American Life in Poetry: Column 087

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The first poem we ran in this column was by David Allan Evans of South Dakota, about a couple washing windows together. You can find that poem and all the others on our website, www.americanlifeinpoetry.org. Here Tania Rochelle of Georgia presents us with another couple, this time raking leaves. I especially like the image of the pair "bent like parentheses/ around their brittle little lawn."


Raking

Anna Bell and Lane, eighty,
make small leaf piles in the heat,
each pile a great joint effort,
like fifty years of marriage,
sharing chores a rusty dance.
In my own yard, the stacks
are big as children, who scatter them,
dodge and limbo the poke
of my rake. We're lucky,
young and straight-boned.
And I feel sorry for the couple,
bent like parentheses
around their brittle little lawn.
I like feeling sorry for them,
the tenderness of it, but only
for a moment: John glides in
like a paper airplane, takes
the children for the weekend,
and I remember,
they're the lucky ones--
shriveled Anna Bell, loving
her crooked Lane.


Reprinted from "Karaoke Funeral," Snake Nation Press, 2003, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2003 by Tania Rochelle. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

From Christopher Lee at the Washington Post:

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services ... The federal family-planning program, created in 1970, supports a network of 4,600 family-planning clinics that provide information and counseling to 5 million people a year. Services include patient education and counseling, breast and pelvic exams, pregnancy diagnosis and counseling, and screenings for cervical cancer, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV.

[The new chief] will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are "designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons."

So who did President Bush choose to fill this position? Dr. Eric Keroack, an OB/GYN who is medical director for A Woman's Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass. that opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts.

"A Woman's Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness," the group's Web site says.

Apparently, Dr. Keroack believes it is better for a woman to churn out a baby every 10 months throughout her child-bearing years than for her to be DEMEANED and DEGRADED by the use of birth control.

Why is it that when we go into the voting booth, we have to choose between two parties composed of extremist lunatics?!

Sigh ...

iTunes is currently playing: Bad Girls from the album On The Radio - Greatest Hits Volumes I & II by Donna Summer.

A new book by Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks ("Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" (Basic Books, $26), scheduled for release on Nov. 24) argues that conservatives are more generous than liberals.

[snip]

The book's basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.

Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.

... liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.

"I know I'm going to get yelled at a lot with this book," he said. "But when you say something big and new, you're going to get yelled at."

[snip]

iTunes is currently playing: Cold, Cold Heart from the album 24 Greatest Hits by Hank Williams.

American Life in Poetry: Column 086

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Linda Pastan, who lives in Maryland, is a master of the kind of water-clear writing that enables us to see into the depths. This is a poem about migrating birds, but also about how it feels to witness the passing of another year.

The Birds

are heading south, pulled
by a compass in the genes.
They are not fooled
by this odd November summer,
though we stand in our doorways
wearing cotton dresses.
We are watching them

as they swoop and gather--
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.

The birds are heading south,
instinct is the oldest story.
They fly over their doubles,
the mute weathervanes,
teaching all of us
with their tailfeathers
the true north.

Reprinted from "The Imperfect Paradise," by Linda Pastan. Copyright (c) 1988 by Linda Pastan. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Ms. Pastan's most recent book is "Queen of a Rainy Country," W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

House Democrats Name Hoyer to No. 2 Post

Democrats picked Rep. Steny Hoyer to be House majority leader on Thursday, spurning Rep. Nancy Pelosi's handpicked choice moments after unanimously backing her election as speaker when Congress convenes in January. A Marylander and 25-year veteran of Congress, Hoyer defeated Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania in a vote of 149-86.

iTunes is currently playing: Slam from the album Close-Up by David Sanborn.

American Life in Poetry: Column 085

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The Illinois poet, Lisel Mueller, is one of our country's finest writers, and the following lines, with their grace and humility, are representative of her poems of quiet celebration.


In November

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.


Reprinted from "Alive Together: New and Selected Poems," Louisiana State University Press, 1996, by permission of the author. Poem copyright (c) 1996 by Lisel Mueller. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

iTunes is currently playing: Brand New Day from the album Brand New Day by Sting.

... and all the rest of our brave young people.

iTunes is currently playing: My Country from the album Bad Love by Randy Newman.

Ted Kooser was U.S. Poet Laureate from 2004 through 2006. During his tenure, he started a weekly poetry column called "American Life in Poetry". Current and past columns can be read online here. You can also sign up to receive each column via email.

The point of the column is to promote poetry. To this end, Mr. Kooser selects poems that are particularly accessible. He wants everyone to read and enjoy the weekly columns, not just people with advanced English degrees.

When one of his selected poems appears in my inbox, I stop whatever I am doing and give it my full attention. I am never disappointed.

I wrote to the folks at ALP to ask permission to include the column in my blog and my request was granted. I hope you all enjoy the poems as much as I do.

iTunes is currently playing: One Of The Things I Do So Well from the album Life Is Good by Livingston Taylor.

American Life in Poetry: Column 084

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Many of this column's readers have watched an amaryllis emerge from its hard bulb to flower. To me they seem unworldly, perhaps a little dangerous, like a wild bird you don't want to get too close to. Here Connie Wanek of Duluth, Minnesota, takes a close and playful look at an amaryllis that looks right back at her.


Amaryllis

A flower needs to be this size
to conceal the winter window,
and this color, the red
of a Fiat with the top down,
to impress us, dull as we've grown.

Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb
half above the soil
stuck out its green tongue
and slowly, day by day,
the flower itself entered our world,

closed, like hands that captured a moth,
then open, as eyes open,
and the amaryllis, seeing us,
was somehow undiscouraged.
It stands before us now

as we eat our soup;
you pour a little of your drinking water
into its saucer, and a few crumbs
of fragrant earth fall
onto the tabletop.


Reprinted from "Bonfire," New Rivers Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1997 by Connie Wanek. Her most recent book is "Hartley Field," from Holy Cow! Press, 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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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.

iTunes is currently playing: Hearts And Flowers from the album Hearts And Flowers by Joan Armatrading.

... and so much to think about afterwards ...

If you have been in a cemetery lately -- at least one in which people have been buried in the last several years -- you have probably seen stones with laser-etched designs on them. Etching has become quite popular and these newer stones give cemeteries a very different look. Supposedly, this technique will last 500+ years in an outdoor setting. I guess that seems like forever to most people. Or maybe they figure in 500 years nobody will care who is buried in these graveyards anyway, so they don't worry that the design will disappear eventually.

As I walked among the stones, I was surprised to see so many of them decorated for Halloween. It has never occurred to me to go to the cemetery and put Halloween decorations up. I think that if I did, some of my relatives would totally understand and some of them would think I was bonkers.

Anyway, a few stones, in particular, caught my eye today.



Ryder was just two and a half years old when he died. I assume his death was accidental, because there is a small, round plaque below his picture that indicates his organs were donated. I love the etched images of a little boy angel playing football and swinging in heaven. :)



Arionna was less than five months old when she died. I always want to know what happened to the babies.



Most people who die before the age of 40 are the victim of an accident, right? I wonder if Robert Altman's motorcylce was involved in his early death. But wouldn't that just be too weird, if he died in a motorcycle accident and the family still chose to include that image on the stone?

iTunes is currently playing: Light Above The Trees from the album A Drop Of Water by Keiko Matsui.