National Poetry Month, spreading the love
Apr. 12th, 2010 12:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
metonomiaToday began very very badly, but luckily it got much more better, so that it is ending with a general air of accomplished exhaustion and good-feeling.
I woke up and went to check The Stranger online, which is my sort of alternative news source, very hipster, very up-to-date, which I usually just read for its general snark. Well, the first thing up this morning was one of the main contributors' letter to his old bishop in Maine, asking to be excommunicated and enumerating why. This had me feeling badly enough, but then I had to go and read the comments below. Which were both more stupidly hateful and less coherently stated than the original post, so. Sad me. Really really sad. It's NOT okay what's been being covered up by some of the Church leadership, but reading things like this makes me feel guilty/bad for being a Catholic, and that's not fair to me or to most of the Church.
But then I frosted my cupcakes and went to do my choir section's fundraising bake sale to raise our quota for the whole choir's big yearly donation to the Daughters of Mary (they run an orphanage/school in Uganda and send two or three Sisters here each year to get their degrees, and they are lovely people with an amazing life calling), and we had so much fun, and people were SO generous, and it made me feel a whole lot better, because yes, horrible stuff happens, but also wonderful stuff happens, and people can be really bad, but they can also be really really good.
Also, commentfic makes me happy. <3
So, poetry.
Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles by Billy Collins
It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.
Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.
"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."
And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."
There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.
Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.
And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.
How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.
I woke up and went to check The Stranger online, which is my sort of alternative news source, very hipster, very up-to-date, which I usually just read for its general snark. Well, the first thing up this morning was one of the main contributors' letter to his old bishop in Maine, asking to be excommunicated and enumerating why. This had me feeling badly enough, but then I had to go and read the comments below. Which were both more stupidly hateful and less coherently stated than the original post, so. Sad me. Really really sad. It's NOT okay what's been being covered up by some of the Church leadership, but reading things like this makes me feel guilty/bad for being a Catholic, and that's not fair to me or to most of the Church.
But then I frosted my cupcakes and went to do my choir section's fundraising bake sale to raise our quota for the whole choir's big yearly donation to the Daughters of Mary (they run an orphanage/school in Uganda and send two or three Sisters here each year to get their degrees, and they are lovely people with an amazing life calling), and we had so much fun, and people were SO generous, and it made me feel a whole lot better, because yes, horrible stuff happens, but also wonderful stuff happens, and people can be really bad, but they can also be really really good.
Also, commentfic makes me happy. <3
So, poetry.
Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles by Billy Collins
It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.
Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.
"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."
And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."
There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.
Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.
And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.
How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.
