Good Morning!

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“The American Dream belongs to all of us.”
– Kamala Harris

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“There are those who will say that the liberation
of humanity, the freedom of man and mind
is nothing but a dream. They are right.
It is the American Dream.”
– Archibald MacLeish,
Librarian of Congress (1939-1944),
poet, author, and playwright

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My dream is of a place and a time
where America will once again be
seen as the last best hope of earth.
– Abraham Lincoln

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13 poets born in
September,
some are famous,
but most aren’t –
yet they all help us
to see differently

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September 15

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1889 – Claude McKay born in Jamaica as Festus Claudius McKay; Jamaican-American poet, author, essayist, and social activist; prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. McKay is best known for his novel, Home to Harlem, which won the 1928 Harmon Gold Award for Literature. He came to the U.S. in 1914 to go to college, but moved to New York City two years later, working as a waiter on the railways, then in a factory, and as an editor of The Liberator.  He joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and became involved with a group of black radicals. McKay wrote one of his best-known poems, “If We Must Die,” in 1919, in response to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings after WWI. He published four collections of poetry, five novels, a novella, short stories, and two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home and My Green Hills of Jamaica.  Disillusioned by communism, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1944, just four years before his death from a heart attack at age 58 in 1948.

 America

by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

“America” from Harlem Shadows: The Poems of Claude McKay, a 2018 reprint of the 1922 edition

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1958 – Brenda Coultas born in Owensboro, Kentucky; American poet, blogger, and academic. She graduated from the University of Southern Indiana, and earned an MFA from Naropa University. Coultas teaches at Touro University in New York. Her poetry collections include: A Journal of Places; A Handmade Museum; The Marvelous Bones of Time; The Tatters; and The Writing of a Hour.

Hour II

by Brenda Coultas

This is the hour of writing, raining and dark days of winter. Of
colds and crap, of umbrellas and hate when the wind blows them
ribs out. My husband follows me from room to room. And I wonder
if my domestic dust is more like “The Story of an Hour” or more
like “The Yellow Wallpaper”?

I cannot distinguish fact from fiction.
Houses from accessories
Bowls from pitchers
Armoires from wardrobes
Carriages from shopping carts

I steal into the ceramic shop to eat from white plates as thin as
saltines, some cabbage-shaped dishes and lobster-handled platters
that the British are so proud of. I carve houses out of a roadside bank
of clay, garages and arches court the danger of collapse and they do
collapse on the best matchbox cars, including sports cars with suicide
doors—and when I am the little match girl, I obsess over haunted
houses as much as Shirley Jackson, and I draw you into a warren
of rooms.

When I return from the hour, Mrs. Mallard is dead, and my partner
stoned and cooking and listening to a podcast of Don Quixote, and we
are both thinking of the Americas.

“Hour II” from The Writing of an Hour, © 2022 by Brenda Coultas –
Wesleyan University Press

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September 16

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1880 – Alfred Noyes born in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands of England; an extraordinarily prolific and popular English poet, short story writer, and playwright. His father had been unable to go to college, but studied on his own, and passed on to his son his knowledge of Latin and Greek, and a love of the written word. Though Alfred Noyes wrote in the 20th century, at heart he was really a 19^th century poet, despising the modernist movement, and continuing to write traditional rhymed verse. As modernist poetry grew in popularity, critics became increasingly harsh in their reviews of his work, but Noyes remained beloved by “ordinary” readers. Noyes wrote his last poem, “Ballade of the Breaking Shell,” in May 1958, one month before his death. He died at age 77, and is still well-remembered for his poem “The Highwayman.”

The Moon is Up

by Alfred Noyes

The moon is up, the stars are bright.
the wind is fresh and free!
We’re out to seek the gold tonight
across the silver sea!
The world is growing grey and old:
break out the sails again!
We’re out to see a Realm of Gold
beyond the Spanish Main.

We’re sick of all the cringing knees,
the courtly smiles and lies
God, let Thy singing channel breeze
lighten our hearts and eyes!
Let love no more be bought and sold
for earthly loss or gain;
We’re out to seek an Age of Gold
beyond the Spanish Main.

Beyond the light of far Cathay,
beyond all mortal dreams,
Beyond the reach of night and day
Our El Dorado gleams,
Revealing – as the skies unfold –
A star without a stain,
The Glory of the Gates of Gold
beyond the Spanish Main.

“The Moon is Up” from The Complete Alfred Noyes: Harmony in Verse – 2023 edition

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1938 – Betty Adcock grew up in San Augustine, Texas, a farming community about 85 miles south of Longview; American poet and writer-in-residence. She was a writer-in-residence at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina (1986-2006), and also was a writer-in-residence at other schools, including Kalamazoo College and Duke University. Adcock has published eight poetry collections, including: Walking out: Poems; The Difficult Wheel; Intervale; Slantwise; and Widow Poems.

No Encore

by Betty Adcock

I’m just an assistant with the Vanishing Act.
My spangled wand points out the disappeared.
It’s only a poor thing made of words, and lacks
the illusive power to light the darkling year.

Not prophecy, not elegy, but fact:
the thing that’s gone is never coming back.

Late or soon a guttering silence will ring down
a curtain like woven smoke on thickening air.
The audience will strain to see what’s there,
the old magician nowhere to be found.

For now, I wear a costume and dance obliquely.
The applause you hear is not for me, its rabid sound
like angry rain—as one by one the known forms cease to be:
childhood, the farm, the river, forested ground;
the tiger and the condor, the whale, the honeybee;
the village, the book, the lantern. Then you. Then me.

“No Encore,” from Rough Fugue, © 2017 by Betty Adcock – Louisiana State University Press

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September 17

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1883 – William Carlos Williams born in Rutherford, New Jersey; American physician, novelist, and poet, who managed to combine life as a small-town doctor with being part of the modern imagist revolution in American prose and poetry. Though born in the U.S., his father was English and his mother was Puerto Rican, a rich and diverse cultural heritage. He later became a mentor to Allen Ginsberg. Williams had a series of heart attacks and strokes in 1948 and 1949, and died at age 79 in March 1963. Among his many poetry collections are: Sour Grapes; An Early Martyr; The Wedge, which was published in a pocket-sized edition for U.S soldiers to carry with them during WWII; the multi-volume Paterson; The Desert Music; and The Red Wheelbarrow.

Poem

by William Carlos Williams

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset—
first the right forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down

into the round
of the empty
flowerpot.

“Poem” from William Carlos Williams: Selected Poems, © 1967 by Mrs. William Carlos Williams; edited by Charles Tomlinson – New Directions Books

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September 18

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1941 – Michael Harnett born in Croom, County Limerick, Ireland; Irish poet and translator who wrote in both English and Irish. He learned Irish as a child from listening to his grandmother speaking it with her friends. Harnett emigrated to England  after completing his secondary education, but some of his writing came to the attention of John Jordan, a poet and professor of English at University College Dublin. Jordon arranged for Harnett to attend the university for a year, and Harnett co-edited the literary magazine Arena during that time. Harnett married in 1966. His first book, Anatomy of a Cliché, published in 1968, was a collection of love poems dedicated to his wife. His work began being published by New Writers Press, including a translation of a traditional tale from the Irish, and his Selected Poems (1970). In 1974, he decided to concentrate on working in Irish, and announced the following year that he was going to “court the language of his people” and stop writing in English. He wrote several works in Irish, and won awards from the Irish Arts Council and the Irish-American Cultural Institute. By 1984, he was writing in both English and Irish. His poetry collections in English include: Poems to Younger Women; The Killing of Dreams; and Selected and New Poems. Harnett died at age 58 in October 1999 from Alcoholic Liver Disease following a stroke. The Collected Poems, A Book of Strays and Translations, was published posthumously.

 A Necklace of Wrens

      For Mícheál Ó Ciarmhaic, file

by Michael Harnett

When I was very young
I found a nest
Its chirping young
were fully fledged.

They rose and re-alighted
around my neck,
Made in the wet meadow
a feather necklet.

To them I was not human
but a stone or tree:
I felt a sharp wonder
they could not feel.

That was when the craft came
which demands respect.
Their talons left on me
scars not healed yet.

“A Necklace of Wrens” from A Necklace of Wrens: Selected Poems, © 1987 by Michael Harnett – Gallery Books

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1952 – Alberto Ríos born in Nogales, Arizona, just across Arizona’s southern border from the city of Nogales in the Mexican state of Sonora; American short story writer, academic, and poet. He has taught at Arizona State University since 1982, and was appointed as Arizona’s first poet laureate in 2013. Among his 13 poetry collections are: Whispering to Fool the Wind; The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body; The World Has Need of You: Poems for Connection; and Not Go Away is My Name.

When Giving Is All We Have

by Alberto Ríos

     One river gives
     Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.
We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.
We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—
Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.
Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:
Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.
You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me
What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made
Something greater from the difference.

“When Giving Is All We Have” from A Small Story About the Sky, © 2014 by Alberto Ríos – Copper Canyon Press

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September 19

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1894 – Rachel Field born in New York City; American novelist, playwright, poet, and children’s author. Hitty, Her First Hundred Years won the 1930 Newbery Award, and was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf. In 1935, the American Booksellers Association awarded Time Out of Mind with its inaugural National Book Award for Most Distinguished Novel. She moved to Hollywood, where her novels Time Out of Mind, All This and Heaven Too, and And Now Tomorrow were made into films. But in March 1942, she died at age 47 of pneumonia following an operation. She faded from public memory until, when 2021 Robin Clifford Wood published The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found.

For A Dog Chasing Fireflies

by Rachel Field

Why do we smile at one who goes
With eager paws and pointing nose;
With rolling eye, and frantic rush
On these small lights mysterious?
Are we more sensible or wise
Because we call them fireflies?
Because from our superior height
We watch you charge each phantom light,
Incredulous, and half afraid,
That such can shine and also fade
Out of your reach to reappear
Ever beyond and never near.
By what sure power do we place
Ourselves above such futile chase,
Who seek more fleeting lights than these
That glitter under darkening trees?

“For a Dog Chasing Fireflies” from Poems, © 1957 by Rachel Field – Macmillan

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1928 – F.D. Reeve born as Franklin D’Olier Reeve in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but grew up near New York City; American academic, poet, author, Russian translator, and editor. He considered a career as an actor, but decided to devote himself to writing instead. He earned degrees from Princeton and Columbia, worked as a Hudson River longshoreman, and then in 1961, was part of one of the first exchanges between the American Council of Learned Societies and the USSR Academy of Sciences. In the summer of 1962, he accompanied Robert Frost to Russia for his meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, serving as Frost’s translator. Reeve taught Russian language and literature at Columbia, then became chair of the Wesleyan University Russian Department, and also taught creative writing and literature at Wesleyan’s inter-disciplinary College of Letters. He married four different women, and was the father of five children, including Christopher Reeve, whose mother Barbara Lamb, was F.D.’s first wife. He and Christopher were estranged for many years, but reconciled after his son was paralyzed in an equestrian accident. He was a founding editor of Poetry Review, and published over two dozen books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and translation. F.D. Reeve died at age 84 from diabetes complications in June 2013. Among his dozen poetry collections are:  The Silent Stones; The Blue Cat; Nightways; Concrete Music; The Moon and Other Failures; and The Blue Cat Walks the Earth.

Identity Crisis

by F. D. Reeve
^.
He was urged to prepare for success: “You never can tell,
he was told over and over; “others have made it;
one dare not presume to predict. You nevercan tell.
^.
Who’s Who in America lists the order of cats
in hunting, fishing, bird-watching, farming,
domestic service–the dictionary order of cats
^.
who have made it. Those not in the book are beyond the pale.
Not to succeed in you chosen profession is unthinkable.
Either you make it or–you’re beyond the pale.
^.
Do you understand?
“No,” he shakes his head.
“Are you ready to forage for freedom?”
“No,” he adds,
“I mean, why is a cat always shaking his head?
^.
Because he’s thinking: who am I? I am not
only one-ninth of myself. I always am
all of the selves I have been and will be but am  not.”
^.
“The normal cat,” I tell him, “soon adjusts
to others and to changing circumstances;
he makes his way the way he soon adjusts.”
^.
“I can’t,” he says, “perhaps because I’m blue,
big-footed, lop-eared, socially awkward, impotent,
and I drink too much, whether because I’m blue
^.
or because I like it, who knows. I want to escape
at five o’clock    into an untouchable world
where the top is the bottom and everyone wants to escape
^.
from the middle, everyone, every day. I mean,
I have visions of two green eyes rising
out of the ocean, blinking, knowing what I mean.”
^.
“Never mind the picture, repeat after me
the self’s creed. What he tells you you
tells me and I repeats. Now, after me:
^.
I love myself, I wish I would live well.
Your gift of love breaks through my self-defeat.
All prizes are blue. No cat admits defeat.
The next time that he lives he will live well.”
^.

“Identity Crisis” from The Return of the Blue Cat, © 2005 by F. D. Reeve – Other Press

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September 20

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1928 – Donald Hall born in Hamden, Connecticut; American poet, writer, editor, and literary critic. Author of over 50 books, from children’s literature, biography, memoir, and essays, to 22 volumes of verse. He was the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), and won the Robert Frost Medal in 1991. He and poet Jane Kenyon were married from 1972 until her death from leukemia at age 47 in 1995. Hall was appointed as U.S. Poet Laureate (2006–2007). His many poetry collections include Exiles and Marriages; The Happy Man; The One Day; Without; The Painted Bed; and The Back Chamber. Hall died of cancer at age 89 in June 2018.

The Blue Wing

by Donald Hall

She was all around me
like a rainy day,
and though I walked bareheaded
I was not wet. I walked
on a bare path
singing light songs
about women.

A blue wing tilts at the edge of the sea.

The wreck of a small
airplane sleeps
drifted to the high tide line,
tangled in seaweed, green
glass from the sea.

The tiny skeleton inside
Remembers the falter of the engines, the
silence, the cry without
answer, the long dying
into and out of the sea.

“The Blue Wing,” © 1968 by Donald Hall, appeared in the November 1968 issue of Poetry magazine

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1954 – Wyatt Townley born in Kansas City, Missouri; American poet, nonfiction writer, and yoga instructor. She was the 4^th Poet Laureate of Kansas (2013-2015). Her debut poetry collection, Perfectly Normal, was published in 1990; followed by The Afterlives of Trees, which won the 2012 Nelson Poetry Book Award; The Breathing Field; and Rewriting the Body. She also wrote two books on yoga and a history of the Kansas City Ballet. Townley currently lives in Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

The Breathing Field

by Wyatt Townley

Between each vertebra
is the through line
of your life’s story,
where the setting sun
has burned all colors
into the cord.  Step

over.  Put on the dark
shirt of stars.
A full moon rises
over the breathing field,
seeps into clover and the brown
lace of its roots
where insects are resting

their legs.  Take in the view.
So much is still
to be seen.  Get back
behind your back, behind
what is behind you.

“The Breathing Field” from The Breathing Field, © 2002 by Wyatt Townley – Little, Brown and Company

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September 21

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1936 – Janet Burroway born in Tucson, Arizona; American novelist, memoirist, short story writer, translator, playwright, children’s author, poet, and how-to author. Her entry into college at the University of Arizona was made possible by scholarships from local men’s clubs, but she won the Mademoiselle Magazine College Board Contest in 1955, and that opened up other scholarships to Barnard College and Cambridge in the UK, where she earned her MA. Burroway then taught at the University of Sussex (1965-1970), and Florida State University in Tallahassee (1972-2002). Her 1969 novel The Buzzards was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but her best-known book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, published in 1982, is in its 10^th edition, and widely used as a textbook in writing programs across the U.S. Her best-known novel is Raw Silk, published in 1977. Her poetry has been published in magazines, including Granta, The Atlantic, New Statesman, and Prairie Schooner.

 Post

by Janet Burroway

Notwithstanding you are in your grave
these fifteen months
you are invited to apply
for a fixed-rate zero-percent American
Express. Your mortgage has been pre-approved
(some conditions may apply).
Your life assurance is inadequate.
Please fill in this form,
and are you interested
in long-term care?
Brown’s Catalogue is the source
for all your survival needs.
Until it expires
this coupon entitles you to twenty percent
off at Bed, Bath & Beyond.
The GOP requests
asap the return of this questionnaire
on which significant issues of the day
you find most urgent,
and the NRA
needs your support to protect our citizens
against curtailment of their inalienable right
to bear arms.
Hello! The class of eighty-six
hopes you will join them for their twentieth,
and would you like the chicken or the fish?

“Post” from The Tim Poems, © 2006 by Janet Burroway, which appeared in the Prairie Schooner Fall 2006 issue

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1945 – Kay Ryan born in San Jose, California; American poet and community college English teacher. She called her childhood home a place of silence, where “being a poet would be thought of as putting on airs.” Ryan published Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends privately in 1983. The Niagara River, her 6^th book, won the 2004 Ruth Lily Poetry Prize. She was a surprise choice for U.S. Poet Laureate (2008-2010). “I felt completely unequal to the task. I thought, no, never in a million years …” In spite of her self-doubts, and the diagnosis of her life partner, Carol Adair, with advanced stage cancer, she accepted, and during her tenure emphasized the value of community colleges. Adair died in 2009, during Ryan’s second term. Ryan won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems.  In 2013, President Barack Obama presented her with a National Humanities Medal. She published Erratic Facts in 2015.

The Best Of It

 by Kay Ryan

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.

“The Best of It” from The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, © 2010 by Kay Ryan – Grove Press

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