(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: Whatever Happens Is the Other Half of a Conversation [1] ['View Profile', 'Greg Dworkin'] Date: 2026-04-13 ________________________________________________________ “The people are what matter to the government, and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.” – Frances Perkins, appointed by FDR as the first woman Secretary of Labor – she was the driving force behind the New Deal ________________________________________________________ “We have to imagine change before we can begin to move toward it.” – Gloria Steinem, American feminist leader, co-founder of Ms. Magazine ________________________________________________________ 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. If interested, please contact Ozarkblue for more information ________________________________________________________ So grab your cuppa, and join in. _________________________________________________________ 13 poets born this April week — some battled just to live, some fought for their art – some lost, some triumphed ________________________________________ April 12th ________________________________ 1941 – Toi Derricotte born as Toinette Webster in Hamtramck, Michigan, near Detroit; American poet and literary memoirist, who taught at the University of Pittsburgh. Her first poetry collection, The Empress of the Death House, was published in 1978, and five more collections have been published, including: Natural Birth; Captivity; The Undertaker’s Daughter, winner of the Pen/Voelker Award ; and “I”: New and Selected Poems. In 2020, she was awarded the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. Her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks, An Interior Journey, records her family’s experiences as one of the first Black families to move into Upper Montclair, New Jersey. In 1996, Derricotte was a co-founder of the Cave Canem Foundation, which supports the professional growth of African-American poets. Blackbottom by Toi Derricotte . When relatives came from out of town, we would drive down to Blackbottom, drive slowly down the congested main streets — Beubian and Hastings — trapped in the mesh of Saturday night. Freshly escaped, black middle class, we snickered, and were proud; the louder the streets, the prouder. We laughed at the bright clothes of a prostitute, a man sitting on a curb with a bottle in his hand. We smelled barbecue cooking in dented washtubs, and our mouths watered. As much as we wanted it we couldn’t take the chance. . Rhythm and blues came from the windows, the throaty voice of a woman lost in the bass, in the drums, in the dirty down and out, the grind. “I love to see a funeral, then I know it ain’t mine.” We rolled our windows down so that the waves rolled over us like blood. We hoped to pass invisibly, knowing on Monday we would return safely to our jobs, the post office and classroom. We wanted our sufferings to be offered up as tender meat, and our triumphs to be belted out in raucous song. We had lost our voice in the suburbs, in Conant Gardens, where each brick house delineated a fence of silence; we had lost the right to sing in the street and damn creation. . We returned to wash our hands of them, to smell them whose very existence tore us down to the human. . “Blackbottom” from Captivity, © 1990 by Toi Derricotte – Pittsburgh Press ________________________________________ April 13th ________________________________ 1939 – Seamus Heaney born in Northern Ireland, but lived much of his life in Dublin; prolific and influential major Irish poet, playwright, and translator, notably of Beowolf. Heany won the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature. He published over 20 poetry collections which include Wintering Out, Seeing Things, Human Chain, and Opened Ground. He died at age 74 in August 2013. Anything Can Happen by Seamus Heaney . Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now He galloped his thunder cart and his horses . Across a clear blue sky. It shook the earth And the clogged underearth, the River Styx, The winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself. Anything can happen, the tallest towers . Be overturned, those in high places daunted, Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one, Setting it down bleeding on the next. . Ground gives. The heaven’s weight Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle-lid. Capstones shift, nothing resettles right. Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away. . “Anything Can Happen” from District and Circle, © 2006 by Seamus Heaney – Farrar, Straus and Giroux ________________________________ 1947 – Rae Armantrout born in Vallejo, California; prolific American poet, writer and academic; winner of the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection Versed. Armantrout attended San Diego State University, and UC Berkeley, where she studied with Denise Levertov, and earned a master’s in creative writing. She is a founding member of the West Coast Language Poets, and author of over ten poetry collections, which include Conjure, Finalists, Itself, and Entanglements. Currently, she lives in Seattle. Djinn by Rae Armantrout . Haunted, they say, believing the soft, shifty dunes are made up of false promises. . Many believe whatever happens is the other half of a conversation. . Many whisper white lies to the dead. . “The boys are doing really well.” . Some think nothing is so until it has been witnessed. . They believe the bits are iffy; . the forces that bind them, absolute. . “Djinn” from Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2015, © 2016 by Rae Armantrout – Wesleyan University Press ________________________________________ April 14th ________________________________ 1905 – Inger Hagerup born as Inger Johanne Halsør in Bergen, Norway; Norwegian writer, playwright, and considered one of the greatest Norwegian poets of the 20th century. Her father died when she was five, and the family moved around until they settled in Volda on Norway’s western coast. In 1931, she married Anders Askevold Hagerup, a teacher and children’s book author. She published her first poetry collection in 1939. Both she and her husband participated in resistance activities during the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany and in 1943 they fled to Sweden. Among the many anti-Nazi poems she wrote, her best-known is “Aust Vågøy” about Nazi retaliation against locals after a successful 1941 British raid in the Lofoten Islands. Some of her lyric poetry has been set to music. Among her many honors, the Swedish Academy awarded her the Dobloug Prize in 1962. Inger Hagerup died at age 79 in February 1985. I am the poem by Inger Hagerup . I am the poem never born I am the letter someone’s torn . a path that no one walks along a melody without a song. . I am a prayer that’s heard by none I am a childless woman’s son . a string no hand has drawn up tight, a fire that will not ignite . Wake me! Release me! Let me flee from soul and body, rock and tree! . But nothing answers when i plead. I am those things that don’t succeed. . (translator not credited) “I am the poem” from Samlede dikt (Collected Poems), © 1976 by Inger Hagerup – Aschehoug publishing ________________________________ 1982 – Rachel Swirsky born in San Jose, California into a Jewish family; prolific American speculative fiction and fantasy writer, poet, essayist, editor, and reviewer. She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. In 2008, she was the founding editor of the fantasy fiction podcast PodCastle. Her fiction works have been honored with two Nebula Awards and nominated several times for Hugo Awards. Swirsky’s poetry has appeared in the Canadian quarterly Ideomancer, the speculative fiction magazine Electric Velocipede, and the fantastical poetry quarterly Goblin Fruit. Ger collection Through the Drowsy Dark: Short Fiction and Poetry was published in 2010. Swirsky lives in Portland, Oregon. Luna by Rachel Swirsky . Alone with no one to call no man, no lady, no rabbit only footprints of men who won’t return. . “Luna” © 2022 by Rachel Swirsky ________________________________________ April 15th ________________________________ 1931 – Tomas Tranströmer born in Stockholm, Sweden; acclaimed and influential Swedish poet, psychologist, novelist, and translator. He was honored with the 1990 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. He suffered a stroke in 1990 that left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak, but he continued to write and publish poetry. One of his last volumes of original poems, Den stora gåtan, was published in 2004, translated into English in 2006 as The Great Enigma. Among his 13 collections of poetry are The Half-Finished Heaven, Seeing in the Dark, The Truthbarrier, and The Sorrow Gondola. Tranströmer died at age 83 in March 2015. Open and Closed Spaces by Tomas Tranströmer . A man feels the world with his work like a glove. He rests for a while at midday having laid aside the gloves on the shelf. There they suddenly grow, spread and black-out the whole house from inside. . The blacked-out house is away out among the winds of spring. ‘Amnesty,’ runs the whisper in the grass: ‘amnesty.’ A boy sprints with an invisible line slanting up in the sky where his wild dream of the future flies like a kite bigger than the suburb. . Further north you can see from a summit the blue endless carpet of pine forest where the cloud shadows are standing still. No, are flying. . “Open and Closed Spaces’ from New Collected Poems, © 1997 by Tomas Tranströmer, translations © by Robin Fulton – Bloodaxe Books ________________________________ 1958 – Anne Michaels born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Canadian poet and novelist. She attended the University of Toronto, where she is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of English. Her first poetry collection, The Weight of Oranges, won the 1986 Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. Her other poetry collections include: Miner’s Pond; Railtracks; Correspondences; and All We Saw. Michaels’ 1996 novel Fugitive Pieces won 12 awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Flowers by Anne Michaels . There’s another skin inside my skin that gathers to your touch, a lake to the light; that looses its memory, its lost language into your tongue, erasing me into newness. . Just when the body thinks it knows the ways of knowing itself, this second skin continues to answer. . In the street – café chairs abandoned on terraces; market stalls emptied of their solid light, though pavement still breathes summer grapes and peaches. Like the light of anything that grows from this newly-turned earth, every tip of me gathers under your touch, wind wrapping my dress around our legs, your shirt twisting to flowers in my fists. . “Flowers” from The Weight of Oranges / Miner’s Pond, © 1997 by Anne Michaels – McClelland & Stewart ________________________________________ April 16th ________________________________ 1935 – Sarah Kirsch born as Ingrid Kirsch in Prussian Saxony, but changed her name to Sarah in protest of her father’s anti-Semitism. She became a prominent German post-WWII poet and author. After she protested East Germany’s expulsion of poet and dissident Wolf Biermann in 1976, she was excluded from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. In 1977 she moved to West Germany, but remained critical of both East and West Germany. She died at age 78 in 2013. Cat lives by Sarah Kirsch . Poets love cats of course The gentle free who cannot be controlled Who sleep and dream November rain away On silk chairs or in rags speak back Without saying a word shake themselves And get on with their lives Behind the hunter’s fence While his possessed neighbours Are still noting down licence plates The one being observed in his four walls Has long left the borders behind . “Cat lives” from Ice Roses: Selected Poems, © 2013 by Sarah Kirsch, translated by Anne Stokes – Carcanet Press ________________________________ 1972 – Tracy K. Smith born in Falmouth, Massachusetts but raised in Northern California; African American poet and member of the Harvard English and African American studies faculties since 2021. She was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019. Smith won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book, Life on Mars. Her other books of poetry include The Body’s Question, Duende, and Wade in the Water. Her 2015 memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction, and was named as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Tracy K. Smith . The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough. . Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise, . Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored . Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen: . The dark we’ve only ever imagined now audible, thrumming, Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns. . Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears Disappears as if returning somewhere. . “The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” from Life on Mars, © 2011 by Tracy K. Smith – Graywolf Press ________________________________________ April 17th ________________________________ 1941 – Louis Daniel Brodsky born in St. Louis, Missouri. incredibly prolific American poet. and writer. After earning a B.A., magna cum laude, at Yale University in 1963, he added an M.A. in English from Washington University in 1967 and an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University 1968. He worked in management at a men’s clothing manufacturer (1968-1987) in Missouri, and taught English and creative writing part-time (1980-1991) at Mineral Area College in Flat river, Missouri while writing poetry and short fiction. He tried to write at least one poem every day. In all, he published 86 volumes of poetry, and 27 volumes of prose. Brodsky died of cancer at age 73 in June 2014. Friends by Louis Daniel Brodsky . This fourth day of April, so joyously warming, As glory-born as ever the botanical garden has seemed to me, Was a pristine flowering of preening fruit trees — . Redbuds, pears, crab-apples, quinces, cherries — Dappling my eyes, with dazzling pastel pinks and whites, Efflorescing, this one brief season, each year, . Before disappearing into the humdrum viridescence of summer… Tiny, delicate petals drifting through the air, on gentle breezes, Like confetti, snowflakes, angels in Renaissance paintings. Tonight, while I sit by myself, in a quiet restaurant, Contemplating my time in that sublime time-out-of-time estate Akin to Eden’s not-yet-inhabited garden, . My mind, heart, imagination — all my soul’s senses — Yet apprehend the lingering essence of spring’s benison, The legacy of unadulterated beauty its left, in my keeping. . And as this day slips swiftly away, I weep silently, privately, Realizing it will never, in quite this way, come again, To make, of me and my solitude, friends. . “Friends” from By Leaps and Bounds, © 2009 by Louis Daniel Brodsky – Time Being Books ________________________________________ April 18th ________________________________ 1915 – Joy Davidman born in New York City, American poet, author, and novelist; her first book of poetry, Letter to a Comrade, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1938 and the Russell Loines Award for Poetry in 1939. Her best-known work is Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments. Her second marriage, to author C.S. Lewis, inspired the play and film Shadowlands. She was diagnosed with incurable cancer in 1957, and died at age 45 in 1960 in Oxford, England. In a Moment of Ecstasy by Joy Davidman . When I am old beside a sheltered fire, When dim blue shadow fills my passive years, I would not look upon the sun-desire Of my keen sunlit youth with helpless tears. . Let me forget the passions of my blood. If this red passion ends despondent gray! Do rivers’ muddy trickles remember flood, Proud in hill-cleaving strength, a gayer day? . To feel the slow slide from precarious stars Down to the placid, safe, ignoble ground Were harder than, with no brain-searing scars Of scarlet memory, to call age crowned . With wisdom through mere drowsing of the soul, Forgetting life’s young magic, that life stole. . (Winter -1929-1930) “In a Moment of Ecstasy” from Naked Tree: Love Sonnets to C.S. Lewis and Other Poems, by Joy Davidson, © 2015 by Don W. King, editor – William B. Eerdmans Publishing ________________________________ 1925 – Bob Kaufman born as Robert Garnell Kaufman in New Orleans, Louisiana; American Beat poet, jazz performance artist, and satirist. His father’s family were German Jews, and his mother was from a Black Catholic New Orleans family. Kaufman joined the U.S. Merchant Marine at age 18, then in the early 1940s, he briefly studied literature at New York City’s New School for Social Research. He moved to San Francisco’s North Beach in 1958 and remained there for most of the rest of his life. In 1959, along with poet Allen Ginsberg and others, he was a co-founder and one of the editors of Beatitude poetry magazine. He was primarily a spoken word poet, and many of his poems would have been lost if his second wife Eileen Singe had not gathered up the scraps of paper he often used, and wrote his words down as he worked out a poem aloud. Believe, Believe by Bob Kaufman . Believe in this. Young apple seeds, In blue skies, radiating young breast, Not in blue-suited insects, Infesting society’s garments. . Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz, Tearing the night into intricate shreds, Putting it back together again, In cool logical patterns, Not in the sick controllers, Who created only the Bomb. . Let the voices of dead poets Ring louder in your ears Than the screechings mouthed In mildewed editorials. Listen to the music of centuries, Rising above the mushroom time. . “Believe, Believe” from Cranial Guitar, © 1996 by Eileen Kaufman – Coffee House Press ________________________________ 1931 – Etheridge Knight born in Corinth, Mississippi; African American poet. He was one of eight children in a poor family, and though a bright student, he dropped out of school at age 16, to work as a shoe shiner before joining the army in 1947. He served in Korea as a medical technician until 1950, when he was seriously wounded. He became addicted to morphine. Coming back to the U.S., he became a drug dealer and thief to support his habit. In 1960, he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to prison. There, he began writing poetry, and some of it was published in the Negro Digest, attracting the attention of established Black poets like Gwendolyn Brooks and Haki Madhubuti. Dudley Randall, poet and owner of Broadside Press, published Knight’s first verse collection, Poems from Prison, in 1968, coinciding with his release from prison. His second book, Black Voices from Prison was published in 1970. He earned bachelor’s degrees in American poetry and in criminal justice from Martin Center University in Indianapolis in 1990, and taught creative writing until he became too ill to continue. He died of lung cancer in 1991 just weeks before his 60th birthday. As You Leave Me by Etheridge Knight . Shiny record albums scattered over the living room floor, reflecting light from the lamp, sharp reflections that hurt my eyes as I watch you, squatting among the platters, the beer foam making mustaches on your lips. . And, too, the shadows on your cheeks from your long lashes fascinate me—almost as much as the dimples in your cheeks, your arms and your legs. . You hum along with Mathis—how you love Mathis! with his burnished hair and quicksilver voice that dances among the stars and whirls through canyons like windblown snow, sometimes I think that Mathis could take you from me if you could be complete without me. I glance at my watch. It is now time. . You rise, silently, and to the bedroom and the paint; on the lips red, on the eyes black, and I lean in the doorway and smoke, and see you grow old before my eyes, and smoke, why do you chatter while you dress? and smile when you grab your large leather purse? don’t you know that when you leave me I walk to the window and watch you? and light a reefer as I watch you? and I die as I watch you disappear in the dark streets to whistle and smile at the johns . “As You Leave Me” from The Essential Etheridge Knight, © 1986 by Etheridge Knight – University of Pittsburgh Press __________________________________________________________ G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies! __________________________________________________________ Om symbol Whatever happens next, THANK YOU my fellow MOTlies for all these years of your friendship and community [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/13/2377408/community/morning-open-thread-whatever-happens-is-the-other-half-of-a-conversation/ 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/