Good Morning!

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We are what we repeatedly
do. Excellence then is not
an act, but a habit.”
― Aristotle

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“Listen, are you breathing just
a little, and calling it a life?”
― Mary Oliver, from
“Have You Ever Tried to Enter
the Long Black Branches?”

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“What you do makes a difference,
and you have to decide what kind
of difference you want to make.”
― Jane Goodall

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13 poets born in September,
12 Americans ― though
one came from Ukraine,
another left and never
came back, and one
was a rebel in exile.

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September 8

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1940 – Jack Prelutsky born in Brooklyn, New York; prolific American poet and singer-songwriter. Most often writing for children, he has published over 50 poetry collections. Before becoming a writer, he  sang in coffee house, and worked odd jobs including driving a cab, moving furniture, busboy, potter, woodworker, and door-to-door salesman. He was appointed as the first U.S. Children’s Laureate by the Poetry Foundation (2006-2008). His many poetry collections include Me I Am; My Dog May Be a Genius; I’ve Lost My Hippopotamus; and Sardines Swim High Across the Sky.

If Not for the Cat

by Jack Prelutsky

If not for the cat,
And the scarcity of cheese,
I could be content.

“If Not for the Cat” from If Not for the Cat, © 2004 by Jack Prelutsky – Greenwillow Books

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1952 – Linda D. Addison born in Philadelphia PA; American poet and writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. The eldest of nine children, she graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1975 with a B.S. in Mathematics. Addison wrote and submitted short stories to magazines like Asimov’s Science Fiction, and her work was included in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2000) before she began concentrating on poetry. She was the first African American winner of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award in the poetry category in 2007, and has since won it four more times. The HWA honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. Her poetry collections include: Animated Objects; Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes; Being Full of Light, Insubstantial; and How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend.

Fear and Loathing in the Writer’s Den

by Linda D. Addison

To write or not to write
she couldn’t find the words to start,
“Come, let’s play” her lover pleaded
while her characters fell flat.

She looked down at delicate furry feet
no fingers clutched the wrinkled paper,
this wasn’t right – not at all
this story was not coming together.

Perhaps she should just write the outline
if only she had a beginning,
tapioca pudding lapped at her paws
there was a snap of leather behind her.

Her lover chirped at her
maybe a little diversion would help,
she pulled at the satin corset,
this might not be the novel to start her career.

“Fear and Loathing in the Writer’s Den” © 2018 by Linda D. Addison,  was featured at Erin Al-Mehairi’s Hook of a Book! site on April 27, 2018

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1955 – Terry Tempest Williams born in Corona CA, but grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah; prolific American author focused on social and environmental justice, poet, historian, memoirist, essayist, nonfiction writer, children’s author, and activist for wilderness preservation, women’s health, and against nuclear testing. Her family, along with many others in the region were exposed to radiation from the Nevada Test Site – 16 members of the family developed cancer, including seven who died. She has protested against nuclear testing both in Nevada and in Washington DC. Her mostly prose works include: Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger; Desert Quartet; Leap; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; and Erosion. Among her poetry collections are: Between Cattails and The Illuminated Desert (both for children); and Earthly Messengers.

I was not alone

by Terry Tempest Williams

One night, a full moon watched over me like a mother.
In the blue light of the Basin, I saw a petroglyph on a large boulder.
It was a spiral. I placed the tip of my finger on the center and began
tracing the coil around and around. It spun off the rock.
My finger kept circling the land, the lake, the sky.
The spiral became larger and larger until it became a halo of stars
in the night sky above Stansbury Island.
A meteor flashed and as quickly disappeared.
The waves continued to hiss and retreat, hiss and retreat.
In the West Desert of the Great Basin, I was not alone.

“I was not alone” from Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, © 1991, 2018 by Terry Tempest Williams – Vintage Books

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September 9

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1868 – Mary Hunter Austin born Carlinville, Illinois; prolific American novelist, essayist, poet, short story writer, playwright, and a pioneering writer about nature in the U.S. Southwest; her classic book, The Land of Little Rain (1903), describes the fauna, flora, people and their mysticism and spirituality, in the region between the High Sierra and the Mojave Desert of Southern California. Her book The American Rhythm, which she called a “re-expression” of Native American poems and songs, was part of her efforts to preserve American Indian culture. She died at age 65 in August 1934.

Medicine Song: To Be Sung in Time of Evil Fortune

English Interpretation by Mary Hunter Austin

Medicine me,
O Friend-of-the-Soul-of-Man,
With purging waters!
For my soul festers
And an odor of corruption
Betrays me to disaster.

As a place of carrion
Where buzzards are gathered,
So is my path
Overshadowed by evil adventures;
Meanness, betrayal, and spite
Flock under heaven
To make me aware
Of sickness and death within me.

Medicine my soul, O friend,
With waters of cleansing;
Then shall my way shine,
And my nights no longer
Be full of the dreadful sound
Of the wings of unsuccesses.

“Medicine Song: To Be Sung in Time of Evil Fortune” (from the Paiute Indian Dialect, done into English by Mary Hunter Austin) from The American Rhythm, originally published in 1930 – Sunstone Press 2007 facsimile edition

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1934 – Sonia Sanchez born Wilsonia Benita Driver in Birmingham Alabama; American Black Arts Movement poet; essayist, short story writer, and children’s author. She was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and briefly joined the Nation of Islam in the 1970s, but left because of their views on women’s rights. Sanchez was a pioneer in developing Black Studies courses, including a class in African American women’s literature. She has published over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories and children’s books. Her poetry collections include Homecoming; We a BaddDDD People; Shake Loose My Skin; and Does Your House Have Lions? Sanchez has been honored with the Robert Frost Medal and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. She was the first Poet Laureate of the city of Philadelphia (2012-2014).

For Sister Gwen Brooks

by Sonia Sanchez

you tell the stars
don’t be jealous of her light
you tell the ocean,
you call out to Olukun,
to bring her always to
safe harbor,
for she is a holy one
this woman twirling
her emerald lariat
you tell the night
to move gently
into morning so she’s
not startled,
you tell the morning
to ease her into a water
fall of dreams
for she is a holy one
restringing her words
from city to city
so that we live and
breathe and smile and
breathe and love and
breathe her…
this Gwensister called life.

“For Sister Gwen Brooks” from Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums, © 1998 by Sonia Sanchez – Beacon Press

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1942 – Sue Owen grew up in Madison, Wisconsin; American poet, writer, and academic known for her often dark humor. After earning a MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, Vermont, she taught poetry classes before joining the faculty at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she taught until 2005. Her poetry collections include: Nursery Rhymes for the Dead; The Book of Winter, which won The Journal Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize in 1987; My Doomsday Sampler; and The Devil’s Cookbook.

Crickets

by Sue Owen

Some summer nights you
can hear them getting all
worked up over this idea
of cheerfulness and song.

Deep in the grasses where
they hide, there is a need
to be heard in the darkness,
even if their voices are

so small they sound
like a door creaking on
its hinge, or the squeak
a drawer makes when

it opens up at last.
It seems as if the damp
air and dew are trying
to hold their song down

out of sheer gravity,
but neither dampness nor
darkness makes them stop.
In fact, the crickets like

to show off their song,
to let it lift up off
the earth the way that
all notes rise to the stars,

and float up through the
thick night, as if their
joy itself were the only light
we needed to follow.

“Crickets” © 1999 by Sue Owen, from The Yellow Shoe Poets: Selected Poems (1964-1999) – Louisiana State University Press

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September 10

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1886 – H.D. born as Hilda Dolittle in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; American poet, novelist, essayist, and memoirist. Ezra Pound coined the term “imagist” to describe her early poems, and those of Amy Lowell, D. H. Lawrence, T. E. Hulme, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, but the imagist label quickly went out of fashion. She was the literary editor of The Egoist journal (1915-1918). H.D. frequently used Greek mythology and insights from psychoanalysis in her work. After her death in 1961, her work was on the way to obscurity until rediscovered by feminist scholars. H.D. is now an icon for feminists and the LGBTQ Community. Her poetry collections include Sea Garden; Hymen; Hippolytus Temporizes; The Wall Do Not Fall; and Helen in Eqypt.

 Evening

by H.D.

The light passes
from ridge to ridge,
from flower to flower—
the hepaticas, wide-spread
under the light
grow faint—
the petals reach inward,
the blue tips bend
toward the bluer heart
and the flowers are lost.

The cornel-buds are still white,
but shadows dart
from the cornel-roots—
black creeps from root to root,
each leaf
cuts another leaf on the grass,
shadow seeks shadow,
then both leaf
and leaf-shadow are lost

“Evening” from Collected Poems 1912-1944, © 1982 by the Estate of Hilda Dolittle – New Directions Publishing

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1935 – Mary Oliver born in Maple Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio; prolific and popular American poet who won the 1992 National Book Award for her New and Selected Poems, and the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive. She died of lymphoma at age 83 in January 2019. Among her many poetry collections are Sleeping in the Forest; Why I Wake Early; Blue Iris; Dog Songs; and Blue Horses.

 I Worried

by Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And I gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

“I Worried” from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems, © 2010 by Mary Oliver – Beacon Press

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September 11

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1941 – Miguel Algarín born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, who came to New York City in the 1950s; American poet, writer, anthologist, translator, and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café in 1973, a place where Puerto Rican and African-American poets and playwrights could present their work. He was also a professor of English, and taught Shakespeare, creative writing, and U.S. ethnic literature at Rutgers University. In 2009, he was the first Latino to win the American Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Award.  Miguel Algarín died at age 79 from sepsis in November 2020. His collections include: Time’s Now/Ya Es Tiempo; Love is Hard Work: Memorias de Loisaida; and Mongo Affair: Poems.

Not Tonight but Tomorrow (1978)

by Miguel Algarín

Not tonight but tomorrow
when the light turns the peach
tree green and the Earth sprouts
its young leaves looking to repeat
the magical mystery tour of
photosynthetic conversion of light
and moisture into life—
Not tonight but tomorrow
when my body will have shed
its fear of turning old and soft
will I turn my speeding mind
into the tunnels of your psyche
to melt the calcium that constipates
your synapses into a lubricating powder—
Not tonight but tomorrow
when the Universe moves on
beyond the field of action
that is the Earth to me and you
will I discover the interplanetary clues
that signal the roots of my moment to you—
Not tonight but tomorrow
will I throw my feelings into
New York streets to stew
in the violence and despair
of our planet—
Not tonight but tomorrow
will the Earth turn green again.

“Not Tonight but Tomorrow (1978)” from Survival Supervivencia, © 2009 by Miguel Algarín – Arte Público Press

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September 12

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1902 – Marya Zaturenska born in Kyiv, Ukraine; American author and lyric poet who won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection, Cold Morning Sky; she came to the U.S. with her family when she was 8 years old; as a teenager, she worked in a clothing factory during the day while attending high school classes at night, and won scholarships to attend college. She published eight volumes of poetry, edited six poetry anthologies, and published A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940. She died at age 79 in January 1982. Her husband, fellow poet Horace Gregory, died two months later. They had been married since 1925.  She wrote “Reflections on a Centaur” for him.

Reflections on a Centaur

by Marya Zaturenska

The years grow small and gray
Above the immobile hills,
I see them float away–

Neither have I grown rich,
Or deeper, more serene:
I am what I have been.

Drink, then, with vivid eyes
This brief and changing world
Of morning light and skies;

Observe this marble faun
Whose cool archaic head
Shines out across the lawn–

Mosaic of my blood,
Of each experience,
Carve something large and good.

So will the lost years fly
Nor will I turn, nor heed
Time’s centaur, or his speed.

“Reflections on a Centaur” from Collected Poems, © 1965 by Marya Zaturenska –
The Macmillan Company

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September 13

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1876 – Sherwood Anderson born in Camden, Ohio; American short story writer, novelist, non-fiction author, poet, and newspaper editor. Best known for his short stories, especially his collection Winesburg, Ohio, which has twice been adapted as a play, by Christopher Sergel in 1958, and by Eric Rosen in 2002. His two poetry collections are Mid-American Chants and A New Testament. He died at age 64 from peritonitis in March 1941.

Evening Song

by Sherwood Anderson

My song will rest while I rest. I struggle along. I’ll get back to the corn and
the open fields. Don’t fret, love, I’ll come out all right.

Back of Chicago the open fields. Were you ever there—trains coming toward
you out of the West—streaks of light on the long gray plains? Many a
song—aching to sing.

I’ve got a gray and ragged brother in my breast—that’s a fact. Back of
Chicago the open fields—long trains go west too—in the silence. Don’t
fret, love. I’ll come out all right.

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September 14

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1843 – Lola Rodríguez de Tió born in San Germán, Puerto Rico, when the island was still under Spanish rule; Puerto Rican poet, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist. After her marriage in 1863 to Bonocio Tió Segarra, she became a writer and book importer, and published her first book of poetry, Mis Cantos (My Songs). She and her husband were banished twice for their political activities and writings advocating Puerto Rican independence from Spain. They lived in Venezuela and New York before settling in Cuba. In 1901, she was a co-founder and member of the Cuban Academy of Arts and Letters, and also served as an inspector of schools. Their home was a gathering place for Cuban intellectuals and politicians, and Puerto Rican exiles. She died in Havana at age 81 in November 1924, leaving a legacy of books and patriotic poetry, including new revolutionary lyrics for the song “La Boriqueña.” In 2014, she was one of 12 Puerto Rican women honored with plaques in La Plaza en Honor a la Mujer Puertorriqueña (Plaza in Honor of Puerto Rican Women) in San Juan.

The Hours

by Lola Rodríguez de Tió

How joyful are the hours! like a flock
of doves that wanders across the skies
tearing apart the frail veil of dawn,
making brighter the iridescent light.

Thus they cross the bluish atmosphere,
in a raucous rumble yet peaceful flight,
bringing an illusion, a new yearning,
to my happy muse in-love.

I feel them pass by, by good fortune,
like extremely pure moonbeams
that sweetly bathe my fantasies;

and my last hour I only wish
that it comes very late to my home,
where love has a fervent altar.

 – translator not credited

“Las Horas” from Claros y Nieblas: Poesias, Lola Rodríguez de Tió – 1885 Spanish-language edition, 2010 reprint by Kessinger Publishing

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1860 – Hamlin Garland born in West Salem, Wisconsin; prolific American novelist, poet, biographer, essayist and short story writer, who grew up on a farm in the Midwest. He was also a Georgist (proponent of the “single tax movement” based on the writings of Henry George), and a parapsychology researcher. He is best known for his Middle Border series. A Daughter of the Middle Border won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. It is the sequel to his autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border. He devoted his last years to investigating psychic phenomena, which was the subject of his final book, The Mystery of the Buried Crosses, published in 1939.

The Cry of the Age

by Hamlin Garland

What shall I do to be just?
What shall I do for the gain
Of the world—for its sadness?
Teach me, O Seers that I trust!
Chart me the difficult main
Leading out of my sorrow and madness
Preach me the purging of pain.
Shall I wrench from my finger the ring
To cast to the tramp at my door?
Shall I tear off each luminous thing
To drop in the palm of the poor?
What shall I do to be just?
Teach me, O Ye in the light.
Whom the poor and the rich alike trust:
My heart is aflame to be right.

“The Cry of the Age” is in the public domain.

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