tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73422856716411031412024-02-19T03:55:15.813-05:00Monday PoemsCarol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comBlogger292125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-47254765087797747652016-10-31T09:47:00.001-04:002016-10-31T09:47:05.592-04:00In Praise of Coldness"If you wish to move your reader,"<br />
Chekhov wrote, "you must write more coldly."<br />
<br />
Herakleitos recommended, "A dry soul is best."<br />
<br />
And so at the center of many great works<br />
is found a preserving dispassion,<br />
like the vanishing point of quattrocento perspective,<br />
or the tiny packets of desiccant enclosed<br />
in a box of new shoes or seeds.<br />
<br />
But still the vanishing point<br />
is not the painting,<br />
the silica is not the blossoming plant.<br />
<br />
Chekhov, dying, read the timetables of trains.<br />
To what more earthly thing could he have been faithful? -<br />
Scent of rocking distances,<br />
smoke of blue trees out the window,<br />
hampers of bread, pickled cabbage, boiled meat.<br />
<br />
Scent of the knowable journey.<br />
<br />
Neither a person entirely broken<br />
nor one entirely whole can speak.<br />
<br />
In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Jane Hirshfield, 2005<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-77583479576870738042016-10-24T09:06:00.000-04:002016-10-24T09:06:39.113-04:00PeachesA crate of peaches straight from the farm<br />
has to be maintained, or eaten in days.<br />
Obvious, but in my family, they went so fast,<br />
I never saw the mess that punishes delay.<br />
<br />
I thought everyone bought fruit by the crate,<br />
stored it in the coolest part of the house,<br />
then devoured it before any could rot.<br />
I'm from the Peach State, and to those<br />
<br />
who ask <i>But where are you from originally,</i><br />
I'd like to reply <i>The homeland of the peach,</i><br />
but I'm too nice, and they might not look it up.<br />
In truth, the reason we bought so much<br />
<br />
did have to do with being Chinese - at least<br />
Chinese in that part of America, both strangers<br />
and natives on a lonely, beautiful street<br />
where food came in stackable containers<br />
<br />
and fussy bags, unless you bothered to drive<br />
to the source, where the same money landed<br />
a bushel of fruit, a twenty-pound sack of rice.<br />
You had to drive anyway, each house surrounded<br />
<br />
by land enough to grow your own, if lawns<br />
hadn't been required. At home I loved to stare<br />
into the extra freezer, reviewing mountains<br />
of foil-wrapped meats, cakes, juice concentrate,<br />
<br />
mysterious packets brought by houseguests<br />
from New York Chinatown, to be transformed<br />
by heat, force, and my mother's patient effort,<br />
enough to keep us fed through flood or storm,<br />
<br />
provided the power stayed on, or fire and ice<br />
could be procured, which would be labor-intensive,<br />
but so was everything else my parents did.<br />
Their lives were labor, they kept this from the kids,<br />
<br />
who grew up to confuse work with pleasure,<br />
to become typical immigrants' children,<br />
taller than their parents and unaware of hunger<br />
except when asked the odd, perplexing question.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Adrienne Su, 2015<br />
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<br />Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-9929931277454640092016-10-17T08:04:00.000-04:002016-10-17T08:04:04.569-04:00LandscapeTime passed, turning everything to ice.<div>
Under the ice, the future stirred.</div>
<div>
If you fell into it, you died.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It was a time</div>
<div>
of waiting, of suspended action.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I lived in the present, which was</div>
<div>
that part of the future you could see.</div>
<div>
The past floated above my head,</div>
<div>
like the sun and moon, visible but never reachable.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It was a time</div>
<div>
governed by contradictions, as in</div>
<div>
<i>I felt nothing</i> and</div>
<div>
<i>I was afraid</i>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Winter emptied the trees, filled them again with snow.</div>
<div>
Because I couldn't feel, snow fell, the lake froze over.</div>
<div>
Because I was afraid, I didn't move;</div>
<div>
my breath was white, a description of silence.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Time passed, and some of it became this.</div>
<div>
And some of it simply evaporated;</div>
<div>
you could see it float above the white trees</div>
<div>
forming particles of ice.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All your life, you wait for the propitious time.</div>
<div>
Then the propitious time</div>
<div>
reveals itself as action taken.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I watched the past move, a line of clouds moving</div>
<div>
from left to right or right to left,</div>
<div>
depending on the wind. Some days</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
there was no wind. The clouds seemed</div>
<div>
to stay where they where,</div>
<div>
like a painting of the sea, more still than real.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Some days the lake was a sheet of glass.</div>
<div>
Under the glass, the future made</div>
<div>
demure, inviting sounds;</div>
<div>
you had to tense yourself so as not to listen.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Time passed; you got to see a piece of it.</div>
<div>
The years it took with it were years of winter;</div>
<div>
they would not be missed. Some days</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
there were no clouds, as though</div>
<div>
the sources of the past had vanished. The world</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
was bleached, like a negative; the light passed</div>
<div>
directly through it. Then</div>
<div>
the image faded.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Above the world</div>
<div>
there was only blue, blue everywhere.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</div>
<div>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</div>
<div>
by Louise Gluck, 2003<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div>
Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-33953663212723938762016-10-10T08:27:00.000-04:002016-10-10T08:27:52.938-04:00The House Was Quiet and The World Was CalmThe house was quiet and the world was calm.<br />
The reader became the book; and summer night<br />
<br />
Was like the conscious being of the book.<br />
The house was quiet and the world was calm.<br />
<br />
The words were spoken as if there was no book,<br />
Except that the reader leaned above the page,<br />
<br />
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be<br />
The scholar to whom his book is true, whom<br />
<br />
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.<br />
The house was quiet because it had to be.<br />
<br />
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:<br />
The access to the perfection of the page.<br />
<br />
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,<br />
In which there is no other meaning, itself<br />
<br />
Is calm, itself in summer and night, itself<br />
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Wallace Stevens, 1947<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-66917264861859379522016-10-03T08:03:00.000-04:002016-10-03T08:03:55.144-04:00The SecretTwo girls discover<br />
the secret of life<br />
in a sudden line of<br />
poetry.<br />
<br />
I who don't know the<br />
secret wrote<br />
the line. They<br />
told me<br />
<br />
(through a third person)<br />
they had found it<br />
but not what it was<br />
not even<br />
<br />
what line it was. No doubt<br />
by now, more than a week<br />
later, they have forgotten<br />
the secret,<br />
<br />
the line, the name of<br />
the poem. I love them<br />
for finding what<br />
I can't find,<br />
<br />
and for loving me<br />
for the line I wrote,<br />
and for forgetting it<br />
so that<br />
<br />
a thousand times, till death<br />
finds them, they may<br />
discover it again, in other<br />
lines<br />
<br />
in other<br />
happenings. And for<br />
wanting to know it,<br />
for<br />
<br />
assuming there is<br />
such a secret, yes,<br />
for that<br />
most of all.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Denise Levertov, 1966<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-84319251345523790512016-09-26T08:03:00.000-04:002016-09-26T08:03:37.639-04:00Imaginary NumberThe mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed<br />
<div>
is not big and is not small.</div>
<div>
Big and small are</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
comparative categories, and to what</div>
<div>
could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed</div>
<div>
be compared?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Consciousness observes and is appeased.</div>
<div>
The soul scrambles across the screes.</div>
<div>
The soul,</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
like the square root of minus 1,</div>
<div>
is an impossibility that has its uses.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</div>
<div>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</div>
<div>
by Vijay Seshadri, 2012<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-50896199006414764402016-09-19T07:21:00.000-04:002016-09-19T07:21:02.801-04:00DewNone are more familiar with dew<br />
than professional footballers. From early<br />
grades they are used to running through<br />
practice drills and hurling their burly<br />
frames through rucks while the moist chaff<br />
of wet grass under the winter lights<br />
softens their fall, accustoms the half-<br />
back to the slippery ball and writes<br />
green cuneiform on wet sandshoes.<br />
And they fear it in the morning,<br />
kicking off the dew in the 'twos'<br />
because they ignored a coach's warning.<br />
Half their lives are spent in clouds<br />
of condensation or the cold heat<br />
of a winter sun where even the crowds<br />
seem like droplets on the concrete<br />
rose of the stadium. In the final days<br />
of their season, sweat-spangled on the eve<br />
of their triumph, the ball on a string and their plays<br />
honed, even the doubters believe.<br />
And the last day is, once again,<br />
already an aftermath: the ground's been shaved<br />
and sucked dry by the noon sun<br />
and the paddock has become a paved<br />
and bristled hell for those who will<br />
collide with it and pinion flesh on<br />
earth, earth on flesh and spill<br />
blood for the sake of the game. Possession<br />
is the law, all are possessed.<br />
And when the crowd melts into the dry<br />
darkness, after that great red football's<br />
booted between the uprights of the sky<br />
scrapers and gone, the sky bawls<br />
cheerless little drops for the victors<br />
and decks the oval with the losers' jewels.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by David Musgrave, 2007<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-5170063883511028672016-09-12T07:58:00.001-04:002016-09-12T07:58:05.961-04:00WaitingLeft off the highway and<br />
down the hill. At the<br />
bottom, hang another left.<br />
Keep bearing left. The road<br />
will make a Y. Left again.<br />
There's a creek on the left.<br />
Keep going. Just before<br />
the road ends, there'll be<br />
another road. Take it<br />
and no other. Otherwise,<br />
your life will be ruined<br />
forever. There's a log house<br />
with a shake roof, on the left.<br />
It's not that house. It's<br />
the next house, just over<br />
a rise. The house<br />
where trees are laden with<br />
fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,<br />
and marigold grow. It's<br />
the house where the woman<br />
stands in the doorway<br />
wearing sun in her hair. The one<br />
who's been waiting<br />
all this time.<br />
The woman who loves you.<br />
The one who can say,<br />
"What's kept you?"<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Raymond Carver, 1996<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-9589818106541695912016-09-05T07:10:00.000-04:002016-09-05T07:10:12.852-04:00After WorkThey're heading home with their lights on, dust and wood glue,<br />
yellow dome lights on their metallic long beds: 250s, 2500s -<br />
as much overtime as you want, deadline, dotted line, dazed<br />
through the last hours, dried primer on their knuckles,<br />
sawdust calf-high on their jeans, scraped boots, the rough<br />
plumbing and electric in, way ahead of the game except for<br />
the check, such a clutter of cans and ice-tea bottles, napkins,<br />
coffee cups, paper plates on the front seat floor with cords<br />
and saws, tired above the eyes, back of the beyond, thirsty.<br />
There's a parade of them through the two-lane highways,<br />
proudest on their way home, the first turn out of the jobsite,<br />
the first song with the belt off, pure breath of being alone<br />
for now, for now the insight of a full and answerable man.<br />
No one can take away the contentment of the first few miles<br />
and they know they can't describe it, the black and purple sky.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by John Maloney, 2007<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-19114440107475515772016-08-01T00:28:00.000-04:002016-08-01T00:28:02.087-04:00For the ShopHe wrapped them up carefully, neatly,<br />
in expensive green silk.<br />
Roses of rubies, lilies of pearl,<br />
violets of amethyst: beautiful according to his taste,<br />
to his desire, his vision - not as he saw them in nature<br />
or studied them. He'll leave them in the safe,<br />
examples of his bold, his skillful work.<br />
Whenever a customer comes into the shop,<br />
he brings out other things to sell - first class ornaments:<br />
bracelets, chains, necklaces, rings.<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by C. P. Cavafy, 1913<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-65723796753880938682016-07-25T08:14:00.000-04:002016-07-25T08:14:55.483-04:00FrameThe tree that had patiently framed our view<br />
turned on us once and swelled<br />
with an issue of birds. Each orange breast<br />
too large for its spine, they threatened to drop<br />
and splatter like so many fruits. I'm frightened<br />
<br />
of birds in the first place. In Illinois<br />
they stay the right size and only come out by ones<br />
and twos, but I won't go barefoot. Remember<br />
the crack of a wing in the grass? It was warmer<br />
than grass.<br />
<br />
I still think the window kept us straight. Twice<br />
a day the light congealed, we could or couldn't<br />
see the bridge for fog. Either way was reassuring.<br />
And if someone had asked, the branch<br />
was too parochial, we knew it<br />
<br />
no? making order out of all that sky.<br />
When better dyes arrived in the wagons of entrepreneurs,<br />
the Navajo weavers knew craft and a past<br />
from nostalgia: they began on brighter rugs.<br />
At one point in the border of each, an erratic line<br />
<br />
a single stitch wide joins the outside<br />
to the pattern at the heart. On a <i>spirit line</i>,<br />
does the spirit come in or depart? Our birds<br />
had been eating what the rain turned up,<br />
new rain got rid of the birds. I'm thinking of you.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Linda Gregerson, 1980<br />
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<br />Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-5767930492494329212016-07-18T07:38:00.000-04:002016-07-18T07:38:39.534-04:00Idle in SummerI sit in meditation in the long summer,<br />
not a single word all day.<br />
You ask me how can I do that?<br />
My heart is at ease when I have nothing to do.<br />
Fishing boats are returning in fine drizzle,<br />
children are noisy in woods.<br />
Northern wind suddenly turns south,<br />
the sun sets behind a distant mountain.<br />
I feel happy at this scene<br />
and pour a drink to go with this great mood.<br />
Gulls fly away from the pond.<br />
In twos they keep coming back.<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Gao Panlong, 1500s AD<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-3543127025494565962016-07-11T08:23:00.001-04:002016-07-11T08:23:13.447-04:00from Night Sky<i>To Linda Connor</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
If the photographers are soul-thieves, whose soul is being stolen in a<br />
photograph of the night sky?<br />
The soul of the last one to go to bed and the soul of the first one to<br />
rise in the morning, perhaps?<br />
Photography is a black art like alchemy. It turns matter into spirit<br />
and spirit into matter.<br />
Still, there are moments when looking at a photograph of a night<br />
sky we have a hunch of what the word <i>soul</i> means, what the word <i>infinity</i><br />
encompasses.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Charles Simic, 1996<br />
<br />
<i>In 1996 the Whitney Museum published a limited edition book,</i><br />
<i>"On the Music of the Spheres," of Linda Connor's photographs of the</i><br />
<i>night sky. </i><i>Charles Simic wrote a long poem, "Night Sky," to accompany</i><br />
<i>the photographs.</i><br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-16391833123430559732016-07-04T08:26:00.000-04:002016-07-04T08:26:14.965-04:00The New ColossusNot like the brazen giant of Greek fame,<br />
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;<br />
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand<br />
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame<br />
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name<br />
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand<br />
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command<br />
The air-bridge harbor that twin cities frame.<br />
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she<br />
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,<br />
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,<br />
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.<br />
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,<br />
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Emma Lazarus, 1883<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-90513384605965887572016-06-27T08:29:00.001-04:002016-06-27T08:29:21.211-04:00WolvesI do not want to be reflective any more<br />
Envying and despising unreflective things<br />
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting<br />
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand<br />
Flushed by the children's bedtime, level with the shore.<br />
<br />
The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want<br />
To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,<br />
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus<br />
But to keep my eye only on the nearest future<br />
And after that let the sea flow over us.<br />
<br />
Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle,<br />
Join hands and make believe that joined<br />
Hands will keep away the wolves of water<br />
Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed<br />
That no one hears them among the talk and the laughter.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Louis MacNeice, 1935<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-43632120171572927092016-06-20T09:03:00.000-04:002016-06-20T09:03:53.422-04:00Sketching ThingsSlender clouds. On the pavilion a small rain.<br />
Noon, but I'm too lazy to open the far cloister.<br />
I sit looking at moss so green<br />
my clothes are soaked with color.<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Wan Wei, 701-761 AD<br />
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<br />Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-31596937341281120292016-06-13T19:45:00.000-04:002016-06-13T19:47:35.954-04:00The Domestic Arrangement from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Wm went into the wood to alter his poems</i><br />
writes Dorothy. <i>I shelled peas, gathered beans,</i><br />
<i>and worked in the garden.</i> This is Grasmere<br />
<br />
where she picked and boiled gooseberries,<br />
<i>two lbs. of sugar in the first panfull</i><br />
while <i>Wm went into the wood to alter his poems</i><br />
<br />
a trip he makes almost daily, composing<br />
the lines she will later copy. Mornings<br />
she works in the garden at Grasmere<br />
<br />
<i>which looked so beautiful my heart</i><br />
<i>almost melted away,</i> she confides<br />
while Wm's in the wood altering his poems.<br />
<br />
On one of their daily walks she observes<br />
helpful details of Wm's famed daffodils.<br />
Then it's back to the garden at Grasmere<br />
<br />
where she ties up her scarlet runner beans<br />
and pulls a bag of peas for Miss Simpson.<br />
Leave Wm in the wood to alter his poems;<br />
praise Dorothy in the garden at Grasmere.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Maxine Kumin, 2007<br />
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<br />Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-67244607446288713102016-06-06T08:08:00.000-04:002016-06-06T08:08:59.715-04:00How Many Thousand of My Poorest Subjectsfrom <i>Henry IV, Part 2</i><br />
<br />
KING<br />
<br />
How many thousand of my poorest subjects<br />
Are at this hour asleep? O sleep, o gentle sleep,<br />
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,<br />
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down<br />
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?<br />
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smokey cribs,<br />
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,<br />
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,<br />
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,<br />
Under the canopies of costly state,<br />
And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?<br />
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile<br />
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch<br />
A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?<br />
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast<br />
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains<br />
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,<br />
And in the visitation of the winds,<br />
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,<br />
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them<br />
With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,<br />
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?<br />
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose<br />
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,<br />
And in the calmest and most stillest night,<br />
With all appliances and means to boot,<br />
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!<br />
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by William Shakespeare<br />
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<br />Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-32075599774645610622016-05-30T07:57:00.001-04:002016-05-30T07:57:36.990-04:00Personal PoemNow when I walk around at lunchtime<br />
I have only two charms in my pocket<br />
an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me<br />
and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case<br />
when I was in Madrid the others never<br />
brought me too much luck though they did<br />
help keep me in New York against coercion<br />
but now I'm happy for a time and interested<br />
<br />
I walk through the luminous humidity<br />
passing the House of Seagram with its wet<br />
and its loungers and the construction to<br />
the left that closed the sidewalk if<br />
I ever get to be a construction worker<br />
I'd like to have a silver hat please<br />
and get to Moriarty's where I wait for<br />
LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and<br />
shaker the last five years my batting average<br />
is .016 that's that, and LeRoi comes in<br />
and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12<br />
times last night outside BIRDLAND by a cop<br />
a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible<br />
disease but we don't give her one we<br />
don't like terrible diseases, then<br />
<br />
we go eat some fish and some ale it's<br />
cool but crowded we don't like Lionel Trilling<br />
we decide, we like Don Allen we don't like<br />
Henry James so much we like Herman Melville<br />
we don't want to be in the poets' walk in<br />
San Francisco even we just want to be rich<br />
and walk on girders in our silver hats<br />
I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is<br />
thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi<br />
and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go<br />
back to work happy at the thought possibly so<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Frank O'Hara, 1964<br />
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<br />Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-60999308438959275782016-05-23T07:59:00.000-04:002016-05-23T07:59:48.460-04:00Misreading HousmanOn this first day of spring, snow<br />
covers the fruit trees, mingling improbably<br />
with the new blossoms like identical twins<br />
brought up in different hemispheres.<br />
It is not what Housman meant<br />
when he wrote of the cherry<br />
hung with snow, though he also knew<br />
how death can mistake the seasons,<br />
and if he made it all sound pretty,<br />
that was our misreading<br />
in those high school classrooms<br />
where, drunk on boredom, we had to recite<br />
his poems. Now the weather is always looming<br />
<br />
in the background, trying to become more<br />
than merely scenery, and though today<br />
it is telling us something<br />
we don't want to hear, it is all<br />
so unpredictable, so out of control<br />
that we might as well be children again,<br />
hearing the voices of thunder<br />
like baritone uncles shouting<br />
in the next room as we try to sleep,<br />
or hearing the silence of snow falling<br />
soft as a coverlet, even in springtime<br />
whispering: relax, there is nothing<br />
you can possibly do about any of this.<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Linda Pastan, 1998<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-91626765287009413062016-05-16T06:30:00.000-04:002016-05-16T13:59:02.869-04:00EquationSomeone said<br />
that working through difficult equations<br />
was like walking<br />
in a pure and beautiful landscape -<br />
the numbers glowing<br />
like works of art.<br />
And in the same crowded room<br />
a woman I thought I didn't like<br />
was singing to herself -<br />
talking and listening<br />
but singing to herself too<br />
and instantly<br />
with the logic of numbers<br />
I liked her<br />
as if she had balanced something<br />
I couldn't.<br />
The corridors are long and pristine<br />
but I'm not lost -<br />
just working<br />
towards some minute<br />
or overwhelming<br />
equipoise.<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Caroline Caddy, 2007<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-77504205473419054412016-05-09T08:21:00.000-04:002016-05-09T08:54:47.200-04:00VermeerSo long as the woman from the Rijksmuseum<br />
in painted quiet and concentration<br />
pours milk day after day<br />
from the pitcher to the bowl<br />
the World hasn't earned<br />
the world's end.<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Wislawa Szymborska<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-57498302099766443912016-05-02T00:36:00.000-04:002016-05-02T00:36:50.657-04:00In the LoopI heard from people after the shootings. People<br />
I knew well or barely or not at all. Largely<br />
the same message: how horrible it was, how little<br />
there was to say about how horrible it was.<br />
People wrote, called, mostly e-mailed<br />
because they know I teach at Virginia Tech,<br />
to say, there's nothing to say. Eventually<br />
I answered these messages: there's nothing<br />
to say back except of course there's nothing<br />
to say, thank you for your willingness<br />
to say it. Because this was about nothing.<br />
A boy who felt that he was nothing,<br />
who erased and entered that erasure, and guns<br />
that are good for nothing, and talk of guns<br />
that is good for nothing, and spring<br />
that is good for flowers, and Jesus for some,<br />
and scotch for others, and "and" for me<br />
in this poem, "and" that is good<br />
for sewing the minutes together, which otherwise<br />
go about going away, bereft of us and us<br />
of them. Like a scarf left on a train and nothing<br />
like a scarf left on a train. As if the train,<br />
empty of everything but a scarf, still opens<br />
its doors at every stop, because this<br />
is what a train does, this is what a man does<br />
with his hand on a lever, because otherwise,<br />
why the lever, why the hand, and then it was over,<br />
and then it had just begun.<br />
<br />
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Bill Hicok, 2010<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-17243590641728840672016-04-25T08:16:00.000-04:002016-04-25T08:16:28.751-04:00WaterwingsThe mornings are his,<br />
blue and white<br />
like the tablecloth at breakfast.<br />
He's happy in the house,<br />
a sweep of the spoon<br />
brings the birds under his chair.<br />
He sings and the dishes disappear.<br />
<br />
Or holding a crayon like a candle,<br />
he draws a circle.<br />
It is his hundredth dragonfly.<br />
Calling for more paper,<br />
this one is red-winged<br />
and like the others,<br />
he wills it to fly, simply<br />
by the unformed curve of his signature.<br />
<br />
Waterwings he calls them,<br />
the floats I strap to his arms.<br />
I wear an apron of concern,<br />
sweep the morning of birds.<br />
To the water he returns,<br />
plunging where it's cold,<br />
moving and squealing into sunlight.<br />
The water from here seems flecked with gold.<br />
<br />
I watch the circles<br />
his small body makes<br />
fan and ripple,<br />
disperse like an echo<br />
into the sum of water, light and air.<br />
His imprint on the water<br />
has but a brief lifespan,<br />
the flicker of a dragonfly's delicate wing.<br />
<br />
This is sadness, I tell myself,<br />
the morning he chooses to leave his wings behind,<br />
because he will not remember<br />
that he and beauty were aligned,<br />
skimming across the water, nearly airborne,<br />
on his first solo flight.<br />
I'll write "how he could not<br />
contain his delight."<br />
At the other end,<br />
in another time frame,<br />
he waits for me -<br />
having already outdistanced this body,<br />
the one that slipped from me like a fish,<br />
floating, free of itself.<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
by Cathy Song, 1988<br />
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7342285671641103141.post-42340505813525872602016-04-18T07:42:00.000-04:002016-04-18T07:42:47.588-04:00Women Whose Lives are Food, Men Whose Lives are Money<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Mid-morning Monday she is staring<o:p></o:p><br />
peaceful as the rain in that shallow back yard<br />
she wears flannel bedroom slippers<br />
she is sipping coffee<br />
she is thinking—<br />
—gazing
at the weedy bumpy yard<br />
at the faces beginning to take shape<br />
in the wavy mud<br />
in the linoleum<br />
where floorboards assert themselves<br />
<br />
Women whose lives are food<br />
breaking eggs with care<br />
scraping garbage from the plates<br />
unpacking groceries hand over hand<br />
<br />
Wednesday evening: he takes the cans out front<br />
tough plastic with detachable lids<br />
Thursday morning: the garbage truck whining at 7<br />
Friday the shopping mall open till 9<br />
bags of groceries unpacked<br />
hand over certain hand<br />
<br />
Men whose lives are money<br />
time-and-a-half Saturdays<br />
the lunchbag folded with care and brought back home<br />
unfolded Monday morning<br />
<br />
Women whose lives are food<br />
because they are not punch-carded<br />
because they are unclocked<br />
sighing glad to be alone<br />
staring into the yard, mid-morning<br />
mid-week<br />
by mid-afternoon everything is forgotten<br />
<br />
There are long evenings<br />
panel discussions on abortions, fashions, meaningful work<br />
there are love scenes where people mouth passions<br />
sprightly, handsome, silly, manic<br />
in close-ups revealed ageless<br />
the women whose lives are food<br />
the men whose lives are money<br />
fidget as these strangers embrace and weep and mis-<br />
understand and
forgive and die and weep and embrace<br />
and the viewers stare and fidget and sigh and<br />
begin yawning around 10:30<br />
never made it past midnight, even on Saturdays,<br />
watching their braven selves perform<br />
<br />
Where are the promised revelations?<br />
Why have they been shown so many times?<br />
Long-limbed children a thousand miles to the west<br />
hitch-hiking in spring, burnt bronze in summer<br />
thumbs nagging<br />
eyes pleading<br />
<i>Give us a ride, huh? Give us a ride?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
and when they return nothing is changed<br />
the linoleum looks older<br />
the Hawaiian Chicken is new<br />
the girls wash their hair more often<br />
the boys skip over the puddles<br />
in the GM parking lot<br />
no one eyes them with envy<br />
<br />
their mothers stoop<br />
the oven doors settle with a thump<br />
the dishes are rinsed and stacked and<br />
by mid-morning the house is quiet<br />
it is raining out back<br />
or not raining<br />
the relief of emptiness rains<br />
simple, terrible, routine<br />
at peace<br />
<br />
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
by Joyce Carol Oates, 1978</div>
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Carol Iaciofanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09382361071119361967noreply@blogger.com