Sometimes a package arrives that is like a party in the mailbox. Often it’s a poetry party, especially the one that just arrived from Anne Stewart‘s poetry p f. The site is affiliated with Second Light Network of Women Poets. There are no gender or age restrictions at poetry p f, which is now a go-to resource for me when I want to buy the collections of U.K. poets.
“The site is principally intended to be a showcase of modern poets, and to provide a focused point for members to take advantage of the visibility and searchable presence the Internet provides; further to promote poets and poetry.” MORE
My recent acquisitions from across the pond include Anne Cluysenaar‘s Touching Distances, Diary Poems (Cinnamon Press, 2014), which was a gift from Myra Schneider and my own purchases: Janus (Oversteps Books, 2010) by Anne Stewart and Dilys Wood‘s novel-length poem, Antarctica. Wow! . . . and all the lovely poetry cards, some purchased and some gifted … so much better than Hallmark. These include Horses by poet and blogger, Carolyn O’Connell.
TIP FOR POETS: Poetry greeting cards are a nice idea some might like to borrow for promoting their own chapbooks and so forth. Myra Schneider first introduced me to this idea, which I have used. Myra’s are works of art. Mine, not so much. Not yet anyway. Can’t seem to get them lined up properly.
Dilys Wood and Anne Stewart added a collection to my package, which deserves special attention: Hands & Wings, Poems for Freedom from Torture (White Rat Press, 2015). The poems in it are freely shared by A-list poets. The proceeds go to help with the rehabilitation and support of torture victims seeking protection in the U.K. That made me look into what services specificially designed for victims of torture might be available in other countries and that readers might want to support through donations or volunteer work. You may find your country’s offerings listed HERE.
“ . . . creativity keeps the world alive, yet, everyday we are asked to be ashamed of honoring it, wanting to live our lives as artists. i’ve carried the shame of being a ‘creative’ since i came to the planet; have been asked to be something different, more, less my whole life. thank spirit, my wisdom is deeper than my shame, and i listened to who i was. i want to say to all the creatives who have been taught to believe who you are is not enough for this world, taught that a life of art will amount to nothing, know that who we are, and what we do is life. when we create, we are creating the world. remember this, and commit.”
― Nayyirah Waheed
Nayyirah Waheed is the author of a two popular and oft-quoted self-published collections, Salt. and Nejma. (Recommended.) Her poetry is wise and atmospheric in style. She cuts to the heart of things and appears to me to be quietly and confidently persistent in her work. I like it very much.
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I first published this piece on Ruth Stone in 2013, but I love her poetry so much I had to include her early in this Thursday series of mine inspired by the work of poet Dilys Wood and the London-based Second Light Network of Women Poets (SLN), which Dilys founded. SLN encourages and supports the poetry of women, including those women with voices emerging in their third act.
Poems clutter the landscape of my mind with bite-sized portions easily committed to memory, ready to be pulled out in a moment of need or want. I like to think of poetry as literary dim sum, which means “touch the heart.” And poems do spring themselves on me and touch the tender places. Depending on the poem and the poet, they may also tickle my funny bone, stimulate my intellect, or affirm some insight. In the art of living hugely, poetry is warp and weft.
Whether I am writing poetry or reading it, poetry gifts to me those blessed eureka moments, the moments when I understand myself or another, can put a name to the demons, or simply realize that I am not alone in my joy or sorrow. Think of W. H. Auden’s Funeral Blues and the simple line, “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.” I am getting older, approaching elderly, and though I am always making new friends, I’m of an age where I lose a friend or two each year. Bereft at the loss of someone precious and shocked that the earth hasn’t stood still, I think of this line and know that in this circumstance, everyone feels what I do . . .
. . . and all it takes is one disappointment in love to relate to Mad Girl’s Love Song by Silvia Plath, “I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed/And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane./(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Of the many poets I dearly love, I particularly appreciate Ruth Stone for her quality of giving things their true names and for the practicalities embedded in her poems. “Dear children,/You must try to say/Something when you are in need./Don’t confuse hunger with greed;/And don’t wait until you are dead.”
Ruth Stone was an American poet and poetry teacher born into an impoverished family at Roanoke, Virginia in 1915. She lived most of her life in rural Vermont, attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, won many awards for her poetry and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her last collection, What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems (2008). She was wry, bold, conversational, edgy, philosophical and used the language and imagery of the natural sciences to good effect. Her second husband, the poet Walter Stone, committed suicide leaving her with three young children and an experience that indelibly etched itself on her life, heart and poetry. She once remarked that she spent the rest of her life writing to him.
Not Expecting an Answer
This tedious letter to you,
what is one Life to another?
We walk around inside our bags,
sucking it in, spewing it out.
Then the insects, swarms heavier
than all the animals of the world.
Then the flycatchers on the clothesline,
like seiners leaning from Flemish boats
when the seas were roiled with herring.
This long letter in my mind,
calligraphy, feathery asparagus.
When Ruth Stone won the Whiting Writers’ Award, she got plumbing for her house. When she received the Walter Cerf Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts at the National Book Awards, she said “I’ve been writing poetry or whatever it is since I was five or six years old, and I couldn’t stop, I never could stop. I don’t know why I did it.… It was like a stream that went along beside me, you know, my life went along here . . . and all along the time this stream was going along. And I really didn’t know what it was saying. It just talked to me, and I wrote it down. So I can’t even take much credit for it.”
Ruth Stone died in 2011 leaving behind thirteen collections of literary dim sum. This poem, which gave its name to a collection that I just purchased, is a new favorite.
In the Next Galaxy
Things will be different. No one will lose their sight, their hearing, their gallbladder. It will be all Catskills with brand new wrap-around verandas. The idea of Hitler will not have vibrated yet. While back here, they are still cleaning out pockets of wrinkled Nazis hiding in Argentina. But in the next galaxy, certain planets will have true blue skies and drinking water.
In the scant two-minute video that follows, the writer Elizabeth Gilbert(Eat, Pray, Love) shares the revealing story of her meeting with Ruth Stone.
Sometimes a package arrives that is like a party in the mailbox. Often it’s a poetry party, especially the one that just arrived from Anne Stewart‘s poetry p f. The site is affiliated with Second Light Network of Women Poets. There are no gender or age restrictions at poetry p f, which is now a go-to resource for me when I want to buy the collections of U.K. poets.
My recent acquisitions from across the pond include Anne Cluysenaar‘s Touching Distances, Diary Poems (Cinnamon Press, 2014), which was a gift from Myra Schneider and my own purchases: Janus (Oversteps Books, 2010) by Anne Stewart and Dilys Wood‘s novel-length poem, Antarctica. Wow! . . . and all the lovely poetry cards, some purchased and some gifted … so much better than Hallmark. These include Horses by poet and blogger, Carolyn O’Connell.
Dilys Wood and Anne Stewart added a collection to my package, which deserves special attention: Hands & Wings, Poems for Freedom from Torture (White Rat Press, 2015). The poems in it are freely shared by A-list poets. The proceeds go to help with the rehabilitation and support of torture victims seeking protection in the U.K. That made me look into what services specificially designed for victims of torture might be available in other countries and that readers might want to support through donations or volunteer work. You may find your country’s offerings listed HERE.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 