Hey word nerds, let’s end National Poetry Month with a bang! Celebrated poetry press Write Bloody, beacon of generosity and badassery that it is, wants to stuff two wonderful Autostraddle readers with poetry up to your shiny eyeballs.
Write Bloody is home to some of the most decorated performance poets in the scene today, and a bunch of those poets are badass queer ladies! The two winners of this prize pack will each get five books by Write Bloody authors:
The Madness Vase by Andrea Gibson
Andrea Gibson has been making queer girls swoon for years, and her latest book reminds us, quite simply, that it will all be ok.
The Smell of Good Mud by Lauren Zuniga
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Lauren Zuniga writes about community, family, identity, politics and the possibilities we hold in our hands. Her book feels like home.
Floating, Brilliant, Gone by Franny Choi
Franny Choi has been tearing up poetry slams for years, and her debut book, released last month, brings her volatile, gorgeous work to the page.
After The Witch Hunt by Megan Falley
Megan Falley is going to find the light, and she’s taking you with her.
Glitter In The Blood: A Writer’s Guide by Mindy Netifee
Many of us who love poetry also try to write it sometimes. But y’all, words are hard. This is perhaps the most accessible and enjoyable writer’s guide I’ve ever used. Learn to write amazing poems like Mindy’s with her relatable advice and unintimidating exercises.
The set will come in a fancy and stylish bag from Blue Q. ARE YOU ENTICED YET?! I thought so. To be eligible for the contest, all you have to do is tell us about your favorite poem in the comments by 5 p.m. PST on Wednesday April 30. We’ll select two commenters at random, and Write Bloody will send you all these kickass books directly to your doorstep! Bonus Xs and Os if your comment is also in the form of a poem. I am so excited for two of you to get all these books! Your brain and heart are going to turn into fiery angel cupcake dreams.
If I had to choose just one poem for a favorite, it would be “Song for Baby-O, Unborn,” by Diane DiPrima. Just can’t get over that last stanza:
but I can show you
baby
enough to love
to break your heart
forever
Read it here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/242638
Asking me to pick a favorite poem is like asking which of my limbs I would least like to lose. But here is a short poem I have always loved:
Boo, Forever (Richard Brautigan)
Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.
This is wonderful!
My favorite is surprisingly easy (especially has a person who never has just *one* favorite). It’s Andrea Gibson’s Tadpoles, her two stanza piece in Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns.
I have the illustration for the poem and two lines tattooed on my lower arm.
this is so rad, especially to see megan falley on autostraddle! not commenting to win anything, just wanted to say yay.
WANT!
One of favorite poems is Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou. I just have vivid memories of first reading it out loud years ago and feeling so empowered, etc!
eek! i’ve been meaning to sign up for the past year, and this did it.
here’s one recent favorite:
From an Atlas of the Difficult World
by Adrienne Rich
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
i just read this poem for the first time a few nights ago! in fact i read the entire book and was deeply touched. ughh adrienne <3
I signed up just for this too! And “From an Atlas” is beautiful, thanks for sharing.
“You Are The Party I Want To Go To” by Alex Dimitrov.
Alex Dimitrov has been a kind of problematic poetic figure in the last few years (ie. that one time he ran that boys club poetry salon and then said it wasn’t a boys club even though it totally was). But this is still my favorite because it’s a love poem about best friends.
Wow! AMAZING GIVEAWAY!!!
It’s hard to choose one favorite poem, but I love Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou. It’s great to repeat to myself when times are especially difficult, and I find it empowering. It helps me with my struggles with anxiety and depression. Plus, one of my best friends got my a copy of the Maya Angelou/Basquiat book recently, so it has an extra special place for me.
I love e.e. cummings’ anyone lived in a pretty how town.
I found this poem in a book of required poems in fifth grade, when we were doing a poetry project, and I fell in love with his writing style. In a time of my life where I thought following the rules was the only way to succeed, his poems showed me that breaking the rules can be beautiful – and that most rules are stupid anyway. Who needs capital letters?
Of course, last week I almost cried when I got caught skipping class… but I can dream, right?
This is the best giveaway ever!
My favorite poem was written by the French poet Paul Eluard. Unfortunately, the translation doesn’t do justice to the original (as always with poetry), so here are the two versions:
–
L’amoureuse
Elle est debout sur mes paupières
Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens,
Elle a la forme de mes mains,
Elle a la couleur de mes yeux,
Elle s’engloutit dans mon ombre
Comme une pierre sur le ciel.
Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts
Et ne me laisse pas dormir.
Ses rêves en pleine lumière
Font s’évaporer les soleils
Me font rire, pleurer et rire,
Parler sans avoir rien à dire.
–
The lover
She is standing on my eyelids
And her hair is in my hair,
She has the shape of my hands,
The colour of my eyes.
She is absorbed in my shadow,
Like a stone upon the sky.
She keeps her eyes open
And doesn’t let me sleep.
Her dreams in broad daylight
Make the suns evaporate,
Make me laugh, weep and laugh,
And speak without a thing to say.
I first heard Andrew by Andrea Gibson at a student dance performance at my school. It was the first poem by AG that I’d ever heard and it shook me to my core. I went home and watched video after video of them performing, speaking words that I’d held inside and didn’t know. It was an especially hard time in my life, and her words helped save me.
“And we held each other like I held these words
For too many years on the tip of my tongue
I am my mother’s daughter
I am midnight’s sun
You can find me on the moon
Waxing and waning
My heart full of petals
Every single one begging
Love me, love me, love me
Whoever I am
Whoever I become”
My sister handed me this poem for my birthday when I was 22. It gets better with age; hands down Nikki Giovanni’s Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission
I mean…I…can fly
like a bird in the sky…
AW HALE A FAV POEM! But this is only one, and maybe not my favorite, but it’s up there SO.
For Mi Osita–Jewelle Gomez
In sleep she arches a brow
over her dark shadowed eye,
causing ripples
that move out from her center
to encircle me.
Light sneaks into our shuttered room.
The scented air lingers on the copper of her skin
and the coal black of her curls.
Her sleeping hums in my ear
closing out noise of the traffic below
and Monday to come,
harmonizing with the rustle of the sheet
as she turns her back to me.
An invitation I always recognize
Oh! I get to talk about it, too! Well, I’m into it because it details this obviously older relationship (these snitches live together so…) that still “causes ripples”. Just the warmth of the poem gets me goin’
:’-)
Finding oneself alone with language that pushes and pulls with an exactness of familiarity is why I am in love, deeply, with poetry.
Blueberries
by Minnie Bruce Pratt
Love, I know you well: how you look, desiring,
upper lip lengthened when you look at what you
want: some wet fat blueberries heaped in bowls, or
me, at times, wet too.
10/9/1982
Ah! An amazing
giveaway! Lucky the one
who wins all those books!
And an actually really real (translation of) my favorite haiku by Issa:
the world of dew is
a world of dew, and yet,
and yet –
A Sad Child by Margaret Atwood: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-sad-child/
Whenever I am going through a rough patch I read this poem.
It reminds me that pain and sadness are universal human conditions, that external attempts to speed up or remedy your emotional journey are generally absurd, and that we’re all hurtling through the universe without an instruction manual so just lighten up a little and give yourself a break.
I don’t know if this will get me entered into the giveaway or not, but… I don’t really have a favorite poem. I can can name some whose words have stayed with me in spite of my feeling ambivilent toward them (I’m looking at you, Howl), but I haven’t been able to connect much with poetry as an adult.
Perhaps this can be a chance to start?
No poetry is
among my favorite words;
I just collect prose.
I <3 Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
"the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters."
though simple and short
my favorite poem weathers
see, emily dickinson penned
“hope” is the thing with feathers
now it stands as my world view
’cause we are scared to fall
but we are able to move buildings
unless we don’t move at all
so i say “we” are the things with feathers
for capable we all are
and i must perpetually remind my peers
collectively our reach can be far.
My favorite poet is neither gay nor a lady, (does that make me a bad gay lady?) but Felix Dennis rocks my world.
i’m too lazy to type it out but here is my favorite poem of his, Sylva Anathema: http://www.felixdennis.com/poetry/sylva-anathema/
He’s sarcastic and heartfelt and cutthroat and the tempo in poems like Why Do They Do It gives me ultimate nerdwood. ( http://www.felixdennis.com/poetry/why-do-they-do-it-3/ )
I’m Nobody! Who Are You? By: Emily Dickinson
If you are too busy trying to be on everyone’s lips you miss to glory of being just yourself with others like you.
It was a poem I found taped to the bottom of my bunk at camp when I was a preteen and it has stayed with me.
I made an account finally, all because of poetry greed. I love the Andrea Gibson poem Jewelry Store
Also, all of Jack Prelutsky’s poetry about dragons.
My favorite poetry tends to run older- when I first decided to start reading more poetry (as a 17y/o with a minimal social life but an intense interest in her AP english class does) I bought a giantass Harold Bloom compilation that ended in the 50’s. So I definitely need to catch up on more modern works but one of my current favorites is Eros Turannos by Edwin Arlington Robinson. The whole thing has such a powerful rhythm and aching sentiment to it, the last stanza especially:
Meanwhile we do no harm, for they
That with a god have striven,
Not hearing much of what we say
Take what the god has given.
Though like waves breaking it may be,
Or like a changed familiar tree,
Or like a stairway to the sea
Where down the blind are driven.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eros-turannos/
Such a great giveaway!
My favorite is “女人” or “Women” by Zhai Yongming, specifically the section called “Desire” (渴望).
今晚所有的光只为你照亮
今晚你是一小块殖民地
久久停留，忧郁从你身体内
渗出，帶著细腻的肉体
—
Tonight every ray of light shines for you.
Tonight you are a little colony
Staying on, the sadness from your body
Seeps out, in delicate water-droplets.
A professor told me once that if you have poems memorized you’re never really alone. And so, my list of favorite memorized poems and where I like to recite them to myself:
When I’m biking at night and feeling lonely: “The Rider” by Naomi Shihab Nye (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/rider)
When I ride past that funny overpass by the Charles River: “I Love You, Sweat Heart” by Thomas Lux (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2003/04/25)
When winter is way too fucking long: “The Woods and Pastures” by Wendell Berry (http://czwanzig.tumblr.com/post/4694871816/the-woods-and-pastures-are-joyous-in-their)
When I get my period and all of a sudden everything makes sense: “If Your Uterus Runs on Birth-Control Standard Time…” by Mindy Nettifree (http://poetry.newgreyhair.com/post/46359656559/if-your-uterus-runs-on-birth-control-standard-time)
Y’all there are so many more, too.
aw I think you should win.
It’s hard for me to choose a favorite poem, but recently I’ve been inspired by Lauren Zuniga’s “Happiness is a Hot Mess”:
There are vegetables overflowing from every surface.
Growing from pots, saved from dumpsters, crooked
sculptures in bowls. The windows are open. Sampson
and Delilah are necking, frenzied black fur and growl.
Lemon Engine is learning the banjo. Cigarette perched
on bottom lip. Clumsy claw hammer. Occasionally,
she looks up to see if she is disturbing anyone. Even
the ceramic owls are tapping their feet. The ants two-
step along mean trails of cayenne. No one is going
anywhere.
The shower curtain keeps falling. The door is off its
hinges. This house is not used to such warm sirens.
Rising up smells like lavender oil and a pile of sweaty
girls. I fell off my bike yesterday; I’ve been admiring
the wound all morning.
Abundance is a handmade grail, filled with mulberry
mead. All these years, I had mistaken it for a clean
house and full bank account. When it came, I didn’t
even notice the casual spill. How it stained the linens.
How it made every crevice glow so loud and sweet.
I love that hilarious video of Andrea Gibson talking about Lauren Zuniga’s book, and biking to her house! Before I knew anything about either of them I thought the name of the video, which is “Andrea Gibson proposed to Lauren Zuniga,” was real. What a cool match those two would make. On second thought, maybe that would be too many feelings in one coupling, even for two queer ladies.
this poem just hit me in the gut approximately five years ago. Incredibly morbid love poem, but somehow some days it doesn’t seem about the inevitability of death as much as the inevitability of life. Lacería, by Juana de Ibarbourou:
No codicies mi boca. Mi boca es de ceniza
y es un hueco sonido de campanas mi risa.
No me oprimas las manos. Son de polvo mis manos,
y al estrecharlas tocas comida de gusanos.
No trences mis cabellos. Mis cabellos son tierra
con la que han de nutrirse las plantas de la sierra.
No acaricies mis senos. Son de greda los senos
que te empeñas en ver como lirios morenos.
¿Y aún me quieres, amado? ¿Y aún mi cuerpo pretendes
y, largas de deseo, las manos a mí tiendes?
¿Aún codicias, amado, la carne mentirosa
que es ceniza y se cubre de apariencias de rosa?
Bien, tómame. ¡Oh laceria!
¡Polvo que busca al polvo sin sentir su miseria!
I have so many favorite poems that it’s difficult to narrow it down. However, something that has been stuck in my head lately is Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty One Love Poems” (FUN FACT: If you want to woo a lady, read all of these to her in a park. It worked for me, at least). It’s obviously too long to post all 21, but here’s the second one:
I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
You’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I’ve been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You’ve kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone…
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.
Picking just one is so hard, but I love “San Sepolcro” by Jorie Graham, it speaks to my art historian heart.
Also anything by Adrienne Rich, I am loving all the Rich love in the comments.
Also nearly everything from Eduardo Corral’s “Slow Lightning.”
He’s an old, middle class white dude, but The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot was the first one to speak to me and leave me moved, when I was about 17.
I read ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ at the same time. This line always made me take a breath and I think it’s pretty gay in hindsight:
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown”.
I had the same experience with Love Song in high school. Eliot the person might suck but his poetry is unfuckwithable
The word “unfuckwithable” is my new favourite, thank you for that.
i like my body when it is with your body. it is so quite a new thing. muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones and the trembling-firm-smoothness and which I will again and again kiss. i like kissing this and that of you, i like slowly stroking that shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh . . . and eyes big love-crumbs and possibly i like the thrill of under me you so quite new
– ee cummings
My favorite poem is the The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Elliot.
When I was in high school my english would give me books to read. After I read the books we would always talk about them together after school. One day he gave a a book of T.S. Elliot’s poetry and we sat down and read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It was magical. Every time I read that poem I think of my English teacher and all the fun afternoons we spent together.
I really like Andrew Zawacki. And just free verse in general. I think my favorite would be Zawacki’s “Grayscale breath on a fluid.” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/247398) I also like “Begins in interruption” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/247400) by him.
It is so hard to pick just one favorite poem. One of my favorites is Many Loves by Allen Ginsberg. The poem is well written and sweet. Also it astounds me that Ginsberg was brave enough to publish it in 1956.
Andrea Gibson’s “The Nutritionist” held my hand through months of suicidal depression while I was closeted.
I felt like I came full circle when I was able to share this poem with one of my high school students who is battling depression. I hang a copy in my classroom as an offering of solidarity to everyone who needs it.
“I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside/ Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside/”
Up until THIS VERY INSTANT, I’d been one of those noiseless lurkers who quietly admires autostraddle from afar, but seeing as I’m ALSO a noiseless lurker who quietly admires spoken word poetry performed by Write Bloody poets on youtube (and saw Andrea Gibson live once!), this giveaway is too good to pass up.
I am bad at favorites because I either have too many or none at all.
I read and liked a lot of Elizabeth Bishop and John Ashbery in college, identified entirely too much for my liking with J. Alfred Prufrock, and have a strong appreciation for most of the Write Bloody crew, but the first poem that came to me when I read this post was one I stumbled upon when I was subscribed to Ted Kooser’s poetry column newsletter. I couldn’t even remember the author until I googled it just now, but apparently it’s Dale Ritterbusch.
“There is this tea
I have sometimes,
Pan Long Ying Hao,
so tightly curled
it looks like tiny roots
gnarled, a greenish-gray.
When it steeps, it opens
the way you woke this morning,
stretching, your hands behind
your head, back arched,
toes pointing, a smile steeped
in ceremony, a celebration,
the reaching of your arms.”
It’s simple, but I think that’s why I like it.
Sarah Kay is my favorite spoken word poet. I adore her poem “If I should have a daughter”.
Trying to choose a favourite poem is like trying to pick a favourite breath of wind or beam of the sun. And to talk about a poem never does quite get to it does it? –the language i have lacks the sounds to describe the feelings that get all up inside.
However, I am grateful to get to read through the comments to see all these wonderful words!
The poem I share below was written hundreds of years ago i am told. And when I read it i am in the illuminated darkness, cool with a breeze and bathed in moonlight that stirs in a way we of the electric carscapes could never know. the feeling of filling with the cool soothing and stirring of moonlight. Where is nowhere? How does a thing, a sound an idea come out of it? And then nothing answers… and that thing inside me happens that my words cannot explain. Have you ever been in the full dark of night, with nothing but the moon to pour her light over you?
All night I could not sleep
because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept on hearing a voice calling:
Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “yes”
by Zi Ye
My favorite poet is probably Edna St. Vincent Millay. I especially love her sonnet “Only until this cigarette is ended”
Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,–farewell!–the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.
I absolutely love Edna St. Vincent Millay! I became obsessed with her in middle or high school when I read a biography of her. I just spent a long time trying to pick my favorite poem of hers but I couldn’t do it.
I LOVE Andrea Gibson’s poem “Glider Plane.” The imagery is beautiful. Sometimes, I play it on repeat to help me fall asleep… it’s comforting like that.
I love different poems in different ways, but a favorite is Borderlands by Gloria E. Anzaldúa. Most parts of my life are lived on borders, and Anzaldúa really captures what that feels like in this poem. It’s the kind of poem that is so specific to her own experience that I find it all the more relatable.
Every piece I’ve read by Allison Benis White has been oddly heartbreaking and beautifully disturbing— I highly recommend her.
I’ve been reading her debut collection, Self-Portrait with Crayon, which is comprised of poems that use Degas paintings as conceptual armature. I held my breath throughout the entirety of this poem:
‘Interior or The Rape’
Without a choice but to couple, to be underneath. But this is an idea separate from the act. Her back is white and turned from who leans against the closed door. Hands in his pockets. Most desire is the opposite of what we have and identical to lack. Maybe to pull her satin blouse strap firmly off her shoulder. And to be seen in the lamp light as a ghost wishes to be seen once and consequently forever.
I will not let you sleep follows the pattern of most affection. Even the woman who holds the wrists of another woman down on the sidewalk or the Polish girl who dragged me forward by my ponytail when I was nine. This is the feeling of a leash at the base of your neck. The circular crease the rubberband leaves in my hair when I take it down every night cannot be brushed out and wholly is the fear of being forgotten.
I still love this shortie from Atwood the best
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
Movie
BY EILEEN MYLES
You’re like
a little fruit
you’re like
a moon I want
to hold
I said lemon slope
about your
hip
because it’s one
of my words
about you
I whispered
in bed
this smoothing
the fruit &
then alone
with my book
but writing
in it the pages
wagging
against my knuckles
in the
light like a
sail.
The day I found out the father of a close friend died, I looked up his poetry (I had forgotten for a while he was a poet) and I found this on a website:
“The good news is that I won’t be writing for too much longer. The bad news, that I leave you with a poem.
zip #254 2011
by the time I reach the gate post
another leaf has fallen”
That stayed with me. Even how he introduced it.
Sorry, the formatting isn’t quite right. He separated with tabs but I’ll show it with lines:
By the time I
reach the gate post
another leaf
has fallen.
And his name is John Carley.
Snow and Dirty Rain by Richard Siken is one of my favorites because “we are all just trying to be holy” speaks to my bones and “we are all going forward. None of us are going back.” grounds me during flashbacks and other not great things.
YES. Richard Siken is my favorite by far. “Crush” is one of those volumes that I can read again and again and always find something new in the language.
Yes! I didn’t stumble across it until a few months ago but aftrr i did i realized it’s one of those books that I need to carry around for everything forever.
“EACH FROM DIFFERENT HEIGHTS” BY STEPHEN DUNN 4 LYFE
YEESSSSSSSS
My favorite poem? I don’t like making “favorite” choices, but the one that came to mind immediately was Invictus, by William Ernest Henley. Mainly because it was heavily featured in Annie on My Mind, but also because it gets stuck in my head every time I hear anything in iambic tetrameter.
My favorite poem? It took some thinking, but The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot – but not that part about “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?” that everyone likes to quote. I like the last bit, at the end:
Me too!! We are favourite poem buddies.
Really interesting that there are loads of mentions for Prufrock. It seems like the alienation theme is something that strikes a chord with LGBT kids. All that “Do I dare?” and the feeling of being wrenched back to a difficult reality, maybe.
I’ve been reading for years and this is my first comment :) One of my favorite poems is Ada Limon’s “Sharks in the River.”
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/sharks-rivers
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.
I had never heard of Ada Limon before, but this is amazing and I’m going to go read a lot more now, thank you!
OLIVER BENDORF
http://www.tupeloquarterly.com/love-and-the-bodega-by-oliver-bendorf/
I just saw Andrea Gibson and Lauren Zuniga perform last night in Burlington! It was magical and heartbreaking and uplifting and a million other feels all at once.
One of my favorite poems is The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
I love this poem. It has helped me through so much. I’m seriously considering getting it tattooed somewhere.
AS’s whole collection of articles for NPM is a wealth of riches. And the comments too; all the personal stories that straddlers share.
One of my favorite poems, ‘Romantics’ by Lisel Mueller (excerpt):
“forgetting how softly Eros walked
in the nineteenth century, how a hand
held overlong or a gaze anchored
in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart,
and nuances of address, not known
in our egalitarian language
could make the redolent air
tremble and shimmer with the heat
of possibility.”
These words will ignite us unite us untie us.
One that nestles in my brain by Margaret Atwood is…
Don’t ask for the true story;
why do you need it?
It’s not what I set out with
or what I carry.
What I’m sailing with,
a knife, blue fire,
luck, a few good words
that still work, and the tide.
Awed by her splendor
stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces
when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver
Sappho
It just makes me really happy that I can totally relate to someone that died thousands of years ago.
This is rad! My favorite poem has to be A Dream within A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe.
“Take this kiss upon the brow…”
I love it so much I’ve committed it to memory.
My favorite poem is probably “Cut” by Sylvia Plath. I’ll just link it because it’s a big long and I don’t want to take up too much room here in the comments!
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1387
my favorite poem right now is “on kindness” by aracelis girmay. it is comforting and wandering and perfect for right before bed, like a lullaby or a superfamiliar childhood story.
the last stanza goes,
“Perhaps this thing I am calling kindness
is more simple than kindness, rather, recognition
of the neighbor & the blue, shared earth
& the common circumstance of being here:
what remains living of the last
two million, impossible years…”
Aracelis Girmay just came onto my radar recently and her work has been capturing my whole self. Love this poem!!
A Brave and Startling Truth
by maya angelou
It’s always difficult to choose a favorite poem. That’s like choosing my favorite cat. But it was gonna be a tossup between Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, and Audre won this one.
A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive
– Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn
<3 this, and also <3 the creation of an open Autostraddle thread on poems.
Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness," READ IT.
(It made me rediscover kindness
as a thing I could love
instead of a thing
that could be used against me)
I recently wrote a paper on Adrienne Rich, so I’m going to have to join the ranks of the many who’ve commented before me picking one of hers! One of my favorites is the cryptic “Final Notations”:
it will not be simple, it will not be long
it will take little time, it will take all your thought
it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
it will be short, it will not be simple
it will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart
it will not be long, it will occupy your thought
as a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied
it will take all your flesh, it will not be simple
You are coming into us who cannot withstand you
you are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you
you are taking parts of us into places never planned
you are going far away with pieces of our lives
it will be short, it will take all your breath
it will not be simple, it will become your will
I have so many! One of my newest favourites is from Sarah Kay’s new book, No Matter the Wreckage, called Ghost Ship.
“No matter your wreckage.
There will be someone to find you beautiful, despite the cruddy metal. Your ruin is not to be hidden behind paint and canvas. Let them see the cracks. Someone will come to sing into these empty spaces.”
Walt Whitman, “To a Stranger.” The pronoun shifts fascinated me, as a child, and then resonated as I grew into myself. It’s the first poem that I ever memorized, and the first one I ever whispered to a girl in the night. Some days I’m wont to forget what I look like, and imagine that someday I’ll forget even my own name, but I can’t imagine these lines ever leaving me:
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
My favorite is probably the first part of Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot:
“Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”
Or Resume by Dorothy Parker:
“Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp;
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.”
e.e. cummings “I carry your heart”
Andrea Gibson “Blue Blanket”
All of the Andrea Gibson ever.
Andrea Gibson- Blue Blanket
i just. I cannot finish a coherent thought. She makes me feel so much. I love poetry, but most of her spoken work makes me feel anguish. Addicting anguish.
I’m generally a happy person I swear!
if you would like to watch it
TW: Rape
Just one? Well, since it is a Write Bloody giveaway, I’ll go with “I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power’s Out” by Andrea Gibson. It’s hard to pick a favorite among Andrea’s poems as well, but this one has saved me so many times, especially these lines:
I said, “Tell me about the Big Bang.”
The stars said, “It hurts to become.”
OMG impossible. Thank you so much for this. My favorite poem of the moment:
Robert Hass, Meditation at Lagunitas http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177014
this is amazing!!!!!! (even if i don’t technically win, i’m still a winner since i got to read all these amazing poems that people have posted!)
mine is probably a poem by william carlos williams:
This is Just to Say
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
This has always been one of my favorites as well <3
Marty McConnell’s “Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell”
This poem has impacted me in ways too profound to put into words, I remembered wept and hallelujah’ed so much when I heard/read it for the first time. I can’t choose a specific line I love, so here’s the whole thing:
My heart is breaking so hard right now because yesterday I found out “how it ends” and I cannot handle this at all.
This is how I felt until recently (and still do):
Baby, I have no idea how this will end
Maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the earth’s hips
And our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary
Or maybe tomorrow, my absolute insanity
Combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills
Will leave us
Like a love letter
In a landfill
But whatever
Whenever
However this ends,
I want you to know, that right now,
I love you forever
I love you for the hardest mile we walked together
–Andrea Gibson, How it Ends
Favorite poem(s)? Anything and everything ever written by the magical fingers of Andrea Gibson. Especially “Blue Blanket” and “I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When the Power’s Out.”
Also, Amal Kassir’s Poem for Syria. I can’t do it justice with a description. Just watch.
they told me to choose
a favorite poem
I
do not think this is fair
I have too many favorite poems
to count.
So I looked
through my collection
And came upon
“To a Stranger”
By Walt Whitman
It isn’t contemporary like my
usual favorites but
at this moment in my life it seems to
speak to me.
“PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you,
I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”
I wrote a really long comment and it made me do a captcha and took me to another page and now it appears as though the comment didn’t go through and I’m very sad.
I never think of favorites, but I always have to keep reading T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” especially for this moment:
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
– Yest when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
You arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, silence.
Suffice it to say that one of my favorite poems is “Reasons to Survive November” by Tony Hoagland and there are a lot of others but it’s the kind of day where the internet eating my comment has left me just totally defeated and unable to rewrite it.
Hands down a poem by Pablo Neruda :
I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
Wow thats beautiful… I love Neruda and for some reason i don’t recall this one..
So many favorites, but this will likely always be The One…
Late Night by Margaret Atwood
Late night and rain wakes me, a downpour,
wind thrashing in the leaves, huge
ears, huge feathers,
like some chased animal, a giant
dog or wild boar. Thunder & shivering
windows; from the tin roof
the rush of water.
I lie askew under the net,
tangled in damp cloth, salt in my hair.
When this clears there will be fireflies
& stars, brighter than anywhere,
which I could contemplate at times
of panic. Lightyears, think of it.
Screw poetry, it’s you I want,
your taste, rain
on you, mouth on your skin.
that last line is great
my favorite poem since high school:
this is the garden:colours come and go; by e.e.cummings
this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.
This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.
One of my favorite poets has always been e.e. cummings, the following being one of the top favorite poems of his. I think it’s pretty self explanatory :)
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh … And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
My favorite poem is T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” It gives me chills every time I read it. :)
Especially these lines:
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
Read the whole poem here:http://allpoetry.com/poem/8453753-The-Hollow-Men-by-T-S–Eliot
Manifesto:The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry. It was the first poem of his that I discovered, at I time that I was searching for how to define my personal manifesto. Especially these two stanzas:
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
total poetry nerd here so this is a tough one, but my heart will always truly belong to photograph by andrea gibson
I discovered Kim Addonizio when I was still a wee queerling, and her “First Poem for You” is still my favourite. Here’s to all the other tattooed queers loving tatted queers:
I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we’re spent
and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until
you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.
These comments are a treasure trove – so happy. One of my lifetime favorites:
Strange Hurt by Langston Hughes
In times of stormy weather
She felt queer pain
That said,
“You’ll find rain better
Than shelter from the rain.”
Days filled with fiery sunshine
Strange hurt she knew
That made
Her seek the burning sunlight
Rather than the shade.
In months of snowy winter
When cozy houses hold,
She’d break down doors
To wander naked
In the cold.
Imtiaz Dharker
gave me Purdah I
something more than
those fields and bogs
and men and constables and
words about a war that was won
there was a veil and a girl
and a thing to be hidden
a thing to hide from
Imtiaz Dharker
gave me this
http://www.imtiazdharker.com/poems/show/9 [purdah I]
“One day they said
she was old enough to learn some shame.
She found it came quite naturally.”
By Jack Gilbert.
THE LORD SITS WITH ME OUT IN FRONT
The Lord sits with me out in front watching
a sweet darkness begin in the fields.
We try to decide whether I am lonely.
I tell about waking at four a.m. and thinking
of what the man did to the daughter of Louise.
And there being no moon when I went outside.
He says maybe I am getting old.
That being poor is taking too much out of me.
I say I am fine. He asks for the Brahms.
We sit and watch the sea fade. The tape finishes again
and we sit on. Unable to find words.
I have loved this poem for nearly 25 years. There is such a sadness and quietness to it.
My favorite poem is “The Nature of a Mirror” by Robert Penn Warren. I read it for the first time when I was seventeen and living in the middle of nowhere. It was the first Poem in his book Or Else and I felt things I’d never felt when I read it, like we were echoing each other. I can still recite it from memory.
The sky has murder in the eye, and I
Have murder in the heart, for I
Am only human.
We look at each other, the sky and I.
We understand each other, for
For the solstice of summer has sagged. I stand
And wait. Virtue is rewarded, that
Is the nightmare, and I must tell you
That soon now, even before
The change from Daylight Savings Time, the sun,
Beyond the western ridge of black-burnt pine stubs like
A snaggery of rotten shark teeth, sinks
Lower, larger, more blank, and redder than
A mother’s rage, as though
F.D.R. had never run for office even, or the first vagina
Had not had the texture of dream. Time
Is the mirror into which you stare.
My favourite has to be one I came upon in teenage years when I started to know which road I was taking – and the road less travelled by has certainly & happily made all the difference
The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
What a great giveaway!! This is my favorite:
You’ve tried the rest.
You’ve waited long enough.
Everything catches up with you.
And you’re too old,
or too young.
Or you don’t have the money
or you don’t have the time.
Maybe you’re shy, and maybe
you’re just afraid.
How often have you heard it,
have you promised
yourself you’d try
something really different
if you had the chance?
Though you can’t help but wonder
if all those people
know what they’re doing, now
you’re saying it with them:
Eventually everything
catches up with us,
and it starts to show.
We’ve waited all our lives, or as long
as we can remember, whichever
is long enough.
― Lawrence Raab, The Rest
Without a doubt A Certain Lady by Dorothy Parker.
It taps into something everyone has experienced; pretending you don’t feel a certain way and laughing along when actually your heart is breaking. Holding onto a semblance of power through your own emotional cloak. Plus it’s really pretty to read.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-certain-lady/
A poem of warrior-like strength
about a little green vegetable,
a show of military might.
They stand guard, unflinching,
strong and bright.
But only when its cracked open
are you able to taste
the tender heart
and the sensitive flesh of
Pablo Neruda’s Ode to the Artichoke.
Richard Siken. I’m not all that good at sounding cleverly enthusiastic, but I love his poems:
“I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
Quit milling around the yard and come inside.”
— Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177722
I have a serious crush on Sarah Kay. And I have a serious love of spoken word. The passion it exudes is palpable. I love watching that passion unfold onstage, unhampered, raw and powerful. The words Sarah uses are large and juicy. This specific poem speaks to me about women’s perceived role within the patriarchal system in the larger sense.. as well as, on an individual level, being ‘everything’ or only a symbol to the person who should love you for the person you are.
Buddy Wakefield’s “The Information Man” because of a perfect memory or Eric Scott Sutherland’s “Kentucky is My Body”…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIr4pL9P0SA&w=420&h=315%5D
“I am a crooked spine
of knobs and mountaintops
centered only by serpentine
sway of back roads, my soul
where front porch stories
still echo”
When the newest woman priest came to the Episcopal Cathedral in Paris, she gave a lecture on the connection between poetry and spirituality. The four poems she shared were all wonderful, but I’ve never been able to get Czesław Miłosz’s poetry out of my head since, especially since he talked about unbelief.
On Prayer
Czesław Miłosz
You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word ‘is’
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.
Ohhhh how I want this. My favorite poem right now is “Fat Girl” by Megan Falley:
Fat girl, fat jokes.
Fat girl, skinny friends.
Fat girl stand next to fatter people to look thin.
Fat girl, fat camp, five years.
(True)
Fat girl lost 2 pounds and you didn’t notice.
Fat girl love your garlic bread.
Fat girl, vegan.
Fat girl, but red velvet cupcake taste so delicious.
(They do, try them)
Fat girl, pretty face.
Fat girl, Dean’s list.
Fat girl want fries with that.
Fat girl, don’t touch her stomach.
Fat girl, turn the lights off.
Fat girl, keep her t-shirt on.
Fat girl not pregnant.
Fat girl, food baby.
Fat girl named her dog taco.
Fat girl, bad bulimic.
Fat girl, binge and no purge.
Fat girl can’t even throw up right.
Fat girl unbutton her pants at dinner.
Fat girl heard, “nothing tastes as good a thin feels.”
Fat girl certain spicy, crunchy tuna rolls taste better than being thin feels.
Fat girl threw out her scale.
Fat girl, you are what you eat.
Fat girl, double stuffed Oreos.
Fat girl got her father’s genes.
Fat girl’s brother didn’t.
Fat girl’s friends come over to stare her brother’s chiseled abdominals
And ignore fat girl.
Fat girl don’t hate her body.
Fat girl hate the world.
Fat girl, fat mouth.
Fat girl, fatter fist.
Fat girl, fuck you.
Fat girl, heart so fat it needs it own zip code.
Fat girl, heart so fat, it uses the equator as its belt.
Fat girl, seafood diet: fat girl see food, fat girl eat it.
Fat girl heard all the jokes.
Fat girl finish the punch line before you do.
Fat girl cry in private.
Fat girl, thick skin.
Fat girl, dance anyway.
Fat girl, shirt off.
Fat girl, lights on.
Fat girl, lights on.
I really love this.
Feminist or Womanist -Staceyann Chin
“I come in too many flavors for one fucking spoon”
Just saw her read/read in front of her and had a mini-queer heart attack. If you haven’t seen her perform yet, you should.
I will embrace the nerd label. I am drooling over these books!!!
favorite poem of all all all time is
Notes to the Music, by Laura Solomon,
especially, these lines:
“In the unbuttoned beginning
there was love and non-love.
Later there were things like
a sky that chirped
and a blue-headed sea,
a grain of sand that said
think of the words of the poem
as notes to the music”
I love the other poems people are posting here.
Yay for new words, new poems and new loves.
My favorite poem might be Maybe I Need You by Andrea Gibson because it has super special meaning for me and my girlfriend.
I’m not going to lie… I’ve only very recently gotten into poetry to save myself from, well, myself. So I’m fairly boring in that if I were to have to pick a favorite poem it would be one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I’m trying to expand my horizons – and I’ll definitely be adding these to the list!
shakespeare’s sonnets are SO GOOD though!
coeur de lion by ariana reines is kind of a bunch of poems, i guess, but it is my current favorite.
this is the best thing. my favorite poem right now (changes frequently, currently in finals) is the shadow voice by margaret atwood.
The Shadow Voice
by Margaret Atwood
My shadow said to me:
what is the matter
Isn’t the moon warm
enough for you
why do you need
the blanket of another body
Whose kiss is moss
Around the picnic tables
The bright pink hands held sandwiches
crumbled by distance. Flies crawl
over the sweet instant
You know what is in these blankets
The trees outside are bending with
children shooting guns. Leave
them alone. They are playing
games of their own.
I give water, I give clean crusts
Aren’t there enough words
flowing in your veins
to keep you going.
http://wireface.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-shadow-voice.html
so this is by no means my favorite poet of all time forever, but it’s the first one that came to mind, so. it’s called somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by e.e. cummings and i have a lot of feelings about it and think it’s pretty much perfect:
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
I vividly remember the first time I read this poem in high school and just sat there shaking having realized I would have to rethink everything I thought I knew about poetry and love and grammar. <3
There are several poems that I would say are my favorites. Today I’ll go with Sylvia Plath’s “Fever 103,” especially these last 7 stanzas:
I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern——
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.
Does not my heat astound you! And my light!
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.
I think I am going up,
I think I may rise——
The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I
Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,
By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean!
Not you, nor him
Nor him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)——
To Paradise.
Because I love you Last Night By E E Cummings
He is such a fantastic writer
he has captivated me since high school, and I have never found a poet who could describe the “cursive” ways of love quite as well.
Bukowski is great for drunk nights. I love andrea gibson and buddy wakefield.
I also like Leonard cohen.
Poetry<3
all the best
stanzas know,
where my blood pools and
aches under my skin.
instead of pausing to
kiss my bruises softly,
they hit them; trip me over
line breaks and
draw me through commas like razors.
they kiss my tears
and don’t apologize.
(sorry, my whole answer can’t be in poem format but that is generally why i like the ones that become favorites. they hurt with me in a way that feels good.)
i am also biased by my relationships, and i know a lot of beautiful budding poet flowers out there so i’m going to go with one of my deviantart friends Masvida, who is just plain awesome and whom i love.
a short part of their poem, memories…
I cannot erase you,
but they say that
skin renews itself every seven years.
In four years, my skin will no longer be
the same skin you touched.
I repeat this to myself
too many times a day, and
I still love
…finally got an account so I could comment on this! There are too many, but today I’m picking “Self Portrait” by Cynthia Cruz:
Self Portrait
I did not want my body
Spackled in the world’s
Black beads and broke
Diamonds. What the world
Wanted, I did not. Of the things
It wanted. The body of Sunday
Morning, the warm wine and
The blood. The dripping fox
Furs dragged through the black New
York snow—the parked car, the pearls,
To the first pew—the funders,
The trustees, the bloat, the red weight of
The world. Their faces. I wanted not
That. I wanted Saint Francis, the love of
His animals. The wolf, broken and bleeding—
That was me.
My favorites change with the days, but this one has always stuck with me.
It’s by the lovely Joy Harjo.
She had some horses.
She had horses who were bodies of sand.
She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff.
She had some horses.
She had horses with long, pointed breasts.
She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.
She had some horses.
She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned
like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own
making.
She had some horses.
She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.
She had horses who cried in their beer.
She had horses who spit at male queens who made them afraid of themselves.
She had horses who said they weren’t afraid.
She had horses who lied.
She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped bare of their tongues.
She had some horses.
She had horses who called themselves, “horse.”
She had horses who called themselves, “spirit.” and kept their voices secret and to
themselves.
She had horses who had no names.
She had horses who had books of names.
She had some horses.
She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.
She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who carried knives to
protect themselves from ghosts.
She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection.
She had some horses.
She had horses who got down on their knees for any savior.
She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.
She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her bed at night and prayed
as they raped her.
She had some horses.
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses.
LOVE Joy Harjo.
I’m pumped. How could you have a body and be made of atoms and react any other way?
Choosing is not something I do well, I have recently been joy-gasming to Ellen Bass, but I am going to have to choose Pitcher by Kay Ryan in this exact moment.
Pitcher
A pitcher molds
the air in it, dividing
from the air it holds. And
should the pitcher
vanish, something
would take a minute
to escape, a gradually
diminishing integrity
a thinning pitcherful
of pitcher shape.
This was the poem that inspired this line in a recent short story of mine, which has sort of been surging around in me, and thus is still on my mind, heart and lips.
“The way the skin on Hera’s face moved made Selah feel empty, hallowed out like a jack-o-lantern, rid of all the goo and seeds of herself and ready to be a light-bucket for something new, a pumpkin-shaped vessel for sweet and new pumpkin-shaped air.”
My favorite poem is “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke.
the first part goes:
“I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.”
It reminds me that everything will end, and to enjoy the journey.
I read it at my grandma’s funeral this past summer.
There are so many it’s hard to choose. “When Love Arrives” by Philip Kaye and Sarah Kay reminds the listener “you are beautiful” even when one doesn’t want to hear it. Aaaaand they’re both babes.
And “Andrew” by our love Andrea perfectly describes wibbly-wobbly gender and sexual identity.
So those. And a haiku:
Andrea Gibson
Will prob never be my wife
But a girl can dream
this artwork is fairly new,
but worn into shreds
with its luminance blaring wisdom…
in a way.
Touring With a Black Poet,
by Andrea Gibson.
ah, picking a favorite poem.
this has always felt
somewhat like
picking a favorite limb
or child
or perhaps
a favorite star.
(poetry was my polaris
when all else was dark.)
i don’t know if i’d call this one my very favorite, but i’ve always loved tattered kaddish by adrienne rich.
Taurean reaper of the wild apple field
messenger from earthmire gleaning
transcripts of fog
in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month
speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides:
Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel
on ones we knew and loved
Praise to life though its windows blew shut
on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved
Praise to life though ones we knew and loved
loved it badly, too well, and not enough
Praise to life though it tightened like a knot
on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us
Praise to life giving room and reason
to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable
Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop, about loss.
I read it first when I was thirteen, before I knew I was queer and before I knew Bishop was queer and I didn’t understand it at all but somehow it still perfectly described me. Six years and a senior thesis about her work later, it still does.
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Andrea Gibson “say yes” — I show it to my students every semester!
One of my favorite poems is by an amazing professor of mine, Aracelis Girmay. There’s this poem in her collection “Teeth” that just hits me all the time. It’s called “For Estefani Lora, Third Grade, Who Made Me a Card” also know (by me) as “loveisforeverybody.”
It’s so beautiful, and dear, and playful. It’s just about love for love’s sake, in all forms, for all people. Y’all should check it out.
Another favorite poem of mine is Andrea Gibson’s “The Madness Vase/The Nutritionist.” It has calmed many a panic attack, very seriously. I often go to it when I’m having a time.
There is something about spoken poetry that grips not only my hears but my eyes and feelings as well. Hearing the author or someone passionate about reading a poem creates depth not understood or felt when simply read, therefore, along with the theme of the Madness Base which is one of the things that have kept me sane. The poem that comes to mind immediately when I think of poetry is “Swing Set by Andrea Gibson, praise it!
Swing Set.
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
he asks, staring up at me in all three feet of his pudding face grandeur, and I say “Dylan,
you’ve been in this class for three years and you still don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Well, at this point, I don’t really think it matters, do you?”
“Uhm, no.
Can I have a push on the swing?”
And this happens every day.
It’s a tidal wave of kindergarten curiosity rushing straight for the rocks of me, whatever I am.
In the class, when we discuss the Milky Way galaxy, the orbit of the Sun around the Earth or whatever.
Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and kids, do you know that some of the stars we see when we look up in the sky are so far away, they’ve already burned out?
What do you think of that?
Timmy?
“Uh my mom says that even though you got hairs that grow from your legs, and the hairs on your head grow short and poky, and that you smell really bad, like my dad, that you’re a girl.”
“Thank you, Timmy.”
And so it goes.
On the playground, she peers up at me from behind her pink power puff sunglasses and then asks, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
And I say no, and she says “Oh… do you have a girlfriend?”
And I say “No, but if by some miracle, twenty years from now, I ever finally do, then I’ll definitely bring her by to meet you. How’s that?”
“Okay. Can I have a push on the swing?”
And that’s the thing.
They don’t care.
They don’t care. Us, on the other hand.
My father sitting across the table at Christmas dinner, gritting his teeth over his still-full plate, his appetite raped away by the intrusion of my haircut,
“What were you thinking? You used to be such a pretty girl!”
Frat boys, drunken, screaming, leaning out of the windows of their daddys’ SUVs,
“Hey! Are you a faggot or a dyke?”
And I wonder what would happen if I met up with them in the middle of the night.
Then of course there’s always the somehow not-quite-bright enough fluorescent light of the public restroom, “Sir! Sir, do you realize this is the ladies’ room?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do,
it’s just that I didn’t feel comfortable sticking this tampon up my penis in the men’s room.”
But the best, the best is always the mother at the market, sticking up her nose while pushing aside her daughter’s wide eyes, whispering “Don’t stare, it’s rude.”
And I want to say, “Listen, lady, the only rude thing I see is your paranoid parental hand pushing aside the best education on self that little girl’s ever gonna get,
living with your Maybelline lipstick after hips and pedi kiwi, vanilla-smelling beauty;
so why don’t you take your pinks and blues, your boy-girl rules and shove them in that car with your fucking issue of Cosmo,
because tomorrow, I start my day with twenty-eight minds who know a hell of a lot more than you.
And if I show up in a pink frilly dress, those kids won’t love me any more, or less.”
“Hey, are you a boy or a — never mind, can I have a push on the swing?”
And some day, y’all, when we grow up, it’s all gonna be that simple.
”
I feel like this poem sums it up in one, just wish there was a bit more love in there, because that is what this place is all about.
I’ve really liked reading all the poems that everyone has shared. And I have a soft spot for sharing things with a community.
That probably explains why one of my favorites poems is, “Gate A-4” by Naomi Shihab Nye.
After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”
Well — one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she did this.
I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu-biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew — however poorly used – she stopped crying. She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the following day. I said, No, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out, of course, they had ten shared friends. Then I thought, just for the heck of it, why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering questions.
She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — out of her bag — and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.
And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers — non-alcoholic — and the two little girls for our flight, one African-American, one Mexican-American — ran around serving us all apple juice and lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar, too.
And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands — had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate — once the crying of confusion stopped — has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too. This can still happen, anywhere.
Not everything is lost.
I know there are times
when you will lay your head to rest
and have a moment of brilliance
that grows into a perfect order of words
but you will fall asleep
instead of painting it down on paper.
When you wake up,
you will have forgotten the idea completely
and miss it like a front tooth
but at least you know how to recognize moments of brilliance,
because even at your worst
you are fucking incredible.
— Buddy Wakefield, from “The Information Man”
One of my very favorite poems is Andrea Gibson’s “I Sing The Body Electric; Especially When My Power Is Out.”
This stanza rings most true for me:
I said to the the sun
“Tell me about the big bang”
The sun said
“it hurts to become.”
I love Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” especially read aloud!
“Not words, not music or rhyme I want…not custom or lecture, not even the best, only the lull I like, the hum of your valued voice.”
Ornithopter by Richard Siken
http://sporkpress.com/1_1/pieces/Editor.htm
‘Sleeping’ by Andrea Gibson was the first slam poetry performance I had ever seen on youtube and it brought me to tears. I fell in love with the raw emotions she wrote with and wished that one day I could write something that visceral. It opened me up to the world of slam poetry on youtube and introduced me to so many amazing poets and I am so grateful for that.