Author Archives: presssendpoetry

Author and editor for Press Send Poetry. Marketing for Barcoding, Inc. #Baltimore #Poet

How to Start the Day (essay on a father’s retirement)

Hi and Happy Friday!!  I wrote this essay a few years ago and, after talking with a good friend who’s father has also just retired, I thought I’d find it and post it here. Let me know what you think!

How to Start the Day: Reflections on the International Day of Older Persons

http://www.un.org/ageing/documents/Intlday/how2start_the_day.pdf

American Life in Poetry: Moment by Gloor

Another brilliant recommendation by Mr. Ted Kooser. Take a look at Carol Gloor’s poem below and enjoy!
 
American Life in Poetry: Column 360

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Carol L. Gloor is an attorney living in Chicago and Savanna, Illinois. I especially like this poem of hers for its powerful ending, which fittingly uses the legal language of trusts and estates.

Moment

At the moment of my mother’s death
I am rinsing frozen chicken.
No vision, no rending
of the temple curtain, only
the soft give of meat.
I had not seen her in four days.
I thought her better,
and the hospital did not call,
so I am fresh from
an office Christmas party,
scotch on my breath
as I answer the phone.
And in one moment all my past acts
become irrevocable.

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 ©2010 by Carol L. Gloor, whose chapbook is Giving Death the Raspberries, Thorntree Press, 1991. Poem reprinted from Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Vol. 25, no. 3, Winter 2010, by permission of Carol L. Gloor and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 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.

from pupil to widening pupil

and the wolf man looks in my direction and
we share a conversation through our eyes
the way it is when you have oceans to cross
before morning the way light takes its sweet time
from pupil to widening pupil and i know you’re
with her but the possibilities linger like so many
silent proclamations of could it be that love comes
in so many ways? could it be that we in another time
would have been queen and king of this rotten
bar this rotten dirt patch that clings to our rooted feet……

"Eight Ball" by Claudi Emerson [American Life in Poetry]

Hi friends! Below is another interesting feature from the American Life in Poetry column, hosted by Ted Kooser. As I always, I highly encourage you to sign up~ it’s a happy bit of email in your day!
 
American Life in Poetry: Column 359

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

At a time when a relationship is falling apart, sometimes the news of its failure doesn’t come out of a mouth but from gestures. Claudia Emerson, who lives in Virginia, here captures a telling moment.

Eight Ball

It was fifty cents a game
             beneath exhausted ceiling fans,
the smoke’s old spiral. Hooded lights
             burned distant, dull. I was tired, but you
insisted on one more, so I chalked
             the cue—the bored blue—broke, scratched.
It was always possible
             for you to run the table, leave me
nothing. But I recall the easy
             shot you missed, and then the way
we both studied, circling—keeping
             what you had left me between us.

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 ©2005 by Claudia Emerson, whose most recent book of poetry is Figure Studies, Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from Late Wife, Louisiana State University Press, 2005, by permission of Claudia Emerson and the publisher.  Introduction copyright © 2012 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.

and outside the planes

and in a sky powdered blue
it appears a child has fingerpainted
a relief of lines breathed into life
by those traveling
like the eyes still blue of a doll baby
looking for those leaving and
those coming screaming back to
the arms of their lovers
waiting outside looking up and up
lines powered white like lips smacking
sugary and sure, guilty
like a child caught painting on the walls.

in the details [Emerson and his circles]

[the patterns of fur, just around the nose
or the way the one blue brick brushes up towards the heavens
while one tall parsley plant pushes strong through the blinds]

reading, on yellowed pages, how Emerson believes in circles

yet it seems to us, young, impatient, only one line
we’re forced to follow straight
like accountants in green visors squinting
patiently close
while the numbers so dutifully march.

we’ll realize sometime, later, that lines never end,
and some, if they start over again, mean Emerson
may have known better all along.