Inside PBS Blog

I have too many favorites to just pick one, but one that I love is Waltzing the Spheres, which Bill Moyers chose to include in one of his broadcasts in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: http://www.pbs.org/americaresponds/moyers912.html

Waltzing the Spheres
by Susan Scott Thompson

We pulled each other closer in the turn.
Around a center that we could not see.
This holding on was what I had to learn.
The sun can hold the planets, earth, the moon.
But we had to create our gravity.
By always pulling closer in the turn.
Each revolution caused my head to whirl.
So dizzy I wanted to break free.
But holding on was what I had to learn.
I fixed my eyes on something out there firm.
And then our orbit steadied so that we could pull each other closer in the turn.
And if our feet should briefly leave the earth, no matter, earth was made for us to leave.
And arms for pulling closer in the turn.
This holding on is what we have to learn.

I have always loved poetry so when Lauren wrote this post I couldn't wait to comment. I have many favorite poems and poets. W. H. Auden and Edgar Allen Poe are favorites. But one poem that always sticks out in my mind is Lord Byron's She Walks in Beauty. It is just pure romance and it has never been determined who Byron is writing about which just adds a little bit of mystery:

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Amy Baroch
PBS Engage

What kid doesn't love Shel Silverstein?

Bear In There

There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire--
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there--
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

What an interesting artist Shel Silverstein, yes. I need a focus on him a little more, from the children's library to playboy cartoonist? Crazy life. Wonderful and colorful, very downtown.


Support the Arts

Whether a haiku,
Limerick, Free Verse or Rhyme.
Celebrate Good Lines!!

I have many favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and Robert Frost to name more than a few. Poetry is an expression of life. One poetess in particular has always gripped me with the expression of her life through language and metaphors. The unique style of Sylvia Plath is exhibited in my favorite poem "Elm".

Elm
By: Sylvia Plath

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? ----

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.

I have two favorite poems, both by Mary Oliver (1) The Journey and (2) Wild Geese

(I think both of these are about moving on after a difficult childhood or a difficult struggle that has held you back..allowing yourself to be free)

(1) The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

(2) Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

"help me out, and submit a National Poetry Month haiku"

April blossoms and
National Poetry Month
brings new hope to all.

From my 9-year-old son:

My mom is as sweet as sugar.
When she's working, she is as focused
as an eagle on its prey.
When she is mad, she is as vicious
as a tiger. And my love for her
is as big as the world.

This Is Just to Say
By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

A Question of Climate
By Audre Lorde

I learned to be honest
the way I learned to swim
dropped into the inevitable
my father's thumbs in my hairless armpits
about to give way
I am trying to surface carefully
remembering
the water's shadow-legged musk
cannons of salt exploding
my nostrils' rage
and for years
my powerful breast stroke
was a declaration of war.

Here's to April, the month that celebrates poetic expression:

April brings tax time
Resurrection reminders
Songbird serenades

I can give you the ultimate fulfillment of poetry in two words: Leonard Cohen ( A Thousand Kisses Deep )

Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of Crime and Punishment."

And he answered saying:

It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,

That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself.

And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.

Like the ocean is your god-self;

It remains for ever undefiled.

And like the ether it lifts but the winged.

Even like the sun is your god-self;

It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent.

But your god-self does not dwell alone in your being.

Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man,

But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening.

And of the man in you would I now speak.

For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime.

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.

But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,

So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.

And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,

So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.

Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.

You are the way and the wayfarers.

And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone.

Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.

And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts:

The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder,

And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed.

The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked,

And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.

Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured,

And still more often the condemned is the burden-bearer for the guiltless and unblamed.

You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked;

For they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together.

And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.

If any of you would bring judgment the unfaithful wife,

Let him also weight the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements.

And let him who would lash the offender look unto the spirit of the offended.

And if any of you would punish in the name of righteousness and lay the ax unto the evil tree, let him see to its roots;

And verily he will find the roots of the good and the bad, the fruitful and the fruitless, all entwined together in the silent heart of the earth.

And you judges who would be just,

What judgment pronounce you upon him who though honest in the flesh yet is a thief in spirit?

What penalty lay you upon him who slays in the flesh yet is himself slain in the spirit?

And how prosecute you him who in action is a deceiver and an oppressor,

Yet who also is aggrieved and outraged?

And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?

Is not remorse the justice which is administered by that very law which you would fain serve?

Yet you cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty.

Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze upon themselves.

And you who would understand justice, how shall you unless you look upon all deeds in the fullness of light?

Only then shall you know that the erect and the fallen are but one man standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self,

And that the corner-stone of the temple is not higher than the lowest stone in its foundation.

I have always loved this short poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay

EBB

by: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge

(And who could forget this seasonal gem:)

SPRING

by: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

O what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

My favorite poem of all time?

Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out by Richard Siken in his book, Crush.

Hands down. He's a living poet too, which makes it all the better.

Haiku

a single poem
soft spring sunlight glancing off
flickering eyelid

The Great Creator
would be proud...he won First Prize!
Sculpture on display

Silver moonlight shines
bright stars twinkle one by one
diamond wedding band

Five points show the way
starfish heads for home at sea
confused...East or West?

Like snowflakes falling
the white fragrant blossoms rain
lovely, but not wet

She flies on white wings
caring for the wounded men
Angel of Mercy

We approach the cross
Nature's God benevolent
flowers amid weeds

Robin's egg blue box
Surprise! Gift tied with a bow
Tiffany & Co.

rainbow mystery
urchin, squid, anemone
flowers of the sea

winter in summer
dazzling snowflakes fly from sky
white Snowy Egret

divine creation
pleasing to the eye is he
darling golden boy

time to pack has come
pack your bags and board the door
chambered nautilus

awaken from sleep
I hear "tick tock" of the clock
alas, time stands still

Like David is he
perfection personified
the man of my dreams

view from the window
a lovely lakeside cabin
snow and red canoe

frozen wonderland
shrieks and frolics in delight
angel in the snow

Mona Lisa...shy
mystery behind your eye
fine art of the smile

her catch of the day
afraid, and yet, enchanted
dying for her love

kiss to breathe new life
bound for all eternity
soulmates of the sea

close your eyes...listen!
sea waves crashing on the shore
nature's lullaby

early morning mist
on a shadowed stretch of shore
no mermaids allowed

born of the sea's foam
floating to shore on a shell
true love at first sight

*tribute to Aphrodite

watch her flip her lid
hope left behind to torment
beautiful evil

*tribute to Pandora