At Summer's End

Remembering Summer

W.S. Merwin

Being too warm the old lady said to me
is better than being too cold I think now
in between is the best because you never
give it a thought but it goes by too fast
I remember the winter how cold it got
I could never get warm wherever I was
but I don't remember the summer heat like that
only the long days the breathing of the trees
the evenings with the hens still talking in the lane
and the light getting longer in the valley
the sound of a bell from down there somewhere
I can sit here now still listening to it.

I can't begin to describe how I feel reading this poem, how I felt when I first read this poem, how it seemed to appear out of nowhere in this moment, the winding down of summer, when I so desperately sought to describe (and remember) how this feels, how summer felt. Wham, there it is this poem, this Merwin poem nonetheless - one I've never seen before and didn't know I so desperately needed.

"The breathing of the trees" just gets me every time. Actually all of that description toward the end of the poem which seems to just perfectly encapsulate summer afternoons - the ease, the light unlike any other time, the vague sounds that seem to arrive dreamily, the nostalgia attached to it all.

I'm going to need this poem come February. I need it now. I love it.

A Poem For A Friday

Disappointment
by Tony Hoagland

I was feeling pretty religious

standing on the bridge in my winter coat

looking down at the gray water:

the sharp little waves dusted with snow,

fish in their tin armor.

 

That’s what I like about disappointment:

the way it slows you down,

when the querulous insistent chatter of desire

            goes dead calm

 

and the minor roadside flowers

pronounce their quiet colors,

and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

 

She played the flute, he played the fiddle

and the moon came up over the barn.

Then he didn’t get the job,—

or her father died before she told him

            that one, most important thing—

 

and everything got still.

 

It was February or October

It was July

I remember it so clear

You don’t have to pursue anything ever again

It’s over

You’re free

You’re unemployed

 

You just have to stand there

looking out on the water

in your trench coat of solitude

with your scarf of resignation

            lifting in the wind.

 

Brightspot is helping to manage the NH "Poetry Out Loud" competition, an annual event where high schoolers learn and recite poems. The state champion then goes on to the nationals. This week, we've been recording student recitations - usually the semi-finals are regional competitions held in-person around the state, but for obvious reasons, this year they're virtual.

But whew boy, it has been so amazing to see these kids bring poetry to life like this. Along with Amanda Gordon's out-of-this-world poem reading at Biden's inauguration, it's such a great reminder that hearing poetry is an entirely different thing than reading poetry. Doing both is the jackpot.

Anyway, long story short, it has revived my interest. A colleague passed along this poem and after multiple reads, I'm loving it. I've never thought about the release disappointment could bring or that freedom that might come with losing out on something. Fascinating to find the inside out flip side of things. Lovely.

A Poem For This Moment

Dew Light
W.S. Merwin

Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age

A Poem For A Friday

Choices
Tess Gallagher

I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don't cut that one.
I don't cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.

I've always loved little poems. This one is so short, so simple, and so effective (and actually kind of looks like a mountain come to think of it). I love how everything in the first two-thirds of the poem is literal and clear. Not a lot of descriptive language or glaring emotion. It makes the closing lines that much more impactful. "In every tree an unseen nest where a mountain would be." I think we often walk through life this way - making changes in pursuit of a specific goal or vision without necessarily pausing to realize the situation we're in is beautiful in a way we didn't recognize. Hmm.

A Poem For A Birthday

To the Light of September
W.S. Merwin

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

A Poem For A Friday

The Chorus
Craig Michael Teicher

1.
It's, you know, the part that repeats,
the bit you're supposed
to remember, the bit that bears

repeating, the part that means
something new
each time, something different,

and the same thing, too,
the thing you can't forget,
that gets stuck in your head.

So, like, childhood
is endless and over
almost as soon as it begins?

Yeah, like that. Ten years
shrinks like the pages
of a water-damaged book.

No, the pages don't really shrink
or shrivel, they crinkle, get kinda
crisp and brittle, but

time's like that, a wrinkle,
and suddenly you've been
married as long as

you were ever a kid,
ever awash in the interminable
Thursday of your first ten years, when

three months was an aeon, when,
like, childhood was endless
and over as soon as it began.

See what I did there? Shifted
the refrain into the middle.
Yeah, time is like that, and

2.
suddenly your newborn
is ten and your wife
is celebrating the birthday

only grownups do,
and you must be older
than your mom was

at your age, and it's not
Thursday -- was it ever? And the two
pills you have to take every night.

How is it Sunday, I mean
Monday, this morning, your alarm,
your coffee grumbling, thunder,

and the kids (two of them,
suddenly) are out the door, and
their childhood is

endless and and already over
as soon as it begins, and
you're on the bus to work. See what

I did there? I don't. The four
pills you have to take three
times every day, you might

3.
as well be already
at your desk, your deathbed,
holding your daughter's

grownup hand, you
hope, the hospital calm and
clean, like the one your mother

died in, and there's hopefully
money somewhere to take care
of everything, and this

is like childhood, endless
and over as soon as it begins,
or as close as you'll ever get

again -- see what I did
there? Did you
see? Did anyone?

My brain is in an allergy-induced haze, but I saw this poem a few weeks ago and can't stop thinking about it. This idea of aging, that feeling that your childhood feels interminable when you're in it, then it suddenly rushes by along with your children's childhoods and then, before you know it, your life. You constantly believe you're too young to be in this place, you're "older than your mom was at your age," and then bam, you're at the end, and it's over as soon as it began.

It's also an example of a poem's structure working wondrously to emphasize its theme. I love the way the poet utilizes line breaks, short little stanzas, and commas to make it all a bit jerky like the narrator is being tugged back and forth between youth and age, sort of how I imagine we all feel as we go through the constant, inevitable plod toward the end.

On that uplifting note, have a happy weekend, hahaha!!!!

W.S. Merwin

Early last Friday morning, I came out of a dream hysterically sobbing. I couldn’t stop. In the dream, we were in this scenario where you could bring your dog back to life, but you could only do it once. It was time to send Merwin away again, and I was sitting on the floor with him in my lap, hugging him tightly, desperate to hold on to him awhile longer. I can’t think about this dream without losing it again. It was so real, bringing the grief and sadness surging back.

As it turns out, one of my all-time favorite individuals, the poet W.S. Merwin, passed away in his sleep early that morning around the same time I woke from my dream.

The oddities of that juxtaposition aside, the devastation came flooding back when I learned of W.S. Merwin’s death. I am hard pressed to put into words what his work has meant for the world, for poetry, for me. Arguably, he is one of the most decorated contemporary poets, having gathered almost all the prominent accolades and awards during his long career.

But beyond the awards and acclaim, I think that he likely had an uncelebrated and possibly unknown profound impact on hundreds of thousands of individual little humans. Me, for one.

I purchased his book, The Rain in the Trees, because it was required reading for a writing workshop at Hamilton College. With the guidance of great professors, his was some of the first poetry I worked to comprehend in any depth. He was the launch pad for a life-long pursuit. I hated that feeling of not grasping exactly what was going on in his poems, but also luxuriated in that same ambiguity. I loved the idea that each word could be dissected, analyzed, listened to, and savored. Every word was enormously meaningful in a poem - they were all placed there for a specific reason or, more likely, hundreds of specific reasons.

As part of my Creative Writing major, I spent hours writing poetry, always with a pencil and always the evening before the poem had to be submitted for review by my classmates. The best part about the process was deliberating over the “right” word. Those moments poring through the thesaurus, writing down, crossing out, hemming, hawing and then finally feeling that tiny thrill when the word “stuck.” Those moments were truly some of my favorite memories of creating anything.

This isn’t a story of Merwin inspiring me to become a poet. It’s a story of him inspiring everything. Of him being this beautiful thread in my life, one that started in college, carried me through New York, accompanied me through love and loss, and stuck with me so profoundly that we gave his name to our dog, who was, as absolutely ridiculous as it sounds, one of the most significant loves of my life. I used Merwin’s work and my love for the dog Merwin to start this blog, a context for reestablishing the thrill of creating that I hadn’t realized I had missed so dreadfully. I have never read another poet’s work and had the same reactions, feelings, or utter awe and admiration for what he could do on a page. I have never met so many of one poet’s works that absolutely just sang to me.

I realized this past year, first with Paul Taylor’s passing then with Mary Oliver’s that I hadn’t yet truly acknowledged the impact my artistic icons have had on me. As silly as it may sound, I feel such a profound loss now that this trifecta has moved on. These people shaped my interest in dance, in poetry, in understanding people, in creating, and in savoring how words or movement can brilliantly illuminate nature or grief or injustice or death in ways that evoke such compelling feeling around what it means to see this world and to be in this world. How amazing they were to share this beauty with us and how utterly sad there will be no more of it from their great minds.

There is so much more to say about W.S. Merwin, likely so many more important things to thank him for and to relay around his life's work, but for now, it just feels like the Merwins' "absence has gone through me / like thread through a needle / everything I do is stitched with its color."

A Poem For Aging

In the Basement of the Goodwill Store
Ted Kooser

In musty light, in the thin brown air
of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,
beneath long rows of sharp footfalls
like nails in a lid, an old man stands
trying on glasses, lifting each pair
from the box like a glittering fish
and holding it up to the light
of a dirty bulb. Near him, a heap
of enameled pans as white as skulls
looms in the catacomb shadows,
and old toilets with dry red throats
cough up bouquets of curtain rods.

You've seen him somewhere before.
He's wearing the green leisure suit
you threw out with the garbage,
and the Christmas tie you hated,
and the ventilated wingtip shoes
you found in your father's closet
and wore as a joke. And the glasses
which finally fit him, through which
he looks to see you looking back --
two mirrors which flash and glance--
are those through which one day
you too will look down over the years,
when you have grown old and thin
and no longer particular,
and the things you once thought
you were rid of forever
have taken you back in their arms.

I was just talking with my sister-in-law about poetry this weekend. We commented on how each word in a poem is so crucial, obviously much more so than in fiction or other prose. I talked about how much I loved that process when writing - the often hours-long search for the exact right word - the one that sounded sharp or soft, the one that alluded to a specific feeling without naming the feeling, the one that had the correct number of syllables, the one that told a larger story than just the word itself. The pursuit of the perfect word is what I remember really treasuring about poetry writing.

This poem exhibits that idea so perfectly. Musty, nails in a lid, skulls, catacomb, old, cough. Little nods to age. Then we switch to the second stanza and that language recedes, becoming more reflective. The narrator finds bits of himself, both literally and figuratively, in this man, a look up the road at what was and down the road at what is to come. The mirrored glasses reinforce this perspective, a literal reflection and also a tool for looking, for seeing better, both the past and the future.

As usual, I can't properly describe what I love about this poem and how amazed I am by the poet's expertise. Maybe that's part of what makes it so good. It's nearly impossible for bodies to do some of the things ballerinas do, but it appears graceful and effortless to the observer. This poem seems effortless. I love it.

The Butterfly

Summer Sky
W.S. Merwin

July with sun-filled leaves drifting among the butterflies
I have been coming to this morning light since the day I was born
I saw its childhood as I sat alone in silence in the high window
no one else saw it no one else would even recognize it
it is the same child now who watches the clouds change
they appear from out of sight and change as the moment passes through them

The sun-filled leaves, butterflies, morning light, passage of time - it's all hitting home these days, and I've been trying to bring myself back to Merwin and Merwin to write about it. I can't promise much. I feel rusty. It's also so very odd to type the word Merwin now.

After Simon's mom passed away, we were gathered in Rhode Island trying to make sense of things and coping as best as possible by being together. We kept seeing yellow butterflies - around the house, on walks in Colt State Park, everywhere around us. Since then, I've associated the yellow butterfly with Janey and her memory. But I haven't seen them with nearly as much frequency as during those early days of her loss.

Until this summer. Nearly every time I am outdoors at the lake, whether on the deck, in the driveway, or laying out on the raft, the yellow butterfly flutters by. The other day Simon was working down in Portsmouth, our visitors had departed, and I was reading in my favorite spot on the deck. I felt movement in front of my face, glancing up just as the butterfly darted out of view. It's uncanny the way it always appears, particularly when I'm alone or finding a moment of solitude amidst a full house. 

There is varied symbolism associated with seeing yellow butterflies. In some Native American cultures, the yellow butterfly brings guidance and a sign of hope. Some cultures believe that it symbolizes re-birth while Irish lore goes so far as to describe them as indicators that departed souls are resting peacefully. They represent joy, creativity, happiness, prosperity.

Of all the things I imagined when facing loss, I never thought this would be so important, comforting, poignant. I never thought I'd believe in something like this, but I feel Merwin and Janey so strongly through the butterfly's presence. I imagine them having grand adventures together. Swimming alongside each other, romping through the woods, happily side by side in quiet moments, savoring the companionship.

I don't care if it sounds ridiculous. It's such a happy moment in my day, this little visit. Those wings, that little fluttering blur, is a hello from somewhere else, from those two other beings who I miss so much. 

A Poem For A Tuesday

To Daffodils
Robert Herrick

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not yet attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.

I forced Simon to read this poem because I found it both timely (daffodils at the lake were emerging) and amazing (for myriad reasons). Great word, "myriad." Anyway, Simon obeyed and said, "I read it as equating human existence to being short in the span of life as daffodils are to spring. Is that the wrong interpretation?" I think it's a spectacular interpretation. In the first stanza, the narrator describes his desire for the daffodils to survive a bit longer into the spring. Slowly the stanza starts to bring humans into the picture with "having pray'd together, we / Will go with you along." Then the second stanza makes it clear that the narrator is comparing the daffodils' brief existence to our own little blips of life. We grow to meet decay and our hours, our time here, slowly dry away like a summer rain or morning dew, each drop or each life unique but never to return. Naturally though, the daffodils return the next year...I wonder how that fits in.

It's intense. A poem I initially imagined would be about bright yellow daffodils breaking up the winter gloom turns into a statement on their short life span, and ours right along with them. Dark, but also perfectly practical. It's true. We're here. We're gone. Pretty standard fact.

More than his interpretation though, I was intrigued by Simon asking if it was wrong. I think this is one of the most challenging things about poetry, or ballet, or modern dance, or visual art, or music. The notion that there is a "right" thing to feel or understand after viewing it. Sure, the artist or poet or choreographer likely has an intention when they create a piece. Maybe some driving thing they want to express, but that doesn't mean any differing interpretation is "wrong." Nothing can be right or wrong when it comes to understanding art. It's not arithmetic. You can't prove any one interpretation is any more or less "correct" than another. There is no answer. That's the beauty of it and why we need art. It inspires people to imagine, create, and think in response. To know what's it's like for something not to be A or B but somewhere between. To live in that space where there is beauty in the varied palette of interpretations. Where people talk to each other about what they think without  being entrenched in what they view as "right" or "wrong." You know, like basically everything else in our country right now.

We need more art.

A Poem For A Wednesday

April in Maine
May Sarton

The days are cold and brown,
Brown fields, no sign of green,
Brown twigs, not even swelling,
And dirty snow in the woods.

But as the dark flows in
The tree frogs begin
Their shrill sweet singing,
And we lie on our beds
Through the ecstatic night,
Wide awake, cracked open.

There will be no going back.

Fine, it's April in New Hampshire, but Maine is just next door and I feel like this poem captures the general gist of right now. All I see out the window is brown gloom. Two squirrels are chasing each other higher and higher into a tree but the branches are a dull brown and the squirrels are an even duller brown. I've never seen a squirrel as high in a tree as this idiot, by the way.

Anyway, my brain tells me that April is always full of sun, spring, warmth, and hope but in reality, it's generally rainy, cool, and brown. But then it suddenly seems to crack open and the air changes, the mood lightens, and breezes have a barely perceptible underlying warmth. Spring joins us. It just joins us a bit later here than in other places. I'll wait.

A Poem For A Wednesday

Wish
W.S. Merwin

Please one more
kiss in the kitchen
before we turn the lights off

Merwin wrote this tiny poem immediately following the death of his wife. How simple of a desire...to experience this seemingly run of the mill, everyday occurrence once more. I envision this as an evening routine, a quick kiss before prepping the house for sleep. But in this case, I think that "turn the lights off" is more, so much more, than flipping a switch. 

Those are the things, perhaps the tiniest of little things, that become what we want to feel just one more time after it's impossible to have them. The things that make our relationships so fully part of us and the things that represent how tinged our entire lives are with those we love. The things we barely notice as being beautiful and wonderful in their simplicity but pile up into stacks of moments that represent so fully those we are forced to leave. Perhaps they eventually become the memories that lighten the load as we go on. Yes, I think that's how it goes.

A Poem For A Tuesday

Winter, Spring
Jim Harrison

Winter is black and beige down here
from drought. Suddenly in March
there's a good rain and in a couple
of weeks we are enveloped in green.
Green everywhere in the mesquites, oaks,
cottonwoods, the bowers of thick
willow bushes the warblers love
for reasons of food or the branches,
the tiny aphids they eat with relish.

Each year it is a surprise
that the world can turn green again.
It is the grandest surprise in life,
the birds coming back from the south to my open
arms, which they fly past, aiming at the feeders.

I've made it through most of winter without that usual craving for warmer weather, but today, with gloomy grey skies and the threat of an incoming Nor'easter, I'm ready to be "enveloped in green." I love how the narrator describes the spring transition as the "grandest surprise in life." Its funny how even after 38 years of experiencing seasonal transitions, they still feel shocking and unexpected. From the depths of winter it seems impossible to imagine the sun warming your skin or the cool relief of jumping into the lake or the bullfrog's call lulling you to sleep or the golden afternoon light slanting through the greenest shade of green leaves on the oak tree. Then from the summer haze,  I suppose it's difficult to imagine snowflakes and cold that hurts the inside of your nostrils. Alas, so it goes. And has for years. And will for years to come. Maybe one of these days I'll figure it out.

A Poem For A Thursday

The Place
Paul Zimmer

Once in your life you pass
Through a place so pure
It becomes tainted even
By your regard, a space
Of trees and air where
Dusk comes in perfect ripeness.
Here the only sounds are
Sighs of rain and snow,
Small rustlings of plants
As they unwrap in twilight.
This is where you will go
At last when coldness comes.
It is something you realize
When you first see it,
But instantly forget.
At the end of your life
You remember and dwell in
Its faultless light forever.

A Poem For A Thursday

Peace
C.K. Williams

We fight for hours, through dinner, through the endless evening, who
        even knows now what about,
what could be so dire to have to suffer so for, stuck in one another's craws
        like fishbones,
the cadavers of our argument dissected, flayed, but we go on with it, to
        bed, and through the night,
feigning sleep, dreaming sleep, hardly sleeping, so precisely never touch-
        ing, back to back,
the blanket bridged across us for the wintry air to tunnel down, to keep
        us lifting, turning,
through the angry dark that holds us in its cup of pain, the arching dark,
        the weary dark,
then, toward dawn, I can't help it, though justice won't I know be served,
        I pull her to me,
and with such accurate, graceful deftness she rolls to me that we arrive
        embracing our entire lengths.

This isn't generally the kind of poem I'm drawn to, but there was something about it that I really liked. It made me recall one of my own poems about an argument and how the tension played out in a sleeping couple. For some reason, I had used music and sound images - staccatos, crescendos, violin strings, and the rattling annoyance of a radiator. This poet did a better job winding together these images to portray that jumbled, icky, roiling gut feeling of fighting then living with someone we love.

I initially found a lot of war-like language and imagery in "Peace," but on later readings, I saw references back to their dinner with words like fishbones, cadavers, dissected, and flayed. Also interesting how these words could describe dinner or the battlefield, which in this case, may be one and the same. 

The repetition of "sleeping" helps the reader feel that endless pain of not being able to rest amidst the context of disagreement. He does that again by repeating the images of the darkness. How amazing is "the angry dark that holds us in its cup of pain?" Love it. Then it's done, as these things often are, and they embrace. This is something I imagine we've all experienced and like artists do, the poet is able to capture it so accurately and beautifully, forcing us right back to those moments and those feelings.

A Poem For A Birthday

Dew Light
W.S. Merwin

Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age

I don't know how to articulate how much I love Merwin's work (I guess the fact that we named the dog after him is a demonstration given how ridiculously loved the dog is). It is some of the first poetry I deeply admired, studied, and savored. Today is Merwin's 90th birthday and this poem has a beautiful simplicity that is amplified by that context of his aging. And perhaps even the age old "living in the moment" lens. Happy birthday, Merwin. I hope, from the little paradise of palms you have created in Hawaii, you know how much your work has helped your readers to understand the world, to feel, and to know beauty in words. 

A Poem For A Friday

Turning
WS Merwin

Going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember

almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice when they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying

Are you ready this time

How many times have you felt that? The all-consuming whirl of life and when you finally pause, you think, "What just happened? Where did all of that go?!" Like the narrator mentions, a few flitters of memory return every now and then, but more sift by than are captured. 

I love how this poem articulates that feeling. It begins rather generally and without much imagery with the narrator pondering the idea that his life has swirled by without him grasping those moments when they were available, tangible, and happening. Then suddenly it gets visual with the distinct image of a dog, a creature that is basically only capable of living in the moment, and his simple query. 

If only we got a do-over to relive those moments we missed when we were caught up and distracted. But maybe we do. Maybe every day is a do-over. Are you ready?

Zen Moment At The Pond

Sometimes when you need a reminder of something, it comes. This little box decorated in blue was part of MJ's yoga studio, greeting students and offering Zen quotes that may make you "smile or shake your head." I was hanging out with my five-month old buddy Helen Jane this past week during her family's visit to Round Pond, and she helped me select a slip of paper from the box. I was struck by how fitting the words seemed in this moment. Maybe it's like horoscopes which are so cleverly written to speak directly to each reader's issue, but it really felt like this blip of poetry was perfectly suited. A reminder to just be - no pressure to feel a certain way, desire anything in particular, or work towards any goal or usefulness. A message I was grateful to receive during this little life pause. Delivered with the help of guardian angels and those they watch over.

Excerpt from Sonnet IV Personal Talk

William Wordsworth

To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,

In the loved presence of my cottage-fire,

And listen to the flapping of the flame,

Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.

A Poem For A Friday

The Dogs at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz

Alicia Ostriker

As if there could be a world
Of absolute innocence
In which we forget ourselves

The owners throw sticks
And half-bald tennis balls
Toward the surf
And the happy dogs leap after them
As if catapulted--

Black dogs, tan dogs,
Tubes of glorious muscle--

Pursuing pleasure
More than obedience
They race, skid to a halt in the wet sand,
Sometimes they'll plunge straight into
The foaming breakers

Like diving birds, letting the green turbulence
Toss them, until they snap and sink

Teeth into the floating wood
Then bound back to their owners
Shining wet, with passionate speed
For nothing,
For absolutely nothing but joy.

World Poetry Day (A Day Late)

In celebration of World Poetry Day (yesterday...oops) I will now rant about poetry. Rejoice.

I love poetry. I wish more people loved poetry. Alas, we live in a world where "reality" shows are the leading form of entertainment and people need everything fed to them in flashing lights competing with all the other flashing lights to be the flashiest lights. Subtlety and sparseness are not exactly the tickets to success these days. And stillness. And effort. It seems that people aren't patient enough to sit with something, think about it, imagine what it could mean, parse out the sound, the images, the feelings it evokes. Instead, we instantly react, critique, bully, and boost ourselves by beating down others. 

On initial glance, poetry doesn't seem to fit our culture anymore. But if I love reading it, wouldn't you imagine others take delight in it? Maybe people could find respite from this crazy world in poems. Maybe poetry could do more to create those pauses and that space for real reflection to happen, like it does for me. Maybe that could somehow reintroduce the idea of real thinking into our society. Maybe people would develop that skill of thought and start to dig one layer into what they see, read, and hear to understand how to determine its truth and value. Wouldn't that make people better and in turn, communities better? Pshaw.

This morning my colleague mentioned a version of an "art CSA" that the local arts council is sponsoring. Similar to organic farm CSAs, where you sign up to receive boxes of locally grown produce throughout the season, the arts version provides you with locally created works of art. In total, you get nine pieces of visual art throughout the year. Brilliant!

I envision a poetry version. Maybe it's new poems by local poets, or maybe it's more of a curation thing like this blog, or maybe the focus is encouraging amateur writers to take up the pen and create something. I know it's a barely formed idea and a pipe dream at best, but at least I have a name.

We'll call it "Poetry to Make America Think Again."