Good Morning!

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“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”
– Mark Twain

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“There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’
There are only the deliberately silenced,
or the preferably unheard.”
― Arundhati Roy,
Indian novelist and political activist

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Everything that needs to be said has
already been said. But, since no one was
listening, everything must be said again.
─ André Gide,
1947 Nobel Prize in Literature winner

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13 Poets born this week,
with poems about Nature,
both real and in metaphor,
and the nature of Humans

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June 9

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1903 – Roberta Teale Swartz born in Brooklyn, New York; American academic and poet. She earned her BA magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College in 1925, then an MA from Radcliffe College in 1926, and a B.Litt degree from Oxford University in 1929.  In September 1929, she married Gordon Keith Chalmers, who would become president of Kenyon College in 1937, and where she would be an associate professor. The couple was very instrumental in the founding of the Kenyon Review, one of the longest publishing and most respected U.S. literary magazines. After her husband’s death in 1956, she was a visiting lecturer at Wellesley College, then an associate professor of English at Queens College in North Carolina (1959-1968). Roberta Teale Swartz Chalmers died at age 89 in May 1993. Her published poetry collections are: Lilliput; Lord Juggler & other poems; and Mount Holyoke College hundred year poems.

The Hawthorne Tree

by Roberta Teale Swartz

The hawthorne tree is strange in May,
Dense with her buds.  I cannot say
What death, what legend, what old dream,
What shadowiness of longing seem
Stealing along her, subtle, slow,
Into the blossom from the bough.

But she is deep in winter now.
By day the sunlit smoke of snow
Blows over her, and glazed at night
She glitters, star and thorn alight.
Her thrill is cold.  Her secret myth
Sleeps in the sap she slumbers with.

“The Hawthorne Tree” appeared in the August 1923 issue of Poetry magazine

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1922 – John Gillespie Magee Jr. born in Shanghai, China, to an American father and an English mother who were missionaries; he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force before American entered the war. He was killed at age 19 in a mid-air collision during training over England in December 1941.

High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

“High Flight” was sent in a letter to his parents dated September 3, 1941

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June 10

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1904 – Lin Huiyin born in Hangzhou, China; Chinese architect, poet, essayist, architectural historian, playwright, and translator.  Born into a wealthy family, Huiyin traveled extensively with her father, and reached a level of education rare for women of the time, including a degree from the University of Pennsylvania (in Fine Arts – as a woman, she was refused admittance to Penn’s School of Architecture) and she also enrolled in stage design classes at Yale University. She was the first woman architect in modern China and her husband Liang Sicheng was known as the “Father of Modern Chinese Architecture.”  They both worked as founders and faculty of the Architecture Department of Northeastern University in 1928 and, after 1949, as professors in Tsinghua University in Beijing. She studied ancient Chinese architecture, and with her husband began restoration work on China’s cultural heritage sites during the Republican Era of China, until the 1937 Japanese invasion. They fled with their children and other faculty members before the invading forces. By 1940, Huiyin was suffering from tuberculosis. After the war, she took part in the standardization of Beijing city planning. She died of tuberculosis in 1955. The American artist Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is her niece.

(Untitled)

by Lin Huiyin

When will there be again
That piece of silence;
Dissolved in the spring breeze,
Facing the mountains, facing the small rivers?
When will it still be like that
Full of hope;
Cloaked in new green, whispered poetry,
Climb the tower and listen to the bell?
When, and when, heart
I can really understand
The distance of this time;
the years of the mountains and rivers;
Yesterday’s silence, the bells
Yesterday’s people
How to draw a shadow in today’s day!

– from Collection of Poems by Talented Women over the Century – Yilin Press, English-Chinese bilingual 2011 edition

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1945 – Janet Kauffman born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; American novelist, poet, short story writer, mixed media artist, and environmental, peace, and social justice activist. She was raised on a farm in a predominantly Mennonite community. Kauffman earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1972 from the University of Chicago. Her first published works were poetry collections, but she began writing novels and short fiction in the 1980s. She taught creative writing, feminist studies, and literature at Jackson Community College, now Jackson College, in Michigan. After her short story collection, Places in the World a Woman Could Walk, was critically acclaimed, she was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan (1985-1986). She then taught at Eastern Michigan University (1988-2008). She owned a farm near Hudson, Michigan, where she grew hay, restored the wetlands, and conducted tours and programs to raise public awareness of environmental threats. In 2019, she donated the majority of her property to the ACRES Land Trust to become an environmental sanctuary. Her poetry collections include: The Weather Book; Where the World Is; and oh corporeal.

Mennonite Farm Wife

by Janet Kauffman

She hung her laundry in the morning
before light and often in winter
by sunrise the sheets were ice.
They hung all day on the line,
creaking, never a flutter.
At dusk I’d watch her lift each one
like a field, the stretches of white
she carried as easily as a dream
to the house where she bent and folded
and stacked the flat squares.
I never doubted they thawed
perfectly dry, crisp,
the corners like thorn.

“Mennonite Farm Wife” © by Janet Kauffman, from A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry, edited by Ann Elizabeth Hostetler – University of Iowa Press, 2003 edition

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June 11

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1572 – Ben Jonson born in London’s Westminster district, English playwright, poet, and critic. His father died before his birth, and his mother married a master bricklayer. Though educated at Westminster School, he became an apprentice bricklayer, then joined English forces fighting with the Dutch revolting against Spanish rule. He next became a strolling player, then joined the Admiral’s Men troupe. By 1597, he was writing plays, mostly comedies, and soon gave up acting. His first big hit was Every Man in His Humour, presented by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1578 – the same year he killed a fellow actor in a duel, considered murder. He pleaded “benefit of clergy” (ability to read the Latin Bible), paid a forfeit, and was branded on his left thumb. By 1603 he was creating masques (stories told through singing and dancing) for the royal court of JamesIV/ I. The masques paid much better than writing plays. In 1616, Jonson was granted a yearly pension, and published the first volume of his collected works, including his epigrams (poems in a classical style). By the 1620s, he’d written almost all his best works, and suffered a series of strokes. In 1625, Charles I came to the throne. Jonson got fewer commissions for masques, though Charles did increase his pension. Jonson had started work on The Sad Shepherd,  a pastoral drama instead of a comedy, when he died at age 65 in August 1637.    

My Picture Left in Scotland

by Ben Jonson

I now think Love is rather deaf than blind,
For else it could not be
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me
And cast my love behind.
I’m sure my language to her was as sweet,
And every close did meet
In sentence of as subtle feet,
As hath the youngest He
That sits in shadow of Apollo’s tree.

O, but my conscious fears,
That fly my thoughts between,
Tell me that she hath seen
My hundred of gray hairs,
Told seven and forty years
Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace
My mountain belly and my rocky face;
And all these through her eyes have stopp’d her ears.

“My Picture Left in Scotland” from Ben Jonson: The Complete Poems – Penguin Classics – 1988 edition

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1911 – Josephine Miles born in Chicago, Illinois; American poet, academic, and literary critic; her family moved to Southern California when she was a child, hoping the milder climate would lessen the degenerative effects of her severe arthritis, but she became completely dependent on others, unable to operate a wheelchair or feed herself. She earned a BA in English literature at UCLA, then a doctorate from UC Berkeley. In spite of her physical disabilities, her brilliance as a scholar led to her becoming the first woman tenured in the English department at the University of California, Berkeley. She and Benjamin H. Lehman developed the first interdepartmental “Prose Improvement Project” which was expanded into James Gray’s Bay Area Writing Project. The National Writing Project grew out of these pioneering efforts at writing across curriculum programs. She mentored many young poets, including Jack Spicer, Diane Wakoski, William Stafford, Thom Gunn, and A. R. Ammons. She died at age 74 in May 1985, and bequeathed her home to the University of California. The PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award was established in her honor to recognize achievement  in multicultural literature. Her poetry collections include: Lines at Intersection; Local Measures; To All Appearances; and Coming to Terms.

Cage

by Josephine Miles

Through the branches of the Japanese cherry
Blooming like a cloud which will rain
A rain white as the sun
The living room across the roadway
Cuts its square of light
And in it fight
Two figures, hot, irate,
Stuck between sink and sofa in that golden cage.
Come out into the night, walk in the night,
It is for you, not me.
The cherry flowers will rain their rain as white
Cool as the moon.
Listen how they surround
You swing among them in your cage of light.
Come out into the night.

“Cage” from Josephine Miles: Collected Poems 1930-1983, © 1983 by Josephine Miles –
University of Illinois Press

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June 12

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1892 – Djuna Barnes born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York; American notable modernist novelist, poet, playwright, journalist, and visual artist. Her works include her poetry collection The Book of Repulsive Women; Ladies Almanack, a satiric chronicle of amorous intrigues in 1920s Paris; and Nightwood, a classic of lesbian fiction. She drank heavily and wrote little in the 1940s, but swore off alcohol in 1950. She then wrote The Antiphon, a verse play, and much poetry. Though ravaged by arthritis in later years, Barnes continued writing until her death just after her 90^th birthday in June, 1982.

Suicide

by Djuna Barnes 

Corpse A

They brought her in, a shattered small
Cocoon,
With a little bruised body like
A startled moon;
And all the subtle symphonies of her
A twilight rune.

Corpse B

They gave her hurried shoves this way
And that.
Her body shock-abbreviated
As a city cat.
She lay out listlessly like some small mug
Of beer gone flat.

“Suicide” from Collected Poems: With Notes Toward the Memoir,  by Djuna Barnes – edited by Phillip Herring and Osias Stutman – University of Wisconsin Press – 2005 edition

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June 13

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1865 – William Butler Yeats Irish poet, dramatist, and prose writer; admired as one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century; awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival (also ironically called the Celtic Twilight), and a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre with Lady Augusta Gregory. His collected works take up fourteen volumes. He died at age 73 in January, 1939.  

VIII – from Among School Children

by William Butler Yeats

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

“Among School Children” from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, © renewed 1961 by Georgie Yeats – Macmillan Publishing

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1961 – Helen Humphreys born in Kingston-on-Thames, SW London, UK, but her family moved to Canada when she was a child. A Canadian poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer, she was a voracious reader and began writing poetry at an early age. She rebelled in high school, and was expelled, then attended an alternative school to finish her education. Her first poetry collection, Gods and Other Mortals, was published in 1986. Her novel, Leaving Earth, won the 1998 City of Toronto Book Award. Her third novel, Afterimage, won the Rogers Writers’  Trust Fiction Prize in 2000. Her nonfiction works include Field Study: Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium and And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life.  She was Poet Laureate of Kingston, Ontario, Canada (2015-2018). Her poetry collections include Nuns Looking Anxious; Listening to Radios, The Perils of Geography; and Anthem, which won the 2000 Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry. In 2023, she was honored by the Writers’ Trust of Canada with the Matt Cohen Award for her lifetime contribution to Canadian Literature.

Marsh

by Helen Humphreys

It is the hinge
between lake and land, where
blackbirds sway on rushes,
and herons rise on stiffened wings.
Where water is a form of darkness,
and the choir of wild iris sings
with meadowsweet and willow.

It is neither solid ground,
nor entirely melt, but shifts
its state to what is found, matching
creature and season. Giving us, too,
relief from absolutes, a fate
where we can dream ourselves as
sway, or rise, or earthly song.

“Marsh” © 2017 by Helen Humphreys

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June 14

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1908 – Kathleen Raine born in Ilford, Essex UK; British poet, critic, author, and scholar. She was a founding member of the Temenos Academy, an educational charity which sponsors lectures, seminars, and readings about the sacred traditions of East and West as reflected in philosophy and the arts. She lived with her aunt Peggy Black during WWI in the isolated village of Great Bavington in Northumberland, surrounded by a rugged landscape sparsely inhabited by subsistence farmers and coal miners. She loved it, and much of the imagery in her poetry comes from those childhood years. She attended Girton College, Cambridge, and earned a master’s degree in 1929. Her first book of poetry, Stone And Flower, was published in 1943. Many of her prose works are about the lives and works of William Butler Yeats and William Blake. She also wrote five autobiographical works, including Farewell Happy Fields and The Lion’s Mouth. She died at age 95, after being hit by a car, of pneumonia in July 2003. Her many poetry collections include: The Year One: Poems; Lost Country; On a Deserted Shore; The Oracle in the Heart; and Living with Mystery.

Harvest

by Kathleen Raine

Day is the hero’s shield,
Achilles’ field,
The light days are the angels.
We the seed.

Against eternal light and gorgon’s face
Day is the shield
And we the grass
Native to fields of iron, and skies of brass.

“Harvest” from The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine, © 2000 by Kathleen Raine – Faber & Faber

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June 15

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1763 – Kobayashi Issa born as Kobayashi Nobuyuki in Shinanomachi Nagano, Japan; Japanese poet who used ‘Issa’ as his pen name (means cup of tea); one of the ‘Great Four’ haiku masters, with Bashō, Buson, and Shiki. He wrote over 20,000 haiku, and is also known for his drawings, which frequently illustrated his poetry. He was a lay Buddhist priest.

Three Haiku

by Issa

A world of dew,
and within every dewdrop
A world of struggle.

Goes out, 
comes back—
the love life of a cat.

Blossoms at night,
and the faces of people
moved by music.

– translations not credited

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1927 – Ibn-e-Insha, pen name of Sher Muhammad Khan, who was born in the Punjab in British India; Pakistani poet, humorist, travel writer, and newspaper columnist. After graduating from Punjab University, he migrated to Pakistan and worked in various capacities for Radio Pakistan, the Ministry of Culture, and the National Book Centre of Pakistan. He also served at the UN. He died in London of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at age 50 in January, 1978.

A Boy (Aik Ladka)

by Ibn-e-Insha

I remember those days when I was a little boy,
I went to a see the fair, rocking and jumping with joy,
Everything seemed so eye-catching,
But I had no money, Nothing I could buy,
I returned home with a heavy heart,
Filled with hundreds of unfulfilled desires,
I remember the day when I was a little boy

Well, those days of my deprivation have gone,
Today, with the same pomp and show, The Fair is on,
Today, I can buy, each and every shop,
Today I can purchase the entire world,
I have no apprehension at all,
But, the little boy is no more there

“A Boy (Aik Ladka)” from Urdu, the Final Book: A Modern Urdu Reader, © 1997 by Ibn-e-Insha and translator David John Matthews – Harper Collins Publishers

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1953 – Ana Castillo born in Chicago, Illinois, to a Mexican mother and a father also born in Chicago; Mexican-American author, poet, novelist, editor, playwright, scholar, and human rights activist. She is the editor of La Tolteca, a virtual literary arts magazine. She won an American Book Award for her debut novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters, in 1987, and was the first appointee to the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University. She describes Chicana feminism as Xicanisma, and much of her work centers on identity, racism, sexism, and classism. She often intermingles Spanish and English in her poetry. Her poetry collections include: Otro canto (Another Song); Women Are Not Roses; My Father was a Toltec; and I Ask the Impossible.

Drops Fell on the Roof

by Ana Castillo

Tic, tic, tic,
tic, tic, tic…
A stab
in the chest of the country

and the night didn’t blink
that Valentine’s Day.

A tic, tic, tic fell on the roof
and no one slept, not my love, not the dog, not me

with the news of the latest massacre.
Seventeen children lost their lives.

Students, poets, leaders of the future,
it was seventeen souls that time.

Seventeen, count them in their coffins,
that will never grow older.

Seventeen sons and daughters. Count, if you can,
the screams of the parents and the people.

Domestic terrorism so rampant
in a place that calls itself democracy,

that has made death banal. It began centuries ago.
Men with weapons, haters of humanity, lovers of power

now, they take off their masks, their costumes,
with the blessing of Mr. President. Tic, tic, tic…

drops fell from the sky, and nobody slept,
not my love, not the dog, not me.

“Drops Fell on the Roof” from My Book of the Dead, © 2021 Ana Castillo, translation by Tyehimba Jess with Ana Castillo – University of New Mexico Press

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