April 1, 2011 Welcome to National Poetry Month! We’ll post new poems all through April. Check back often to find the latest offering, with writing prompts! The first poem, fittingly, is an “ars poetica” — a poem about poetry. It’s by the well-loved William Stafford. Below the prompts, you’ll find Lisel Mueller’s beautiful “Monet Refuses the Operation.” Further on, you’ll find another favorite for Poetry Month: “Eating Poetry” by Mark Strand.
Poetry
Its door opens near. It’s a shrine
by the road, it’s a flower in the parking lot
of the Pentagon, it says, “Look around,
listen. Feel the air.” It interrupts
international telephone lines with a tune.
When traffic lines jam, it gets out
and dances on the bridge. If great people
get distracted by fame they forget
this essential kind of breathing
and they die inside their gold shell.
When caravans cross deserts
it is the secret treasure hidden under the jewels.
Sometimes commanders take us over, and they
try to impose their whole universe,
how to succeed by daily calculation:
I can’t eat that bread.
–William Stafford
© Estate of William Stafford
Journal prompts:
- What is the first poem you remember loving?
- Have you ever memorized a poem? Write as much of it as you can in your journal. What memories does it evoke?
- This month, explore poets who are new to you. When you find a poem on this website or elsewhere that speaks to you, print it out and paste it in your journal. Read it over and over. How does it speak to you?
- Write a poem (it doesn’t have to rhyme!)
April 8, 2011 This beautiful poem by Lisel Mueller has been a favorite for many years. I love the “voice” that Mueller gives Monet, and the lyrical glimpse into a way of seeing.
Monet Refuses the Operation
Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
– Lisel Mueller
© Lisel Mueller
Journal prompts:
- Start a write with this line: I tell you it has taken me all my life….
- The poem describes a particular way of seeing. How would you describe how you see the world?
- Think of someone with whom you’re having a conflict, disagreement or difference of opinion. What might happen if you were to write in that person’s voice about the disagreement? See what happens when you change perspectives.
April 20, 2011 Another personal favorite. I remember individual moments of hearing Mark Strand recite this poem at a reading in Denver.
Eating Poetry
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
–Mark Strand
Journal prompts:
- Write about a time when you devoured a pleasurable experience.
- Do you have a passion that others don’t understand? Tell the story of a time when you followed your heart, even when others mocked you, criticized you or seemed to fear you.
- Do you ever eat poetry? Write about an experience when you “romp(ed) with joy in the bookish dark.”
