicago, and became part of Harriet Monroe’s circle (Monroe became the founding publisher of Poetry magazine in 1912, and its long-time editor). Teasdale married in 1914, and moved with her husband to New York City in 1916. In 1918, she won the Columbia University Poetry Society Prize (which became the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) and the Poetry Society of America Prize for Love Songs, which had appeared in 1917. Between 1911 and 1930, she published six volumes of poetry, including Rivers to the Sea; Flame and Arrow; Dark of the Moon; and Stars To-night. Her husband’s constant travel for business led to her filing for divorce in 1929. She lived alone as a semi-invalid, until she committed suicide in January, 1933. Her final book, Strange Victory, was published posthumously.
There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale
.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
.
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
.
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
.
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
.
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
.
“There Will Come Soft Rains” from Flame and Shadow, by Sara Teasdale – originally published by Macmillan Publishers in 1920
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Rafael Casal born, grew up in San Francisco bay area; American writer, rapper, actor, producer, director, show runner, and poet. Casal made his feature debut in Blind Spotting, which he wrote, produced, and starred in. Co-Founder with Daveed Diggs and Artistic Director of the landmark BARS Workshop at New York City's Public Theatre. He appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and won the Brave New Voice Poetry Slam Festival twice.
Rescue
by Rafael Casal
.
My mother calls me a fireman
I look at some people like burning buildings
That I’d run into
To drag their hearts out
If I saw the roof caving in on them
I had a wildfire once
In my rib cage
Scorched my faith like curtains, it did
Now sometimes I see smoke
Billowing out of strangers
A bit too faint
To alarm the unscathed, perhaps
But I see it slithering
From the corners of their mouths
When they say things like “I’m fine.”
I have always been
Intoxicated by a blazing fire
Even the ones within people
I think that’s what she meant by it.
.
© by Rafael Casal – https://www.tumblr.com/rafaelcasalpoetry
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August 9
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1922 – Philip Larkin, British poet, critic, essayist, novelist, and librarian, born in Coventry, England, attended St. John’s College, Oxford, where he befriended novelist and poet Kingsley Amis and finished with First Class Honors in English. After graduating, Larkin undertook professional studies to become a librarian. He worked in libraries in Shropshire and Leicester, then at Queen’s College in Belfast, and finally as librarian at the University of Hull. Though best remembered for his poetry, it is a small part of his published work, which includes reviews of jazz music, and two novels. Larkin, a private man, declined an OBE in 1968, and also declined the post of Poet Laureate in 1984. In 1985, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. An attempt at surgical removal revealed the cancer had spread too far. He died in December 1985 at the age of 63.
The Mower
by Philip Larkin
.
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
.
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
.
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
.
“The Mower” from Collected Poems, © 1989, Estate of Philip Larkin – Farrar Straus & Giroux, Ltd.
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August 10
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1949 – Joyce Sutphen was raised in Saint Joseph, Minnesota; American poet, academic, and anthologist. Her first book, Straight Out of View, won the 1994 Barnard New Women’s Poetry Prize. She served as the second Poet Laureate of Minnesota (2011-2021). Her many poetry collections include: Straight Out of View; Coming Back to the Body; First Words; After Words; and Modern Love & Other Myths. She has also co-edited three anthologies, including Boomer Girls: Poems by Women from the Baby Boom Generation.
At the Moment
by Joyce Sutphen
.
Suddenly, I stopped thinking about Love,
after so many years of only that,
after thinking that nothing else mattered.
.
And what was I thinking of when I stopped
thinking about Love? Death, of course—what else
could take Love’s place? What else could hold such force?
.
I thought about how far away Death once
had seemed, how unexpected that it could
happen to someone I knew quite well,
.
how impossible that this should be the
normal thing, as natural as frost and
winter. I thought about the way we’d aged,
.
how skin fell into wrinkles, how eyes grew
dim; then (of course) my love, I thought of you.
.
“At the Moment” from Naming the Stars, © 2004 by Joyce Sutphen – Holy Cow! Press
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1975 – Rebecca Gayle Howell born in Lexington, Kentucky; American writer, editor, poet, and translator. Alicia Ostriker, Nikky Finney, Wendell Berry, and W.S. Merwin are among her mentors. Howell’s first book Render / An Apocalypse was selected in 2013 for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Prize. Her second book, American Purgatory, won the Sexton Prize for Poetry in 2016. She co-edited with Ashley M. Jones What Things Cost: an anthology for the people in 2023. In collaboration with al-Jubouri and Husam Qaisi, Howell has translated poetry by Iraqi writer Amal al-Jubouri, and also translated Argentinean poet-filmmaker Claudia Prado’s El interior de la Ballena (The Belly of the Whale).
What Goes Around
by Rebecca Gayle Howell
.
Not all wells are tapped. Some draw sufficient
to run a hose to a house, the low sulfur cloud
a mark of the wet-mouth advantaged. As if that’s
not enough, they buy the sprays in shades
like police-tape yellow or this-is-not-yours red,
so I can’t believe The Kid who, in broad Tuesday light,
slinks under sills to unscrew nozzles and tug
the umbilical weight of rushing water all the way
to his mother’s corroded truck bed, where they go
to work. She, bent over like she’s burying a sin;
The Kid with arms raised revival, pouring whatever
don’t spill at the air into their drought tank.
My mother, hairnet tied fist-tight at the back,
was made to cook; she left early, returned late,
and dark raced dark in her shift. That was the days
of commissaries, when sharing was plenty. The Kid
don’t know those days. Love is funny, in that it’s dead
but not dead.
.
“What Goes Around,” © 2017 by Rebecca Gayle Howell, appeared in the March 2017 online issue of The Baffler
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1986 – Kristiana Rae Colón born in Chicago, American poet, playwright, actor, and educator. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, creator of #BlackSexMatters and co-founder/director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective. Her play Octagon won the 2014 National Latino Playwriting Award, and she was honored in 2017 Best Black Playwright by The Black Mall. Cólon won the 2013 Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize for her chapbook promised instruments, and two of her poems are featured in the anthology The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop.
instructions for giving
by Kristiana Rae Colón
.
I wrapped the gifts in one man’s
living room and stacked them
into my Maxima to drive to another’s.
One was impressed with the care given
to each precise crease, the attention
to hiding lines of tape, the symmetry
of identical snow flakes falling over
the box’s edges, the single blade
of sewing scissors scraping along
the ridged underside of the wisps
of silver ribbon, its wild helix erupting
from my sharp knots. The other was silent
.
and angry when I left his bed Christmas morning
to pull on jeans without sex. One man would later slap
.
my cheek as I perched in my panties on the edge
of his tub sobbing with scissors poised on the ribbon
of my veins, tired of being an unopened present
.
for the other man. Distinctions are peripheral.
First, you place the gift on the blank swath
of paper, intuit equidistance and cut, let the blade
glide like a tear from one edge to the other, like a lover
crossing the city in a Maxima doomed to crash, fold both
sides to the center crisply, obscuring adhesive
as though the wrap will stick by magic. The sides
are tricky, a labyrinth of triangles. Precision is paramount.
.
Once the gift is secure in its sheath of shimmer and hope
for some glimmer of gratitude, then comes the joy
of ribbons, royal purple and crimson crisscrossed
and absolute, with no indication of where each thread
.
begins. They culminate in a celebration of ringlets
cascading. This is the type of giving. The bliss
.
of a lover ripping through knots to receive me, and me
expecting nothing in return.
.
“instructions for giving,” © 2012 by Kristiana Rae Colón, appeared in the January 2012 online edition of [PANK]
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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