I have her book, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962. It was one of many things given to me by my grandmother — long before she passed. The copy she left me (a collectible) was not read but boxed away for when I finished college and lived a more solitary existence. I picked up an old paperback version of the book somewhere in New York when I lived there. I felt less guilty turning the pages of an old paperback. It is a great book of poetry. I’ve no idea where the paperback is now. The collectors hardback is on a shelf — unread and without an advocate. I recommend it to you now.

Death wistfully calls attention to its own inevitability while apologizing with the reminder of forgotten poetry.

An excerpt from North American Time by Adrienne Rich

I am thinking this in a country
where words are stolen out of mouths
as bread is stolen out of mouths
where poets don’t go to jail
for being poets, but for being
dark-skinned, female, poor.
I am writing this in a time
when anything we write
can be used against those we love
where the context is never given
though we try to explain, over and over
For the sake of poetry at least
I need to know these things

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The photos gave me pause.

We killed each other well, we did.

On a somewhat related note, this is our National Poetry Month, and this is a brief note on a poem.

Christmas Bells was a Civil War poem before it was a Christmas Carol. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this poem on Christmas Day 1864 — subsequent to his 17 year old son’s surreptitious enlistment in the Union Army, and after his son suffered serious injury. The poem was published in 1865 and not set to music until 1872.

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Question of the week.

How many people still eat at McDonald’s? I can’t believe with all we know people still eat that stuff. Not only is it full of fat but it’s most likely full of antibiotics and steroids as well. I will judge you because good sense defies eating that stuff, but feel free to opine on the poison which in my opinion is McDonald’s food.

I’m serving sushi and hot and spicy salad for the game tonight, so feel free to stop by.

insidious
the radiation that won’t be plugged
its seepage like mucus
from an unyielding virus

hideous
the world who contemplates
as death accelerates
on roads crowded, then crimson,
from the mindless killing

Your god
so willing

[See post to listen to audio]

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