Good Morning!

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“There are times in life when people must know when not to
let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”
― Terry Pratchett

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“How does one grow up?”
I asked a friend the other day.
There was a slight pause; then
she answered, “By thinking.”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

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13 poets born this week
these will surprise you –
Calamity turns out to be less
serious than the Unheard, and
a Cat has lessons to teach us.

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April 29

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1863 – C. P. Cavafy born as Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis in Alexandria, Egypt, of Greek parents; an important figure in modern Greek poetry, and widely translated into other languages. He never lived in Greece, where his work was ridiculed and rejected by the Athenian literati, then almost forgotten until a collection of his poems was published in 1935, two years after his death. His family’s import business fell on hard times after his father died when he was 9. His mother moved the family to Liverpool. Cavafy learned English, discovered Shakespeare, Robert Browning, and Oscar Wilde, and chose the Anglicized “Cavafy” as his pen name. When he was sixteen, that business failed, and the family returned, in debt-ridden gentility, to Alexandria’s Greek community. His mother moved the family again when he was 19, to her parents’ home in Constantinople because of increasingly tensions between Egypt and the British Empire, leading to British bombardment of Alexandria in June 1882. Their home was destroyed and Cavafy’s early writing lost. After their return, he worked in the Irrigation Department of the Ministry of Public Works for 30 years. His British bosses valued his excellent English, and he retired as assistant director of his department. Cavafy was homosexual, and had several affairs but no lasting love. Most of his erotic poetry was never published in his lifetime. Cavafy died at age 70 of cancer on his birthday in 1933. His tombstone in the Greek Orthodox Cemetery in Alexandria bears a single word epitaph: Poet.

The God Abandons Antony

by C. P. Cavafy

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with whining, or the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

“The God Abandons Antony” from C. P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems, translation © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley – Princeton University Press, revised edition

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1947 – Yusef Komunyakaa born as James William Brown in Bogalusa Louisiana, the eldest of five children. He served one tour of duty in South Vietnam during the war, and worked for the military paper Southern Cross, leaving the service in 1966. He earned an M.A. in writing from Colorado State University in 1978, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine, in 1980. He was awarded the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Neon Vernacular. Currently, Komunyakaa is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

After Summer Fell Apart

by Yusef Komunyakaa

I can’t touch you.
His face always returns;
we exchange long looks
in each bad dream
& what I see, my God.
Honey, sweetheart,
I hold you against me
but nothing works.
Two boats moored,
rocking between nowhere
& nowhere.
A bone inside me whispers
maybe tonight,
but I keep thinking
about the two men wrestling nude
in Lawrence’s Women in Love.
I can’t get past
reels of breath unwinding.
He has you. Now
he doesn’t. He has you
again. Now he doesn’t.

You’re at the edge of azaleas
shaken loose by a word.
I see your rose-colored
skirt unfurl.
He has a knife
to your throat,
night birds come back
to their branches.
A hard wind raps at the door,
the new year prowling
in a black overcoat.
It’s been six months
since we made love.
Tonight I look at you
hugging the pillow,
half smiling in your sleep.
I want to shake you & ask
who. Again I touch myself,
unashamed, until
his face comes into focus.
He’s stolen something
from me & I don’t know
if it has a name or not—
like counting your ribs
with one foolish hand
& mine with the other.

“After Summer Fell Apart” from Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems, © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa – Wesleyan University Press

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April 30

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1937 – Tony Harrison born in the Beeston suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire UK: one of Britain’s foremost poets, he is also a translator, playwright, and librettist. He was educated in Classics at Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University. Several of his plays have been staged at the Royal National Theatre, and the National Theatre production The Mysteries, his adaptation of medieval English mystery plays was filmed for UK television. His many poetry collections include: From the School of Eloquence; The Gaze of the Gorgon; Under the Clock; and Collected Film Poetry. Harrison has been honored with the Whitbread Prize for Poetry; the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award; the European Prize for Literature; and the Premio Feronia.

Long Distance Ii

by Tony Harrison

Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles on her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.
He’d put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there’s your name
and the disconnected number I still call.

“Long Distance Ii” from Selected Poems, © 1984 by Tony Harrison – Penguin Books

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1945 – Annie Dillard born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; American novelist, essayist, poet, and academic; best known for her narrative style in both fiction and nonfiction. Her first poetry book, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, was published the same year as Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. She taught in Wesleyan University’s English department (1980-2001). Her other works include: Teaching a Stone to Talk, a nonfiction and travel essays collection; Encounters with Chinese Writers; The Maytrees, a novel; and Mornings Like This: Found Poems.

 Quatrain of the Body’s Sleep

 by Annie Dillard

 I lure sleep. I bait sleep in with my white throat.
I pretend to be asleep. Then everything happens at once.
Sleep wraps me round in his dim coat;
I weep: you leap from your and dance.

“Quatrain of the Body’s Sleep” © 1975 by Annie Dillard, appeared in Poetry magazine’s February 1975 issue

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1973 – Jeannine Hall Gailey was the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. Her poetry collections include: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World; Unexplained Fevers; The Robot Scientist’s Daughter; Field Guide to the End of the World; and Flare, Corona. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner.

Calamity

by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Your family is coming for Thanksgiving.
Even worse, it’s snowing.

Headless robots are playing soccer with your soul.
UFOs have been sighted overhead.

A meteor is definitely heading straight for you.
It might miss, but then again.

Tonight a city is being decimated by Godzilla,
Or was it a bunch of genetically-engineered dinosaurs?

Either way, I hope you’re lizard-friendly.
Tonight you have to give a speech

and that girl who hated you in third grade
will be in the audience. What have I ever done

to deserve this? the prophet asks, tearing his robes
in the desert. God responds: how long you got?

A plague of egrets, of eaglets, of egress.
A black hole has just opened up and it is

already swallowing someone else’s sun.
Did you see the team play last night? A travesty.

Someone is always preaching doomsday.
Who are you wearing? Because tonight

your life will be required of you. Grab a bag,
a sword, a water bottle. Go out swinging.

“Calamity” from Flare, Corona, © 2023 by Jeannine Hall Gailey – BOA Editions, Ltd.

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May 1

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1909 – Yiannis Ritsos born in Monemvasia on the southern tip of Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula; Greek poet and WWII National Liberation Front resistance fighter. At age 18, he was confined to a sanatorium (1927-1931) for tuberculosis. He joined the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in 1934. His poetry was banned by the Greek Junta (1967-1974). His poetry collections include: Chronicle of Exile; Subterranean Horses; Gestures; and Late into the Night. Ritsos died at age 81 in November 1990.

The Heard and the Unheard

by Yiannis Ritsos

A sudden unexpected motion; the palm of his hand
made a fist over his wound to stanch the blood
even though we had not heard any gun-shot,
nor the whizz of the bullet. A little later,
he lowered his hand and he smiled to himself;
but again slowly he placed the palm of his hand
over the same shot; he took out his wallet,
paid the boy politely and departed.
And the coffee cup cracked of itself.
That at least we heard very clearly.

“The Heard and the Unheard,” © 1964 by Yiannis Ritsos, appeared in Poetry magazine’s February 1964 issue

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1914 – Barbara Howes born in Bennington, Vermont; she was adopted and raised in Chestnut Hill near Boston, Massachusetts; American poet, short story writer, and editor. She graduated from Bennington College in 1937, and edited the literary magazine Chimera (1943-1947) while living in Greenwich Village. She married poet William Jay Smith in 1947, but they later divorced. Howes won the Golden Rose Award, and The Collected Poems of Barbara Howes was nominated for the 1995 National Book Award. Her other poetry books include: Looking Up the Leaves; The Blue Garden; A Private Signal; and Moving. Howes died at age 81 in February, 1996.

The Cicisbeae

by Barbara Howes

Mincing on slippered feet,
Decked out in sad mandarin-pale faces,
A pride of women flock to the Broad Motel
To sing a song of sixpence.

Tripping on bound feet,
Quilted into identical wrappers, they
Take turn and turnabout through the bedroom turnstyle
With State Senators, with expenses.

Mouths, bellies, feet
Clutch in spasm, let go, get up, go;
Some pocket money, all drink: this is the Social
Hour; the Chair presents

His platform:— each to sing her favorite
Ditty before he’ll let her leave: Careless
Love, Only the Lonely, A Small
Hotel. . . . “Next week, O.K.? Sure, tax exempt!”

Cicisbeo: man who is a gallant or lover of a woman married to someone else.

 “The Cicisbeae,” © 1965 by Barabra Howes, appeared in Poetry magazine’s December 1965 issue

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May 2

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1931 – Ruth Fainlight born in New York City to an American Jewish mother and a British father; prolific Anglo-American poet, short story writer, translator, librettist, and critic who has mainly lived in the UK since she was 15 but has also lived in France and Spain. She studied for two years at the Birmingham and Brighton Colleges of Art. Fainlight has written criticism for BBC Radio, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and other publications. She was married to British writer Alan Sillitoe from 1959 until his death from cancer in 2010.  Fainlight has published over 25 collections of poetry and prose poems, including: Cages; To See the Matter Clearly; Fifteen to Infinity; The Knot; Climates; Sugar-Blue Paper; Pomegranate; and Somewhere Else Entirely. She has also translated works by Lope de Vega, Jean Joubert, and Sophocles, as well as writing opera libretti for The Dancer Hotoke; The European Story, and Bedlam Britannica. Fainlight was honored with a 1994 Cholmondeley Award for Poetry and made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.

Handbag

by Ruth Fainlight

My mother’s old leather handbag,
crowded with letters she carried
all through the war. The smell
of my mother’s handbag: mints
and lipstick and Coty powder.
The look of those letters, softened
and worn at the edges, opened
read, and refolded so often.
Letters from my father. Odor
of leather and powder, which ever
since then has meant womanliness,
and love, and anguish, and war.

“Handbag” from Fifteen to Infinity, © 1983 by Ruth Fainlight – Hutchinson

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1940 – Sherko Bekas born in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region in Iraq, the son of poet Fayaq Bekas, who died when Sherko was 8, plunging the family into extreme poverty, but with great difficulty, he managed to graduate from high school. He was 17 when one of his poems was published in Zhin newspaper. In 1965, Bekas joined the Kurdish liberation movement and worked at the movement’s radio station, The Voice of Kurdistan. Best known for his 1968 collection, Tirîfey Helbest (Tirifey Poetry), and the long 1991 poem, Butterfly Valley, his response to Saddam Hussein’s deadly chemical attacks which killed over 100,000 Kurds and destroyed 3,000 Kurdish villages. In 1987, he was awarded the “Tucholsky scholarship” of the Pen club in Stockholm, where he died in exile of cancer in August 2013. He is widely regarded as the greatest Kurdish national poet.

Storm tide

by Sherko Bekas

The tide said to the fisherman:

There are many reasons
why my waves are in a rage.

The most important is

that I am for the freedom of the fish

and against
the net

“Storm tide” from The Secret Diary of a Rose, © 1997 by Sherko Bekas, translation © 1997 by Bingard Shirwan Mirza and Sherzad Hassan – Ashti Bibani

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May 3

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1912 – May Sarton born Eleanore Marie Sarton in Wondelgem, Belgium, the only child of a chemist and science historian father and an English artist mother; prolific American poet, novelist, and memoirist; Her parents fled with their two-year-old daughter when the Germans invaded Belgium in 1914, first to Britain, and then to America, where her father taught at Harvard. May Sarton became an apprentice at the Civic Repertory Theatre, founded by the legendary actress Eva Le Gallienne. Later, Sarton founded her own company, the Associated Actors Theatre, but it failed in 1935. She then made her living from writing and teaching writing. Sarton wrote 19 novels, 17 books of poetry, and 15 nonfiction works – including her bestselling Journal of a Solitude. Her last poetry collection, Coming Into Eighty, published after her death from cancer at age 83 in July 1995, won the Levinson Prize.

The Ten Commandments of the Gentleman Cat

by May Sarton

A Gentleman Cat has an immaculate shirt front and paws at all times.

A Gentleman Cat allows no constraint of his person, even loving constraint.

A Gentleman Cat does not mew except in extremity. He makes his wishes known and waits.

When addressed, A Gentleman Cat does not move a muscle. He looks as if he hadn’t heard.

If he should be frightened, A Gentleman Cat looks bored.

A Gentleman Cat takes no interest in other people’s affairs, unless he is directly concerned.

A Gentleman Cat does not hurry towards an objective, or looks as though he wants just one thing: it is not polite.

A Gentleman Cat approaches food slowly, however hungry he may be, and decides at least three feet away whether it is Good, Fair, Passable, or Unworthy. If Unworthy, he pretends to scratch earth over it.

A Gentleman Cat gives thanks for a Worthy meal, by licking the plate so clean that a person might think it had been washed.

A Gentleman Cat is never hasty when choosing a housekeeper.

“The Ten Commandments of the Gentleman Cat” from The Fur Person, © 1978 by May Sarton – W. W. Norton & Company

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May 4

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1749 – Charlotte Turner Smith born in London to a well-to-do family; English poet and novelist; her first book helped spark a revival of the sonnet, and her novels established some of the conventions of Gothic fiction. Her father’s reckless spending led to him forcing her into marriage at age 15 – which she later called “legal prostitution”– to a violent drunkard whose own extravagance landed them in debtors’ prison in 1783, where she wrote her first book, Elegiac Sonnets, published in 1784, which was an instant success, enabling her to pay their way out of prison. They went to France, where she earned money translating French works into English. After they returned to England, she left him in 1787, as his increasing rages made her fear for her life. To support herself and her children, she wrote 10 novels, five educational works, and five poetry books, including The Emigrants and Beachy Head and Other Poems.

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes

by Charlotte Turner Smith

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!
How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!
For me wilt thou renew the withered rose,
And clear my painful path of pointed thorn?
Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest,
Like the young hours that lead the tender year
Enchantress come! and charm my cares to rest:
Alas! the flatterer flies, and will not hear!
A prey to fear, anxiety, and pain,
Must I a sad existence still deplore?
Lo! the flowers fade, but all the thorns remain,
‘For me the vernal garland blooms no more.’
Come then, ‘pale Misery’s love!’ be thou my cure,
And I will bless thee, who though slow art sure.

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1864 – Richard Hovey born in Normal, Illinois; American poet, playwright, and translator; son of a Union officer who served during the Civil War, he grew up in North Amherst, Massachusetts, and Washington DC. He went to Dartmouth College, where he wrote the school song, “Men of Dartmouth.” His first poetry collection was published in 1880. He joined the “Visionists,” a social club for writers and artists in Boston, where he became friends with Canadian poet Bliss Carman. Hovey and Carman collaborated on three books of “tramp” verse: Songs from Vagabondia; More Songs from Vagabondia; and Last Songs from Vagabondia, which was published after Hovey’s death at age 35 after undergoing surgery in February 1900.

The Sea Gipsy

by Richard Hovey

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

There’s a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the Sea.

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1928 – Thomas Kinsella born in Dublin; his father worked at the Guinness brewery and was active in the union; Irish poet, translator, and publisher. Kinsella received grants and scholarships to attend University College in Dublin, where he studied physics and chemistry but took his degree in public administration. He began in the Irish civil service in 1946. In the early 1950s he met Liam Miller, the founder of the Doleman Press, which published much of Kinsella’s poetry, beginning in 1952. He rose to the civil service rank of assistant principal officer in the Department of Finance, but left the service in 1965 to become an artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois University. In 1970, he became a professor of English at Temple University. In 1976, Kinsella started Temple University’s School of Irish Tradition in Dublin. He retired from teaching in 1990, but continued directing Peppercanister Press in Dublin. He died at age 93 in December 2021.

Mirror in February

by Thomas Kinsella

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed – my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy –
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.

It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.

“Mirror in February” from Collected Poems, © 2006 by Thomas Kinsella – Wake Forest University Press

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