Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. -Samuel Johnson
Poetry catches a lot of slack in this modern literary world of vampires and hunger games (guilty on the latter). It’s either dubbed too emotional, too hard to read, or just plain boring. Austin likes to joke that anyone can be a poet, anything a poem—which is ironically poetic itself, although he’d never admit it because he is a skeptic and usually in a bad mood (medical school).
I love poetry. It is a religion for me; beautiful, sacred, a holy place of words and broken sentences. Vertical magic.
A few of my favorite poems below, including one I wrote long ago for a 7pm poetry class with the scariest professor I’ve ever met. I saw her smile only once.
Authors (in order): Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver, Margaret Atwood, Hafiz, Margaret Atwood.
*
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
*
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
*
Habitation
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
*
Untitled
Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.
*
Against Still Life
Orange in the middle of a table:It isn’t enough
to walk around it
at a distance, saying
it’s an orange:
nothing to do
with us, nothing
else: leave it aloneI want to pick it up
in my hand
I want to peel the
skin off; I want
more to be said to me
than just Orange:
want to be told
everything it has to say
And you, sitting across
the table, at a distance, with
your smile contained, and like the orange
in the sun: silent:Your silence
isn’t enough for me
now, no matter with what
contentment you fold
your hands together; I want
anything you can say
in the sunlight:
stories of your various
childhoods, aimless journeyings,
your loves; your articulate
skeleton; your posturings; your lies.
These orange silences
(sunlight and hidden smile)
make me want to
wrench you into saying;
now I’d crack your skull
like a walnut, split it like a pumpkin
to make you talk, or get
a look inside. But quietly:
if I take the orange
with care enough and hold it
gentlyI may find
an egg
a sun
an orange moon
perhaps a skull; center
of all energy
resting in my handcan change it to
whatever I desire
it to beand you, man, orange afternoon
lover, wherever
you sit across from me
(tables, trains, buses)if I watch
quietly enough
and long enoughat last, you will say
(maybe without speaking)
(there are mountains
inside your skull
garden and chaos, ocean
and hurricane; certain
corners of rooms, portraits
of great grandmothers, curtains
of a particular shade;
your deserts; your private
dinosaurs; the first
woman)
all I need to know
tell me
everything
just as it was
from the beginning.
*
Untitled
We’re stuck, suffocating.
Gasping and clawing
searching for air
in the cruel metal box.
Screaming for the clown man to stop.
+
Our limbs tossed like salad
bang and bruise,
bust and bumble,
a montage of arms and legs.
I can’t breathe.
+
As the oldest, I try to console her,
it must end soon. Surely—
the wheels will slow, stop, turn us right side up,
outside in, back to little girls.
Here,
just hold on to me and stare through the
paint chipped
mud caked
rubbed raw
cracks
And focus instead on the
cotton candy
caramel apple
love sick
mouths.
+
And there, grandma!
Waving like a loon,
ice-cream on her chin,
watching her babies
being murdered by the round metal snake.
+
***
Leave your favorite poems or poets in the comments below.
