Good Morning!

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“People have only as much liberty as they have
the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
― Emma Goldman

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“Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what
books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is
thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens?
Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be
cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall
a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the
rule of what we are to read, and what we must believe?”
– Thomas Jefferson,
‘Founding Father’ and Third U.S. President

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Thirteen Poets born this week,
Barrier Breakers, Activists,
Rebels, and Iconoclasts

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March 24

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1914 – Krystyna Krahelska born in Mazurki, Russian Empire (now Belarus); Polish poet, ethnographer, and member of the Home Army (Polish resistance against the Nazis). In 1932, she began studies in geography, history, and ethnography at the University of Warsaw, passing her final exams in May 1939. She was also an artist’s model for Ludwika Nirschowa for a Warsaw Mermaid sculpture. In September 1939, Warsaw was overrun by the Nazi invaders. During the occupation, Krahelska worked at the National Institute of Agricultural Cultivation. She was also a resistance messenger and courier. From 1943 to 1944 she transported weapons, trained in medicine, worked as a nurse and trained girls for medical service, and wrote lyrics for a song which became  very popular in the Polish underground, “Hej chłopcy, bagnet na broń” (“Hey Boys, Bayonet on the Gun”). On August 1, 1943, during the Warsaw Uprising, she was rescuing a wounded resistance fighter when she was shot three times in the chest. Surgery was attempted, but she died on the morning of August 2 at age 30. After the war, two collections of her poems and song lyrics were published, “Smutna rzeka” (“Sad River”) and “Wiersze: (“Poems”).

Sad River

by Krystyna Krahelska

A lonely river, the moon floats on her,
Above her a maple bows its dark palms,
Sleep, little child, nothing’s calling out,
Weapons are sleeping, buried in tombs.

A sad river, the thorned forest fell asleep,
Silver stars fell into silver depths.
Somewhere in the meadow, somewhere in foggy woods,
Dozing fitfully, buried weapons rest

A sad river, the moon floated down her,
On the leaves, a dark night lays its hands
Sleep little child, sleep, soldier son,
Soon we’ll wake the weapons

– translation by Sławomir Borkowski

 “Sad River” appeared in the Word Press post “Detroiter in Poland” in May 2016  

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1931 – Maxim Ghilan born in Lille, France, but his family went to Spain in the 1940s. Israeli poet, journalist, editor, and activist; he and his mother moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1944 after his father was “disappeared” by Franco’s fascists. Ghilan joined Lehi, a Zionist paramilitary group trying to drive the British out. After the establishment of Israel, he was imprisoned, and witnessing mistreatment of Arab prisoners led to his speaking out for Arab rights after he was released. In the 1960s, he was deputy editor of Bul, a tabloid which published a story accusing the Mossad of being involved in the disappearance of Moroccan dissent Mehdi Ben Barka. His editor and Ghilan were charged with espionage, and jailed for 135 days. Ghilan moved to Paris in 1969, and in the 1980s was a leader in the International Jewish Peace Union, the first Jewish organization to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organziation (PLO). He returned to Israel after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Ghilan was awarded the Prime Minister Levi Eshkol Prize for Literary Excellence in 2004, but I could not find any published collections of his poems. There was a 1963 limited edition of his poem “Matach” printed in Hebrew on a cardboard sheet folded into quarters, now considered a rare collectible. He is best known outside of Israel for his non-fiction book, How Israel Lost Its Soul. Ghilan died at age 74 in April 2005.

Leaving

by Maxim Ghilan

She is leaving. She is thieving
away and he has not been told yet
But the cat is awake, the cat watches
the threshold. Bold
songs draw her away
to the shadows.
Her drive is the need to survive.
No star, no lord alive
will keep her from running away.
Yet her old master still holds mighty sway.
She runs to her savior.

Behold
the hammering in her head
Instead of haven, fearful clouds.
Yet isles say yes, grey rocks
stand out from troubled seas of pain.
Look at her nipple sticking out
Under thin cloth. It is plain
to see she’s on her way
at the very last moment, on the very last day.

She leaves behind a life and packs
slowly a cheap canvas bag. Her hand
mindlessly strokes the small beast’s fur. She courts
her future. Yet her thoughts
are for him, who owned her in days past,
She runs away and leaves. At last.
Yes, but the cat blue-eyed and sad stares at the Mistress
as she steps over her doorstep walking fast.

This English translation of “Leaving” appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of Fidelio

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1953 – Jo Shapcott born in London; English poet, editor, and lecturer. She won the National Poetry Competition in 1985 and 1991. Her collections include: Electroplating the Baby; Phrase Book; My Life Asleep, which won the 1999 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection); Her Book: Poems 1988-1998; and Tender Taxes. She was honored in 2011 with the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Then, though she continued to publish other work, she stopped publishing collections of her poetry until Of Mutability appeared in 2019.

Era

by Jo Shapcott

The twenty-second day of March two thousand and three
I left home shortly after eight thirty
on foot towards the City. I said goodbye
to the outside of my body: I was going in.
The magpies were squabbling in the park.
The little fountain splashed chemical bubbles
over its lip. Traffic swarmed and swam
round Vauxhall Cross, like crazy fish, with teeth.

And anything could be real in a country
where Red Kites were spreading east and now
we had February swallows. Planes for Heathrow
roared not far enough overhead, shedding
jet trails which pointed over there: those other
places where all the frontiers end with a question.

“Era” from Of Mutability, © 2019 by Jo Shapcott – Faber & Faber

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1954 – Ofelia Zepeda born and grew up in the tiny town of Stanfield, in southern Arizona; she earned an MA and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Arizona, and is the author of a grammar of the Tohono O’odham language, A Papago Grammar (1983). Zepeda’s poetry collections include Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert and Jewed’l-hoi/Earth Movements, O’Odham Poems).  Zepeda was director of the American Indian Language Development Institute. She edits Sun Tracks, a book series which publishes work by Native American artists and writers, at the University of Arizona Press.

 Carrying Our Words

by Ofelia Zepeda

We travel carrying our words.
We arrive at the ocean.
With our words we are able to speak
of the sounds of thunderous waves.
We speak of how majestic it is,
of the ocean power that gifts us songs.
We sing of our respect
and call it our relative.

– translation from O’odham by the poet

 “Carrying Our Words” from Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert, © 1995 by Ofelia Zepeda – University of Arizona Press

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March 25

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1881 – Mary Webb born in Leighton, Shropshire; English novelist and poet; most of her work is set in Shropshire, where she grew up. Best known for her novels Gone to Earth; The Golden Arrow; Precious Bane, which won the 1926 Prix Femina Vie Heureuse; and Armour Wherein He Trusted. Her poetry collections include Poems and the Spring of Joy and Fifty-One Poems. She suffered from Graves disease and died at age 46 in 1927.

The Night Sky

by Mary Webb

The moon, beyond her violet bars,
From towering heights of thunder-cloud,
Sheds calm upon our scarlet wars,
To soothe a world so small, so loud.
And little clouds like feathered spray,
Like rounded waves on summer seas,
Or frosted panes on a winter day,
Float in the dark blue silences.
Within their foam, transparent, white,
Like flashing fish the stars go by
Without a sound across the night.
In quietude and secrecy
The white, soft lightnings feel their way
To the boundless dark and back again,
With less stir than a gnat makes
In its little joy, its little pain.

“The Night Sky” from Poems and the Spring of Joy, © 1927 by Mary Webb – published posthumously in 1928 by Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith

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1942 – Ana Blandiana born as Otilia Valeria Coman in Timișoara, Romania;  Romanian poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. She took her pen name from Blandiana, a commune near her mother’s home village, Vințu de Jos. Her mother was an accountant, but her father was an orthodox priest and former member of the fascist Iron Guard, who spent years in Communist prisons and died soon after his release. In 1967, she settled in Bucharest, and worked as an editor, mainly for the literary journal Amfiteatru. Then she was a librarian (1875-1977) at the Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest. In 1984, her poem ‘Totul’ (‘Everything’), which contrasted everyday life in Bucharest with the official view of Romanian life, was published in Amfiteatru. The issue was withdrawn within hours of publication, and the editors were dismissed, but the poem had some underground circulation, and a translation of it appeared in Western media. After the 1989 Romanian Revolution, she campaigned for an open society. Her poetry has appeared in English-language anthologies, and in Five Books, an English translation of poems from her original Romanian collections, and The Hour of Sand: Selected Poems 1969-1989. In 2017, she was honored with the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

As If

by Ana Blandiana

As if the light itself
Were merely a plant, as if the stars
Sent down their thin rays
Like capillary roots
Sucking at me, to extract
Their mysterious nutrient.
Astral blooms flock to the scalpel
Like crows to the plough.

The size of this field of light scares me.
With so many flowers to feed, I’m worn
To the bone, fulfilled and woozy with love.
And whom can I call for assistance?
Will nobody rid me, root, stem and branch,
Of this star-sprouting garden,
Burst the galactic, numinous dykes
And make way for the ocean of darkness?

“As If” – this English translation is from The Translations of Seamus Heaney, © 2022 by the estate of Seamus Heaney – Farrar, Strauss and Giroux

“As If” appeared in The Hour of Sand: Selected Poems 1969-1989, © 1990 by Ana Blandiana, and © 1990 for translation by Peter Jay – Anvil Press Poetry

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1944 – Jack Mapanje born in Kadango Village, Malawi, to Myanja and Yao parents; Malawian poet, editor, and human rights activist. After getting a BA from the University of Malawi, he earned advanced degrees at universities in the UK before becoming head of the University of Malawi’s Chancellor College English Department. He was arrested in 1987 after his first book of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods, was banned in Malawi. Imprisoned without trial or charge, he was released in 1991 following an international outcry against his treatment. While in prison, he wrote two more poetry collections, The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison and Skipping without Ropes. His other works include the memoir And Crocodiles Are Hungry at Night; an anthology he edited, Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing; and Beasts of Nalunga, a poetry collection. He lives in exile in the UK with his family, and is currently a visiting professor in the faculty of art at York St John University.

After Celebrating our Asylum Stories at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

 by Jack Mapanje

So, define her separately,
She is not just another
Castaway washed up your
Rough seas like driftwood,
It’s the nameless battles
Your sages burdened on her
People that broke her back;
Define him differently,
He is not another squirrel
Ousted from your poplars,
It’s the endless cyclones,
Earthquakes, volcanoes,
Floods, mud and dust that
Drafted him here; define
Them warmly, how could
Your economic émigré queue
At your job centres day after
Day? If you must define us
Gently, how do you hope
To see the tales we bear
When you refuse to hear
The whispers we share?

“After Celebrating our Asylum Stories at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds” from The Last of the Sweet Bananas: New & Selected Poems, © 2004 by Jack Mapanje – Bloodaxe Books

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March 26

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1930 – Gregory Corso born in New York City; prolific American ‘Beat’ poet; son of Italian-Americans. His mother abandoned him as an infant, and his father put him in a foster home. By 1941, he was a homeless street child, but kept it a secret so he could continue going to school, running errands for street stall merchants in exchange for food. He was arrested for a series of petty crimes committed to survive until at 18, he was tried as an adult, and sent to Clinton, New York’s toughest prison. In 1951, he met Alan Ginsberg, and became the youngest member of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers. In 1954, he hitchhiked to San Francisco, then spent some time in Paris, but returned to New York in 1958. In the 1960s, he struggled with drugs and alcohol, but continued to write. He died at age 70 in Minneapolis in 2001. He wrote a novel, several plays, and over a dozen poetry collections, including The Vestal Lady and Other Poems; Gasoline; Bomb; The Happy Birthday of Death; and Earth Egg.

Humanity

by Gregory Corso

What simple profundities
What profound simplicities
To sit down among the trees
and breathe with them
in murmur brool and breeze —

And how can I trust them
who pollute the sky
with heavens
the below with hells

Well, humankind,
I’m part of you
and so my son

but neither of us
will believe
your big sad lie

“Humanity” from Mindfield: New and Selected Poems, © 1989 by Gregory Corso – Thunder’s Mouth Press

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1954 – Dorothy Porter born as Dorothy Featherstone Porter in Sydney, Australia; Australian poet best known for her noir private eye novel in verse, The Monkey’s Mask, which was a surprise international hit and revitalized Australian poetry publishing – after being rejected by publishers for years. It won Australia’s National Book Council Turnbull Fox Phillips Poetry Prize (the Banjo) in 1995. In 2004, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and died in 2008. She was survived by her partner, novelist Andrea Goldsmith, her parents, her two sisters, and her cat, Wystan, named after W. H. Auden.

Silence

by Dorothy Porter

It is rare for me
to write a poem
in absolute silence.

No music.
No throttling heart.

Just faint early birds
and a grey early
sky.

I’ve given up
this serpentine fight.

No one won.
And I’m flooded
with peace and
gratitude
for that.

This poem, handwritten by Dorothy Porter, was found by Andrea Goldsmith on July 27, 2022, in the back of A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.

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March 27

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1910 – Ai Qing born in Fantianjiang, a village in Zhejiang province, China; Chinese poet using the pen names Linbi, Ke’a, and Ejia. After studying at Hangzhou Xihu Art School, he went to Paris (1929-1932). On his return, he joined the China Left wing Artist Association in Shanghai, and was arrested for opposing the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). During his time in prison, Ai Qing wrote his first book Dayanhe (My Nanny). He was released in October 1935. During the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Ai Qing went to Wuhan to support the war effort. In 1938, he became editor of the Guixi Daily newspaper. In 1942, he joined the Chinese Communist Party. But in 1957, during the Anti-Rightist Movement, he defended author Ding Ling and was exiled to rural farming villages in 1958. During the Cultural Revolution, he cleaned communal toilets. He wasn’t allowed to publish his works Return Song and Ode to Light until he was reinstated in 1979, and became vice-chair of the Chinese Writers Association. In 1985, French president François Mitterrand made him a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. Ai Qing died at age 86 in May, 1996.

The Lamp

by Ai Qing

Hope that looked toward the horizon
Now lies in this oil lamp—
For the sky’s farther than hope can reach!
Arrows of light obliterate the distance
into blank nothingness;
then what makes my trembling fingers
gently stroke the brilliant forehead
of this oil lamp?

(written in prison)

 “The Lamp” from Selected Poems, by Ai Qing, translation © 2021 by Robert Dorsett – Crown Publishing

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March 28

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1976 – Ada Limón born in Sonoma, California; American poet of Mexican heritage, and 24^th U.S. Poet Laureate. She has published six collections of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry; The Carrying, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; and most recently The Hurting Kind. Prior to becoming Poet Laureate, she was the host of American Public Media’s weekday poetry podcast The Slowdown. When Limón isn’t on the road, she lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

The Visitor

by AdaLimón

A neighborhood tuxedo cat’s walking the fence line
and the dogs are going bonkers in the early morning.
The louder they bark, the more their vexation grows,
the less the cat seems to care. She’s behind my raised
beds now, no doubt looking for the family of field mice
I’ve been leaving be because, why not? The cat’s
dressed up for this occasion of trespass, black tie
attire for the canine taunting, but the whole clamor
is making me uneasy. This might be what growing
older is. My problem: I see all the angles of what
could go wrong so I never know what side to be on.
Save the mice, shoo the cat, quiet the dogs? Let
the cat have at it? Let the dogs have at it? Instead,
I do what I do best: nothing. I watch the cat
leap into the drainage ditch, dew-wet fur against
the day lilies, and disappear. The dogs go quiet
again, and the mice are safe in their caves, and
I’m here waiting for something to happen to me.

“The Visitor” from The Carrying, © 2018 by Ada Limón – Milkweed Editions

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March 29

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1978 – J. Michael Martinez born in Greeley, Colorado; American poet and editor; his first poetry collection, Heredities, was honored with a Walt Whiteman Award from the Academy of American Poets. His other poetry collections are In the Garden of the Bridehouse and Museum of the Americas. He also wrote the libretto for The Autumn Orchard, an opera composed by Daniel Kellogg. In 2016, Martinez was a coeditor and cofounder of Breach Press.

Heredities (1) Etymology

by J. Michael Martinez

When she was seven, my grandmother suffered from fever and swollen glands. The doctors believed her tonsils were inflamed, that she needed surgery. Instead, she went to a curandera. The curandera divined that a jealous relative had cast a curse on her and, now, her language of kindness was bound to her throat, the unspoken swelling her glands.

As a child my grandmother spoke to santitos with a voice like a chestnut: ruddy and warm, seeds dropping from her mouth. The santitos would take her words into themselves, her voice growing within them like grapevines.

During the tonsillitis, when the words no longer fell like seeds from her lips, the santito’s vineyards of accent and voice grew vapid, dry as a parched mouth. They went to her tongue and asked why silence imprisoned the words of the child, why lumps were present under her chin, why tears drew channels down her cheeks.

I asked my grandmother how her tongue replied. After touching my cheek, she told me she had a dream that night: She was within her lungs and she rose like breath through the moist of her throat. She remembered her tonsils swinging before her like fleshy apples, then a hand taking them into a fist, harvesting their sound. She told me her throat opened in two spots like insect eyes and the names of her children came flying through her wounds like peacocks.

Patting my thigh, she said, “That is why the name of your mother is Maria, because she is a prayer, a song of praise to the Holy Mother.” She told me this, then showed me two scars on her throat—tiny scars, like two eyelids stitched closed.

“Heredities (1) Etymology” from Heredities, © 2010 by J. Michael Martinez – Louisiana State University Press

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March 30

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1886 – Frances Crofts Darwin Cornford was brought up in Cambridge, England; English poet, granddaughter of Charles Darwin, and daughter of botanist Francis Darwin and Newnham College English literature lecturer Ellen Crofts Darwin, who had to resign her post when she married. Frances was educated privately, and called “FCD” by her family to avoid confusion with her father, and later with her husband, who was another Francis who was also a poet. They had five children. Frances published the first of her poetry collections, The Holtbury Idyll, at age 22 as “F.C.D.”  Her other books are: Poems; Spring Morning; Autumn Midnight; Different Days; and Mountains and Molehills. Frances Darwin Cornford died of heart failure at age 74 in August 1960.

The Guitarist Tunes Up

by Frances Darwin Cornford

With what attentive courtesy he bent
Over his instrument;
Not as a lordly conquerer who could
Command both wire and wood,
But as a man with a loved woman might,
Inquiring with delight
What slight essential things she had to say
Before they started, he and she, to play.

“The Guitarist Tunes Up” from Frances Cornford: Selected Poems, © 1996 by Hugh Cornford; edited by Jane Dowson – Enitharmon Press

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Ilustration by Max Guther