Sending poetry to the world
a fox in Clifton Park
crossed a road,
slipped among shadows.
some shadows are happy to be stretched
down long roads of abandonment.
then again some girls are easily bare
long legs thin and tough, scrambling side to side.
absurd, a fox here in a park of burnt out grass
trees choked
shadows stretched too thin
but hey, that’s the city.
around every corner, alley, boarded home, rats find a nibble.
girls slowly pull on their tights.
a fox makes a deal and gets away.
in the dark air a hint of smoke wraps like a scarf
around us, two hand in hand,
newly bundled with wool
and shuffling through the past
underfoot like so many dead leaves not raked.
we could smell the rain but we couldn’t have it.
this reminds me of
longing.
a word itself so drawn out and heavy on the tongue
as to torture slowly like
salt water to a thirsty man or better yet
a leaf, turned on by fall and full of impetuousness,
flying high and hitting mud.
how when we daydream of rain,
we get to wear colorful boots and umbrellas and songs.
Take a look… disorderly, marvelous, ours. What a great way to cap off the week!
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American Life in Poetry: Column 445
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Sit for an hour in any national airport and you’ll see how each of us differs from others in a million ways, and of course that includes not only our physical appearances but our perceptions and opinions. Here’s a poem by Ada Limón, who lives in Kentucky, about difference and the difficulty of resolution.
What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use
All these great barns out here in the outskirts,
black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass.
They look so beautifully abandoned, even in use.
You say they look like arks after the sea’s
dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,
and I think of that walk in the valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,
low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,
and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,
woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.
So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,
its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name
though we knew they were really just clouds—
disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Ada Limón, whose most recent book of poems is Sharks in the Rivers, Milkweed Editions, 2010. Poem reprinted from Poecology, Issue 1, 2011, by permission of Ada Limón and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
sun, banjo,
a plaid shirt i particularly like
all make such exaggerated claims
while
gossiping on
hips like
a tart apple moonshine, this dance
stretches us thin into
sound waves, stretches us loud
into nights like a
plaid shirt
tossed to a river bank
hungry for a wild breeze with
a hint of cologne.
late hour, woozy with memories
that one adam says are ghosts.
how right he is, adams are vapor.
as are bens and jons
and young shadowy men
drinking too much,
driving too fast.
one adam wraps around a tree before i can tell him
anything, how i have a photo of him with birthday cake
poised waiting on his bottom lip for a sugary kiss
my god, we could have been anything by now
if we weren’t spread out across the sky, still waiting
on kisses from little girls like
dew-tipped grass in a morning chilly, ripe.
Another gem from Ted Kooser to pick up your Tuesday!!! Please let me know what you think in the comments. Also, for more poetry yumminess, follow @PoetryFound
American Life in Poetry: Column 442
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Tracy K. Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poems, Life on Mars, from which I’ve
selected this week’s poem, which presents a payday in the way many of us at some time have
experienced it. The poet lives in Brooklyn, New York.
The Good Life
When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org),
publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Tracy K. Smith from her most recent book of poems, Life on Mars, Graywolf Press, 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Tracy K. Smith and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
fog rolls over the citta of Erice
it softly pets medieval steps and towers
streetlights glow with a
promise of ghosts and shadows
and a family like ours, like so many others,
melts into warm candlelight and homemade pasta.
(from the red journal, 2013)
Another fine poem posted in Ted Kooser’s column. Take a read!
American Life in Poetry: Column 439
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Here’s a fine poem about the stages of grief by Helen T. Glenn, who lives in Florida.
Noguchi’s Fountain
The release of water in the base
so controlled that the surface tension,
tabletop of stability, a mirror,
remains unbroken. Moisture seeps
down polished basalt sides.
This is how I grieve, barely
enough to dampen river stones,
until fibers in my husband’s
tweed jacket brush my fingers
as I fold it into a box. How close
the whirlpool under my feet.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Helen T. Glenn, and reprinted from the Nimrod International Journal, Vol. 56, no. 1, 2012, by permission of Helen T. Glenn and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
August poems from the past (2011, 2012) – your Friday poetry round-up!
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