PoetryBones Anniversary!

Image by Gerd Altmann

First Mentor Poem

To Put It Differently
BY NATAN ZACH
TRANSLATED BY PETER COLE
 
 Poetry chooses choice things, carefully selecting
select words, arranging,
fabulously, things arranged. To put it differently
is hard, if not out of the question.
 
Poetry's like a clay plate. It's broken easily
under the weight of all those poems. In the hands
of the poet, it sings. In those of others, not only
doesn't it sing, it's out of the question.

Writing Prompt #1:

About poetry, do you agree or disagree with the poet ?  —OR—  Tell me, what is poetry to you?
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Second Mentor Poems

blessing the boats
BY LUCILLE CLIFTON
                                    (at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Source: Poetry Foundation

Writing Prompt #2:

​Write a poem of blessing to the writers in this group—to all writers—even to thank a writer, if you like.
 

For Discussion:

The Cheer
WILLIAM MEREDITH
 
reader my friend, is in the words here, somewhere.
Frankly, I'd like to make you smile.
Words addressing evil won't turn evil back
but they can give heart.
The cheer is hidden in right words.
A great deal isn't right, as they say,
as they are lately at some pains to tell us.
Words have to speak about that.
They would be the less words
for saying smile when they should say do.
If you ask them do what?
they turn serious quick enough, but never unlovely.
And they will tell you what to do,
if you listen, if you want that.
Certainly good cheer has never been what's wrong,
though solemn people mistrust it.
Against evil, between evils, lovely words are right.
How absurd it would be to spin these noises out,
so serious that we call them poems,
if they couldn't make a person smile.
Cheer or courage is what they were all born in.
It's what they're trying to tell us, miming like that.
It's native to the words,
and what they want us to always know,
even when it seems quite impossible to do.

Another poem we revisited in celebrating the writing journey is Joy Harjo's  "For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet."  See how we used it in this writing session, too.
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Poems from *PoBo Writers

Hear Sarah Goettsch read her poem
"To All of You Gathered Here"

​

​[A toast to your courage and obstinacy]
KIMBERLEY HEALEY
 
A toast to your courage and obstinacy.
You have trod on the metaphors
And plodded around old syntax
And driven the unruly beasts of your mind
Up a hard mountain. Thank you.
 
There are poets among us
And sad mothers, and slow thinkers,
And dedicated observers of the goose.
Your words painted high tea with sex lurking,
Or sadness at time’s commingling of union and loss.
 
So much loss.
The rose gardens behind the walls of your personae
Have blossomed and faded, sprouted and become heavy in fragrant words,
Dropping to the stones for me to recall and roll around in my mouth for days,
Like good candy that only exists in childhood books.
 
Your secrets, your confessions, your raw hard smelly truth pause me.
You write, I remember.
Your fears, my solace.
Your breathing words, my dreaming ear.
 
I see you on my screen.
The cock of a thinking head, the pensive pause,
And your good reading glasses.
 
There is a river flowing beneath us and
In this last year its waters are deeper, darker;
Full of horses and boats and sapphires and
A floating eagle feather and a child’s first glasses and
A husband’s gone love.
Sometimes I am afraid to jump in.
This river with its armful of giant current.
 
« You can swim. You can swim. »
I see it on your faces, I hear your thank you’s,
I watch your funny movements to stay afloat,
None alike.
 
And I want to go with you in the stream even if there are giant spiders,
Or Godot is waiting under a rock to pull me down or if all this swimming will
Make us big naked De Kooning women, laughing with the cold water in our wavy hair.
 
Thank you for letting me swim with you, for pulling up the trapdoors of your minds and hopes.
 
May the year to come wash big waves of you and life onto the shores of these notebooks and
give us all the courage to jump in, to trust the moving waters because
We trust each other.

 [Just now, it occurs to me]
MICHAEL COOPER
 
Just now, it occurs to me:
The weight of this morning,
This dark cocoon woven of fitful dreams,
Has lightened.
 
I took a breath,
A sigh of pleasure, really,
Hearing these fine words with you.
I felt a lightening, an easing.
Pleasant edges crept in through the cracks
In this dark armor of night.
The pain and perseverant thoughts
I have not yet laid down
Paused.
 
We all have our stories to tell.
So many have said it better than I
But I will say it too:
Please don’t let anyone shame you
For telling your story
 
Don’t let them pathologize you,
Make you small,
Tell you in some way that you
Should’ve moved on by now.
 
You deserve to hold your story,
You lived it!
In your story is the very power
Of life itself,
Be it ugly, messy, sticky, and
Radiantly beautiful.
 
May you be free to move
Within the story of your life
As you will.
For you are its proper owner.
There is no shame in that.
 
The wound that weeps
Can heal us all

"May you always have words to come home to" --Sarah Goettsch

Read more blessing and thank you poems from PoBo writers here , including: 
   Megan Herlaar          Kathy Flanagan
   Melissa Hurt               Nancy Friedland
   Janine Theodore       Nancy Smith
   Mary Jo Andrews     Heather Miller