Watermark

Another

I woke this morning to a note from Erin, that her beloved sister Wendy died this weekend while vacationing in Mexico. Wendy was thirty years old.

Erin has written about this here.

Life is seeming particularly cruel these past weeks; my small garden is not large enough to contain it, and far too small to balance it.

Poets' Notebooks

I found this meme at chanticleer and Big Window -- Eduardo says:

Every poet I know carries around a notebook to jot down ideas, images, bits of interesting data. I've always wanted to take a peek inside another poet's notebook. So I'm asking other bloggers to post a page from their notebooks on their blogs.

Here is this poet's notebook, the most recent pages and a shot of the cover, with the stick I was trying to draw:

   

You can see the poem that came out of these jottings here.

Eduardo has a long list of poets who have posted either pictures or out- takes of their notebooks -- he is overwhelmed with the html to link them all, and I've nothing better to do and an easy interface, so I shall do it here:

Therapist With A Dream Inside
Avoiding the Muse
Sea-Camel
Barbara Jane's New Blog
the world a letter
Almost I rushed from home to tell you this
beautiful monsters
JewishyIrishy
Ivy  [Hi Ivy!]
Box of Birds
Radish King  [Hi Rebecca!]
*~gila monster~*
Ironic points of light
the wendy house
Pugnacious Pinoy
litwindowpane
The World According to Ess
Whimsy Speaks
Quoi?
Book of Kells
Kutibeng
early hours of sky
vowel movements
Small Branches Poetry
Awake at Dawn on Someone's Couch
one good bumblebee
écritures bleues

If I have missed anyone, and as there are additions, please let me know and I'll add them to the list. This was a great idea!

Monday, 10 January:  I am adding Bookworm -- a nice meditation on paper writing and notebooks, independent of the meme.  And another addition below -- keep telling me, and I'll keep adding:

Humanyms
Scoplaw

Good News

Árni is awake.  We are told:

He's terribly tired - even opening his eyes is a major effort. He seems to have control of hands and legs, no apparent paralysis in his face, and he clearly understands what's going on.

-- and who is to say that all those candles did not help?  He will need them, still, for the long climb back to us.

Life

This morning, along with other distressing news, I hear that Árni Ibsen, a steady light on the PoetryEtc list, collapsed with a brain hemorrhage on Tuesday.

It is a cold, grey morning.

And it is filled with waxwings.

Poem From A Friend

This Garden
      Cindy Smith

you cannot know
what you have planted
buttercup, bramble, or choking thorn
they are all here before you
in their most secret form,     root threads
or seeds closed like fists in the sun

and you must pick, and plant
unknowing,  and never knowing
if the mud in your hands
will bring you any living thing let alone
what you want  what you want     water  is

everywhere it is flowing
through your veins it is rolling
in the delicate limbs of the plants
remember to water
life is so thirsty some days it needs
more than you can carry

it all takes faith,
that mute and stubborn stranger
who always waits for what has not happened
and time while the sun etches lines in your face
and luck, who only taps some shoulders
some times
and may never tap yours.

The Nothing

A very special gift today, from WhiskeyRiver.

Collaborative Poem Dancing

On Thursday, I posted this small poem both here and on the PoetryEtc Listserve:

at the altar
an old woman
counting breaths

      

Now look at what the PoetryEtc poets did with it!

at the altar
an old woman
counting breaths

inspiration, expiration -
one purl, one plain

one pearl, one pain

one puff one flap
one left or to attain
one here or there
as it is everywhere

one pearl
one lost
since the markers of elegance moved on
since breaths at the altar are counted in black beads

one plain
decrease
here where the knee bends
where drawing breath might count for something

a pearl
of great price

telling beads
expiation, expectation
for decades
the varieties of precipitation
joyful
sorrowful
glorious

black pearl, lucrescent seed,
one joy, one pain, bittersweets the eye

falling from the needle
a curtain of white tears
pears at the point of ripeness

her slack mouth tells
forms the oh of them
black germ in pale flesh

nascent, oystered
many smiles, many sighs,
breaking open one

mortal shell,
come, o come, divinest shell
in my heart all thy secrets tell

      

Dancers:  Anny Ballardini; Joanna Boulter; Andrew Burke; Deborah L. Humphreys; Liz Kirby; and Rebecca Seiferle.

Questions

I consciously decided to not write about politics on this weblog; there are so many who can think and write about it better than I.  I know, I read them.

But I find it more and more difficult to think about anything but the war, and to write about anything at all. In some ways I am more shaken by Abu Ghraib than I was by 9-11, when the city my brother loved was so devastated. Again I am preoccupied with the problem of -- not so much why bad things happen to good people -- as how good people can do, and endorse, evil. And the reminder that righteous conviction is no safeguard.

The Next Story

Today is         and also         and also


                         FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING DAY

So I have chosen a favorite poem by a favorite poet and a favorite teacher,  Pattiann Rogers; in which a cat makes a brief, but critical, appearance: 

Playing With Shape

I know that concrete poetry is out of fashion, but I think that sometimes a poem demands to be shaped in this way. Now and then I find some I really like. Here are two, the first by Jon Corelis and the second by Anny Ballardini (posted here with their permission):