The Museum of Flight by Kazim Ali
What a great poem from therumpus:
Kazim Ali
All boys want to fall
Sent like sun-thunder westwardSense-sure and censured they twist
out of the wings fastened to their backsitching always for more blue
suspended endlessly in space at the moment of fallHere in the sky ward
you can count them:Lightning-struck or hurled from heaven
Panicked or resigned,But all heading in the blue direction,
their fathers always at a loss for words.Here is the disobedient one who willfully jumped
And here the wild one who raced for the sun
Here is the stupid one who lost control of the horses
And here the frightened one who stowed away
on the silver boat bound for the storm.They all raced away from rules like sea-drunk criminals
hopelessly confused about the laws of men and godscaught by gravity, unspooling like bolts of silk across the sky
chattering on and on about infinity and eternitythe whole way down.
I adore these closing stanzas from this poem by Marie Howe:
For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,
the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.The underneath —that was the first devil.
It was always with me.
And that I didn’t think you — if I told you — would understand any of this —She is one of those all-too-rare poets who can read her work with a fluidity and a clarity that doesn’t sound forced. It was such an honor to edit and produce this interview with her for On Being.
An enchanting hour of poetry drawing on the ways family and religion shape our lives. Marie Howe, poet laureate of New York State, works and plays with her Catholic upbringing, the universal drama of family, and the ordinary time that sustains us. The moral life, she says, is lived out in what we say as much as what we do — and so words have a power to save us.
Happy Earth Day y’all. Here’s Wendell Berry reading “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer” for our podcast production of “The Poetry of Creatures.” Share and reblog with your friends!
I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
I told them, ‘He’s dead.’ And when they told me
‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing ever day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.
Crow’s Word
You’re likely to outlive some of your greatest joys. Don’t let that be the only period in your life when you become highly aware of them. Notice joy now and it will help you become a person of peace, integrity, and strength when there is less joy in your life.
Crow’s Word
His note, dawn’s foil —
One blow to fill her pale blue bell with sound,
One impulse to deliver; that serves to sever bonds
Of all things that entangle, sully, soil.This is the Word that blasts the sap,
The sound of force
That lifts the arms of trees;
That fashions-forth the branches from within
To raise this world of darkwood iron all around;
This the rising sound
Of the very juice by which the ground toils,
Becomes each massive trunk and slender tendril coil
Upright, upreared, at prayer.Bright above, the morning sky awakens,
She blues and beckons like a mother’s eye toward which
The sun climbs, wings beat a path, while feet
With new-found ease
Like light along the spangled grass self-hurl,
Fast follow down that one windfall trail
Being blazed toward Canaan by what lives.Let this day go gray, grow disenchanted:
I know the crow.
Text and poem excerpted from “On Being More Than Ourselves Alone.” Read more of Paul Martin’s complete essay.
On Saturday, Krista Tippett interviewed New York poet laureate Marie Howe in the beautiful old library at the College of Saint Benedict under the watchful eyes of the Virgin Mary (Salve Regina). Can’t wait to produce this show for On Being.
Photo by Trent Gilliss
From our senior editor Trent Gilliss:
“A poet is the ‘Amen’ before the utterance of prayer.”
~Dominique Ashaheed from Denver, ColoradoWhat a magnificent, strong figure, and a lyrical voice to boot. I only wish I could’ve made it to the Women of the World Poetry Slam finals this past week!
(Big thanks to City Pages for the layout.)
Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?
G. K. Chesterton,”Evening”
(via dailymarvelous)
Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else’s suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others.
— Mary Karr from her 2010 interview with Judy Valente on PBS’ Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
(via trentgilliss)
There is something very comforting about ritual. I have friends who go to church or sit at the Zen center. I respect that. The ritual of writing fills that need for me. Writing has been a kind of spiritual devotion for me. Listening to language, feeling stories unfold and poems arrive, being present to the page – I do not think of it as a career, I think of it as a devotion. That is a big difference to me.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, from her interview with Kim Rosen in Spirituality & Health magazine in which she talks about the writing life, ecumenism, and the virtue of kindness.
(h/t DailyGood)
(via trentgilliss)
