Whenever I read what I feel is a really good poem, I want to share it with people. A lot of times I email them to friends and since a lot of you have become my friends over the years, I wanted to share it with you.

In addition to writing novels, I also write poetry and I have been modestly published a couple of times. I think a good poem makes us realize that we’re not alone. It expands our world in some way. See what you think of this one by Malena Morling. As always, I welcome your thoughts, and if you have a poem that you’d like to share with other readers, please email it to me or put it in the comment section. –Susan

Simply Lit
by Malena Morling

Often toward evening,
after another day, after
another year of days,
in the half dark on the way home
I stop at the food store
and waiting in line I begin
to wonder about people—I wonder
if they also wonder about how
strange it is that we
are here on the earth.
And how in order to live
we all must sleep.
And how we have beds for this
(unless we are without)
and entire rooms where we go
at the end of the day to collapse.
And I think how even the most
lively people are desolate
when they are alone
because they too must sleep
and sooner or later die.
We are always looking to acquire
more food for more great meals.
We have to have great meals.
Isn’t it enough to be a person buying
a carton of milk? A simple
package of butter and a loaf
of whole wheat bread?
Isn’t it enough to stand here
while the sweet middle-aged cashier
rings up the purchases?
I look outside,
but I can’t see much out there
because now it is dark except
for a single vermilion neon sign
floating above the gas station
like a miniature temple simply lit
against the night.

“Simply Lit” by Malena Mörling, from Astoria. © University of Pittsburg Press, 2006.

This is what you shall do
by Walt Whitman

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

“This is what you shall do…” by Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass. Public domain.

Happy Summer, everyone!

Author website

P.S. If you’re looking for ways to preserve your family stories go here.

Two poetry organizations you may want to check out, if you haven’t already:

American Life in Poetry

Poetry Foundation

P.S. Seeking Sara Summers is available on Kindle, as well as iBooks and Barnes and Noble (on the Nook).

“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.” –Marianne Moore

“Poetry is the rhythmic, inevitably narrative, movement from an overclothed blindness to a naked vision that depends in its intensity on the strength of the labour put into the creation of the poetry. My poetry is, or should be, useful to me for one reason: it is the record of my individual struggle from darkness towards some measure of light.” –Dylan Thomas

“I’m not very good at praying, but what I experience when I’m writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” -Denise Levertov

“Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing.” Dylan Thomas

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.  Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.  Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.  -Carl Sandburg 

“If I were in solitary confinement, I’d never write another novel, and probably not keep a journal, but I’d write poetry, because poems, you see, are between God and me.” -May Sarton

“Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.” – Mary Oliver

There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.  -Robert Graves 

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.
-Emily Dickinson

“One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.” May Sarton

Poetry is life distilled.  -Gwendolyn Brooks

Poets are like magicians, searching for magical phrases to pull rabbits out of people’s souls.  -Terri Guillemets

Do you have a favorite quote or a favorite poet? If so, I’d love to hear from you.

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Author Website.

Maxine Kumin—the author of many poetry collections, including Up Country (1973), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and most recently, Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (2010), which was published last spring—said:

Until the Women’s Movement, it was commonplace to be told by an editor that he’d like to publish more of my poems, but he’d already published one by a woman that month … this attitude was the rule rather than the exception, until the mid-sixties. The highest compliment was to be told, ‘You write like a man.’

What do you think? Have we come a long way? Or do we still have farther to go. I’d love to hear from you.

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Author website.

Trust
by Thomas R. Smith

It’s like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn’t.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.

From Waking Before Dawn. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2007.

 
When I was going through a very difficult time in my life several years ago, someone I respected a great deal told me to, “Trust the process.” I did then and I still do. And I would also add:

 May we all show up at our intended destinations.

 
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Check out my day job here. I help people trust the process.

In addition to her well-known autobiographies, Maya Angelou has steadily written poetry over the years. In this video Professor Angelou recites her poem, “And Still I Rise,” from her volume of poetry And Still I Rise, published in 1978. I offer this as our poem of the week.

Is there something in your life that you need to rise above in order to live your best life? What are you a “slave” to? Perhaps a negative attitude or a negative belief in yourself? Who or what inspires you to keep going despite these obstacles?

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S. If for some reason you can’t view the video go here.

Music

by Anne Porter

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood
Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

“Music” by Anne Porter from Living Things: Collected Poems. © Steerforth Press, 2006.

 What kind of music moves you the most? Please comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

 
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