(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: Time Done is Dark – Scars and Tasting Sunshine [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-10-21 _____________________________________ Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. – Leonard Cohen _____________________________________ My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style. – Maya Angelou _____________________________________ Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day's posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. Morning Open Thread is looking for contributors, either occasional, or weekly, on Tuesdays or Thursdays. If you’re interested, please contact me or P Carey for more information. ______________________________________ So grab your cuppa, and join in. ______________________________________ 13 Poets born in October. They turn their memories and the scars they bare into messages for all of us. _________________________________ October 20 _________________________________ 1933 – Alice Friman born in New York City; American poet, editor, academic; professor emerita of English and creative writing at the University of Indianapolis. She now lives in Georgia, where she was poet-in-residence at Georgia College. Winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry, she is a recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and is featured in Best American Poetry. Her poetry collections include: Inverted Fire; Reporting from Corinth; Vinculum; and Blood Weather. Adrienne Rich 1929-2012 by Alice Friman . She came to read her poems— those straight-talk towers of brick and mortar—and to speak of the cracked earth and seething rock beneath them. Each poem, a requiem for the rubble she stood in: the twentieth century that cast her and cost her. A serious woman who spent her life spending every thing she had. Outside the room, winter maples organized themselves against the sky, and sparrows pecked at what they could find as they had always done. And we, of the chicken salad and buttered roll, folded our linen napkins, laid down our silver, and hushed— waiting for gold. But as soon as she mounted the stage and leaned to the microphone, we leaned back and away in our chairs. You could barely discern it, but yes, back away is what we did, for in her voice and in the match strike of her eyes, she flared fire, and I saw again the ghost of the old refinery, the one off Township Line Road, its towers lighting the night sky, each burning off in one pure flame the impurities we were. You see, she spoke true. She spoke witness. And we knew it. ​.​ “Adrienne Rich” © 2012 by Alice Friman – published in The Southern Review ______________________________________ 1939 – Nhã Ca, pen name of Trần Thị Thu Vân, born in Hué, Vietnam; Vietnamese-American poet, novelist, and non-fiction author. After studying at Đồng Khánh College in Hué, she moved to Saigon in 1960, married poet Trần Dạ Từ, and they had seven children. She wrote over twenty books as Nhã Ca (“little anthem”), and founded the Thương Yêu Political publishing house. Returning to Hué for her father’s funeral in January 1968, she was stranded there during the Tet Offensive. Nhã Ca published her account in 1969 of the Battle of Hué in Giai Khăn Sô cho Huế (Mourning headband for Hue), which was banned after Vietnam's reunification in 1975. She and her husband were both blacklisted as "cultural guerrillas." She was jailed for two years, but he was imprisoned for 12 years. After his release in 1989, they (and several of their children) sought asylum in Sweden. They settled in California in 1992, where they founded Việt Báo, which would become a daily newspaper, and sponsors an annual writing contest. Most of her books have not yet been translated into English. Scar by Nhã Ca The little girl came into existence with a lonely scar . During a time of no hunger no fullness no smell no taste . I live freely in my body and . Listen to the scar growing slowly, taking roots Infancy flashed to adolescence O my head hand feet from a childish time . Attuned in time to the smell and taste of love . In one step I left behind my girlhood The little girl came into existence despite doubts . I alone exist in my deep dark scar . Empty body in which fragments travel . My scar my wound hidden by reeds No speech no vision nothing at all . I’ve lived with my predicament through the years . All those years I’ve looked at life–a stranger . The war within me continues coldly . “Scar” © 2007 by Nhã Ca, translated by Đinh Từ Bích Thúy – posted at Dàmau: Literature Without Borders ______________________________________ 1981 – Mai Der Vang born in Fresno, CA, daughter of Hmong refugees fleeing Laos; Hmong-American poet. She earned a BS in English from UC Berkeley, and an MFA in creative writing-poetry from Columbia. Her poetry collection, Afterland, won the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award in 2016, and her second book, Yellow Rain, was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Yellow Rain is myotoxin trichothecene, which was dropped on the Hmong, who were fighting against the Communists, after the U.S withdrawal. For the Nefarious by Mai Der Vang . From a recessed hollow Rumble, I unearth as a creature . Conceived to be relentless. Depend on me to hunt you . Until you find yourself Counting all the uncorked . Nightmares you digested. I will let you know the burning . Endorsed by the effort of Matches. And you will claw . Yourself inward, toward a Conference of heat as the steam . Within you surrenders, caves You into a cardboard scar. . Even what will wreck you Are your mother’s chapped lips. . Even to drip your confession Of empty rooms. I know about . Your recipe of rain, your apiary Ways. Trust me to be painful. . “For the Nefarious” © 2017 by Mai Der Vang appeared in Poetry magazine’s 2017 July/August issue _________________________________ October 21 _________________________________ 1907 – Nikos Engonopoulos born just north of Athens, Greece; prolific Greek writer, poet, painter, and translator. His family visited Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the summer of 1914, then stayed there through WWI. He began studying in Paris, but was called up for national military service in 1927-1928. He then spent two years in Athens working during the day, and going to school at night. Engonopoulos worked as a designer at the Ministry of Public Works (1930-1936) while studying painting. His father died in Constantinople in 1937. In 1938, three of his poems were published in the journal O Kyklos, and he published his first poetry collection, Do Not Distract the Driver. He worked as a set and costume designer at a theatre, published a second volume of poetry, and his paintings were part of a group exhibition. In 1941, he was called up to the Albanian Front. By 1942, his paintings are being shown in several exhibitions, and his reputation is established. In 1945, he begins teaching design and drawing at the National Technical University, but also continues to write both prose and poetry. In 1973, he is named Professor Emeritus, and retires. He was awarded the Cross of the Commander of the Phoenix, and won the State Prize for Poetry twice. He died at age 78 in October 1985. In 2007, a retrospective of his art and poetry was published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Poetry 1948 by Nikos Engonopoulos this age of civil strife is no age for poetry and such like: when something is about to be written it's as if it were being written on the other side of death announcements . which is why my poems are so bitter (and when - in any case - were they not?) and are - above all - also so few “Poetry 1948” from Selected Poems by Nikos Engonopoulos, translated by David Connolly – Harvard Department of the Classics, 2018 Bilingual edition ______________________________________ 1929 – Ursula K. Le Guin born as Ursula Krober in Berkeley, CA; American novelist, author of short stories and children’s books, mainly in the fantasy and science fiction genres, essayist, and poet. She is known for her Earthsea series, The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, and The Left Hand of Darkness, which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. A pioneer in feminist science fiction, she was the first woman to win both awards for the same book. Her poetry collections include Out Here; Sixty Odd; Going out with Peacocks; and Wild Angels. She died at age 88 of heart-related causes in January 2018. Doggerel for a Cat by Ursula K. Le Guin . His paws are white, his ears are black. When he isn’t around I feel the lack. His purr is loud, his fur is soft. He always carries his tail aloft. His gait is easy, his gaze intense. He wears a tuxedo to all events. His toes are prickly, his nose is pink. I like to watch him sit and think. His breed is Alley, his name is Pard. Life without him would be hard. . “Doggerel for a Cat” from Cat Dreams, © 2009 by Ursula K. Le Guin – Scholastic Inc ______________________________________ 1947 – Ai born as Florence Anthony in Albany, Texas but spent her impoverished early years in Tucson, Arizona; American poet and educator; her book Vice: New and Selected Poems, won the 1999 National Book Award for Poetry. She describes herself as ½ Japanese, ⅛ Choctaw-Chickasaw, ¼ Black, as well as Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche. She attended the University of Arizona and the M.F.A. program at UC Irvine. After being a visiting professor at several colleges, she taught at Oklahoma State University until her death at age 62 from breast cancer in March 2010. Her poetry collections include: Killing Floor, the 1978 Lamont Poetry Selection; Sin, winner of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; Vice, which won the 1999 National Book Award for Poetry; and No Surrender, published posthumously in September 2010. Woman to Man by Ai Lightning hits the roof, shoves the knife, darkness, deep in the walls. They bleed light all over us and your face, the fan, folds up, so I won’t see how afraid to be with me you are. We don’t mix, even in bed, where we keep ending up. There’s no need to hide it: you’re snow, I’m coal, I’ve got the scars to prove it. But open your mouth, I’ll give you a taste of black you won’t forget. For a while, I’ll let it make you strong, make your heart lion, then I’ll take it back. Woman to Man” from Cruelty, © 1973 by Ai – Houghton Mifflin Company _________________________________ October 22 _________________________________ 1929 – Stanley Cooperman born in New York City, who became a Canadian citizen in 1972; American-Canadian poet, literary critic, and academic. He earned a BA and an MA from New University, and a PhD from Indiana University. Cooperman taught at the University of Tehran through a Fulbright Award, and at several U.S. Universities. He committed suicide at age 46 in April 1976. His poetry collections include: The Owl Behind the Door; Cappelbaum’s Dance; Canadian Gothic and Other Poems; Greco’s Last Book: Selected Poems, published posthumously. Mitla Pass: The Sinai by Stanley Cooperman . I remember the landscape as a place where machines flake but never rot, and the occasional shin-bone, unfired shell shoe chamber-pot town newspaper (the print flowing in that liquid script no wind can cure) rest heavily on sand, set in some thick and perfect lens. . I remember the landscape as a place where all laughter is accidental, and a question could break your foot; I remember birds attacking each other on a wall, dust-devils near a few stray palms arranged like paraplegics against the sky .… . this is no country for boasting. “Mitla Pass: The Sinai” from The Jerusalem Poems, © 1975 by Stanley Cooperman, which appeared in the August 2014 issue of The Ontario Review ______________________________________ 1934 – Gerald Vizenor born in Minneapolis, MN, as an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation; prolific American novelist, nonfiction writer, essayist, poet, and scholar of the Native American Renaissance. His father was murdered when Gerald was less than two years old, and the case was never solved. Raised by his Swedish-American mother and his Anishinaabe grandmother and uncles, Vizenor served in the U.S. Army in Post-WWII Japan. There, he learned about haiku, and later wrote the “kabuki novel” Hiroshima Bugi. Funded by the G.I. Bill, he completed his undergraduate degree at New York University, then did postgraduate study at Harvard and the University of Minnesota. In the 1960s, he was director of the American Indian Employment and Guidance Center in Minneapolis, then became a staff reporter and contributor at the Minneapolis Tribune. He taught at Lake Forest College in Illinois, then the University of Minnesota before moving to California. He was Director of Native American Studies at UC Berkeley, and also taught at the University of New Mexico. Vizenor was honored in 2001 with the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award, and won the 2011 American Book Award for his novel Shrouds of White Earth. His poetry collections include Water Striders; Raising the Moon Vines; Empty Swings; and Almost Ashore. Three Haiku by Gerald Vizenor those stubborn flies square dance across the grapefruit honor your partner ___ From the wind Along with the scented cat Spring the anemones. ___ cocksure squirrels break the ice at the window raid the bird feeder – © by George Vizenor, featured at Terebess Asia Online (TAO) _________________________________ October 23 _________________________________ 1844 – Robert Seymour Bridges born in Walmer, Kent in the UK; British physician and poet who was England’s Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930. He wrote and published poetry while practicing medicine, before Lung disease forced him to retire in 1885. He then devoted himself to writing and literary research. In addition to poetry, he also wrote hymns, verse drama, and studies of Milton, Keats, and Gerald Manley Hopkins, as well as essays, and an anthology of French and English philosophers and poets. He died of cancer at age 85 in April 1930. The Evening Darkens Over by Robert Seymour Bridges . The evening darkens over After a day so bright, The windcapt waves discover That wild will be the night. There's sound of distant thunder. . The latest sea-birds hover Along the cliff's sheer height; As in the memory wander Last flutterings of delight, White wings lost on the white. . There's not a ship in sight; And as the sun goes under, Thick clouds conspire to cover The moon that should rise yonder. Thou art alone, fond lover. . “The Evening Darkens Over” from The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges – hansebooks 2017 edition _________________________________ October 24 _________________________________ 1923 – Denise Levertov born in Ilford in east London; British-American poet. She married an American in 1947, and moved to the U.S. in 1948. Known for her anti-Vietnam war poems in the 1960s and 1970s, which also included themes of destruction by greed, racism, and sexism. Her later poetry reflects her conversion to Catholicism. No matter the subject, she was always an acute observer, and wrote with a rare combination of economy and grace. Levertov was the author of 24 books of poetry, as well as non-fiction, and served as poetry editor of The Nation and Mother Jones. She was honored with the Robert Frost Medal in 1990, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1993. In 1997, Levertov died from complications of lymphoma at age 74. The Cat As Cat by Denise Levertov . The cat on my bosom sleeping and purring ―fur-petalled chrysanthemum, squirrel-killer― . is a metaphor only if I force him to be one, looking too long in his pale, fond, dilating, contracting eyes . that reject mirrors, refuse to observe what bides stockstill. Likewise . flex and reflex of claws gently pricking through sweater to skin gently sustains their own tune not mine. I-Thou, cat, I-Thou. . “The Cat As Cat” from The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, © 2013 by The Denise Levertov Literary Trust - New Directions first edition ______________________________________ 1930 – Elaine Feinstein born to Jewish parents in Bootle, Lancashire, in the UK, but grew up in Leicester, in the East Midlands. Feinstein is a novelist, poet, translator, short story writer, teleplay writer, and biographer. After WWII, she was horrified by the revelations of the Holocaust. “In that year I became Jewish for the first time.” She explored her Russian Jewish heritage, and Russian poetry. After attending Newnham College, Cambridge, she became a lecturer at the University of Essex. She went to Russia in the early 2000s to do research for her biography of poet Anna Akhmatova, Anna of all the Russias. Feinstein has written 15 novels, and an equal number of poetry collections, including At the Edge; City Music; Daylight; Talking to the Dead; and The Clinic. Urban Lyric by Elaine Feinstein . The gaunt lady of the service wash stands on the threshold and blinks in the sunlight. . Her face is yellow in its frizz of hair and yet she smiles as if she were fortunate. . She listens to the hum of cars passing as if she were on a country lane in summer, . or as if the tall trees edging this busy street scattered blessings on her. . Last month they cut a cancer out of her throat. This morning she tastes sunshine in the dusty air. . And she is made alert to the day’s beauty, as if her terror had wakened poetry. . “Urban Lyric” from Collected Poems and Translations, © 2002 by Elaine Feinstein – Carcanet Press _________________________________ October 25 _________________________________ 1973 – Suheir Hammad born in Amman, Jordan, to Palestinian refugees; her family came to the U.S. when she was five, and she grew up in Brooklyn. Hammad is an American poet, author, playwright, film narrator and performer, and political activist. Hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons signed her for HBO’s Def Poetry Jam because of her poem “First Writing Since” – her reaction to the September 11 attacks. She recited original works on the Def Poetry Jam tour (2002-2003). In 2007, she was cast in her first fiction role in cinema, the Palestinian film Salt of this Sea by Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir, which debuted as an official selection in the Un Certain Regard competition of the Cannes Film Festival. She has written a memoir, Drops of This Story, and several plays, including Blood Trinity and Libretto. Her poetry collections are Born Palestinian, Born Black/ The Gaza Suite and Zaatar Diva. Of Woman Torn by Suheir Hammad . palestine's daughter love making can be as dangerous as curfews broken guerillas hidden . you join now those who won't leave the earth haunt my sleep who watch my back whenever i lay the forced suicides the dowry deaths and . nora decapitated by her father on her forbidden honeymoon he paraded her head through cairo to prove his manhood this is 1997 . and i can only hope you had a special song a poem memorized a secret that made you smile . this is a love poem cause i love you now woman who lived tried to love in this world of machetes and sin . i smell your ashes of zaatar and almonds under my skin i carry your bones . “Of Woman Torn” © 2001 by Suheir Hammad, from The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, edited by Nathalie Handal – Interlink Books, 2001 edition _________________________________ October 26 _________________________________ 1955 – Michelle Boisseau born in Cincinnati, Ohio; American poet and academic. She taught in the MFA program at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and was a contributing editor of New Letters. She won the 1995 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize for Understory. Boisseau wrote Writing Poems, considered the gold standard in how-to-write-poetry textbooks, now in its 8th edition. Her five poetry collections are: No Private Life; Understory; Trembling Air; A Sunday in God-Years; and Among the Gorgons. She died of lung cancer at age 62 in November 2017. Time Done is Dark —Archibald MacLeish . by Michelle Boisseau . Childhood is a nicked black trunk you move when you move, from attics to basements, storage sheds, crawl space, walk-in closet. When they were in . their sixties and their mother in her eighties, they said to her, We are miserable, our childhoods were miserable. And their mother? . Oldest of seventeen, four years of school, Nothing Soup—raw milk, salt, pepper, flour—spring snow sparkling through the wallboards, her first child . at fifteen. Childhood is a nicked trunk you don’t have to look inside to remember. Blasted lining, the smell of nickels. Childhood, let . it be long ago, like glaciers. . “Time Done is Dark,” © 2005 by Michelle Boisseau, appeared in the November 2005 issue of Poetry magazine _______________________________________ G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies! _______________________________________ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/21/2275998/-Morning-Open-Thread-Time-Done-is-Dark-Scars-and-Tasting-Sunshine?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=community_groups_MOTley+Crew&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/