From the R&RG Archive: “I Love All Beauteous Things”

August 13, 2015August 12, 2015 / Carolyn O / 5 Comments

Friends, this week has been a busy one. In addition to work and the other work of child-chasing, there’s been traveling and a tiny bit of writing and even reading. I’m *this close* to finishing two books I’m very much enjoying (one novel, one collection of poems), so this week I’m taking you back to the archive, by which I mean a post from 2013, when not too many readers were to be found hereabouts.

I’ve picked this post because of its connection to a favorite book of mine. My sister’s baby shower was this past weekend, and one of the gifts we gave her is a copy of Miss Rumphius, which you must go read for yourself if you haven’t already. And just learned that Barbara Cooney’s original artwork for Miss Rumphius is in the museum at Bowdoin College, which is serendipitous because I know a certain incoming freshman who is just dying to give a museum tour—probably early on a Saturday morning, right?—to his extremely nerdy and old cousin (hey there, FB!) . . .

Robert Bridges’s fine poem is a brief, honestly joyous celebration of the beautiful, and our urge to create something beautiful ourselves. In the second stanza, he writes: “I too will something make / and joy in the making” even if his creation proves ephemeral.

One of the pleasures of this little poem, for me, is that it reminds me of one of my favorite children’s books, Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. In the book, Miss Rumphius (as a child) is told by her grandfather that she must (among other things) over the course of her life do something to make the world more beautiful.

Isn’t that lovely?

I’ve loved this book since I was a little girl, and when I’m feeling reflective, I remember the beautiful illustrations and ask myself if I’ve done anything lately to make the world more beautiful, and, more importantly, what I can still do.

Image courtesy of Tom Curtis / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

(I’ll let you find out for yourself what Miss Rumphius sets out to do.)

“comes a fierce longing”: Countee Cullen’s “To the Swimmer”

August 6, 2015August 3, 2015 / Carolyn O / 2 Comments

Here’s a poem for hot August days: Countee Cullen’s “To the Swimmer.” I love this poem’s long, undulating lines; the phrases roll like waves, their main verbs often placed at the ends of lines. And that last line comes crashing in to shore.

Photo by Matthew Kosloski via Unsplash

“All night it will say one name”: Tess Gallagher’s “Under Stars”

July 30, 2015July 25, 2015 / Carolyn O / 4 Comments

Photo by Blair Fraser via Unsplash

I am very fond of letters, though I am a terrible correspondent, so I loved the opening of Tess Gallagher’s poem “Under Stars,” which imagines what a letter does in a mailbox overnight:

The sleep of this night deepens

because I have walked coatless from the house

carrying the white envelope.

All night it will say one name

in its little tin house by the roadside.

Ms. Gallagher is a poet who I’m just starting to read. I learned from the biographical note on the Poetry Foundation’s site that she is also a short story writer, and I think this remark about how she approaches writing poetry and prose is illuminating:

Of the differences between writing prose and poetry, she said in an interview with Willow Springs: “I feel like prose comes much more from outside me than poetry does. Poetry is intimate and more generated in my own theater, shall we say. But in prose I have to be responsive to that story that’s coming to me and there has to be some part of me that goes out to meet it.”

I wonder how many other writers feel that way.

If you’re a Tess Gallagher fan, please let me know which poems and collections I should seek out!

“larklike over the wheat”: Ted Kooser’s “So This Is Nebraska”

July 23, 2015July 23, 2015 / Carolyn O / 2 Comments

Photo courtesy of Jordan McQueen via Unsplash.

It’s been hot in Boston this week, certainly more hot than I like (which, to be fair, is not very hot at all), but not as hot as it could be. One of the hottest days I remember involved driving through Nebraska in summertime, years ago, when the temperature outside was 106 degrees. I don’t think I’ve seen a thermometer hit that temperature in all the years since.

“So This is Nebraska,” by former poet laureate Ted Kooser, describes that kind of hot day, though with far more attention to detail than I can conjure from memory. And oddly enough, it made me feel a little cooler.

By the way, there’s a bar before the poem that has a recording of Ted Kooser reading the poem. It’s great.

“the world it becomes”: Louise Erdrich’s “Turtle Mountain Reservation”

July 16, 2015July 8, 2015 / Carolyn O / 5 Comments

Ever since I read The Round House (brief review here), I’ve been on the lookout for Louise Erdrich’s books. In Vermont a few weeks ago, at Brattleboro Books, I found a copy of Jacklight (1984), her first collection of poetry, which, though it’s now thirty years old, still feels fresh, full of sharp observations and unexpected turns of phrase. I’ve been reading it slowly, finishing up last week. The poems tell stories that reflect Ms. Erdrich’s Native American and German American background; several are accompanied by short, explanatory notes or epigraphs, which is a poetic practice I happen to love.

I recommend the whole collection, but this week I’ll point you toward “Turtle Mountain Reservation,” the last poem in the book. Dedicated to the poet’s grandfather, it’s a powerful meditation on heritage, aging, and change.

Celebrated Days

July 2, 2015June 28, 2015 / Carolyn O / 2 Comments

Dear Readers, it seems like just yesterday I was writing about We Do! American Leaders Who Believe in Marriage Equality, and now look where we are! We’ve been celebrating not only the wonderful news about marriage equality over the past week with family and friends, but also the birth of our friends’ first baby (hi K and T and baby E!). Here’s an Emily Dickinson poem that reminds us to treasure, to celebrate, the present.

Emily Dickinson
Forever – is composed of Nows –

Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –

From this – experienced Here –
Remove the Dates – to These –
Let Months dissolve in further Months –
And Years – exhale in Years –

Without Debate – or Pause –
Or Celebrated Days –
No different Our Years would be
From Anno Dominies –

“All of us dazzling in the brilliant slanting light”: Barbara Crooker’s “Strewn”

June 25, 2015June 22, 2015 / Carolyn O / 6 Comments

Not exactly right, but you get the idea.

Last week, my uncle, who lives in Maine, came for a visit, which was excellent in all respects except that it was too short. And it just so happened that last week’s American Life in Poetry column, curated by Ted Kooser (which I highly recommend as a way to get into poetry–the poems are about the experiences of everyday life, and are always accessible) featured a poem by Barbara Crooker about the Maine coast.

“Strewn” is beautifully detailed. I love the list of broken shells that the speaker describes, and the idea of the sunlight on the beach like “a rinse / of lemon on a cold plate.” But it’s the turn at the end of the poem that brings the other people on the beach—and by extension the reader—into the speaker’s orbit that still resonates for me days after reading the poem.

“Then he unlocked the back door / and stepped out into the garden”: Paula Meehan’s “My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis”

June 18, 2015June 14, 2015 / Carolyn O / 8 Comments

Photo courtesy Breno Machado via Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I was reading about contemporary Irish poetry (living life in the fast lane, as always), and I learned a little bit about Paula Meehan, named the Ireland Professor of Poetry in 2013. The Irish Times had a feature about her this winter, in which Ciaran Carty wrote,

“It’s more than 40 years, and nine books, since Meehan emerged from childhood in the inner city Dublin tenements to give voice to the disenfranchised everywhere, less in anger than with compassion and an intuitive understanding that, through verse, imbued their lives and memories with mythic dignity.”

Sounds pretty good to me.

Professor Meehan’s poems are a little tricky to find–she doesn’t have an entry at The Poetry Foundation, which is my go-to poetry site, but you can read “Ashes” at Poets.org. The poem that really caught my eye was this one: “My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis,” over at The Poetry Project, which is a site devoted to Irish poetry. It’s a lovely poem, anchored in everyday detail, but transcendent all the same.

“a way to attain a life without boundaries”: Juan Felipe Herrera’s “Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings”

June 11, 2015June 11, 2015 / Carolyn O / 4 Comments

Photo courtesy Modestas Urbonas via Unsplash.

The new Poet Laureate of the United States has just been announced! Juan Felipe Herrera will take up the post in September, the first Chicano poet to do so. He is also the former poet laureate of California. You can read more about him in this Los Angeles Times piece and in this Poetry Foundation profile.

In honor of Mr. Herrera, this week’s poem is “Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings.” Poetry on poetry can be a bit fussy and pretentious, but here the poem takes readers on a sort of breathless tour, and we end up someplace completely different from where we started, a place where we are “thirsty” but where we are drawn into “alarming waters” that nonetheless invite us to “bathe” and “play.” It’s an inventive, exciting poem that conjures up the best of what poetry can do.

Rosemary and Reading Glasses

Reads Worth Remembering

Poem of the Week

Recommended Reading: Simeon Berry’s Ampersand Revisited