Good Morning!
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“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing
its best, night and day, to make you everybody else —
means to fight the hardest battle which any human
being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
─ Laura Riding,
from “Four Unposted Letters to Catherine” (1930)

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Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and
exciting – over and over announcing
your place in the family of things.”
─ Mary Oliver

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13 poets this week:
Seasons, birth, quiet,
Paris, bones of heaven,
Weather, tigers, women,
and ultimate truth

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July 23

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1823 – Coventry Patmore born in Woodford, Essex, England; English poet and literary critic. He worked for the British Museum as a printed book supernumerary assistant (1846-1865). Patmore wrote poetry in his spare time, and published his first book in 1844, but its success was limited, and he was upset by harsh reviews. He didn’t publish his next book until 1853. The Angel in the House, a long narrative poem for which he is best remembered, was published in four parts between 1854 and 1863. It was a sentimental portrait of the Victorian ideal of Woman as wife and mother making a happy marriage.  He was devastated when his wife Emily (who wrote three books under the pen name ‘Mrs. Motherly’), after giving birth to six children, died in 1862 at age 38, after a long decline from tuberculosis.  Patmore married Marianne in 1864, but she died in 1880, and then he married Harriet, his children’s former governess, in 1881. Patmore died in 1896 at age 73.

 The Year

 by Coventry Patmore

The crocus, while the days are dark,
Unfolds its saffron sheen;
At April’s touch the crudest bark
Discovers gems of green.

Then sleep the seasons, full of might;
While slowly swells the pod
And rounds the peach, and in the night
The mushroom bursts the sod.

The winter falls; the frozen rut
Is bound with silver bars;
The snowdrift heaps against the hut,
And night is pierced with stars.

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1959 – Carl Phillips born in Everett, Washington, into a frequently moving military family; American poet and teacher. He graduated from Harvard, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Boston University, then taught high school Latin for 8 years. His first collection, In the Blood, won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. Among his many other awards and honors is the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Then the War: And Selected Poems (2007-2020). He teaches English and African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

 A Little Closer Though, If You Can,
for What Got Lost Here

by Carl Phillips

Other than that, all was still — a quiet
so quiet that, as if silence were a kind of spell, and
words the way to break it, they began speaking.
They spoke of many things:
sunset as a raft leaving the water in braids behind it;
detachment, the soul, obedience;
swans rowing at nightfall across a sky filled with snow;
what did they wish they could see, that they used to see;
to mean no harm, or to not especially, just now, be looking for it;
what would they wish not to see, could they stop seeing;
courage mattering so much less than not spooking easily —
maybe all nerve is; the search-and-rescue map wildflowers
make of a field in summer; deserving it, versus asking for it,
versus having asked, and been softly turned from.
They said it would hurt, and it does.

“A Little Closer Though, If You Can, for What Got Lost Here” © 2017 by Carl Phillips appeared in the October 2017 issue of Poetry magazine

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July 24

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1895 – Robert Graves born in Wimbledon, Surrey, England: British historical novelist, poet, critic, and classicist; best known for his novel, I, Claudius, which was adapted with its sequel, Claudius the God, by the BBC into the award-winning television series, I, Claudius. Graves is also notable for his translations of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek, and as a prolific poet who published nearly three dozen collections of poetry during his lifetime. He died at age 90 in December 1985.

 On the Poet’s Birth

by Robert Graves

A page, a huntsman and a priest of God
Her lovers, met in jealous contrariety
Equally claiming the sole parenthood
Of him the perfect crown of their variety.
Then, whom to admit, herself she could not tell:
That always was her fate, she loved too well.

“But many-fathered little one,” she said,
“Whether of high or low, of smooth or rough,
Here is your mother whom you brought to bed;
Acknowledge only me; be this enough;
For such as worship after shall be told
A white dove sired you or a rain of gold.”

“On the Poet’s Birth” from Robert Graves, The Complete Poems, © 2003 by Trustees of the Robert Graves Trust – Penguin Books

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1947 – Minou Drouet born in La Guerche-de-Bretagne, Brittany, France, as Marie-Noëlle Drouet; she had been almost blind at birth, and had to have a series of operations to recover her sight. By age eight, she could play Mozart on the piano. In 1955, some of her poems were privately circulated among French writers and publishers, causing controversy over whether they were written by the 8-year old Minou or by her foster mother. A test was set up. Minou was given the subject ‘Paris Sky’ and left alone in a room with only a pen and paper. Just 25 minutes later, she had completed her poem. Her first book of poems sold 40,000 copies, and she was lionized by Maurice Chevalier, Vittorio de Sica, Pablo Casals, and Jean Cocteau. By the time she was in her early 20s, she was married and leading a bohemian life on the Left Bank. But when her grandmother fell ill, she took care of her until her death. She decided to become a nurse, and cared for the elderly, terminally ill children, and pregnant women. By her early 30s, she was divorced and caring for her foster mother, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, back in her small home town in Brittany. She remarried, but has remained reclusive.

Paris Sky

by Minou Drouet

Paris sky, secret weight
flesh which in hiccups spits into our faces.
Through open jaws, the rows of houses
a stream of blood between its luminous teeth.
Paris sky, a cocktail of night and of fear that one savours with licks of the tongue
with little catches of the heart/ from the tip of a neon straw….

translator uncredited – this English-language version of “Paris Sky” appeared in LIFE magazine in 1956

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July 25

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1933 – George Graf Dickerson born in Topeka, Kansas but the family moved often, and he grew up in Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Virginia; short story writer, poet, editor, and actor.  A Yale graduate (1955) who had studied with Robert Penn Warren, he read his poems at same venues as Gregory Corso and Diane di Prima. He spoke English, French German, Arabic, and Italian. At age 32, he planted his roots in 1965 in the same Manhattan NY apartment that had at one time been rented by novelist and critic James Agee. Among his many long-time friends from the Arts world were Leonard Cohen, Richard Widmark, Roscoe Lee Brown, Leontyne Price, and Mark Strand. He worked as an actor in film and television, appearing in everything from the film Blue Velvet to the soap opera Search for Tomorrow. Dickerson was an editor and contributor to Time magazine, and The New Yorker, and a contributor to The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and Penthouse.  His collection Selected Poems, 1959-1999 was published in 2000. He died after a long illness at age 81 in January 2015.

The Bones of Heaven

by George Dickerson

When children of the desert are starving,
They crave far more than wafers of sand.
Their bellies are crypts where war’s gargoyles growl.
No fish swim the fonts of their fly-gummed eyes
When hunger’s thistles stitch them shut.
Their husks of voices are shucked-off choirs.
Their fingers are harps for the empty wind.
They will eat anything.  They will eat tomorrow.
For them, the sky’s a scoured bowl.
Oh, God, my indifferent God,
Witness how cold, how far the stars
Are flung from their scavenged dreams!
The bones of heaven are long sucked clean.

“The Bones of Heaven” from Selected Poems, 1959-1999, © 2000 by George Dickerson – Rattapallax Press

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July 26

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1965 – Ruth Ellen Kocher African American poet born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Her collection When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering won the Green Rose Prize in Poetry, and her first book, Desdemona’s Fire, won the Naomi Long Madget Award for African American Poets. She is also the author of Third Voice, Goodbye Lyric: Gigans and Selected Poems, domina Un/blued, and One Girl Babylon.  Kocher is a Professor of English at the University of Colorado – Boulder, and Divisional Dean for Arts and Humanities.

Gospeling

by Ruth Ellen Kocher

You shake a mile of ocean
not your shoulders but a different language

Maybe you’re talking in your sleep
When I am watching the Ethiopian grocer
hand me change

Quiet is one language of war but
Most importantly only one

“Gospeling” © 2022 by Ruth Ellen Kocher, appeared in the Paris American, # 107

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1875 – Antonio Machado born in Sevilla, Spain, to a literary family – his father was a writer, and his brother Manuel was a playwright and poet; Spanish poet, a leading figure in the Spanish ‘Generation of ’98’ literary movement, known for the evolution of his poetry from modernist to a style combining symbolism with social realism. In 1899, he went to work as a translator for a publisher in Paris, where he met Paul Verlaine, Rubćn Dario, and Oscar Wilde. His first book, Soledades (Solitudes), was published in 1903. Otros Poemas was published in 1907, and he taught French at a school in Soria in northern Spain. In 1909, at age 34 he married 15-year old Leonor, and they went to live in Paris in 1911. But she contracted tuberculosis, and they returned to Soria, where she died in 1912. For several years, Machado lived in Baeza, Andalucia, then became Professor of French at the Instituto de Segovia. In 1932, Machado became a professor at the Instituto Calderón de la Barca in Madrid. The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, and he was evacuated to Valencia, then to Barcelona, but had to leave Spain entirely in 1939. He died in Collioure, France, just over the border from Spain on the Mediterranean coast in February 1939, at age 63.

from CLIX: Songs

by Antonio Machado

I.

By the flowering hills
seethes the wide sea.
The honeycomb from my bees
contains tiny grains of salt.

Song “I” from Antonio Machado: Selected Poems, translated by Alan S. Trueblood – Harvard University Press, 1988 reprint edition

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July 27

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1835 – Giosue Carducci born in Tuscany. In 1906, he became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a poet, writer, literary critic, and teacher. Rime nuove (The New Lyrics) and Odi barbare (The Barbarian Odes) are considered his best work. Since he won the Nobel Prize, Carducci has fallen into obscurity, despite his one-time eminence as the best-known poet in Italy, and a trumpeter of Italian unification. He died in February, 1907, at age 71.

 Snowfall

by Giosue Carducci

A light snow falls through an ashy sky.
From the city no sounds rise up, no human cries,

not the grocer’s call or the ruckus of his cart,
no light-hearted song of being young and in love.

From the tower in the piazza, the quinsied hours
moan, sighing as if from a world far off.

Flocks of birds beat against the misted glass:
ghosts of friends returned, peering in, calling to me.

Soon, O my dears, soon—peace, indomitable heart—
I will sift down to silence, in shadow rest.

 (January 29, 1881)

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1870 – Hillaire Belloc was born near Paris just a few days before the Franco-Prussian War began. His family fled to England when news came of the French army’s collapse, returning after the war’s end to discover that their home had been looted and vandalized by Prussian soldiers. This was followed by his father’s death, leaving his English mother in difficult financial circumstances, and she returned with her children to England. In 1892, Belloc joined the French Artillery Service in France for a year. Back in England, he became a student at Baillol College, Oxford, then wrote for London newspapers and magazines.  In 1896, his first book, Verses and Sonnets, appeared, followed by The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, which remain popular to this day.  He died in 1953 just a few days before his 83^rd birthday.

The Tiger

by Hilaire Belloc

The tiger, on the other hand,
Is kittenish and mild,
And makes a pretty playfellow
For any little child.
And mothers of large families
(Who claim to common sense)
Will find a tiger well repays
The trouble and expense.

 “The Tiger” from Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc

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1947 – Kathleen Norris born in Washington DC, but her family moved to Hawaii when she was a child; American poet and essayist; arts administrator of the Academy of American Poets (1969-1974). She and her husband went to live on the South Dakota farm she inherited from her grandparents in 1974. After her husband’s death in 2003, she moved back to Hawaii. Her books of poetry include Falling Off; The Year of Common Things; and Journey: New and Selected Poems, 1969-1999.

 Mrs. Adam

by Kathleen Norris

I have lately come to the conclusion that I am Eve,
alias Mrs. Adam. You know, there is no account
of her death in the Bible, and why am I not Eve?
Emily Dickinson in a letter, 12 January, 1846

Wake up,
you’ll need your wits about you.
This is not a dream,
but a woman who loves you, speaking.

She was there
when you cried out;
she brushed the terror away.
She knew
when it was time to sin.
You were wise
to let her handle it,
and leave that place.

We couldn’t speak at first
for the bitter knowledge,
the sweet taste of memory
on our tongues.

Listen, it’s time.
You were chosen too,
to put the world together.

“Mrs. Adam” © by Katheen Norris appeared in Poetry magazine’s April 1990 issue

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July 28

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1874 – Alice Duer Miller was born in Staten Island, New York. She was an American poet, novelist, screenwriter, satirist, and feminist. The New York Tribune published a series of her wonderful satirical poems lambasting the objections to women voting, which were then published in 1915 as a book called Are Women People?  Her title became a catchphrase of the woman suffrage movement.

 “Oh, That ‘Twere Possible!”

by Alice Duer Miller

With apologies to Lord Tennyson.

(“The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their
roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human reason, it flouts
the teachings of experience and the admonitions of common sense.”
—N.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 1915.)

Oh, that ‘twere possible
After those words inane
For me to read The Times
Ever again!

When I was wont to read it
In the early morning hours,
In a mood ‘twixt wrath and mirth,
I exclaimed: “Alas, Ye Powers,
These ideas are fainter, quainter
Than anything on earth!”

A paper’s laid before me.
Not thou, not like to thee.
Dear me, if it were possible
The Times should ever see
How very far the times have moved
(Spelt with a little “t”).

Oh, That ‘Twere Possible!” from Are Women People? by Alice Duer Miller

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1940 – Judy Grahn was born in Chicago, but grew up in New Mexico. After she joined the Air Force, she was discharged at age 21 for being openly gay. In the 1960s, she moved to San Francisco, and co-founded the Women’s Press Collective in 1969. Grahn was also a founding member of the West Coast New Lesbian Feminist Movement. She is an editor and contributor to Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture.  Grahn has given thousands of readings and lectures, frequently collaborating on programs with dancer-choreographer Anne Blethenthal, and with singer-songwriter Anne Carol Mitchell. She teaches at the California Institute for Integral Studies, where she earned her Ph.D. Her poetry collections include A Woman is Talking to Death, The Work of a Common Woman, The Queen of Swords, and Hanging on Our Own Bones.

 The Common Women Poems, 
III. Nadine, resting on her neighbor’s stoop

by Judy Grahn

She holds things together, collects bail,
makes the landlord patch the largest holes.
At the Sunday social she would spike
every drink, and offer you half of what she knows,
which is plenty. She pokes at the ruins of the city
like an armored tank; but she thinks
of herself as a ripsaw cutting through
knots in wood. Her sentences come out
like thick pine shanks
and her big hands fill the air like smoke.
She’s a mud-chinked cabin in the slums,
sitting on the doorstep counting
rats and raising 15 children,
half of them her own. The neighborhood
would burn itself out without her;
one of these days she’ll strike the spark herself.
She’s made of grease
and metal, with a hard head
that makes the men around her seem frail.
The common woman is as common as
a nail.

“Nadine, resting on her neighbor’s stoop” from love belongs to those who do the feeling: New & Selected Poems (1966-2006), © 2008 by Judy Grahn – Red Hen Press

“Nadine, resting on her neighbor’s stoop” from love belongs to those who do the feeling: New & Selected Poems (1966-2006), © 2008 by Judy Grahn – Red Hen Press

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July 29

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1878 – Don Marquis born in Walnut, Illinois; American author, poet, playwright, humorist, and newspaper columnist. He is best known for creating archy, a typewriting cockroach, and mehitabel, an alley cat, originally for his column in The Evening Sun newspaper, who later appeared in several books about their adventures. The Broadway musical version Shinbone Alley featured Eddie Bracken as archy and Eartha Kitt as mehitabel. His poetry collections include archy and mehitabel, Dreams and Dust, Poems and Portraits, and Love Sonnets of a Cave Man. Don Marquis died at age 59 of a stroke in December 1937.

 Realities

by Don Marquis

We are deceived by the shadow, we see not the substance of things.
For the hills are less solid than thought; and deeds are but vapors; and flesh
Is a mist thrown off and resumed by the soul, as a world by a god.
Back of the transient appearance dwells in ineffable calm
The utter reality, ultimate truth; this seems and that is.

“Realities” from Dreams and Dust, by Don Marquis, originally published in 1915

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