(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: The Eye Extending Its Shadow [1] ['Dan K', 'Chloris Creator', 'Greg Dworkin', 'Thom Hartmann', 'Kelli Anne Busey'] Date: 2026-07-20 “… the rainbow is elusive, and its colors but the illumination of tears …” – Alice Dunbar Nelson, African-American author, poet, activist, and teacher “The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.” – Allen Ginsberg, American author of Howl, the ground-breaking poetry book which changed the legal definition of “obscene” “Before a nation can be rebuilt, the citizens need to understand how it was destroyed in the first place; how its institutions were undermined, how the language was twisted, how its people were manipulated.” – Anne Applebaum, American journalist and historian, author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism __________________________ Welcome to Morning Open Thread, with daily posts from a MOTley crew of hosts who choose their own topics from a wide-open range: often music or poetry, sometimes history — anything and everything from Apples to Zoology! We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in our open forum. That’s a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. Meanwhile, grab your cuppa, and join in! ☕ _______________ 13 poets born in July — some whose words are here translated into English, but most who write in English as their native tongue, yet still twould confound Avon’s Bard _______________ July 19 _______________ 1875 – Alice Dunbar Nelson born as Alice Ruth Moore, in New Orleans, Louisiana; African-American author poet, columnist, short story writer, activist, diarist, and teacher. Her heritage was a complex mix: Creole, which in her city meant descendants of early French and Spanish inhabitants; African American, Native American, and Anglo. The lightness of her skin and hair influenced both black and white society. Her longing to be accepted as a member of the African American community was hindered by sometimes being seen as white, allowing her to “pass.” She was viewed with envy or suspicion by some African Americans, while still facing racial prejudice from white people. She published her first book, Violets and Other Tales, in 1895 when she was just 20 years old. The book was a mix of short stories and poetry. Dunbar Nelson wrote prose and poetry, kept a journal, wrote articles and columns for organizational publications and newspapers, and all the while she taught, mostly at the high school level. She married three times. Her first husband, poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, had written to her about her first book. They married in 1898. But Dunbar suffered from tuberculosis, and he began drinking heavily. She left him in 1902, after he savagely beat her, but didn’t file for divorce. Dunbar died in 1906. She married her 2nd husband, Dr. Henry Arthur Callis, in 1910, but they divorced after less than a year. In 1916, she married journalist and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson, and they were together until her death. Dunbar Nelson was active in social and cultural organizations since she was a teenager, but now she became more active in politics, and the civil rights and women’s suffrage movements. She worked as a field organizer for the Middle Atlantic states’ woman’s suffrage movement; in 1918, she served as the field representative for the WWI Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1924, Dunbar Nelson campaigned for passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (it was defeated by the white Southern bloc). But in her writing, she made her points by inference, through anecdotes and short stories, many based on the New Orleans of her childhood. In 1926 she wrote, “We are forced by cruel challenges to explain, show our wares, tell our story, excuse our shortcomings, defend our positions. And we insist that every Negro be a propagandist…. We forget that didacticism is the death of art.” Between 1928 and 1932, she toured as a public speaker for the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee. Dunbar Nelson and her husband moved to Philadelphia in 1932 when he joined the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission. She died from a heart ailment at age 60 in September 1935. If I Had Known by Alice Dunbar Nelson If I had known Two years ago how drear this life should be, And crowd upon itself all strangely sad, Mayhap another song would burst from out my lips, Overflowing with the happiness of future hopes; Mayhap another throb than that of joy. Have stirred my soul into its inmost depths, If I had known. If I had known, Two years ago the impotence of love, The vainness of a kiss, how barren a caress, Mayhap my soul to higher things have soarn, Nor clung to earthly loves and tender dreams, But ever up aloft into the blue empyrean, And there to master all the world of mind, If I had known. “If I had Known” from The Works of Alice Dunbar Nelson, Volumes 1 & 2, edited by Gloria T. Hull – Oxford University Press, 1988 edition _______________ 1893 ― Vladimir Mayakovsky, Russian Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor born in Baghdati, Georgia, at the edge of the Ajameti forest. By 1917, he was already a prominent member of the Russian Futurist movement, and a co-signer of its manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste. Mayakovsky produced a large body of work including 24 poetry books, five plays, appearances as an actor in films, editing the art journal LEF, and producing agitprop posters supporting the Communist Party during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922). He also wrote My Discovery of America, a combination of travelogue, sketches, and poems, and How to Make Verse, his views on individual artistic integrity and the demands of committed Marxist populism. In his last years, he completed The Bedbug and The Bathhouse, two plays satirizing bureaucratic stupidity and opportunism. He shot himself at age 37 on April 14, 1930, after a dispute with his current lover, actress Veronica Polonskaya, who was unwilling to leave her husband. He had often spoken to friends about his fear of growing old, and about committing suicide. Past One O’Clock … by Vladimir Mayakovsky Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. Why bother then To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts. Behold what quiet settles on the world. Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars. In hours like these, one rises to address The ages, history, and all creation. – translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey Found among Mayakovsky’s papers after his suicide. _______________ July 20 _______________ 1927 – Simin Behbahani born as Simin Khalili, daughter of a newspaper editor father and a mother who was a poet. Less than a month after they married, the political storm at the end of Ahmad Shah Qajar’s reign as Shah of Persia forced the new husband into exile, unaware that his wife was already pregnant. Simin was raised by her mother, who continued writing poetry, but was also a social activist, and founding member of the Iranian Committee of Nationalist Women. Simin started secretly writing poetry at age 14, but her mother found one of her poems, and sent it to a literary editor, who published it in his newspaper. In 1941, Simin joined the Tudeh Party’s Youth Organization, a Communist group, and when an anonymous report criticizing her school administration appeared in a newspaper, she was immediately suspected as the author, and was expelled. She married her first suitor, Hassan Behbahani, and from then on published her work as Simin Behbahani. The marriage was troubled from the beginning. Defying conventions, she continued her studies, went to law school, then became a teacher. Her poetry brought her increasing recognition in literary circles. She and her husband had two sons and a daughter during the 20 years they lived together, but they ultimately separated. In 1962, she started writing song lyrics for Iranian Radio to earn money, and joined the National Radio and Television Council. Behbahani married again in 1969, to Manouchehr Koushyar, who was a fellow student at law school. They were happily married until he died of a heart attack in 1984. Behbahani was a long-time member of The Iranian Writers’ Association, which fought against censorship, and she served for a time as the association’s president. She was awarded the Janus Pannonius Poetry Prize in 2013. Behbahani died at age 87 of Pulmonary heart disease in August 2014. My Country, I Will Build You Again by Simin Behbahani (To the lady of Persian storytelling, Simin Daneshvar) My country, I will build you again, if need be, with bricks made from my life. I will build columns to support your roof, if need be, with my bones. I will inhale again the perfume of flowers favored by your youth. I will wash again the blood off your body with torrents of my tears. Once more, the darkness will leave this house. I will paint my poems blue with the color of our sky. The resurrector of “old bones” will grant me in his bounty a mountain’s splendor in his testing grounds. Old I may be, but given the chance, I will learn. I will begin a second youth alongside my progeny. I will recite the Hadith of “love and country” with such fervor as to make each word bear life. There still burns a fire in my breast to keep undiminished the warmth of kinship I feel for my people. Once more you will grant me strength, though my poems have settled in blood. Once more I will build you with my life, though it be beyond my means. “My Country, I Will Build You Again” from A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems, by Simin Behbahani – translation © 1999 by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa – Syracuse University Press _______________ July 21 _______________ 1943 – Tess Gallagher born in Port Angeles, Washington, to a logging family; American poet, essayist, short story writer, and translator. She knew the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest and the Ozarks – home to her grandparents – very well from an early age. In 1977, she met Raymond Carver. He was a master of the short story, and inspired her to write three short story collections of her own. For 11 years they were friends, lovers, editors, and sounding boards. Carver became her third husband, and she his second wife, just six weeks before his death from lung cancer at age 50. Gallagher manages his literary estate. Her poetry collections include Under Stars, Amplitude, Moon Crossing Bridge (poems in remembrance of Raymond Carver), Midnight Lantern, and Is, Is Not Poems. The Vilela were hunter-gatherers of the Grand Chaco in South America. Their language is now extinct, only its Ocol dialect still struggles to survive. The last Vilela people were absorbed into the surrounding Toba tribe, who are fighting their own battle to maintain their cultural heritage. Redwing by Tess Gallagher The readers of poetry, the writers of poetry. Nation inside the nation. That rainbow holding briefly over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, its violet inner rim, its guess-work dome of crimson. My back to the sun for this to happen at all, the eye extending its shadow until it sees into what it doesn’t see. I don’t have to think of raindrops hanging as light, or to command the schoolbook corpses of refraction and internal reflection to be dazzled. The myth of the Vilela Indians, its rainbow a gigantic serpent charmed by a small girl until it sheds her sway and piecemeal ravages the world, vanquished at last by an army of birds—that’s good enough for me. And victory too, each bird dipping itself in the blood of the monster. “Redwing” © 1987 by Tess Gallagher originally appeared in the October/November 1987 issue of Poetry magazine _______________ 1945 – Wendy Cope born in the Erith area of southeast London; English poet for both adults and children, journalist, and editor. She read history at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, then worked for several years as a primary-school teacher. Her husband Lachlan Mackinnon is also a poet. Her poetry collections include Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, Anecdotal Evidence, Two Cures for Love, and Family Values. She has also edited several poetry anthologies. Differences of Opinion by Wendy Cope 1. HE TELLS HER He tells her that the earth is flat — He knows the facts, and that is that. In altercations fierce and long She tries her best to prove him wrong. But he has learned to argue well. He calls her arguments unsound And often asks her not to yell. She cannot win. He stands his ground. The planet goes on being round. 2. YOUR MOTHER KNOWS Your mother knows the earth’s a plane And, challenged, sheds a martyr’s tear. God give her strength to bear this pain – A child who says the world’s a sphere! Challenged, she sheds a martyr’s tear. It’s bad to make your mother cry By telling her the world’s a sphere. It’s very bad to tell a lie. It’s bad to make your mother cry. It’s bad to think your mother odd. It’s very bad to tell a lie. All this has been ordained by God. The world is round. That must be true. She’s praying, hoping you will change. Already people find you strange. You know your anger is a sin. You’re difficult. You don’t fit in. God give her strength to bear this pain. You know your anger is a sin. Your mother knows the earth’s a plane. “Differences of Opinion” © 2006 by Wendy Cope was published in Poetry magazine’s February 2006 issue _______________ July 22 _______________ 1849 – Emma Lazarus, American poet, born in New York City, into a large and wealthy Sephardic Jewish family. Her mother was related to Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo. Lazarus, privately educated by tutors, studied American and British literature, and German, French, and Italian. In the 1880s, Lazarus was an advocate for Jewish refugees fleeing from Russian pogroms. Appalled by the refugees’ miserable living conditions, she volunteered at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute (1884-1939), a vocational high school. She wrote “The New Colossus” in 1883 for a fundraiser for the pedestal to support France’s gift of a statue for New York Harbor. She died in 1887, the year after “Liberty Enlightening the World” (the statue’s original title) was dedicated. Though her poem had been published in the New York Times, it was forgotten until 1901, when her friend Georgina Schuyler began a campaign for the poem to be memorialized. In 1903, the words were placed on the inner wall of the statue’s base, and changed forever the perception of the Lady with the Lamp. The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” _______________ 1898 ― Stephen Vincent Benét born in Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania; American poet, short story writer, and novelist. His father was a colonel in the U.S Army, continuing a family tradition of military service. Stephen was sent at age 10 to Hitchcock Military Academy. He then graduated at the top of his class from Summerville Academy in Augusta, Georgia. He went to Yale, where he was involved with publication of the Yale Literary Magazine and contributed light verses to The Yale Record. His first book was published when he was aged 17 and he was awarded an M.A. in English upon submission of his third volume of poetry in lieu of a thesis. In 1920, Benét went to France on a Yale traveling scholarship, where he met writer and poet Rosemary Carr. They married in November 1921. In 1926, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship award and wrote John Brown’s Body while in living in Paris. Among his many other works are Heaven and Earth, Ballads and Poems, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Cheers for Miss Bishop, and They Burned the Books. He died at age 44 of a heart attack in March 1943. Talk by Stephen Vincent Benét Tobacco smoke drifts up to the dim ceiling From half a dozen pipes and cigarettes, Curling in endless shapes, in blue rings wheeling, As formless as our talk. Phil, drawling, bets Cornell will win the relay in a walk, While Bob and Mac discuss the Giants’ chances; Deep in a morris-chair, Bill scowls at “Falk”, John gives large views about the last few dances. And so it goes — an idle speech and aimless, A few chance phrases; yet I see behind The empty words the gleam of a beauty tameless, Friendship and peace and fire to strike men blind, Till the whole world seems small and bright to hold — Of all our youth this hour is pure gold. “Talk” from Selected Works of Stephen Vincent Benét, Volume One, © 1942 by Stephen Vincent Benét – Farrar & Rinehart _______________ 1939 ― Quincy Troupe, African-American poet, editor, journalist, UC San Diego professor emeritus, and children’s book author, born in St. Louis Missouri. The son of professional baseball player Quincy Thomas Trouppe. Known for his memoir Miles and Me; The Pursuit of Happyness, co-authored with Chris Gardner; The Architecture of Language, winner of the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement; and Transcircularities, which won the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. He was appointed in 2002 as California’s first poet laureate. His poetry collections include Avalanche, Skulls Along the River, and Snake-Back Solos. The Hours Fly Quick by Quincy Troupe the hours fly quick on wings of clipped winds like nonsense blown from mouths of hot air— people—including my own—form syllables, suds, words shot through pursed lips like greased sleaze & bloom inside all these rooms dominated by television’s babble sluicing idiot images invented in modern test tubes— clones—blinking, slathering all over controlled airwaves of an up-for-sale world, blinking a paucity of spirit, so dance you leering ventriloquists, marionettes, you greedy counterfeits, dance, dance, dance “The Hours Fly Quick” from The Architecture of Language, © 2006 by Quincy Troupe – Coffee House Press _______________ July 23 _______________ 1959 – Carl Phillips born in Everett, Washington, into a frequently moving military family; African-American poet and teacher. He earned a BA from Harvard, an MAT from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and an MA in creative writing from Boston University. He then taught high school Latin for 8 years before becoming a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. His first collection, In the Blood, won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. Among his many other awards and honors is the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Then the War: And Selected Poems (2007-2020). His poetry collections include: Rock Harbor; The Rest of Love; Speak Low; Reconnaissance; and Pale Colors in a Tall Field. That Part in the Music by Carl Phillips Once loyal to a cruel master, the dog moves like a man who not so long ago weighed a lot less and is still figuring the difference, what if anything to make of it. It doesn’t matter, whatever tenderness she’s known since; the dog, I mean. They’re called hesitation wounds, the marks left where the hand, having meant to do harm, started to, then reconsidered. As if a hand could reconsider. The dog wants to trust, you can see it in her eyes, like that part in the music where it still sounds like snow used to. There were orchards, still; meadows. She’ll never be free. “That Part in the Music” © 2024 by Carl Phillips – originally published in ‘Poem-a-Day’ on September 10, 2024 _______________ July 24 _______________ 1895 – Robert Graves born in Wimbledon, Surrey, England: British historical novelist, poet, critic, and classicist; best known for his novel, I, Claudius , which was adapted with its sequel, Claudius the God, by the BBC into the award-winning television series, I, Claudius. Graves is also notable for his translations of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek, and as a prolific poet who published nearly three dozen collections of poetry during his lifetime. He died at age 90 in December 1985. A Slice Of Wedding Cake by Robert Graves Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls Married impossible men? Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out, And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten. Repeat ‘impossible men’: not merely rustic, Foul-tempered or depraved (Dramatic foils chosen to show the world How well women behave, and always have behaved). Impossible men: idle, illiterate, Self-pitying, dirty, sly, For whose appearance even in City parks Excuses must be made to casual passers-by. Has God’s supply of tolerable husbands Fallen, in fact, so low? Or do I always over-value woman At the expense of man? Do I? It might be so. “A slice of Wedding Cake” from Robert Graves, The Complete Poems, © 2003 by Trustees of the Robert Graves Trust – Penguin Books _______________ 1947 – Minou Drouet born in La Guerche-de-Bretagne, Brittany, France, as Marie-Noëlle Drouet; she had been almost blind at birth, and had to have a series of operations to recover her sight. By age eight, she could play Mozart on the piano. In 1955, some of her poems were privately circulated among French writers and publishers, causing controversy over whether they were written by the 8-year old Minou or by her foster mother. A test was set up. Minou was given the subject ‘Paris Sky’ and left alone in a room with only a pen and paper. Just 25 minutes later, she had completed her poem. Her first book of poems sold 40,000 copies, and she was lionized by Maurice Chevalier, Vittorio de Sica, Pablo Casals, and Jean Cocteau. By the time she was in her early 20s, she was married and leading a bohemian life on the Left Bank. But when her grandmother fell ill, she took care of her until her death. She decided to become a nurse, and cared for the elderly, terminally ill children, and pregnant women. By her early 30s, she was divorced and caring for her foster mother, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, back in her small hometown in Brittany. She remarried, but has remained reclusive. Paris Sky by Minou Drouet Paris sky, secret weight flesh which in hiccups spits into our faces. Through open jaws, the rows of houses a stream of blood between its luminous teeth. Paris sky, a cocktail of night and of fear that one savours with licks of the tongue with little catches of the heart/ from the tip of a neon straw…. translator uncredited – this English-language version of “Paris Sky” appeared in LIFE magazine in 1956 _______________ July 25 _______________ 1893 – Lexie Dean Robertson born in Lindale, Texas, but grew up in Canton Texas. American teacher, Poet Laureate of Texas (1939-1931). She married a fellow student at North Texas State Normal College (today the University of North Texas), J. F. Robertson, in 1911. The couple settled in the small town of Rising Star in 1920. Robertson was the first native-born Texan to hold the position of Poet Laureate of Texas; her works was featured in magazines like Southwest Review, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies’ Home Journal. Robertson was a charter member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and also a member of both the Poetry Society of America and the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. Robertson was a Methodist and a democrat. She died at age 60 in February 1964. Her poetry collections include: Red Heels; I Keep a Rainbow; Acorn on the Roof; and Answer in the Night. Gossip by Lexie Dean Robertson Before I knew how cruel Just common talk can be, I thought that words were singing things With colors like the sea. But since I’ve felt their caustic lash And know how they can sting, I hold my breath when words go by For fear they will not sing. “Gossip” by Lexie Dean Robertson, appeared at Poetry Explorer – www.poetryexplorer.net _______________ 1951 – Angela Jackson born in Greenville, Mississippi, but grew up in a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago; American poet, playwright, novelist, and academic. Raised as a Catholic, she went to St Anne’s elementary school, where she skipped 4th and 5th grade, then graduated third in her class at Loretto Academy, a Catholic girls high school, before going to Northwestern University on a pre-med studies scholarship. She joined the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), and became an editor of Nommo, OBAC’s literary journal, after deciding to switch from medicine to writing as a career. Her debut poetry collection, Voodoo Love Magic, was published in 1974. She served as a coordinator for OBAC (1976-1990). In 1977, Jackson graduated with a B.A. in English and American Literature from Northwestern, then earned an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean studies at the University of Chicago in 1995. Much of her poetry focuses on social injustice. Among her many awards, she won a 1993 Carl Sandburg Award and a 2022 Ruth Lily Poetry Prize for her body of work from The Poetry Foundation. In 2020, she was named as poet laureate of the state of Illinois. Her poetry collections include: Dark Legs and Silk Kisses: The Beatitudes of the Spinners; It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time; and More Than Meat and Raiment. The Love of Travelers by Angela Jackson At the rest stop on the way to Mississippi We found the butterfly mired in the oil slick; its wings thick and blunted. One of us, tender in the fingertips, smoothed with a tissue the oil that came off only a little; the oil-smeared wings like lips colored with lipstick blotted before a kiss. So delicate the cleansing of the wings I thought the color soft as watercolors would wash off under the method of her mercy for something so slight and graceful, injured, beyond the love of travelers. It was torn then, even after her kindest work, the almost-moth, exquisite charity could not mend what weighted the wing, melded with it, then ruptured it in release. The body of the thing lifted out of its place between the washed wings. Imagine the agony of a self separated by gentlest repair. “Should we kill it?” one of us said. And I said yes. But none of us had the nerve. We walked away, the last of the oil welding the butterfly to the wood of the picnic table. The wings stuck out and quivered when wind went by. Whoever found it must have marveled at this. And loved it for what it was and had been. I think, meticulous mercy is the work of travelers, and leaving things as they are punishment or reward. I have died for the smallest things. Nothing washes off. “The Love of Travelers” from All These Roads Be Luminous: Poems Selected and New, © 1998 by Angela Jackson – TriQuarterly Books 📚☕ _______________ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/20/800071856/community/morning-open-thread-the-eye-extending-its-shadow-until-it-sees-into-what-it-doesnt-see/ 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/