Author Archives: presssendpoetry

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"Little Girl" by Tami Haaland

another lovely pick from Ted Kooser … enjoy!

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American Life in Poetry: Column 430

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
There are many fine poems in which the poet looks deeply into a photograph and tries to touch the lives caught there. Here’s one by Tami Haaland, who lives in Montana.

Little Girl

She’s with Grandma in front
of Grandma’s house, backed
by a willow tree, gladiola and roses.

Who did she ever want
to please? But Grandma
seems half-pleased and annoyed.

No doubt Mother frowns
behind the lens, wants
to straighten this sassy face.

Maybe laughs, too.
Little girl with her mouth wide,
tongue out, yelling
at the camera. See her little
white purse full of treasure,
her white sandals?
She has things to do,
you can tell. Places to explore
beyond the frame,
and these women picking flowers
and taking pictures.
Why won’t they let her go?

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. “Little Girl” from When We Wake in the Night, by Tami Haaland, ©2012 WordTech Editions, Cincinnati, Ohio. Poem reprinted by permission of Tami Haaland 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.

The Vacation by Wendell Berry

Great piece featured by Ted Kooser today~ and great advise for me as I get ready for my next big adventure. Taking the family to Italy/Sicily! WOO! So if you don’t hear from me until June, you’ll know why 🙂
 
American Life in Poetry: Column 425

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

If we haven’t done it ourselves, we’ve known people who have, it seems: taken a vacation mostly to photograph a vacation, not really looking at what’s there, but seeing everything through the viewfinder with the idea of looking at it when they get home. Wendell Berry of Kentucky, one of our most distinguished poets, captures this perfectly.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.
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 Wendell Berry, whose most recent book of poems is New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012. Poem reprinted from New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012, and used with permission of Wendell Berry 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.

the voices

downstairs. the voices. i lay awake to the voices. they crescendo in no particular time, die down slightly (i may close my eyes) erupt again. in a cadance they can’t control. in a swirling tsunami of sound. they swell around me. they form a cocoon so that i may lose my skin. so i may wall myself in, shed my regrets, live vicariously through strange voices choosing a late hour. choosing to pet each others questionable decisions. i am becoming them. i am rocking ever so slightly to the hum. shadows on the walls dance wickedly, my naked little fears run away. i shed them overnight in this chysalis. in this safe haven humdrum silent bed fed by voices. pick up a storyline from a deep baritone, drift off as a narrator in a lengthy surrealist novel, one where sweet home is nothing but a painted highway running past an apartment filled with voices.

Arnold (reaching full sail)

I wonder how Arnold feels
on the Canton docks, drying his skin
after a windy cold winter.

He will be under a new moon tonight
streets lit up with
city haze alone.
He will be under the awning of Safeway
sketchbook clutched in one hand,
bottle in the other.

“Maybe,” he says, “if I hadn’t been drunk that day
I would have met Oprah before
she moved to Chicago and I could call her now
as a friend.”

The harbor sways up to comment
but only trash reaches the dock. Far beyond,
other peoples’ boats reach full sail
into the Bay.