What Is One Poem You Read In 2024 That You'd Like To Share? (12/15/24)

[Marc]

Share with us one poem you read in 2024 that moved/impressed/stuck with you...

[Sam]

The poem is "Pop Song," from Modern Poetry: Poems by Diane Seuss and it devastates me every time I read it. The whole collection has a memoir element to it and I gave it 5 stars.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bL9o...

[Greg]

That's wonderfully moving Sam - we carry so much of our parents' legacy within us I think. I would love to see it on paper as well.

[Greg]

The most extraordinary book of poetry I read this year was Translations from the Night: Selected Poems of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (African Writers Series ; 167) by surrealist Malagasy poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo. And the translation by Robert Ziller is in general beautifully done.

It's hard to pick a single poem from the book, but the one that is calling out to me most at this moment is the final poem in the volume:


30.

Vain all these anticipations
that claim to give us wings
and promise
that one day we'll seduce some Martian?

Vain too, the dream
that lost Icarus
more than the sun
that drank the marvelous wax?

Yet what certain triumph
announced to me by all these signs
that earth and sky send out
from the borders of sleep:

within our cities of the living
even the most humble of huts
respond to the calls of fire
bursting from the newborn stars.

[Hester]

Thanks for both of these . Both new to me and stunning .

I have been touched this year by Grevell Lindop and Jo Haslam , both poets from Northern England .

SCATTERING THE ASHES. Grevell Lindop

At last the rain cleared and we found a barley-field

where the crop was knee-high, and in our town shoes

paced the lumpy furrows along the edge

until our trousers were soaked. My brother held it out,

open, and I pushed my hand in. It was like

dark corn, or oatmeal, or both, the fine dust

surprisingly heavy as it sighed through the green

blades and hit the earth. And like the sower

in that nursery picture (‘To bed with the lamb,

and up with the laverock’) we strode on, flinging it

broadcast, left and right, out over the field.

And there was no doubt that things were all in their places,

the tumbled clouds moving back, light in the wheel-ruts

and puddles of the lane as we walked to the car;

and yes, there were larks scribbling their songs on the sky

as the air warmed up. We noticed small steps

by a pool in the stream where a boy might have played

and people fetched water once, and wild watercress

that streamed like green hair inside the ribbed gloss of the current.

And then I was swinging the wheel as we found our way

round the lane corners in a maze of tall hedges

patched with wild roses, under steep slopes of larch

and sycamore, glimpsing the red sandstone of castles

hidden high in the woods. And the grit under our nails

was the midpoint of a spectrum that ran from the pattern in our cells

to the memories of two children, and it was all right.

A Lyke Wake Walk for Auntie * / Jo Haslam

By Asda, Tesco, Boggart Hole,
its river path and bowling green;
by midweek cold and dank October,
by the Co-op funeral parlour,

by paramedic, ambulance,
by CT scan and mammogram
by all night on the floor alone,
by fire that burns to the bare bone

no one kept her company
till she from hence away
had passed, nobody stayed
for the ae neet and no one lit

a candle in the dark.
No one stayed by fire or fleet
and no one stayed her soul to keep;
but some came early, some were late,

some took the wrong exit
on the motorway. And nobody
remembered much of anything
she’d said or done. No one wept.

Some didn’t come. Nobody knew
what job she’d done, name of the caff
where every day she ate her lunch;
no one followed her on foot,

no one took the river path,
but someone chucked the pee
stained mat, cleared the wardrobe
packed her clothes, gave what they’d take

to Oxfam, Hospice, Age UK.
And someone tucked her wedding ring
and glasses case inside the box,
someone touched her freezing hands

and someone prayed, by Asda, Tesco,
Boggart Hole, by fire that burns
to the bare bone by Lethe, Styx
and Irwell, Christ receive her saule.

* This poem is in conversation with an old folk song The Lyke Wake Dirge . The song tells of the soul's travel, and the hazards it faces, on its way from earth to purgatory, reminding the mourners to practise charity during lifetime. Though it is from the Christian era and features references to Christianity, much of the symbolism is thought to be of pre-Christian origin.[1][2][3][4]

Here is the original

This one night, this one night
Every nighte and all
Fire and sleet and candle-light
And Christ receive thy soul

When from hence away thou art past
Every night and all
To thorny wood thou com'st at last
And Christ receive thy soul

If ever thou gavest cloth and shoon
Every night and all
Sit thee down and put them on
And Christ receive thy soul

If cloth and shoon thou ne'er gav'st
Every night and all
The thorn shall prick thee to thy bone
And Christ receive thy soul

When from thorny wood thou pass
Every night and all
To Brig o' Dread thou com'st at last
And Christ receive thy soul

From Brig o' Dread whence thou may'st pass
Every night and all
To Purgatory fire thou com'st at last
And Christ receive thy soul

If meat or drink thou ne'er gav'st
Every night and all
The fire shall burn thee to thy bone
And Christ receive thy soul

And Christ receive thy soul

[Sam]

Hester wrote: "Thanks for both of these . Both new to me and stunning .

I have been touched this year by Grevell Lindop and Jo Haslam , both poets from Northern England .




I enjoyed the Lindop and had to order the collection.

[Hester]

Delighted to hear this Sam

[victoria]

oh great Q & oh so many! here’s one I can’t get out of my head, “Valentine” by Jess Smith (her first book of poems is being published next year)

http://haydensferryreview.com/jess-sm...

The heart shape did not start with the heart,
but peepal leaves, Silphium, wild carrot—the rounded plants
ancient women found to prevent or end pregnancy. See
also: ivy, fig leaves, damp petals of the water-lily. It’s not until

crucifixion we get the bloody organ, pierced by a black cross,
a clutched chest the true symbol of devotion, then Luther’s Rose,
Danish ballad books, winks at the shape of buttocks
when viewed from behind, private schools with demanding names

like Sacred or Immaculate Heart, a box heavy with chocolates
and rimmed in velvet, children folding red paper in half
with clumsy hands, I Heart NY, i carry your heart with me,
(Everybody Has a) Hungry Heart, <3, aisles in the drugstore so red

you’d think they were bleeding, which is all ancient women
hoped for each month, not just February, gifting each other
Silphium, wild carrot, leaves like paper hearts, what clearer way
to say I love you, I love you, I want you to live.

[Alwynne]

Have always loved the Lyke Wake dirge and Jess Smith sounds really interesting. I don't read much contemporary poetry and when I do tend to prefer prose poetry like Mary Ruefle's. But recently read a Danielle Dutton collection that refers to a poem by Wang Jiaxin which I then looked up and really liked, also fits with the wintry season here:

Tangerine – Wang Jiaxan

All winter he eats tangerines,
sometimes at the table,
sometimes on a bus.
Sometimes, as he’s eating,
snow falls inside the bookcase.
Sometimes instead of eating,
he simply peels, slowly,
as if something lives within.

So he eats tangerines all winter,
and while eating recalls a novel
in which the heroine also brought to the table
a dish of tangerines. One kept rolling
till the end of the story.
But he can’t name the author.
He simply eats the tangerine in silence.
The peels on his windowsill rise higher.

At last an image comes, several tangerines,
in childhood, placed near his hospital bed.
His mother had found them somewhere.
Though his little brother begged one, mother refused.
Still, he shared, but neither
would eat the last tangerine,
which stayed on the night stand.

Who knows what became of it?

So he eats tangerines all winter,
especially on snowy days, gray days.
He eats slowly, as if
there’s plenty of time,
as if he’s devouring darkness.
He eats, peels, and when he lifts his head,
snow glitters at the window.