Category: Uncategorized (Page 12 of 22)

Ladybug

Harmless harbourer of luck, you dot
the meadows, parks, and dust
filled corners with your vibrant reds,
orange, and yellows.
You land on our shoulders
and we yell out ‘Lady Luck!’ –
our burdens fewer, a tide turning,
and a love blooming from your age-old
magic that nestles together in the dark months.
Not quite a nuisance – who would squash the
flaming flight of fate’s good word with a promise of
pollen-rich buds come springs sleepy rise.
Count the number of spots from this talisman
of luck, and a new season may usher in a
deepest wish in a few short months.
By correlation or causation, felicity or fluke,
your quiet creep in the marigolds and
honeydew, or snug in the windows of our living
rooms give us a glimpse of the mystical.

Museum Guides 

Almost artifacts themselves, so picturesque, so stoic,
so cool as the marble-walled world that surrounds their 
life – day in, day out.
Almost unnoticeable as they move so swiftly down 
the corridors, echoing melodies of tragedy, love, 
and grace – yet they remain temperature-controlled, 
buttoned and collared.

when we step away from our books, our lessons,
our ideas, and face the immortalized souls hung 
on the walls – gazing at each other in perpetual tranquility, we see them bound tirelessly to the age of their last breath – 
each brushstroke, carving, and touch of life bound within our commitment to animate them. 

Almost artifacts, those who live to guide and guard the eternal achievements of past hands – almost overlooked. 

Suppose 

Suppose the limber, breathless 
bend of warmth on the wind
never gave way to its grace 
sucked from its breath – life 
suddenly bound to torpor 
stillness and sterility. 

I suppose that the silence 
meddles your mind, and its 
meaning when the rush and 
rustle above vanquishes to 
the ground – stomped and blown. 

It forces a sound within, perhaps 
muted at first, but a growing 
menace all the same that you wish to
ignore – more easy to do, you find, 
when the clatter of animation abuzz in 
the air with perpetual bounds and chirps. 

Suppose, now, you listen. 

I grate, and grate, and grate, 
fingers seizing like having had written 
the sound of anticipation over and over 
and over again. 

All year, I stand nearby and watch
the shards of cheese jump and writhe 
under the coarse metal, but today – 
today is my birthday, the meal of
of all meals. 

The kitchen’s samba sways back and forth 
like feasting rituals long before me. 
Yet every year, I stand nearby with 
excited hands ready to let slip the 
mundane tastes and times of grating, 
melting, stirring, and baking. 

reflections 

To love what you will never 
believe twice, to believe only the truly 
unbelievable, is to begin to understand the 
thousands of lives we’ve lived, if only to
remember the closest one. 
To reach out in the darkness, clawing at the familiar ache 
of the daily pangs of grief, of affection, of regret, 
to take great pains in holding that swindling joker, none 
other than Time itself, who jeers along. 
To pluck that proverbial day that makes the rest gleam 
and fade as it dulls the mind-numbing reality of 
looking back to the beginning of the end of your days. 
To do nothing so productively that you, the spectator, 
dictate the mirror of art, of style, of life. 

The traveler 

Your face begins to 
smudge and smear 
unforgettably unrecognizable 
like the pages of a well-worn 
book I know I’ve drifted through 
before while dancing in the
rosy lens that bends toward 
crowded cloud-like cobblestone.

You begin to spiral out of 
view – never seen with eyes,
but felt through visions of
vibrant reminiscence of
that flowering road now
stretching awake with faint
phantoms of my travels passed.

Your face begins 
to smudge 
and smear 
unforgettably 
unrecognizable 
like the pages
of a well-worn 
book I know 
I’ve drifted 
through before 
while dancing in
the rosy lens that
bends toward crowded 
cloud-like cobblestones.
You begin to spiral out 
of view – never seen 
with eyes but felt through 
visions of vibrant 
reminiscence of that 
flowering road now
stretching awake with 
faint phantoms of my 
travels passed.

After watching the video on poetry with Donal Hall, I definitely started to think way more about the sound/shape/cadence of poetry and a type of musical connection that I haven’t been thinking about as much, but listening to him read his poetry really stuck with me. I thought many of the things he spoke of regarding his early life and the beginnings of writing poetry were so cool. I loved how he described feeling at ease in the right university atmosphere and how much the cultivation of a fantastic writing community can be for someone’s craft – the seriousness surrounding their work and a type of competitive push for each other to excel. I loved listening to that and connecting with our class, and how much I think we strive to be professional, take each other’s work seriously, and be helpful in our environment. Another aspect I took away from this video was how beautiful his poems about his grieving process with his wife are – one thing he said that stuck out for me was, “It was not grief and horror to write them; it was making grief and horror into poems.” I thought back to our class discussions on the shadow/bag we carry with us, the idea of writing from the scar, and how to remove ourselves from all that unhelpful venting to truly make something out of the less-than-ideal aspects of life. Both his insights surrounding defining poetry and his advice were just so reflective and appreciative of the way of life poetry can cultivate in us – like in his focus again on sound as both an entryway into defining poetry but also in how we as new poets can listen to and read aloud the work of great poets before us and get an ear for the meter. He also brought up such an interesting concept that all good poems should have this opposition and tension built into it, and the phrase where he said ambivalences are characteristics of every human mind and that it should be mirrored within the poem was a truly compelling moment for me in this interview.

• From the Novel:

“St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now…No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour: his mind will be unclouded; his heart will be undaunted; his hope will be sure; his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this: – “My Master,” he says, “has forwarned me. Daily he annouces more distinctly, – ‘Surely I come quickly’; and hourly I more eagerly respond, – ‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!” (Brontë 556).

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Broadview Press, 2022.

• Critical Commentary:

“…The way I think about it is theological, right? Whenever we’re dealing with someone’s death and the reasons behind their deaths. Brontë is always someone who thinks that there is a real Christainness to the way someone dies…Like Aunt Reed summons Jane, St. John is saying “Here I come, Lord Jesus,”…What’s theological about it to me is that every other character is given at least some conversation around their death, but this white creole woman, this mad woman, right – this alcoholic woman, this licentious woman, right, isn’t”

“On eyre: final thoughts”. Hot and bothered, Not sorry productions, 2023

• Historical Context:

“Henry says he is comfortably settled in Sussex [ where he was then a vicar], that his health is very improved and that it is his intention to take pupils after Easter – he then intimates that in due time he shall want a wife to take care of his pupils and frankly aks me to be that wife…I asked myself two questions – “Do I love Henry Nussey as much as a woman ought to love her husband? Am I the person best qualified to make him happy?” Alas Ellen my conscious answered “no” to both these questions”.

“What became of St. john rivers,” https://www.annebronte.org/2019/05/13/what-became-of-the-real-st-john-rivers/

• Visual

British Library “The Juvenile Missionary Magazine.” 1844.

october 

If anticipation was a song 
it would be you – your 
melody swept up in the floral 
curtains that mask my view 
of an outdoor not-so-dissimilar 
from your last coming
now opaque through the soft 
light of your day's end.
Your forecast is unknown
the year spreads before you
blind to the barren chill 
still fanning the flames 
that scorched your ground. 
Your sporadic pleasures 
you don’t seem to register 
hold my attention as I 
look out the window,
It is you – October – that I
hum along to.