Category Archives: poetry

Dwelling in the Mystery

art, poetry,
Farms and Fields and Clouds

My husband told a friend that I have been in a foul mood these days. I did not disagree. Is it any wonder why?

As a balm to my overwrought soul, I was fortunate to spend more time with my parents and their friends a few weeks ago. I heard the new chaplain speak, and her message echoed that of the one I heard from the Bible study during the previous visit. Using the metaphor of a cup filled with water, she suggested that we do ourselves an injustice when we try to fit God into our cup. Instead, she emptied the cup and dropped it into a bucket of water. God is all around us just like the cup in water. We should dwell in the mystery of being surrounded by something much larger than ourselves, larger than our own imaginations.

That same message is the theme of Denise Levertov’s poem, “Primary Wonder.” She gets straight to the point in the first sentence: “Days pass when I forget the mystery.” She goes on to describe all the ways life gets in our way of experiencing the mystery that “there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory.” While some may be put off by the Christian imagery, I think the poem speaks to anyone who has had an experience of getting beyond the day-to-day diversions to a deeper connection with the mystery.

Levertov’s spiritual journey is fascinating: born to a Hasidic Jewish scholar and Welsh mother, she was an agnostic for much of her life, converting to Catholicism in the 1980s.

You can read the complete poem here.

Sigh

advocacy, poetry, thinking out loud

Writer, farmer, and activist Wendell Berry died yesterday, aged 92. He told the stories of his people in quiet prose and reflective, if sometimes combative, poetry. I have read a few of his novels, but it is his poetry that speaks to me most strongly. He is my favorite poet as I resonate with his love for rural life along with his anger at environmental destruction. I have written about him often on this blog. I suspect “The Peace of Wild Things” is his most beloved poem as we all find ourselves longing to escape to a place of quiet tranquility.

Berry, however, was much more than just a rural bard rambling through the fields. He was an environmental activist who used his poetry to lament the loss of nature and with it the diminishment of our own lives. Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry documents the challenges of being a farmer in the 21st century through the eyes of Berry, his family and his neighbors and friends. It is not so much a biography of the man as a portrayal of a disappearing way of life. In the trailer, Berry recites a poem written in 1997 from his collection of Sabbath poems titled A Timbered Choir.

Poem in Your Pocket Day

poetry,

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. April 30, tomorrow, is Poem in Your Pocket Day. The goal is to make poetry part of your day by choosing a poem to share with others.

Not sure which poem to share? The Academy of American Poets has lots of resources including a printable PDF with several poems and a very fun zine that features “Pockets,” a poem by 12-grader Rowan Yordy. You can also print a blank template to make your own poetry zine.

As regular readers of the blog may be aware, my favorite poet is Wendell Berry. His meditations on living simply in a complex world resonate with me. Ten years ago, I celebrated National Poetry Month by sharing a few April poems along with one of my favorite Berry poems, “The Peace of Wild Things”.

For this year, I am feeling less peaceful and more reactionary. Thank goodness, there is a Wendell Berry poem for that. In fact, there is a full anthology called The Mad Farmer Poems.

You can listen to Berry reading “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer”. My favorite of the collection is “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”. You can read the full poem at the link. Here is a taste of Berry’s ire at the world that is surprisingly contemporary:

So, friends, every day do something
    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
    Love the world. Work for nothing.
    Take all that you have and be poor.
    Love someone who does not deserve it.
    Denounce the government and embrace
    the flag. Hope to live in that free
    republic for which it stands.
    Give your approval to all you cannot
    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
    has not encountered he has not destroyed.

I wasn’t able to find audio of Berry reading the poem, but I did fine this fabulous jazz performance that included a reading of his poem. Enjoy:

Good God, Y’All

music, poetry, thinking out loud

I am struggling to put words together these days. But, I feel compelled to connect so for today, I am sharing a song and a poem.

SiriusXM served up Edwin Starr’s song, “War,” recorded in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War.

You can find the lyrics here.

Today’s Poem of the Day from the Academy of American Poets is “War” by Gary Copeland Lilley. The poem is dedicated to Lilley’s friend who fought in the Army Special Forces and muses on the impact of war on the combatants.

“the man’s been in combat he’s seen what can I tell you he knows the need for a transcendent blues relief honed by the Blues-People the Indian my brother-man now got indigenous blues my brother-man genocide survivor joined the army airborne paratrooper delta force fought wars most Americans never know are happening in anywhere-South America”

A Time for Poetry

poetry, thinking out loud, ,
Egret On Nice
Egret on Ice, Pea Island, North Carolina, January 2025, Photo by The Richardsons

After my last rant, I took a break and dove into the #100DayProject. Supported by Lindsay Jean Thomson, the goal of the project, which began on February 23 this year, is to choose a project and work on it for 100 days. While Thomson’s focus is about art, I don’t think it has to be. The main purpose is making the commitment to creating something everyday.

My project this year comes out of twin desires: to become more skilled at gel plate printing and to read more poetry. I am tracking my progress on Substack, as that is where the main project community is housed. I am also posting pictures to Flickr.

I was considering using Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope” is the thing with feathers next. The Poetry Foundation included the poem in a collection of poems of hope and resilience, created in 2017. I found Claudia Rankine’s poem, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: “Cornel West makes the point…”, a powerful meditation on life as a black person during George W. Bush’s election. She references Dickinson:

“I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recog­nition that a life can not matter. Or, as there are billions of lives, my sadness is alive alongside the recognition that billions of lives never mattered. I write this with­out breaking my heart, without bursting into anything. Perhaps this is the real source of my sadness. Or, per­haps, Emily Dickinson, my love, hope was never a thing with feathers. I don’t know, I just find when the news comes on I switch the channel. This new ten­dency might be indicative of a deepening personality flaw: IMH, The Inability to Maintain Hope, which trans­lates into no innate trust in the supreme laws that gov­ern us. Cornel West says this is what is wrong with black people today—too nihilistic. Too scarred by hope to hope, too experienced to experience, too close to dead is what I think.”

Claudia Rankine, “Cornel West makes the point… (pp. 21-23)” from Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. Copyright © 2004 by Claudia Rankine.