In the Poet’s Corner of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, pause to find Plath’s stone laid bare. Carved upon it is the opening line from her poem, “The Moon and the Yew Tree”:
This is the light of the mind,
Cold and planetary
There will never be a greater statement made in this or any language, for here is an intergalactic declaration of independence.
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Thrilled to have been nominated this year for two Pushcart Prizes, a top award for American literary arts published by our smaller presses. One nom for a poem, another for an essay, all totally unexpected and a pleasant surprise indeed.
Onward, 2019!
So many poems have been falling out of the sky lately and landing on my head/page/lap/grocery list/tire repair receipt– everywhere. I love this gift of life and learning, the hard work that goes into it, but also the inevitability. The roll of it. Honoring this means stopping to get against a solid service to get the line down, and it also means granting permission to do so rather than denigrating my talent with bullshit like “Oh, that’s stupid” or “Who even reads poems anyway?” or “I can’t do this.”
Answers: “No it’s not.” “Everyone, whether they realize it or not.” “Yes you can.” Good, glad that’s clear now.
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Published three new poems that I completed this past summer as a poet-in-residence at the Rivendell Writers Colony in Tennessee. I share these here with gratitude to Entropy Magazine.
Seventeen years ago I published this poem in the British magazine TANK. I still recognize the lost and wandering soldier who wrote it, who poked around Beijing’s Summer Palace at the height of the season. Today I feel compelled to give China a leave of absence of indeterminate length, repelled as I am by its murder of human rights giants like Liu Xiaobo (say his name). But still in my head I hear the lowing of Beijing Wanbao! and I recall my friends and students, my landlord Yang, my neighbors. They remain and work, I believe, to make the country better even as I disappeared into an aisle seat on a long-ago United flight. Here’s to those twin poles: courage and cowardice.
If you take stock and notice– really breathe deep and notice— the world offers up a million poems a second. It is extraordinary to realize we are traveling at such a light speed and you will stop and say no! Slow down! I can’t capture it all when you move that quick! But the world will throw its head back and laugh and speed up again. That is the moment in which you come into direct contact with your own mortality. You cannot catch it all. Your time is finite. You will only reel in a handful of poems at best. Here is one.
We’re mere inches and millimeters away from the start of the public school year here in NYC, and the District 7 high school where I work is abuzz, I mean abuzz, with go-get-it-ness and get-it-done-ness and other forms of generalized optimism before the students arrive and deflate these many tires. Ohhh man, what it is to teach. What it is.
“He had been fired from that job because he had broken into the sacramental wine and rung the bells all night long.” — Henry Miller, TROPIC OF CAPRICORN
I love that you do what you do
With holy rolling thunder.
And so from out the books to bring
A holy new high plunder.
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Forgetful houndstooth
And nary a sweater
For walking the whippoorwills
In this kind of weather.
Caroline M Cooper 