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Though often misattributed to Ogden Nash, today’s limerick is actually by the poet and humorist Dixon Lanier Merritt.
Hello Friends,
Today’s poem is a rare case of writing by a 19th-century African American woman that has survived for us to read today. Alice Dunbar-Nelson published her first poetry collection when she was only 20 years old and already a college graduate (but not yet married to her first of three husbands, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar). Appropriately for today’s poem, Dunbar-Nelson is interred in Delaware very near Carney’s Point, and her papers are collected by the University of Delaware.
Enjoy.
— Ellen
O white little lights at Carney’s Point,
You shine so clear o’er the Delaware;
When the moon rides high in the silver sky,
Then you gleam, white gems on the Delaware.
Diamond circlet on a full white throat,
You laugh your rays on a questioning boat;
Is it peace you dream in your flashing gleam,
O’er the quiet flow of the Delaware?
And the lights grew dim at the water’s brim,
For the smoke of the mills shredded slow between;
And the smoke was red, as is new bloodshed,
And the lights went lurid ‘neath the livid screen.
O red little lights at Carney’s Point,
You glower so grim o’er the Delaware;
When the moon hides low sombrous clouds below,
Then you glow like coals o’er the Delaware.
Blood red rubies on a throat of fire,
You flash through the dusk of a funeral pyre;
Are there hearth fires red whom you fear and dread
O’er the turgid flow of the Delaware?
And the lights gleamed gold o’er the river cold,
For the murk of the furnace shed a copper veil;
And the veil was grim at the great cloud’s brim,
And the lights went molten, now hot, now pale.
O gold little lights at Carney’s Point,
You gleam so proud o’ver the Delaware;
When the moon grows wan in the eastering dawn,
Then you sparkle gold points o’er the Delaware.
Aureate filagree on a Croesus’ brow,
You hasten the dawn on a gray ship’s prow.
Light you streams of gold in the grim ship’s hold
O’er the sullen flow of the Delaware?
And the lights went gray in the ash of day,
For a quiet Aurora brought a halcyon balm;
And the sun laughed high in the infinite sky,
And the lights were forgot in the sweet, sane calm.
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Hello Friends,
The poetry of Simon J. Ortiz is rooted in the oral traditions of the Acoma Pueblo Indians — so you may want to read today’s poem out loud. “Culture and the Universe” can be found in Ortiz’s 2002 collection Out There Somewhere.
Enjoy.
— Ellen
Two nights ago
in the canyon darkness,
only the half-moon and stars,
only mere men.
Prayer, faith, love,
existence.
by vastness beyond ourselves.
Dark is light.
Stone is rising.
I don’t know
if humankind understands
culture: the act
of being human
is not easy knowledge.
With painted wooden sticks
and feathers, we journey
into the canyon toward stone,
a massive presence
in midwinter.
We stop.
sings in quiet meditation.
We are wordless:
Without knowing why
culture needs our knowledge,
we are one self in the canyon.
I lean upon spins me
wordless and silent
to the reach of stars
and to the heavens within.
It’s not humankind after all
nor is it culture
that limits us.
It is the vastness
we do not enter.
It is the stars
we do not let own us.
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Hello Friends,
Today I am sharing my favorite poem to encompass both celebrity culture and Sirenia. The poet responsible is James Reidel.
Enjoy.
— Ellen
What is flat and nothing but skin,
What lolls in a shallow world,
What is watched for its surface,
Between long episodes of water the color of a dead screen’s sea-green glass,
What has but a few hairs in the snapshot?
A bit of muzzle,
No more than a pug’s worth for a rented red kayak,
For this sailor swallowed by enormous wax lips,
What is gray and aporial,
Once mistaken for half girl,
Half monster,
Disappointingly naked and slipping under the hull.
— Lido Beach, Fla., November 2013
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Hello Friends,
Sometimes we describe a thing best by saying what it is not. Today’s poem by Rita Dove is one of those cases.
Enjoy.
— Ellen
It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.
It doesn’t have
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—
but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.
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Hello Friends, and Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare! In honor of the Bard, today’s poem-a-day is Sonnet 15. Read this and then tell me “engraft” isn’t the best word you’ve heard all day. — Ellen
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Hello Friends,
To honor Earth Day today, I have for you a poem by Dorianne Laux that is both gross and gorgeous — and that’s exactly the point of it. (Just maybe don’t read it over lunch.)
Enjoy.
Ellen
and remote, and useful,
if only to itself. Take the fly, angel
of the ordinary house, laying its bright
eggs on the trash, pressing each jewel out
delicately along a crust of buttered toast.
Bagged, the whole mess travels to the nearest
dump where other flies have gathered, singing
over stained newsprint and reeking
fruit. Rapt on air they execute an intricate
ballet above the clashing pirouettes
of heavy machinery. They hum with life.
While inside rumpled sacks pure white
maggots writhe and spiral from a rip,
a tear-shaped hole that drools and drips
a living froth onto the buried earth.
The warm days pass, gulls scree and pitch,
rats manage the crevices, feral cats abandon
their litters for a morsel of torn fur, stranded
dogs roam open fields, sniff the fragrant edges,
a tossed lacework of bones and shredded flesh.
And the maggots tumble at the center, ripening,
husks membrane-thin, embryos darkening
and shifting within, wings curled and wet,
the open air pungent and ready to receive them
in their fecund iridescence. And so, of our homely hosts,
a bag of jewels is born again into the world. Come, lost
children of the sun-drenched kitchen, your parents
soundly sleep along the windowsill, content,
wings at rest, nestled in against the warm glass.
Everywhere the good life oozes from the useless
waste we make when we create—our streets teem
with human young, rafts of pigeons streaming
over the squirrel-burdened trees. If there is
a purpose, maybe there are too many of us
to see it, though we can, from a distance,
hear the dull thrum of generation’s industry,
feel its fleshly wheel churn the fire inside us, pushing
the world forward toward its ragged edge, rushing
like a swollen river into multitude and rank disorder.
Such abundance. We are gorged, engorging, and gorgeous.
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Hello Friends,
It’s one of my favorite days of the year — Poem in Your Pocket Day! Today is the perfect day to stand on a street corner and pass out poems to passers-by. They will mostly think you’re trying to sell them something at first, but you’ll find many are quite delighted to realize you’re giving them a poem. I’ve made a PDF of some pocket-sized poems for you to download and print, so you too can pass out poems to your friends, neighbors, co-workers, or on your nearest street corner.
Also, for the first-time ever on Poem in Your Pocket Day: I have something special for you this year, which is a poem actually about a pocket!
Enjoy.
Ellen
if I had two nickels to rub together
I would rub them together
like a kid rubs sticks together
until friction made combustion
and they burned
a hole in my pocket
into which I would put my hand
and then my arm
and eventually my whole self—
I would fold myself
into the hole in my pocket and disappear
into the pocket of myself, or at least my pants
but before I did
like some ancient star
I’d grab your hand
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— Kevin Varrone
Hello Friends,
C. Dale Young began yesterday’s poem-a-day “I love. Wouldn’t we all like to start / a poem with ‘I love…’?” A couple of centuries earlier, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834) proposed there are creatures who sing exactly that poem.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove,
The Linnet and Thrush say, “I love and I love!”
In the winter they’re silent—the wind is so strong;
What it says, I don’t know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing, and loving—all come back together.
But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he—
“I love my Love, and my Love loves me!”
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I love. Wouldn’t we all like to start
a poem with “I love…”? I would.
I mean, I love the fact there are parallel lines
in the word “parallel,” love how
words sometimes mirror what they mean.
I love mirrors and that stupid tale
about Narcissus. I suppose
there is some Narcissism in that.
You know, Narcissism, what you
remind me to avoid almost all the time.
Yeah, I love Narcissism. I do.
But what I really love is ice cream.
Remember how I told you
no amount of ice cream can survive
a week in my freezer. You didn’t believe me,
did you? No, you didn’t. But you know now
how true that is. I love
that you know my Achilles heel
is none other than ice cream—
so chilly, so common.
And I love fountain pens. I mean
I just love them. Cleaning them,
filling them with ink, fills me
with a kind of joy, even if joy
is so 1950. I know, no one talks about
joy anymore. It is even more taboo
than love. And so, of course, I love joy.
I love the way joy sounds as it exits
your mouth. You know, the word joy.
How joyous is that. It makes me think
of bubbles, chandeliers, dandelions.
I love the way the mind runs
that pathway from bubbles to dandelions.
Yes, I love a lot. And right here,
walking down this street,
I love the way we make
a bridge, a suspension bridge
—almost as beautiful as the
Golden Gate Bridge—swaying
as we walk hand in hand.
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— C. Dale Young, Torn (2011)