leap before you look

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

 

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

 

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

 

Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.

                                                              WH Auden,   December 1940

all-day luck

bits of copper luck

sprinkled through my stepping out

awareness blesséd

Paw de Deux

This fits for both foreign language poetry, animal poetry and lyrical/poetry slam....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q34z5dCmC4M&feature=youtu.be

boxed

If there is any sort of unifying theme to my life, it would be cardboard.  Am gearing up for yet another move; as of this typing, not sure if it's across town or across the country.  Either way, for the next few months my life, will once again, be contained neatly in rows of labeled boxes.

How fortunate that Keillor sent me this poem for today's perusal.

That year we left the house we couldn't afford and put
our belongings in storage. We were free now
to travel or live in tiny spaces. We kept our chairs

and tables in a cement cell, our bookshelves,
our daughter's old toys, clothes we wouldn't wear
or discard. There were books we liked but did not

need and mattresses and pots and pans. Sometimes
we went to visit our things: sat in our rocking chairs,
searched for a jacket, listened to an old radio. It was like

visiting someone I loved in a hospital: the way, removed
from the world, a person or object becomes thin,
diminished. The furniture on which we lived

our young life had no job but to wait for us.
It remembered our dinners, the light through
our windows, the way the baby once played on the floor.

"Storage" by Faith Shearin, from Moving the Piano. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011.

pre-rhymed sonnets

It was a smidge of trepidation that I introduced this exercise to my class.  This is where the class creates the end-rhyme words and then we write our sonnets around those.  It's challenging even in one's first language.  I am pleased to say that this particular class did splendidly well.  Here are my two creations of the day:

Once upon a time, Snow White found an apple,
this fruit, juicy or not, was not the bacon
crispy she desired.  If only as simple
as hopping into her shining Lincoln
and going to the market.  But now cake
was calling her name--a rich raspberry
torte; drenching chocolate, tooth-achingly
sweet.  Or perhaps she should use strawberry
for the flavoring.  So exhausted, a chair
was needed for deciding.  There was cream
also to be used.  But first her hair
needed to be fixed. A  look in a mirror; scream
was the reaction.  A princess needs her sleep.
And so, Snow White called Bo Peep and her sheep.

School is boring; I'd rather be home.  Pie
baking sounds like a better use of the day.
But I cannot tell a lie
I would rather not be here. I could lay
under a palm tree.  Refrigerator-
chilled beverage would be more comfortable
than classroom-bound.  Being a generator
of energy is unbelievably
tiring.  In my next life, I'd become a cat
and sleep and sleep with such abandon.
Alas, I cannot drop this life like a hat,
so one must strain sinew and tendon.
Guess I am glad that prostitution
is against this country's constitution.

(Just want to re-emphasize that the students generated this list.)

from stones to stars

One of the genres we're covering is poetry in another language: I'm covering German, French and Italian and my students will bring in Asian language poems.  Today posting is Rilke's Abend.

Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewӓnder,

die ihm Rand von alten Bӓumen halt;

du schaust: und von dir sceiden sich die Lӓnder,

ein himmelfahrendes und eins, das fӓllt;

und lassen dich, zu keinemm ganz gehӧrend,

nicht ganz so dunkel wie das Haus, das schweigt,

hicht ganz so sicher Ewiges beschwӧrend

wie das, was Stern wird jede Nacht und steigt—

und lassen dir (unsӓglich zu entwirrn)

dein Leben bang und riesenhaft und reifend,

so dass es, bald begrenzt und begreifend,

abwechselnd Stein in dir wird un Gestirn.

(Or, as you would probably like to read.....)

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors

which it passes to a row of ancient trees.

You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,

one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,

not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,

not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing

that turns to a star each night and climbs--

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)

your own life, timid and standing high and growing,

so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

experience

Coming a little late to the poetry party that is happening this month, but as I'm inflicting my students with poetry, decided I ought to dust off the blog and share poems with perhaps, a more appreciative audience. As I'm in the process of deciding what to do with my next step and next school year, thought this Emily Dickinson was appropriate. 

I stepped from plank to plank,
A slow and cautious way;
The stars about my head I felt,
About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch.
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience.