Poetry as Present

The noun “present” means both something offered as a gift and being in the company of a person or thing. Poetry carries connotation of both meanings. It is a gift from the poets and from those, beginning with my mother, who fostered a love for poetry within me. It is also with me daily, a presence in my life through memories, through lines learned by heart, and through lines on the pages of books I read, some decades old and some as new as last week.

Among my earliest memories is my mother reading to me from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. I memorized some of Stevenson’s poems before I could read. I wrote my first poems—very bad ones—at six. At ten, I discovered Emily Dickinson, with whom I have visited regularly ever since. I can’t imagine a life without poetry.

One of the things I always tried very hard to do when I was teaching was to bring my students to see that poetry is not written to be isolated in a classroom of reluctant students wrenching meaning from it with pain and protests. Poetry is living; it is as much a part of us as the stars we wish on, the wind that lifts our kites, the smell of lightning bugs on our hands. Dylan Thomas’s definition of poetry seems right to me: “Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.”

 Because poetry is a part of my life every day, it seems quite natural to find inspiration for the fiction I write in the poems I read. Many writers have sound tracks for their novels. Although I too find ideas and inspiration in music, I even more often turn to poems I love to help me capture a feeling, craft a love scene, or give me the seed for a section of dialogue. April is National Poetry Month, a celebration throughout the United States of poetry and its place in American culture. One meaning of “celebrate” is to make publically known. Part of my celebration is to share with you three poems and snippets of the particular moments they inspired.

Grief, Cynthia Angeles

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

It was over then. Zan wasn’t surprised. She’d always expected Caleb to leave. She’d had plenty of practice at losing. Her mother chose death over her child and husband. Her father left years before his body followed his heart. Caleb was just the latest in a line. And Tal.  The man she loved, the child she loved. Her breath caught on the sudden stab of pain--sharp, physical pain, like a blade plunging and turning in her chest. She bent double from the blow. “Damn you,” she cried. “Damn you.” She didn’t know if she were cursing her parents who had abandoned her, Caleb who had followed in their path, or the distant deity who had let them leave.

Lovers, Connie Chadwell

How Will You Kiss? by Judith Pordon

Lilt me your lips,
our lost breath intermingling.

Synchronize our silence
as lazy hours ease by.

Waft cocoa, hazelnut, cinnamon,
scents around me.

Tremble with me
in paralyzing pauses.

I may no longer breathe
without breathing you.

Silence surrounded them as if the world had paused for this long delayed moment. He kissed her slowly, his mouth savoring hers. Saja tasted cocoa and cinnamon and lust and memory. His hand trembled as he stroked her breast, his mouth moving to brush kisses across her face. “Brody.” Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

 “I’m here,” he said. “I’ll always be here.”

Chair-Two Women Talking, Fred Bell

True Love by Judith Viorst

It is true love because
I put on eyeliner and a concerto and make pungent observations about the great issues of the day
Even when there's no one here but him,
And because
I do not resent watching the Green Bay Packer
Even though I am philosophically opposed to football,
And because
When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the middle of the street,
I always hope he's dead.

It's true love because
If he said quit drinking martinis but I kept drinking them and the next morning I couldn't get out of bed,
He wouldn't tell me he told me,
And because
He is willing to wear unironed undershorts
Out of respect for the fact that I am philosophically opposed to ironing,
And because
If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and he had to choose one of us to save,
He says he'd save me.


It's true love because
When he went to San Francisco on business while I had to stay home with the painters and the exterminator and the baby who was getting the chicken pox,
He understood why I hated him,
And because
When I said that playing the stock market was juvenile and irresponsible and then the stock I wouldn't let him buy went up twenty-six points,
I understood why he hated me,
And because
Despite cigarette cough, tooth decay, acid indigestion, dandruff, and other features of married life that tend to dampen the fires of passion,
We still feel something
We can call
True love.      

“All I ever wanted was to have what you have, to have a marriage like yours and Dad’s. Easy and—"

 “Easy? No marriage is easy, not if there’s any commitment. There’s anger and disappointment and loneliness enough to make you wonder if being alone is less painful. Maybe Dan and I did you a disservice by not fighting in front of you. Buy you’re an adult now, Dori, old enough and smart enough to know that no two people as different and as strong-willed as your Dad and I are could exist in perpetual harmony.  We didn’t speak for a week after I unplugged his TV in the middle of the Daytona 500. And the freeze lasted longer than that when I campaigned for Trent Porter.”

 “None of that mattered. You stayed together. You were happy. We were happy.”

 “They mattered to us. But you’re right: we stayed. The good was always enough to keep us together during the tough times. And we just kept falling in love again.”

 Dori heard the unspoken words as clearly as those spoken. “You didn’t stay, Dori. You ran away. You quit. You left.” Was Zan right? Should she be wearing a sign that read “Dori Marshall, Coward.”

 

What are your favorite poetry presents?

Poem in Your Pocket

Each April since 1996, the Academy of American Poets has led a celebration of the legacy and achievement of American poetry. This month people will gather in schools, colleges, and universities in all fifty states to read aloud favorite poems. Schools and libraries will display the 2011 poster (at left), which this year the line "bright objects hypnotize the mind" from Elizabeth Bishop's poem "A Word with You." This year marks the centennial celebration of Bishop’s life. On April 27, 2011, the Academy of American Poets will present its ninth annual benefit, Poetry & The Creative Mind, at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, where artists and other public figures will read from works of contemporary poets. This year’s guest readers include Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman, Live Schreiber, Michael Cunningham, and Alec Baldwin.


During my years in the classroom, I read in campus read-a-thons, sometimes from poems I had lived with and loved for many years, sometimes from my own work; I led discussions about poems in my classes; I attended poetry parties where quotes from Shakespeare and Shelley filled the air, along with toasts to Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens. I have missed those public celebrations over the past few years. The blog provides a venue for a celebration that extends beyond my home, but I couldn’t seem to come up with a way to connect poetry to reading and writing romance fiction. Then I hit a wall in my WIP. I rewrote one scene so many times I lost count and finally gave up. That evening I read a poem, and it led to a eureka moment. In minutes I had the scene that I had lost hope of writing. From that experience came the idea for this blog.

Thursday, April 14 is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Throughout the day, people in libraries, schools, bookstores, and workplaces will be sharing with family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors poems that are carrying in their pockets. The Academy of American Poets suggests that online communities can participate in Poem in Your Pocket Day by posting a poem on a blog or social networking page. I’m going to extend that idea and post a pocket poem here each day this week. And each of the poems will be one that I see as potential inspiration for a scene in a romance novel. On Thursday, the official Poem in Your Pocket Day, I’ll post the poem that inspired my scene and share a snippet from the scene with you.


Sunday’s Pocket Poem: Diamonds by Kathryn Stripling Byer

This, he said, giving the hickory leaf
to me. Because I am poor.
And he lifted my hand to his lips,
kissed the fingers that might have worn
gold rings if he had inherited

bottomland, not this
impossible rock where the eagles soared
after the long rains were over. He stood
in the wet grass, his open hands empty,
his pockets turned inside out.

Queen of the Meadow, he teased me
and bowed like a gentleman.
I licked the diamonds off the green
tongue of the leaf, wanting only

that he fill his hands with my hair.

Monday’s Pocket Poem: Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay


We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Tuesday’s Pocket Poem: Golden Oldie by Rita Dove

I made it home early, only to get
stalled in the driveway-swaying
at the wheel like a blind pianist caught in a tune
meant for more than two hands playing.
The words were easy, crooned
by a young girl dying to feel alive, to discover
a pain majestic enough
to live by. I turned the air conditioning off,
leaned back to float on a film of sweat,
and listened to her sentiment:
Baby, where did our love go?-a lament
I greedily took in
without a clue who my lover
might be, or where to start looking.

Wednesday's Pocket Poem: The Look by Sara Teasdale

Strephon kissed me in the spring,

      Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
      And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
      Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
      Haunts me night and day.

Thursday's Pocket Poem: What a Woman Wants by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.

I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

Note: Serendipitously, this is the same poem that Terri O. posted as her pocket poem in the comment section yesterday. No collusion, I assure you. :) Just two women responding to the same powerful poem.

Here's the promised snippet from the scene inspired by "What a Woman Wants" (Keep in mind please that it is this WIP is still in the rough draft stage.):

“I want this one.”


“Honey, are you sure? That’s definitely a burning-bridges dress.” Saja’s voice was soft, tentative, almost a whisper, as if a louder noise might upset Zan’s careful balance.

“I’m ready to burn bridges.” Zan's words were emphatic. She swung to face her friends, catching them exchanging a look that said as clearly as words “Zan’s not herself.”

Even they didn’t know how sick she was of her Griselda self that turned the other cheek and turned away wrath. Anger burned in her, hotter than the August sun that steamed the sidewalks of Gentry. She wanted to let it explode and destroy forever the good girl who thought if she played by the rules long enough, she’d be forgiven and win the prize. Caleb’s final words to her hammered in her head. Well, she’d show him. She’d show them all. She was nobody’s angel, and that dress, that scarlet dress with sin written in every thread, was just what she needed to light the funeral pyre of the passive creature she’d been for too long.

Friday's Pocket Poem: Some Notes on Courage by Susan Ludvigson

Think of a child who goes out

into the new neighborhood,
cap at an angle, and offers to lend
a baseball glove. He knows
how many traps there are—
his accent or his clothes, the club
already formed.
Think of a preganant woman
whose first child died—
her history of blood.
Or your friend whose father
locked her in basements, closets,
cars. Now when she speaks
to strangers, she must have
all the windows open.
She forces herself indoors each day,
sheer will makes her climb the stairs.
And love. Imagine it. After all
those years in the circus, that last
bad fall when the net didn’t hold.
Think of the ladder to the wire,
spotlights moving as you move,
then how you used to see yourself
balanced on the shiny air.
Think of doing it again.

Saturday's Pocket Poem: Poem #245 by Emily Dickinson

I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: " 'T will keep."

I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
The gem was gine;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.





I invite you to share a pocket poem with us. What ideas for scenes does “Diamonds” give you?

Ink Runs

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
From “Eating Poetry” by Mark Strand

April is National Poetry Month. Since 1996, the Academy of American Poets has designated the fourth month of the year as a time for the nation to celebrate poetry. Schools, libraries, and communities schedule special activities in April celebrating the role of poetry in American life. When I was teaching, I usually read at my university’s celebration where faculty, staff, and students read favorite poems—sometimes their own, sometimes one by another poet. Our celebration was low-key, but there are some glittering gatherings going on this month.

I’d love to attend the one Tuesday at Lincoln Center and hear stars such as Meryl Streep, Matt Dillon, Roseanne Cash, and Gabriel Byrne reading their favorite poems. I’m always interested in learning people’s favorite poems. There’s a wonderful site called “The Favorite Poem Project” which offers videos of Americans in all their wondrous variety reading their favorite poem and sharing their reasons for connecting with the poem. Robert Pinsky founded the project during his tenure as 39th Poet Laureate of the United States. I find it heartening to visit the site and watch a few videos and remember that the fifty on the site are just a sampling of the thousands in the project. Americans from 5 to 97, from every state, from various backgrounds were eager to share the poems they love.

Another great site to pay a celebratory visit to this month is Robert Lee Brewer’s 3rd Annual Poem a Day Challenge at his Poetic Asides Blog. He provides a prompt each day, shares his own response to the prompt, and challenges his readers to write and share theirs. Today (April 18) , the prompt is to “take the phrase ‘To (blank),’ replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem.” Brewer’s own poem for today is entitled “To write a poem in a crowded bookstore.”

Yet another site I visit is the American Academy of Poets Life Lines. The Academy invites readers to share a few lines of poetry that have remained with them, along with a paragraph explaining what the lines have given.

By now, you’ve probably realized that I’m a lover of poetry. It was really my first love—the first lines I learned by heart were from poems (nursery rhymes, psalms, Robert Louis Stevenson). I’ve been blessed to have a few poems published. I even won an Academy of American Poets award when I was in graduate school. These days I write only occasional poetry, although I like to think I bring a poet’s sensibilities to the prose writing I do. And Max’s songs may count as poems. But I am still a reader of poetry. I would find a day without reading a poem bleak indeed. I thought about posting my favorite poem, but how can I choose from such bounty? Instead, I’ll share with you some of my poetic “life lines.”


I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!
--from #288 by Emily Dickinson

I was 10 the year I first read this poem. It was my first experience with feeling that a poem was a conversation between the poet’s mind and mine. I was entering puberty at a bewildering speed, feeling as if eyes were everywhere. I was hungry for solitude and safety. Ah, I thought, she understands! That’s an experience that has been repeated countless times since, many times with other Dickinson poems, but perhaps it’s never been quite so powerful as the first time. These lines have become part of me.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
—from “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden

Some of you may recognize these lines from the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, but my love for them goes back further to a time when I was hit with a loss so great that it was nearly unendurable. I clung to these words. I whispered them to myself in the darkness, finding solace in the evidence that someone else had known such loss and had survived to write of it.

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
--from “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

These lines belong to a more recent period in my life, a time when I was old enough to question some of my choices, to mourn for dreams that were dead, to wonder what was left. They offer consolation and challenge when I need both.



I have loved this poem since the first time I read it in a college classroom. Back in February, the Academy of American Poets offered several downloadable, printable poetic valentines. This is one of them. I printed it and I keep it on my desk. Every rereading brings a new sense of epiphany.

What are your “life lines”? Don’t tell me you don’t like poetry. My response to that claim is a bit from my introduction to poetry lecture for my students: You don’t like poetry? Tell me truly, are there no lines from childhood readings, from the lyrics of a song, from the words you read that no one made you read that sing in your head and echo in your heart? Think hard. Remember. Then tell me that you don’t like poetry.”