allowables

I've been rereading Nikki Giovanni, who died in December. Her writing—her poetry, of course, but also prose—is so wonderful, but one of my favorite things is how spare and simple some of her poems are, and how she can just absolutely punch you in the stomach with like five words. This one, from her 2013 hybrid collection Chasing Utopia (here's the title essay of the book at Poetry Foundation), absolutely haunts me.

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn't
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don't think
I'm allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened

—Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024), "Allowables," from Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (William Morrow, 2013)

heartbreaking

My book club's book for March was Maya Deane's Wrath Goddess Sing, a trans and fantasy-ish retelling of the Iliad. As a long-standing irreverent classicist and fan of iddy fanfic, I enjoyed it a lot, although I did have some quibbles (overall, the fantasy and science fiction elements worked less well for me, and at a certain point I did kind of reach my limit on bonkers shit...lol whoops). But I also could not stop thinking about this poem during our book club meeting on Sunday—it's exactly right tonally, even if it's the Odyssey rather than the Iliad.

When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.

—Louise Glück (1943-2023), "Telemachus' Detachment" from Meadowlands (Ecco Press, 1996).

love this spring

Good morning, and welcome to National Poetry Month. This means that I will be posting a poem (more or less) every day from now until April 30—life does intervene, and sometimes I skip days or post multiple poems, but I think that's part of the fun.

I started celebrating National Poetry Month in 2007, when I was 21; I turn 40 this year, and it's a little crazy to think that I've been doing this for almost half my life. According to my spreadsheet, I've posted approximately 500 poems. So much has changed in the time I've been doing this—for me, for the world—but poetry remains a constant for me, even while my tastes evolve and what I want from poetry shifts with the times we live in. I'm never exactly sure, going in, what any year's April will bring, but I hope you'll enjoy the journey with me. ♥

I always try to start with a spring poem for April 1 (even when the weather is terrible, as it currently is here in Houston), and I really love this one.

How can I love this spring
when it's pulling me
through my life faster
than any time before it?
When five separate dooms
are promised this decade
and here I am, just trying
to watch a bumblebee cling
to its first purple flower.
I cannot save this world.
But look how it's trying,
once again, to save me.

—James A. Pearson, "This Spring," from The Wilderness That Bears Your Name (Goat Trail Press, 2024). I first encountered this poem on Instagram, which has been a surprisingly excellent source of poetry for me over the last few years.

curl your toes into the grass

Happy May 1! In keeping with a year of poetry month that has been pretty off-kilter in terms of my posting schedule, I am posting my closing poem for April 30 today. It's been a weird month—and, frankly, a weird year so far—with travel and health stuff and being in a new place. I hope that by this time next year, I'll be a lot more settled in Houston (and also, like, not having daily migraines). But it's still been a good April in many ways, and the poems have certainly helped. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next year. ♥

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden's dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

—Ross Gay, "Thank You" from Against Which, 2006.

home

This year in particular, I can't wrap up poetry month without Mahmoud Darwish. At the beginning of the month, I think there was a part of me that hoped that by the time we got here, he might not feel quite so immediately and desperately relevant—but that's not where we are, and frankly it's not where we've been for all eighteen years that I've been posting poems (and longer). I could have done an entire month of Mahmoud Darwish at basically any point in those eighteen years, even if it feels more acute and immediate right now.

It was also a challenge to decide on a poem, but earlier in the month I committed to this one, and I stand by it—I love this one. That said, you should also (at the least) go read Think of Others and In Jerusalem.

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.

—Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), "I Belong There," from Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, translated and edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein (2003).

break open

It's the last Sunday in April. Here's some Mary Oliver.

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), "Lead" from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two, 2005.

a hundred mountains

For several years, I've wanted to post Ursula K. Le Guin's poem "For Gabriela Mistral," which is a gorgeous poem about translation and geography and language and connection across time. But as much as I love poets writing about other poets, I felt a little weird posting it without actually having read any Mistral. Then, this year for my birthday, Lucy got me a volume of Mistral poetry translated by Le Guin, and I had a different problem, which was picking a poem to post alongside the Le Guin poem. So here is Le Guin on Mistral, for today, and Mistral herself—also about connections and words—for April 20, one of my missed days.

                    En el Valle de Elqui, ceñido
                de cien montañas o de más...

Forty years beyond her mortal years
she came back to me, to our Pacific,
she came here, she
who sank the meek and blinded saint
and the grim men from Spain
in the glory of the lord of angels
and a gust of the craziest wind.
She stood on this northern shore
where gulls whirled like torn paper
and said in the language that I spoke
before I spoke words, "Come!"

"Come!" she said, standing
heavy-bodied and rough-voiced,
deep-breasted as the hills:
"I came north, but you didn't know me.
I've gone home now to the valley
encircled by a hundred mountains,
a hundred mountains, maybe more.
You must come and you must learn
my language."

    If I walk south
with the ocean always on my right
and the mountains on my left,
swimming the mouths of the rivers,
the estuaries and the great canal,
if I walk from high tide to low tide
and full moon to new moon, south,
and from the equinox to solstice, south,
across the equator in a dream of volcanoes,
if I walk through all the Tropics
past bays of amethyst and bays of jade
from April spring to April autumn, south,
and cross the deserts of niter and asbestos
with the sea silver on my right
and a hundred mountains on my left,
a hundred mountains, maybe more,
I will come to the valley.

If I walk all the way, my poet,
if I can walk all the way,
I will come to you.
And I will speak your language.

—Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), "For Gabriela Mistral," from Sixty Odd (1994-1999), and in this case from Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems: 1960-1920 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).

*

                A Blanca Subercaseaux

    Yo no sé si podré venir.
A ver si te cumplo, hermana.

    Llego, si vengo, en aire dulce
por no helarte la llanada
o en el filo de tu sueño
con amor, y sin palabra.

    Empínate por si me cuesta
hallémonos a media marcha,
y me llevas un poco de tierra
por que recuerde mi Posada.

    No temas si bulto no llevo
tampoco si llego mudada.
Y no llores si no te respondo
porque mi culpa fue la palabra.
Pero dame la tuya, la tuya,
que era como paloma posada.


                    For Blanca Subercaseaux

    I don't know if I can come
let's see if I can reach you, sister.

    I'll arrive, if I do, on a mild wind,
so as not to freeze your plains,
or at the edges of your dream,
with love, and without a word.

    Stand up tall, in case I find it
hard to meet halfway,
and bring me a little earth
to remember my Inn by.

    Don't worry if I don't have a shape,
or if I look different.
And don't cry if I don't answer,
for my sin was words.
But give me yours, your word
that was like a dove alighting.

—Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), "Encargo a Blanca" or "Message to Blanca," translated by Ursula K. Le Guin, from Lagar or Winepress, 1954. Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, trans. Ursula K. Le Guin (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003).

forget the epitaph

When we were in New York, I went to see Suffs on Broadway with my mom. It was great—I have notes, of course, but overall I really enjoyed it, and I'm really glad I got to see it—and when I got home (or rather, back to the hotel) I obviously ended up reading up on the historical figures I didn't know as much about. This is how I learned that after Inez Milholland died, her husband married Edna St. Vincent Millay, who then WROTE A POEM about her husband's dead wife. Because, like, obviously. So this is the poem I would have posted on April 19, if I hadn't already been in bed and half-asleep when I learned of its existence.

                        Read in Washington, November eighteenth, 1923, at the unveiling of a statue
                        of three leaders in the cause of Equal Rights for Women

Upon this marble bust that is not I
Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame;
But in the forum of my silenced cry
Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.
I, that was proud and valiant, am no more;—
Save as a dream that wanders wide and late,
Save as a wind that rattles the stout door,
Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate.
The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust.
Only my standard on a taken hill
Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust
And make immortal my adventurous will.
Even now the silk is tugging at the staff:
Take up the song; forget the epitaph.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), "To Inez Milholland," 1923. I wouldn't say it's Edna's best work, but there's still something about it that really does land.

without a word

I couldn't decide which W. S. Merwin poem to post, so here are two, one for today and one to count for April 17. They're variations on a theme (it's a little weird to be back in Texas where it very much is already summer), and I really enjoy the way Merwin just doesn't use punctuation at all.

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this

—W. S. Merwin (1927-2019), "Black Cherries," from Garden Time, 2016.

*

The first hay is in and all at once
in the silent evening summer has come
knowing the place wholly the green skin
of its hidden slopes where the shadows will
never reach so far again and a few
gray hairs motionless high in the late
sunlight tell of rain before morning
and of finding the daybreak under green
water with no shadows but all still the same
still known still the known faces of summer
faces of water turning into the themselves
changing without a word into the themselves

—W. S. Merwin (1927-2019), "After the Spring," published in Poetry (June 1992).

cathedrals

And for today, a poem I've been thinking about, quite possibly constantly, since the first time I read it:

There's this cathedral in my head I keep
making from cricket song and
dying but rogue-in-spirit, still,
bamboo. Not making. I keep
imagining it, as if that were the same
thing as making, and as if making might
bring it back, somehow, the real
cathedral. In anger, as in desire, it was
everything, that cathedral. As if my body
itself cathedral. I conduct my body
with a cathedral's steadiness, I
try to. I cathedral. In desire. In anger.
Light enters a cathedral the way persuasion fills a body.
Light enters a cathedral, the way persuasion fills a body.

—Carl Phillips, "And If I Fall," from Star Map with Action Figures, 2018. Between "I cathedral" and the work that comma does in the last line, I am just—this poem, my god. I guess the thing these two poems have in common is that they are both masterpieces of enjambment.