by Kat | 6 days ago | General, Poetry
I don’t know about you all, but these days poetry is the lifeline that is keeping me sane. As the tsunami grows larger, I read more poetry. I don’t want to imagine what my life would be like if there was no poetry… thankfully, that will never be a reality because poets have me more than covered.
Recently, I heard a poem by Ilya Kaminsky ** Ilya is a “fairly new to me poet” and I have not been able to get that poem out of my head. It is eerily timely… despite being published in 2019. I am doubly fortunate that my library has a copy of Deaf Republic… I have been reading through it a few poems at a time each afternoon.
The opening poem, We Lived Happily during the War, sets the stage for the poems that follow. Poems that tell the story of Sonya and Alfonso and the town they live in. It is about community. It is about inclusion. (Ilya lost his hearing at age 4 and the book has some ASL images that allow the reader to be totally immersed in Ilya’s “world”) And, perhaps most importantly, it is about a view of things that are not at all familiar… at least to me… and that is exactly why reading poetry, especially right now, is so vital to me!
Here is Ilya’s poem:
We Lived Happily during the War
by Ilya Kaminsky
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house—
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
We Lived Happily during the War © 2019 Ilya Kaminsky. Published by Grey Wolf Press.
You can learn more about Ilya here and visit his website here.
Finally, stop and see who has gathered a poem to share with Bonny today!
** Yes, I listened to the Poetry Unbound episode when it aired, but back then this poem did not even make a blip on my radar. I am so glad Padraig revisited it in his Substack a couple of weeks ago!
Header photo by Polina Tankilevitch
by Kat | Feb 20, 2025 | General, Poetry
Confession time… I completely forgot today is the Third Thursday, so I have hastily gathered a poem to share with you all today.
Really, it’s a poem for me especially because I sure as hell could use a bit more kindness in my days. And of course, a poet must have had the same struggles… but they made sense of what I am missing. I am grateful to Danusha Laméris for gathering a small dose of kindness I can consume with my cup of coffee.
Thank you, Bonny for kindly gathering us all together this month. Stop by and inject your day with a slice of poetry!
Small Kindnesses
Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers will say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these b brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
Small Kindnesses from Bonfire Opera. Copyright © 2020 by Danusha Laméris.
Happy Thursday, everyone. Stay warm and I will see you all back here on Monday!
Header photo by Jason Villanueva
by Kat | Jan 16, 2025 | General, Poetry
If ever there was a month for poetry it is January. We have had some very winter-like weather this month and for that I am truly grateful. While I might not appreciate the snow and cold, nature surely does. I look around my snow-covered back yard and all my bulbs tucked safely away under the blanket of snow… and I smile! This snow and cold will mean that spring will be all the sweeter!
I have a bonus as well… Franklin absolutely loves the snow and it is impossible to be a grinch when his delight is so overwhelming!
A new book of poetry by Billy Collins – Water, Water: Poems – has been much on my mind recently, especially the poem I am sharing today. And when Ann Shayne read it last week at the inaugural MDK Society Zoom, it cemented it for this month’s selection! I hope you enjoy it too!
Winter Trivia
by Billy Collins
It takes approximately two hours for a snowflake to fall from a cloud to the ground.
—THE BOOK OF TRIVIA
In the roughly two hours
it takes for a snowflake
to fall from a cloud to the ground,
we managed to get back to the house,
bang the snow off our boots,
shake out our coats in the mudroom,
then stoke the stove back to life,
open a bottle of wine—
I think it was a red from Oregon—
heat the white bean soup from last night,
which we spooned up
sitting close to the splintering stove,
after which we carried our bowls
to the kitchen and opened
an inlaid wooden box full of chips
and fanned out a fresh deck of playing cards,
which you shuffled and I cut,
as the house was warming up,
and you tossed in a modest bet
with a red Jack showing
and I saw you with my nine
just as that singular snowflake
landed without a sound
in the general darkness of Vermont.
Winter Trivia Copyright © by Billy Collins.
You can learn more about Billy Collins here and here.
I would like to thank Bonny for gathering us all together today to share a bit of poetry!
See you all back here on Monday!
A bit of a post script… I have been having issues posting comments on some of your WordPress blogs. I am not sure why just some of the WordPress blogs and not all WordPress blogs and I have yet to figure out the issue. If I have not commented on your blogs this week, this is the reason… if anyone is having issues posting comments to my blog, please let me know (you can email me here). Thanks!
by Kat | Dec 19, 2024 | General, Poetry
Today, I am joining Bonny and friends today to share a bit of poetry. I *usually* read a couple of poems each morning, but a certain small someone has drastically altered my morning routine and I fell away from sitting with the quiet and reading a poem either with my eyes… or out loud to myself. I like to read poetry out loud very much. The poem I am sharing today is one of those poems that begs to be read aloud.
Thanks to Kym, this month I have been really focused on the kinship we all share in this corner of the internet… and more broadly – finding kinship in a very fractured world. This poem gives us a great starting point…
About Standing (in Kinship)
Kimberly M. Blaeser
We all have the same little bones in our foot
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong—
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don’t get casts when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.
(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—
find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)
Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.
Maybe we should give more honor to feet
and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—
communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.
About Standing (in Kinship). Copyright © 2021 by Kimberly M. Blaeser. First published in Poetry. Reprinted in Poetry of Presence II More Mindfulness Poems.
You can read more about Kimberly M. Blaeser here and here on her website.
Make sure you stop and visit Bonny and see who she has gathered up today!
See you all back here on Monday!
Now a tiny postscript for all you Ted Kooser fans out there (as well as those of you who don’t know you are a Kooser fan yet!) I listened to this episode of Poetry For All and… yes, it brought tears to my eyes. I have listened to it again several times since as well… it is just so good!
“In this episode, we offer close readings of poems from Ted Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison. Kooser’s poems allow us to think about the poem as a social act, as a form of healing, and as a kind of meditation.”
I also requested Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison from my library… I will be picking it up later today. I wanted to share with you all because I thought you too might need a bit of healing and meditation as the New Year rapidly approaches.
by Kat | Nov 21, 2024 | General, Poetry
I contemplated skipping the poetry today… because, I completely forgot about it. But I pulled out the poetry book I am reading this year (although, I have not read a lick of poetry from it since you know who arrived!) and serendipitously, it fell open to the poem I am sharing today.
A few more moments spent searching on Pexels for a photo that will work and before I knew it, the post was ready to share!
The poem is so very fitting for my life right now and I hope you enjoy it as well.
Clearing
Martha Postlethwaite
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world,
so worthy of rescue.
Martha Postlethwaite, “Clearing.” Copyright © 2007 by Martha Postlethwaite. First published in The World of Prayer: Activists and Humanitarians Share Their Favorite Prayers (Orbis Books, 2012).
There is little about Ms. Postlethwaite on the interwebs and she has just a single book listed on Goodreads. I am ever so glad that this poem was included in Poetry of Presence II.
If you need more poetry in your life today, stop by and see who has gathered with Bonny today.
See you all back here on Monday with my word update!
Header photo by cottonbro studio
by Kat | Sep 19, 2024 | General, Poetry
It seems that my need for poetry this month has been directly tied to the state of the world around us… and so as the world gets uglier, I dive deeper into poetry. Poetry is most frequently a balm for me… a soothing salve that eases the bruises of the day. But sometimes poetry is more than a balm… it opens a door, invites me through, and shows me something rare and special.
The poem I selected today was one that I “stumbled” upon Sunday. It seems so very relevant today… I hope you find something rare and special inside this poem as well.
Halal Delicatessen
by Patrick Hicks
after the London bombings of July 7, 2005
The owner who made my falafel was gruff,
my smile and small talk lost in a desert.
But when his son, speaking a language I did not know,
came around the counter and tugged my jeans,
I have him my full attention.
He pointed at meat and salad,
saying the words that made them real.
I got down on one knee and pointed at trays,
which brought a feast of words to his lips.
He reached for my hand,
and tugged me into his kingdom.
Diced apples became tofah, bread was khobez,
he pointed at ice cream, helu, and his eyes bloomed.
If only it were this easy, always.
I thought of him as a grown man, oblivious
to this moment of hime that I will carry.
Later, we might pass each other on the street,
but today, I am the anchor of his universe.
His father wrapped my sandwich and, pausing,
passed two bottles of water into my hands.
“Hot today. You take these.”
His son looked on and pointed, ma’a,
he said, ma’a, of which we are all made.
Patrick Hicks, “Halal Delicatessen.” Copyright © 2009 by Patrick Hicks. First published in The Connecticut Review (Fall 2009).
If you want to know more about Patrick Hicks, you will find his very extensive website here.
Now go see who is joining Bonny today in gathering up some poetry! I will be back on Monday!
**Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich**
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