Lakota lullaby

Lastet opp av ‪meethaa1 13. juni 2010

chante waste hokshila

(good hearted boy)

lahkge estemah

(go back to sleep)

han hepi kin waste

(the night is good)

wa yelo heya

( I have spoken)

*

Billy Collins: Introduction To Poetry

Introduction To Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

*

Poet School

Bob Hicok: Calling him back from layoff

Calling him back from layoff

I called a man today. After he said

hello and I said hello came a pause

during which it would have been

confusing to say hello again so I said

how are you doing and guess what, he said

fine and wondered aloud how I was

and it turns out I'm OK. He

was on the couch watching cars

painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars

painted with ads for Tide around an oval

that's a metaphor for life because

most of us run out of gas and settle

for getting drunk in the stands

and shouting at someone in a t-shirt

we want kraut on our dog. I said

he could have his job back and during

the pause that followed his whiskers

scrubbed the mouthpiece clean

and his breath passed in and out

in the tidal fashion popular

with mammals until he broke through

with the words how soon thank you

ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove

through the wires on the backs of ions

as one long word as one hard prayer

of relief meant to be heard

by the sky. When he began to cry I tried

with the shape of my silence to say

I understood but each confession

of fear and poverty was more awkward

than what you learn in the shower.

After he hung up I went outside and sat

with one hand in the bower of the other

and thought if I turn my head to the left

it changes the song of the oriole

and if I give a job to one stomach other

forks are naked and if tonight a steak

sizzles in his kitchen do the seven

other people staring at their phones

hear?

* 

Hai-pooh

Adrienne Rich - What Kind of Times Are These

What Kind of Times Are These

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

“What Kind of Times Are These”. © 2002, 1995 by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich.

Litt om Adrienne Rich her!

*

I anledning Walt Whitmans fødselsdag i dag (1819)

Rita Dove: "American Smooth"

Mark Doty: "Brian, Age 7"

Litt om Mark Doty & hans foredrag "Why poetry matters now" her!

*

Tim Minchin: "Storm"

Litt om Tim Minchin her!

*

Ted Kooser: "Nest"

Desemberutgaven av tidsskriftet Ames Progressive presenterer et nytt dikt av Ted Kooser - jeg siterer:

Ted Kooser was born in Ames in 1939 and graduated from Iowa State University. He served as US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006 and currently edits the weekly newspaper series “American Life in Poetry.” He has published many books over the past four decades and has been awarded numerous literary honors. In 2005 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Delights and Shadows.

NEST

In late November,
I found, in a bare
forsythia bush,
a bird nest woven
of pin oak leaves,
a rattly little thing
too loose for eggs
or so I thought,
but in it, like baby birds,
were curled a few
brown pin oak leaves
the winter sky
was feeding.

*

(Vokste selv opp i Ames og ble ganske henrykt da jeg nylig snublet over nettstedet til Ames Progressive - og der oppdaget et nytt dikt av en av yndlingspoetene mine. Link til tidsskriftet fins i menyen til høyre.)