San Francisco poetry - Kim Addonizio

Finally, Maddie and I made it to San Francisco! I never thought it would actually happen, but here we are in this amazing city for a week. And what do I keep thinking about? Yup, you guessed it - poetry. We visited the famous City Lights Bookstore for a little while yesterday (we plan to go back), and it just blew my mind. The store is so small and tucked away in a small corner building near Chinatown, but the charm and intimacy I felt upon entering was unmistakable. Without a doubt, this will be one of my favorite places visited when I reflect on this trip. While I was there, on the second floor (the poetry floor!), I made it about halfway through the A's before we decided to head back to the hotel. I found a poet from the bay area named Kim Addonizio. She also had a fiction book on the shelves. She is on poets.org, so check her out. I thought her poetry was beautiful. Here is a selection from her book What is This Thing Called Love: Poems.

Stolen Moments


What happened, happened once. So now it’s best
in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge—
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours.

An Old Mini-Essay I Wrote...

I found this essay the other day, and some of the things I wrote are coming back to me, almost cyclically, in the way I'm trying to live my life. It's called Life As Seen Through the Eyes of Poetry. Very lame, but I'm always terrible with titles. Enjoy! Much love :)

A poem can come from any thing, any place and any person; maybe that's what I love so much about poetry. A verse can be confined to an aesthetic scene in nature as much as consciousness can be confined to a series of black and white snapshots indicating one's identity. Poetry is ingrained into our senses. It doesn't matter if you know how to put it on paper or understand the difference between a cinquain and a haiku. We all see, hear, smell, taste and touch poems every day. In fact, our consciousness itself sometimes seems to be one mesmerizing, intricate series of poetry.

Think about the way you look at a loved one, whether this person is a sibling, parent, lover or friend (or even a random person you happen to pass on the street, if you see such a person as a loved one). Does something about this person strike a chord within you each time you cross his or her path? Although I am presenting only one example, it is an example of poetry. Love, happiness, anger, art, peace, hatred, sex, money, hunger, drugs, religion, politics, sports, pain, music, freedom, oppression, history, earth, the unknown: ALL of it is poetry being written in one form or another. We walk, talk and breathe through intertwined landscapes of it every moment.

There are no rules concerning the autonomy of one's consciousness. That being said, my developing understanding of the boundless horizons of poetry (which could simply be referred to as art, as well) continues to lead me back to recurring ideas about the nature and evolution of humanity. These repeated notions can be explained by starting on a local and even personal level.

I love my family. There is simply no doubt about it. I almost selfishly want them all to defy the cycle of life and live to see progress and the changes that will eventually be made to make the world a more healthy and peaceful one. I have recently come to understand what this love means to me, as well as to the rest of my family. It means kindness, support, happiness, compassion, intellectual stimulation, etc. My family is the primary source of all these wonderful things in my life.

Simply put, I want ALL people to sense (in the most broad interpretation of the word) the beautiful poetry of this symbiotic relationship. I want ALL people to experience the love and peace that I feel when I'm with my own family. Some people would like our relations with other people, groups, nations, etc. to be more complicated than this simple notion of complete compassion. I don't believe we have to make our inherently positive social relationships into complex webs leading to deceitful self-interest that detracts from our true connections with one another.

Conversely, I have experienced limited amounts of hate. I have used hateful words toward people whom I believed to be wrong, and I have experienced the same from others. What I am beginning to realize is how much such hatred hurts on a personal level and breeds separation on a communal level. I want nobody to experience hate. I would much rather see and hear about all people feeling love and acceptance instead of hate and intolerance. I want people to feel the power of this type of poetry for the stinging indictment it brings upon such negative parts of humanity that we must overcome.

I, like any other person, struggle with emotions. But one thing I do understand about emotions is how powerful and meaningful they are to me. Consequently, I also understand that EACH individual's emotions add powerful and substantial meaning to that person's life. I have no desire to ever diminish a person's feeling of emotional, physical, psychological or spiritual self-worth. We do this so often as a species by claiming superiority and professing absolute righteousness (among other things).

I feel like many of my notes are redundant. I have exhausted my repertoire of unpolished writing skills, trying desperately to connect on some level with even one person who happens to stumble upon my unofficial collection of work. Simply put, compassion and open-mindedness are the two keys to a revolution of the mind, heart and soul. If we could remove our unquenchable desire for something better and just BE those two things, then human beings are still capable of some pretty amazing accomplishments in the future.

“Let us enjoy breathing together.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Mary Oliver...Again

I know, I know...not fair to the vast numbers of other poets out there. But Mary Oliver is speaking to me lately. It might be that humble Zen thing she has going on in her poetry, or it might be that she is just that good. So one more Mary Oliver Poem, and then I'll find something else! Much love :)

Hum

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that's all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They're small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them-haven't you?—
stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered-so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn't anything in this world I don't
admire. If there is, I don't know what it is. I
haven't met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It's not hard, it's in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.

Mary Oliver & Happy Birthday to Rainer Maria Rilke

A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver is an excellent tool for poets, young and old, new and experienced. I flip through it every now and then to remind myself of some of the basic techniques and fundamental principles of writing and reading poetry. Mary Oliver is also an excellent poet, as I am continuing to learn, and this one I found is a wonderful probing into the nature of the self. However, the investigation bears no pretension, as Oliver does not attempt to come up with any answers. She allows her questions to stand on their own, and she does this simply and beautifully. Enjoy!

Some Questions You Might Ask

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?

What about the grass?

And today, I'm going to post another poem. It's December 4th, Rainer Maria Rilke's 134th birthday - if he were still alive. Check out his profile on poets.org here.

I'm Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

(Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder)

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everyday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Andrew Greig - Orkney/This Life

Andrew Greig is a Scottish writer who has published eight collections of poetry, six novels and several nonfiction books on subjects such as climbing and golf. This poem has an amazing way of relating the charm of a small, simple life, while still portraying the significance and power that each person, animal, boat, piece of earth, etc. can have on our lives.

Orkney/This Life

It is big sky and its changes,

the sea all round and the waters within.

It is the way sea and sky

work off each other constantly,

like people meeting in Alfred Street,

each face coming away with a hint

of the other's face pressed in it.

It is the way a week-long gale

ends and folk emerge to hear

a single bird cry way high up.

It is the way you lean to me
and the way I lean to you, as if
we are each other's prevailing;
how we connect along our shores,
the way we are tidal islands
joined for hours then inaccessible,
I'll go for that, and smile when I
pick sand off myself in the shower.
The way I am an inland loch to you
when a clatter of white whoops and rises...

It is the way Scotland looks to the South,
the way we enter friends' houses
to leave what we came with, or flick
the kettle's switch and wait.
This is where I want to live,
close to where the heart gives out,
ruined, perfected, an empty arch against the sky
where birds fly through instead of prayers
while in Hoy Sound the fern's engines thrum
this life this life this life.