(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: It’s Not the Weight You Carry But How You Carry It [1] ['Greg Dworkin', 'Angela Marx'] Date: 2026-09-07 “The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.” – Dame Edith Sitwell, English poet, best known for Façade “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” – John Maynard Keynes, author of The Economic Consequences of the Peace “All poets, all writers are political. They either maintain the status quo, or they say, ‘Something’s wrong, let’s change it for the better.” – Sonia Sanchez, American Black Arts Movement poet, short story writer, and essayist ________________________ 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. We’re always looking for new contributors, so contact officebss or RandomNeuron if you’d like to give it a try. Meanwhile, grab your cuppa, and join in! ☕ ________________________ 13 poets born in September – activist, immigrant, autistic, poor, or privileged, all struggle in an unjust and fast-changing world, leaving paths of words for us to follow into the maze __________________ September 6 __________________ 1953 – Belinda Subraman born in Wilkesboro, NC; American poet, writer, publisher, political activist, and registered nurse. She worked as a hospice nurse (2001-2007) in El Paso, Texas. While living in Germany in the 1980s, she started Gypsy Literary Magazine and the Sanctuary Tapes series of the writings and vocal performances of an international array of poets. She traveled extensively, and was part of an East Indian family for 22 years. She was on the Texas Green Party State Executive Committee from 2001-2003 and served as the El Paso County Green Party Co-chair (2000-2004). Currently she is politically independent and only works with peace groups. Her solo poetry collections include Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights and Left Hand Dharma. She also published The Innocents, in collaboration with Lyn Lifshin and David Transue. Wayward Wind by Belinda Subraman My patient, Paul, wrote in a poem that he belongs to the wayward wind, a restless breed, a strange and hardy class. I’ve been with him for two years and now he is dying. “Are you in pain, Paul?” I ask. “I AM pain,” he said. But he is refusing medication although his cancer has spread from his kidneys to his lungs, brain and bones. Somehow bearing this pain to the grave is his last act of defiance/bravery/repentance. My hands are tied. My job now is to protect his choice and later as promised to collect his ashes, read his poems in my garden then set him free in the wind where he belongs. “Wayward Wind” from Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights, © 2012 by Belinda Subraman – Unlikely Books _____________________ 197? – Christine Rhein born in Detroit, Michigan, daughter of German immigrants; American poet, writer, teacher, and speaker, but formerly a mechanical engineer in the automotive industry. Her father was one of the German children who escaped to America during World War II, and he taught her to speak fluent German. Her poems have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review. Her collection, Wild Flight, published in 2009, won the Walt McDonald First Book Prize in Poetry. Asked what she believed in, Rhein replied, “the pulse/ of algebra, all those x’s busy intersecting / all those y’s, points aligned” then added, “the tangle of science and poetry.” In Detroit, What Counts as Grace by Christine Rhein Trees growing from the roofs of empty factories and houses, birds nesting deep inside. Children at their desks without breakfast, busy adding and subtracting, the lunch bell not ringing until 12:45. The teacher, mid-morning, with snack mix from home, pouring a little extra into the shyest cupped hands. The men who stand and fish, casting lines into the river, office towers soaring at their backs. New farmers, in their agri-hoods, watering and weeding, growing peas, beans, Motor City Kale, making Wild Detroit Honey. The cooks who serve up Coney Dogs, burritos, shawarma—even at 3 a.m.— singing out the orders. And the woman at Cass and Forest dancing by her boom box every afternoon, her feet sliding on the sidewalk, trailing through the snow. “In Detroit, What Counts as Grace” © 2017 by Christine Rhein, appeared in #57 – Fall 2017 ‘Tribute to Rust Belt Poets’ __________________ September 7 __________________ 1883 – Elinor Wylie born in Somerville, New Jersey; American novelist and poet; her first poem to appear in print was “Velvet Shoes,” in Poetry magazine in 1920, followed in 1921 by publication of her collection Nets to Catch the Wind, and Black Armor in 1923, the same year her first novel Jennifer Lorn appeared. She was poetry editor of Vanity Fair magazine (1923-1925), and a contributing editor at The New Republic (1926-1928). Other works include her novel The Orphan Angel, and Angels and Earthly Creatures, a book of verse. Wylie suffered from high blood pressure in adulthood, and severe migraines. She died of a stroke in 1928 at age 43. Pretty Words by Elinor Wylie Poets make pets of pretty, docile words: I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish Which circle slowly with a silken swish, And tender ones, like downy-feathered birds: Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds, Come to my hand, and playful if I wish, Or purring softly at a silver dish, Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds. I love bright words, words up and singing early; Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing; Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees; I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly, Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees, Gilded and sticky, with a little sting. “Pretty Words” from Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie, by © the Elinor Wylie Estate – published posthumously in 1932 by Knopf _____________________ 1887 – Dame Edith Sitwell born in Scarborough on England’s North Sea Coast, into a wealthy, upper-crust family; English poet, critic, and editor. Her health problems included a spinal deformity, and she was put into an iron frame. Her parents, particularly her mother, a noted beauty of the day, abandoned her almost entirely. Sitwell became an eccentric, often cruelly mocked for her tall thin appearance, a large and distinctive nose, and her outrageous, flamboyant style of dress. She is best remembered for Façade, an “entertainment” – a recitation of poems with an instrumental accompaniment composed by William Walton, first performed in 1923. She championed Wilfred Owen, whose poetry she edited, and helped to publish after his death. In the 1950s, Marfan syndrome, which inhibits the body’s ability to produce the protein that makes up connective tissue, led to her becoming wheelchair bound. In 1962, she published her final poetry book, The Outcasts, and gave her last poetry reading. She died of cerebral haemorrhage in December 1964, at age 77. She was cruelly labeled by critic Julian Symons, while she lay dying, as “wearing other people’s bleeding hearts on her own safe sleeve.” That her personal suffering was cloaked and masked, all while she wore her off-putting nose like a badge of honor, seems never to have occurred to him. Heart and Mind by Edith Sitwell Said the Lion to the Lioness – ‘When you are amber dust, – No more a raging fire like the heat of the Sun (No liking but all lust)- Remember still the flowering of the amber blood and bone, The rippling of bright muscles like a sea, Remember the rose-prickles of bright paws Though the fire of that sun the heart and the moon-cold bone are one.’ Said the Skeleton lying upon the sands of Time- ‘The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun Is greater than all gold, more powerful Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes Like all that grows or leaps…so is the heart More powerful than all dust. Once I was Hercules Or Samson, strong as the pillars of the seas: But the flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind Is but a foolish wind.’ Said the Sun to the Moon– ‘When you are but a lonely white crone, And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood, Remember only this of our hopeless love That never till Time is done Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.’ “Heart and Mind” from Collected Poems, © 1954 by Edith Sitwell – Vanguard Press __________________ September 8 __________________ 1940 – Jack Prelutsky born in Brooklyn, New York; prolific American poet and singer-songwriter, most often writing for children; he has published over 50 poetry collections. Before becoming a writer, he sang in coffee houses, and worked odd jobs including driving a cab, moving furniture, busboy, potter, woodworker, and door-to-door salesman. He was appointed as the first U.S. Children’s Laureate by the Poetry Foundation (2006-2008). His many poetry collections include Me I Am; My Dog May Be a Genius; I’ve Lost My Hippopotamus; and Sardines Swim High Across the Sky. A Dragon’s Lament by Jack Prelutsky I’m tired of being a dragon, Ferocious and brimming with flame, The cause of unspeakable terror When anyone mentions my name. I’m bored with my bad reputation For being a miserable brute, And being routinely expected To brazenly pillage and loot. I wish that I weren’t repulsive, Despicable, ruthless, and fierce, With talons designed to dismember And fangs finely fashioned to pierce. I’ve lost my desire for doing The deeds any dragon should do, But since I can’t alter my nature, I guess I’ll just terrify you. “A Dragon’s Lament” from The Dragons Are Singing Tonight, © 1997 by Jack Prelutsky – Greenwillow Books _____________________ 1983 – Sarah Stup born in Frederick, Maryland; American author, poet and essayist, who writes about autism; she has limited motor skills and does not speak. She uses a variety of typing devices to converse and work. Stup has self-published her poetry collection Are Your Eyes Listening?, and two children’s books, Paul and His Beast, and Do-si-Do with Autism. “Writing is my way out of a lonely place where only God knows,” she says. “I feel alive to type. The lid opens and out comes pieces of Sarah, a girl with wings who soars above the place with no hope called autism. I am real when I write. Autism is my prison, but typing is the air of freedom and peace.” Are Your Eyes Listening? by Sarah Stup Are your eyes listening? That’s what needs to happen to hear my writing voice. Because of autism, the thief of politeness and friendship, I have no sounding voice. By typing words I can play with my life and stretch from my world to yours. I become a real person when my words try to reach out to you without my weird body scaring you away. Then I am alive. With writing I reach out to try, and autism or hate or walls of doubt can’t hold me. I am pleased to be typing away — typing away loneliness, typing away silence, using paper to hug you and slap you and join you. Click, click, clicking keys are my heartbeat. Listen with your eyes. “Are Your Eyes Listening?” from Are Your Eyes Listening? © 2007 by Sarah Stup – SarahStup.com __________________ September 9 __________________ 1934 – Sonia Sanchez born Wilsonia Benita Driver in Birmingham, Alabama; American Black Arts Movement poet; essayist, short story writer, and children’s author. She was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and briefly joined the Nation of Islam in the 1970s, but left because of their views on women’s rights. Sanchez was a pioneer in developing Black Studies courses, including a class in African American women’s literature. She has published over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories and children’s books. Her poetry collections include Homecoming; We a BaddDDD People; Shake Loose My Skin; and Does Your House Have Lions? Sanchez has been honored with the Robert Frost Medal and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. She was also the first Poet Laureate of the city of Philadelphia (2012-2014). This Is Not a Small Voice by Sonia Sanchez This is not a small voice you hear this is a large voice coming out of these cities. This is the voice of LaTanya. Kadesha. Shaniqua. This is the voice of Antoine. Darryl. Shaquille. Running over waters navigating the hallways of our schools spilling out on the corners of our cities and no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths. This is not a small love you hear this is a large love, a passion for kissing learning on its face. This is a love that crowns the feet with hands that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails mends the children, folds them inside our history where they toast more than the flesh where they suck the bones of the alphabet and spit out closed vowels. This is a love colored with iron and lace. This is a love initialed Black Genius. This is not a small voice you hear. “This Is Not a Small Voice” from Wounded in the House of a Friend, © 1995 by Sonia Sanchez – Beacon Press _____________________ 1942 – Sue Owen grew up in Madison, Wisconsin; American poet, writer, and academic known for her often-dark humor. After earning a MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, Vermont, she taught poetry classes before joining the faculty at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she taught until 2005. Her poetry collections include: Nursery Rhymes for the Dead; The Book of Winter, which won The Journal Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize in 1987; My Doomsday Sampler; and The Devil’s Cookbook A Basket of Buttons by Sue Owen Lost eyes, whose sight will not be restored. What was there to see, anyway? You saw how the days undid you. You saw wear wear you out and let down, and how knots, told to hold you, didn’t. It may be a disappointment, but nothing turns out as planned. Perhaps the buttonhole you left found another mate, or the shirt itself was torn up and now is a rag that cleans the dusty floors. That is, nothing turns out as planned. Even blind now, you can see that the needle will not come back for you, or stitch hope back into your dreams. You will sleep now in that basket with the others who do not belong anymore to this world of work and play. That is, nothing, not even the fate of one small button, turns out as planned. “A Basket of Buttons,” from The Book of Winter, © 1988 by Sue Owen – Ohio State University Press __________________ September 10 __________________ 1886 – H.D. born as Hilda Dolittle in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; American poet, novelist, essayist, and memoirist. Ezra Pound coined the term “imagist” to describe her early poems, and those of Amy Lowell, D. H. Lawrence, T. E. Hulme, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, but the imagist label quickly went out of fashion. She became the literary editor of The Egoist journal (1915-1918). H.D. frequently used both Greek mythology and insights from psychoanalysis in her work. After her death in 1961, her work was on the way to obscurity until rediscovered by feminist scholars. H.D. is now an icon for feminists and the LGBTQ+ Community. Her poetry collections include Sea Garden; Hymen; Hippolytus Temporizes; The Walls Do Not Fall; and Helen in Eqypt. by H.D. They said: she is high and far and blind in her high pride, but now that my head is bowed in sorrow, I find she is most kind. We have taken life, they said, blithely, not groped in a mist for things that are not are if you will, but bloodless– why ask happiness of the dead? and my heart bled. Ah, could they know how violets throw strange fire, red and purple and gold, how they glow gold and purple and red where her feet tread. This untitled poem is a kind of prologue to Hymen, her second poetry collection, published in 1920 _____________________ 1935 – Mary Oliver born in Maple Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio; prolific and popular American poet who won the 1992 National Book Award for her New and Selected Poems, and the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive. She died of lymphoma at age 83 in January 2019. Among her many poetry collections are Sleeping in the Forest; Why I Wake Early; Blue Iris; Dog Songs; and Blue Horses. Heavy by Mary Oliver That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this, as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said, was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel, (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it– books, bricks, grief– it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it when you cannot, and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed? Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth? How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled – roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply? “Heavy” from Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver, © 2006 by Mary Oliver – Beacon Press __________________ September 11 __________________ 1885 – D.H. Lawrence born in Eastwood, a coal-mining town in Nottinghamshire; English novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist. His novels were called pornographic by many readers of his day, but are now regarded as classics of English literature. His best-known books are Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. When he died in 1930 at age 44 from tuberculosis, he was still widely regarded as a pornographer, but novelist E.M. Forster wrote in an obituary notice that Lawrence was “the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation,” which began the reevaluation of his work. The 1960 obscenity trial of Penguin Books for printing an unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover made headlines across the world, and the jury’s ‘not guilty’ verdict made it widely available for the first time. Piano by D.H. Lawrence Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cozy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide. So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past. “Piano” from The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence – Wordsworth Editions, 1994 __________________ September 12 __________________ 1942 – Michael Ondaatje born in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Canadian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and filmmaker. He emigrated to England in 1954, and attended Dulwich College, then moved to Montreal Canada, and later earned an M.A. from Queen’s University at Kingston. He is best-known for his novel The English Patient, and critics have also favored his other six novels, but Ondaatje has published 13 collections of poetry, including The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems, a novel in verse. He has also edited several anthologies, and written plays and screenplays. Bearhug by Michael Ondaatje Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight I yell ok. Finish something I’m doing, then something else, walk slowly round the corner to my son’s room. He is standing arms outstretched waiting for a bearhug. Grinning. Why do I give my emotion an animal’s name, give it that dark squeeze of death? This is the hug which collects all his small bones and his warm neck against me. The thin tough body under the pyjamas locks to me like a magnet of blood. How long was he standing there like that, before I came? “Bearhug” from The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems, © 1997 by Michael Ondaatje – Vintage Books _____________________ 1946 – Minnie Bruce Pratt born in Selma, Alabama; American poet, author, essayist, lesbian, feminist activist, and educator. In 1966, she married, and gave birth to two sons, but when she came out as a lesbian in 1975, her ex-husband got custody of their children. In her book Crimes Against Nature, she wrote in a poem cycle about losing custody because of her sexual orientation. In 1977, she was a founding member of WomanWrites, and in 1984 a co-founder of LIPS, a Washington DC-based lesbian activist group. LIPs was the first group arrested during the 1987 DC protests of the Bowers v. Harwick sodomy law decision. Her memoir, S/HE was published in 1995. Pratt’s poetry collections include The Money Machine; We Say We Love Each Other; Walking Back Up Depot Street and Magnified. Pratt died of cancer at age 76 in July 2023. Learning to Talk by Minnie Bruce Pratt On Magnolia Avenue there are no magnolias. Someone bought the house of the one survivor. All morning I heard the chainsaw sever its limbs from root to bud. No more scattered flowers, star city. No pink galaxy. Now the yard is a parking space, one Jeep SUV, one older car. Next door a woman comes out, late afternoon, a child in her arms. She speaks low, as if there’s just the two of them. She says to him, Listen to the little birdies, and he listens to the common sparrows talking in the hedge. He listens as they argue back and forth, their dialect of nature, as the street clatters with commuters taking a shortcut home. She says: Listen. And he turns his head to follow the fugitive motion, the small streaked wings unfolding, folding, the relentless chirp from a tiny blunt beak, the sound almost within reach. “Learning to Talk” from The Dirt She Ate: New and Selected Poems, © 2003 by Minnie Bruce Pratt – University of Pittsburgh Press ___________ 📚☕ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/9/7/800094798/community/morning-open-thread-its-not-the-weight-you-carry-but-how-you-carry-it/ 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/