Good Morning!

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“The young always have the same problem ─
how to rebel and conform at the same time.
They have now solved this by defying their
parents and copying one another.”
— Quentin Crisp

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“the stars
            were always what we knew
they were: the exit wounds  
                       of every
     misfired word.”
— Ocean Vuong,
To My Father / To My Future Son

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13 poets born this week
talking about Youth, Chance,
and the Choices we make.

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February 18

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1926 – A. R. Ammons born as Archibald Randolph Ammons in Whiteville, North Carolina; American poet, columnist, essayist, and professor of English at Cornell University. Thirty collections of his poetry have been published, including Collected Poems, 1951-1971, and Garbage, which both won the National Book Award; Sphere: The Form of a Motion, winner of the Bollingen Prize for Poetry; A Coast of Trees, Nation Book Critics Circle Award winner; Bosh and Flapdoodle: Poems; and The Mule Poems. Ammons died of cancer at age 75 in February 2001.

When I Was Young the Silk

by A.R. Ammons

When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head
unfurled
and wind bloomed the parachute:

/ To My Fur
The air-head tugged me
up,
tore my roots loose and drove
high, so high

I want to touch down now
and taste the ground
I want to take in
my silk
and ask where I am
before it is too late to know

“When I Was Young the Silk” from The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, © 1977 by A. R. Ammons /© 2017 by John E. Ammons – W.W. Norton & Company

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1934 – Audre Lorde born in New York City, daughter of a father from Barbados, and a mother from Grenada ; American poet, author, essayist, feminist, and activist for women’s rights and civil rights. She described herself as “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” Her poetry and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration of black female identity. “I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t…” Lorde was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977, and wrote The Cancer Journals about her fight with the disease, published in 1980. But six years later, she was diagnosed with liver cancer, which she also fought, but lost the battle at age 58 in 1992.

Who Said It Was Simple

by Audre Lorde

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.

“Who Said It Was Simple” from From a Land Where Other People Live, © 1973 by Audre Lorde, Broadside Press

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February 19

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1869 – Hovhannes Toumanian (also spelled Tumanyan) born in Desegh, a village in what was then the Russian Empire but today is part of Armenia; poet, writer, translator, and pacifist; Armenia’s national poet. He was arrested twice for criticizing the government for its role in the oppression and massacres of Armenians. He died at age 54 in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, in 1923.

Before A Painting By Ayvasovsky

by Hovannes Toumanian

Rising from ocean, billows uncontrolled,
With heavy flux and reflux, beating high,
Towered up like mountains, roaring terribly;
The wild storm blew with wind gusts manifold—
A mad, tempestuous race
Through endless, boundless space.

“Halt!” cried the aged wizard, brush in hand,
To the excited elements; and lo!
Obedient to the voice of genius, now
The dark waves, in the tempest’s fury grand,
Upon the canvas, see!
Stand still eternally!

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1917 – Carson McCullers born in Columbus, Georgia; American novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet and essayist. Best known for her novels The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding, which was adapted as a play, and ran on Broadway (1950-1951). She contracted rheumatic fever at age 15, which left her with rheumatic heart disease, later compounded by alcoholism. She died after a brain hemorrhage at age 50 in 1967.

 When We Are Lost

by Carson McCullers

When we are lost what image tells?
Nothing resembles nothing. Yet nothing
Is not blank. It is configured Hell:
Of noticed clocks on winter afternoons, malignant stars,
Demanding furniture. All unrelated
And with air between.

The terror. Is it of Space, of Time?
Or the joined trickery of both conceptions?
To the lost, transfixed among the self-inflicted ruins,
All that is non-air (if this indeed is not deception)
Is agony immobilized. While Time,
The endless idiot, runs screaming round the world.

“When We Are Lost” from The Mortgaged Heart – edited by Margarita G. Smith –
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970 edition

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1947 – Bin Ramke born as Lloyd Binford Ramke in Port Neches, Texas: American poet, editor, and academic who previously taught at Columbus College, part of the University System of Georgia. He was editor of the University of Georgia Press’s Contemporary Poetry Series (1984- 2005). He now teaches at the University of Denver. In 1977, his collection, The Difference Between Night and Day, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. His many poetry books include: White Monkeys; The Language Student; Wake, which won the 1999 Iowa Poetry Prize; Matter; and Missing the Moon.

 Victory Drive, Near Fort Benning, Georgia

 by Bin Ramke

I hold a rattlesnake in my hand, gently:
even a bird does not have bones so fragile.
He is, in his way, humiliated, and makes
his rattle, his only poem. You can see him
any day, a lonely exhibit in a bar
where soldiers go to dream of jungles,
of chances lost.

“Victory Drive, Near Fort Benning, Georgia” from Theory of Mind: Selected Poems, © 2009 by Bin Ramke – Omnidawn Publishing

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February 20

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1886 – Takuboku Ishikawa (aka Ishikawa Takuboku) born at Joko Temple in Hinoto-mura Iwate Prefecture to Ittei, a priest of the temple, and his wife Katsu. The next year, the family moved to Shimutami-mura, a village near Morika, the prefecture’s capital. When he was 13 years old, he started Choji-kai, a series of literary booklets. In 1900, he joined the “Union Club” a group learning English. His tankas were first published in 1901 under the pen name of “Suiko” in the daily newspaper Iwate Nippo. The literary magazine Myōjō published his work, first under the pen name “Hakuhin” and then under “Takuboku.” He wrote articles about the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), and his first poetry collection Akogare (Admiration) appeared in 1905. He was a substitute teacher, while writing two novels, but lost his teaching jobs when the school burned in a fire. Takuboku then worked for various newspapers, eventually moving to a Tokyo suburb, where he was a proof-reader for Asahi Shimbum, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, and started Subaru, a literary magazine. His tanka collection Ichiaku-no-Suna (A Handful of Stars) was published in 1910. He died of tuberculosis at age 26 in April 1912. Some collections of his poems have been edited and published since his death, including The Illusions of Self; Sad Toys; and Takuboku Ishikawa: Complete Works in English translation.

For some reason

by Takuboku Ishikawa

There is a cliff inside my head.
And day by day a fragment of earth
Crumbles off it.

– translation by Roger Pulvers

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1971 – Carmen Giménez Smith born in New York City; American poet, writer, memoirist, and anthology editor. She earned an NFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. Her poetry collection Goodbye, Flicker won the 2012 Juniper Prize for Poetry. Her other poetry collections include Odalisque in Pieces; The City She Was; Milk and Filth; and Be Recorder. Her memoir Bring Down the Little Birds was published in 2010, and she was a co-editor on the anthologies Angels of the Americlypse and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.

Photo of a Girl on a Beach

by Carmen Giménez Smith

Once when I was harmless
and didn’t know any better,

a mirror to the front of me
and an ocean behind,

I lay wedged in the middle of daylight,
paper-doll thin, dreaming,

then I vanished. I gave the day a fingerprint,
then forgot.

I sat naked on a towel
on a hot June Monday.

The sun etched the inside of my eyelids,
while a boy dozed at my side.

The smell of all oceans was around us—
steamy salt, shell, and sweat,

but I reached for the distant one.
A tide rose while I slept,

and soon I was alone. Try being
a figure in memory. It’s hollow there.

For truth’s sake, I’ll say she was on a beach
and her eyes were closed.

She was bare in the sand, long,
and the hour took her bit by bit.

“Photo of a Girl on a Beach” from Odalisque in Pieces, © 2009 by Carmen Gimenez Smith – University of Arizona Press

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February 21

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1907 – W. H. Auden born in York, England as Wystan Hugh Auden; British-American poet, playwright, and prose author who grew up near Birmingham and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. After graduation, he spent a few months in Berlin, then taught in British preparatory schools (1930-1935). His first book Poems was published in 1930, and was very influential with his contemporaries, in spite of being poorly reviewed by most critics. He took journeys to Iceland and China (1936-1937), and wrote books about his travels. In 1939, he moved to the U.S., then became a dual American-British citizen in 1946. He taught at American universities, and occasionally at Oxford as a visiting professor. His many poetry collections include Another Time; The Double Man; The Age of Anxiety, which won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; The Shield of Achilles, which won the 1956 National Book Award for Poetry; and Thank You, Fog: Last Poems. He died of heart failure at age 66 in September 1973.

If I Could Tell You

by W. H. Auden

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

“If I Could Tell You” from Collected Poems of W.H. Auden, © 1976, 1991 by The Estate of W. H. Auden – Vintage Books/Random House

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February 22

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1892 – Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Maine, graduated from Vassar College in 1917, and published her first book of poetry that same year. She became a well-known and highly respected poet and playwright, with a strong feminist sensibility. She was the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1923, for The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver. In 1936, she was in a road accident which severely damaged nerves in her spine, requiring frequent surgeries and hospitalizations, and at least daily doses of morphine. Millay lived the rest of her life in pain. Though she had been a dedicated and active pacifist during WWI, in the 1930s, she became very alarmed by the rise of fascism, and was an ardent supporter of U.S. involvement in WWII. She worked with the Writers’ War Board to create propaganda, including poetry. Millay’s reputation in poetry circles was damaged by her war work. Book critic Merle Rubin noted, “She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than Ezra Pound did for championing fascism.” St. Vincent Millay was the second woman to be awarded the Robert Frost Medal for body of work in 1943. She died at age 58 in October 1940 from a heart attack which caused her to fall down a flight of stairs.

 Tavern

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I’ll keep a little tavern
Below the high hill’s crest,
Wherein all grey-eyed people
May set them down and rest.
There shall be plates a-plenty,
And mugs to melt the chill
Of all the grey-eyed people
Who happen up the hill.
There sound will sleep the traveller,
And dream his journey’s end,
But I will rouse at midnight
The falling fire to tend.
Aye, ’tis a curious fancy–
But all the good I know
Was taught me out of two grey eyes
A long time ago.

“Tavern” from Collected Poems: Edna St Vincent Millay, © 1956 by Norma Millay Ellis – Perennial Classic Harper, 1970 edition

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1900 – Meridel LeSeuer was born in Murray, Iowa; American poet, short fiction writer, activist and essayist against unfair labor conditions and in favor of the land rights of Southwest and Minnesota Native American tribes. After studying dance and physical fitness, in the early 1920s she moved to New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Acting, and lived in an anarchist commune. By 1925, she was a member of the Communist Party. She found work in Hollywood as an extra and a stunt woman in silent pictures, but also continued to write articles for newspapers and journals, and children’s books which became popular, including biographies like Nancy Hanks of Wilderness Road, and Sparrow Hawk. Lesueur was blacklisted in the 1950s as a communist, and taught writing classes in her mother’s home. In the 1960s, she travelled the U.S., attending and writing about the student protests, and in the 1970s, she lived among the Navajo people in Arizona. LeSueur’s unpublished novel, The Girl, written in the 1930s, was finally published in 1978.

 This poem was written when Meridel Le Seuer attended the Third World Conference on the status of women in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985 for the“UN Decade of Women.”

 Arise!

by Meridel LeSeuer

They came, bright over the old African horizon
They came, wave after wave with their wounds wrapped in flowered woven bandages
They rose in great waves, earth in their flesh
They came out of slavery upon which the western world was built.
They came appearing in their massive soaring power.
They came rising out of the mortgaged stolen country.
They came out of the corrupt city of Nairobi,
the skyscrapers actually imbedded in the
starving breasts of thousands of farmers and workers.
The property sign brazenly, Standard Oil,
Exxon, General Motors, all the predators from my country
now looting the earth and the cheap labor of living beings.
They came in the thunder, carrying their dead children.
They drummed and danced and shook the gourds
in flesh and power and survival
Don’t stop me, the Sudan woman cried, I came to speak of hunger.
Don’t stop me, I appear at last.
I am not supposed to be here, I was not supposed to survive.
We are supposed to be gone.
But we appear in the thunder of our solidarity.
We claim our earth
We claim our flesh
We have been nought
We claim our earth
We claim our flesh
We have been nought
We shall be all, we shall be all.
I saw them.  I am an old woman and I began to dance.
I will never be afraid again.
I will never feel alone again
Dying in the old deathly world with the murderers.
Assassins. Vultures.
I will never leave the rising power of the oppressed.
The earth shall rise on new foundations,
dancing, singing and the touch of love
and the hosanna of freedom
dancing, singing and the touch of love
and the hosanna of freedom
dancing, singing and the touch of love
the hosanna of freedom, the hosanna of freedom,
the hosanna of freedom
They come.

“Arise!” © 1985 by Meridel LeSeuer

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1955 – Yang Lian born in Bern, Switzerland, and grew up in Beijing. His education was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. In 1974, he was sent to Changping county near Beijing to undergo ‘re-education through labor’, where his tasks including digging graves. Yang began writing traditional Chinese poetry, despite it being officially proscribed under the rule of Mao Zedong. In 1979, he joined a group of poets writing for Jintian (Today) magazine, and his style of poetry developed into a modernist, experimental style, which later became controversial.  In 1977, after the Cultural Revolution had ended, Yang returned to Beijing, where he worked for the state broadcasting service. In 1983, Yang’s poem “Norlang” (named for a waterfall in Tibet) was criticised as part of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, and a warrant was issued for his arrest, but he avoided arrest until the campaign ended. In 1989, Yang became a visiting scholar at the University of Auckland, and was in New Zealand during the Tiananmen incident. He took part in protests against the Chinese government’s crackdown. His work was blacklisted in China in June, 1989, and two books of his poetry awaiting publication there were pulped. He has been in exile ever since, first in New Zealand and more recently in Switzerland. He has published 15 collections of poems, two prose collections, and many essays. Yang also translated all George Orwell’s fiction works into Chinese (unpublished because of censorship in China). Several of his poetry collections have been translated into English, including: Dead in Exile; Masks & Crocodile; Non-Person Singular; Concentric Circles; Anniversary Snow; and A tower built downwards.

Winter Garden

by Yang Lian

trees frozen red in snow   as if wearing tattered wind jackets
snow crunches underfoot
as night rushes by with newly soled shoes
goats fear the loneliness   and for their own ears
transform their bleating into wailing

on the road     a cow has just given birth
is covered in whip marks and lies panting in mud and blood

treetlights are on early     and lovers dark like rocks
stand there with hazy faces against a metallic spiritual bed
the field mouse is a weary nurse     and furtively
sneaks through a wound in the garden to dream
flowers     pale red flesh preserved underground
like when a child dies     there is always a young ghost
stars not fully formed     lock us behind an iron fence

those who distrust language the most are poets
in white snow roses wilt at birth
and flames are far away from a pair of chilly hands
winter is busy     like a hardworking editor
I am snipped by the sunlight
and bend to smell the worsening stench of my corpse
in the north wind of one person     the garden died long ago
existing for ghosts and finally returning to ghosts

blue music of tree and tree arises from the sheer loneliness
so the same big snowfall     twice falls from my shoulders
covering the garden I am forgotten
trudging up to the road I become a mistake
and like a hoarse throat in the light of the deserted street
chant withered words bearing witness to many years

“Winter Garden” from Anniversary Snow, © 2019 by Yang Lian and (translation) Brian Holton – Shearsman Books

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February 23

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1957 – Mamang Dai born in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh, India; Indian novelist, non-fiction writer, poet, and journalist; she earned a B.A. in English literature from Gauhati University in Assam. She was been a contributor to the English-language Indian newspapers The Telegraph, Hindustan Times, and The Sentinel, and has also worked in radio and television news. Her best-known non-fiction works are Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land and Mountain Harvest: The Food of Arunachal. Her novels include:  The Legends of Pensam; Stupid Cupid; and The Black Hill, which won the 2017 Sahitya Akademi Literary Award. Her poetry collections are River Poems; The Balm of Time; Hambreelmai’s Loom; and Midsummer Survival Lyrics. Dai was honored with India’s 4th-highest civilian honor, the Padma Shri, in 2011.

Narrative

by Mamang Dai

I swallowed the current
At high tide I swam with the moon
I saw the wolves hunting
And all winter I dreamt of being a polar bear.

There are footprints climbing up to the sky,
And an ancient wing
Frozen beneath the earth.
Bone, teeth, hair, muscle,
There is food mingled in the swamp
And mangrove roots full of secrets.

The images mingle.
I see my father’s face blind with age
Turned towards me with a smile of sweetness.
Bittersweet, unexpected.
What baffles me is the fleeting image,
Perhaps we matter in someone else’s dream.

“Narrative” from The White Shirts of Summer: New and Selected Poems, © 2023 by Mamang Dai, Speaking Tiger Books

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February 24

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1925 – Etel Adnan born in Beirut, Lebanon, daughter of a Greek Christian mother and a Syrian Muslim father; Lebanese feminist, pacifist, and LGBTQ poet, painter, essayist, and short story writer. Her languages were Greek, French, English, and Arabic. Much of her writing was in French and English. After attending the Ecole Supérieure de Lettres de Beyrouth, she studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard University in the 1950s. Adnan taught philosophy at Dominican College (1958-1972) in San Rafael, California. During the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) she stopped writing in French, and took up painting. In response to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, she began writing poetry again, but in English. In 1972, she moved back to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—Al Safa, and L’Orient le Jour. She stayed in Lebanon until 1976, then returned to California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. She died in November 2021 at age 96.

XXXVI  (36)

by Etel Adnan

In the dark irritation of the eyes there is a snake hiding
In the exhalations of Americans there is a crumbling empire
In the foul waters of the rivers there are Palestinians
OUT OUT of its borders pain has a leash on its neck
In the wheat stalks there are insects vaccinated against bread
In the Arabian boats there are sharks shaken with laughter
In the camel’s belly there are blind highways
OUT OUT of TIME there is spring’s shattered hope
In the deluge on our plains there are no rains but stones

“XXXVI” from The Arab Apocalypse © 1989 by Etel Adnan, Post-Apollo Press

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