30 Poems for National Poetry Month: Day 28
April 28, 2013
Here is my poem for Day 28:
Breakfast on the deck in the morning sun.
Spinach-feta-egg-white omelette,
The last of the rosemary bread toasted,
French-pressed coffee, the Times.
Proving to ourselves at least,
Civilized life can continue,
Even with the hoard of kids
(The smallest perfect number)
Looming in their beds.
–Scott Edward Anderson
Ada Limón’s poetic world is one where dislocation leads to an opening up rather than a shutting down, an unfolding rather than sequestration, and where doors are open, not closed. She isn’t afraid to confront her emotions or to let the reader in to observe her reactions to those emotions.
Yet, Limón’s is not a confessional poetry or, at least, not in the derogatory sense of that word. Limón tells stories and she’s proud of that fact.
“It’s ingrained in human nature to crave stories,” Limón explained in an interview. “We want them read to us as children, to be told around the fire, we want to see ourselves, our lives in these stories, and to have a sense of both escapism and transformation. People don’t know that poetry can do that, because they have the preconceived notion that poems take a tremendous amount of work to even comprehend, let alone be moved by.”
Her poems are not meant solely for the page, but to be read aloud. Her language is fluid, whether describing dreams or reality or the blurring between the two.
As Jeffrey Cyphers Wright wrote in The Brooklyn Rail, “She personalizes her homilies, stamping them with the authenticity of invention and self-discovery.”
Born March 28, 1976, Ada Limón is originally from Sonoma, California, and now divides her time between there and Lexington, Kentucky. Her first collection of poetry, lucky wreck, won the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is also the author of This Big Fake World, winner of the 2005 Pearl Poetry Prize, and Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed Editions, 2010).
Here is Ada Limón’s poem, “Sharks in the Rivers”:
We’ll say unbelievable things
to each other in the early morning—
our blue coming up from our roots,
our water rising in our extraordinary limbs.
All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles
and ghosts of men, and spirits
behind those birds of flame.
I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes,
I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.
It is a short walkway—
into another bedroom.
Consider the handle. Consider the key.
I say to a friend, how scared I am of sharks.
How I thought I saw them in the creek
across from my street.
I once watched for them, holding a bundle
of rattlesnake grass in my hand,
shaking like a weak-leaf girl.
She sends me an article from a recent National Geographic that says,
Sharks bite fewer people each year than
New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records.
Then she sends me on my way. Into the City of Sharks.
Through another doorway, I walk to the East River saying,
Sharks are people too.
Sharks are people too.
Sharks are people too.
I write all the things I need on the bottom
of my tennis shoes. I say, Let’s walk together.
The sun behind me is like a fire.
Tiny flames in the river’s ripples.
I say something to God, but he’s not a living thing,
so I say it to the river, I say,
I want to walk through this doorway
But without all those ghosts on the edge,
I want them to stay here.
I want them to go on without me.
I want them to burn in the water.
–Ada Limón
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30 Poems for National Poetry Month: Day 27
April 27, 2013
Here is my poem for Day 27:
That’s an unattached male
Mockingbird who sings
At 3AM, hidden somewhere
In the magnolia behind our
Building. He wants a mate.
I’ve got a mate, lying next to me,
And she rolls over and remarks
About the bird, asks why
He is singing now, before dawn.
It’s a strategy mockers have developed,
Taking advantage of silence,
As if in competition with the night.
Waiting will not do for the mocker,
Who has already stolen other birds’
Songs, he now wants to win
A heart of his own–
What he doesn’t realize is
It’s as annoying to the females
As it is to us trying to sleep.
–Scott Edward Anderson
30 Poems for National Poetry Month: Day 26
April 26, 2013
Here is my poem for Day 26:
Last night’s full moon
Appeared further away
Than usual, reminding me
That it is moving away
From us an inch and a half
Every year. Its pull
Stretches us thin
And complicates
Our emotions.
The “pink” moon angles
Through our window
And across our white
Sheets. Your tangle
Of red hair on the pillow
Reflects tiny lights
Neither high nor low,
As if your dreams
Escape into the night.
–Scott Edward Anderson
30 Poems for National Poetry Month: Day 25
April 25, 2013
Here is what passes for my Day 25 poem:
Not feeling very poetic today,
The tank approaching empty.
I’ll jot some lines here anyway,
In hopes to replenish the plenty.
–Scott Edward Anderson
30 Poems for National Poetry Month: Day 24
April 24, 2013
Here is my poem for Day 24:
Doubt is a privilege
Of the faithful,
I always say.
I have doubts
About almost everything
–except you.
You are the one
Person to whom
I could give my whole
Heart and never want
It back. Or, rather,
Always know where
To find it.
–Scott Edward Anderson
30 Poems for National Poetry Month: Day 23
April 23, 2013
Here is my poem for Day 23:
We never met a reality
We couldn’t lick.
We’ve turned dreams
Into reality, turned
Reality inside-out,
And found poetry
In places both usual
And extraordinary.
Scott Edward Anderson
30 Poems for National Poetry Month: Day 22
April 22, 2013
Here is my poem for Day 22, Earth Day:
Monday morning
After a glorious
weekend in Brooklyn.
The magnolia waves,
Birds sing, greet the day,
And the bed sways
With our embrace.
Time to celebrate
Our Mother Earth.
–Scott Edward Anderson
30 Poems for National Poetry Month: Day 21
April 21, 2013
Here is my poem for Day 21:
I want you to feel the way you do
When you’re with me, even when
We’re apart: beautiful, whole, sexy,
Smart, grounded — a rock star.
You should always feel that way,
Because it is who you are
Not just how I see you.
“Bind me as a seal upon your heart,
A sign upon your arm…” writes Solomon.
That seal and sign,
Should not be a “brand,”
But a celebration of you,
Your beauty, your wholeness,
And how full of love you are.
–Scott Edward Anderson
Don Share’s poetry resume reads like something from another era, when men and women of letters were perhaps more common.
Not the tenure-track kind of poet one finds in universities, but the sort that is actively engaged in poetry – as an editor, as a translator, a critic, and as a writer – on a daily basis. He was poetry editor of Harvard Review, the Partisan Review, and a senior editor of Poetry magazine.
He’s published three books of his own poems, translated Seneca and Miguel Hernandez, and compiled two books of verse by the great Basil Bunting, as well as co-editing The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of “Poetry” Magazine.
Share’s own poems are pithy, witty, and verbally gymnastic. Occasionally he takes a pun or a rhyme a little too far until it snaps back or more likely turns inside out. He’s fascinated by words and how they transform each other in the music of varying line length and tone.
And he is always aware, as poet Tom Sleigh writes in a blurb for Wishbone, Share’s latest collection, “of how daily life refuses to cohere into a consoling pattern is beautifully mirrored by his conviction that language itself signals a fall from grace and unity and emotional wholeness.”
The title poem, “Wishbone,” Share said in an interview, “is in the voice of a dying cat, and from his perspective, human beings are in charge, making godlike decisions in the face of which he feels powerless, though this is a tough cat and he suffers no loss of nobility or character even at the very end of it all. Needless to say, a cat can’t talk; I wanted to give one language for a short spell so he could speak his piece. A bit of tragicomic relief, you might say.”
Here is Don Share’s poem “Wishbone”:
I have a bone to pick
with whoever runs this joint.
I don’t much like
being stuck out in the rain
just to feed on the occasional
vole or baby rabbit
and these wet weed-salads
confound my intestines.
A cat can’t throw himself
into the Des Plaines River,
not even in the luscious fall.
I get yelled at in human
language every single day
for things I can’t begin
to comprehend, let alone change.
But I go on cleaning myself –
why shouldn’t I? –
and so I think I smell sweet,
even though I suspect otherwise.
I wouldn’t harm a fly normally,
but why doesn’t anybody
take care of me? How am I
supposed to know that it’s Easter,
that I’m not allowed to die
in my own bed, and that neither prong
of this wishbone is meant for me?
–Don Share
Scott Edward Anderson
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