Category: Poetry (Page 11 of 11)

After: Poems by Jane Hirshfield

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On March 4, 2008

In Poetry

After:Poems
Jane Hirshfield
Harper Perennial (2006)
Recently, I undertook the reading project of exploring three female poets at the same time. Jane Hirshfield was the first. 
Kate, my friend and Harper sales rep. shared this writer with me, thinking that I would enjoy it, and I did, thanks. 
Jane’s work is much praised and seems to have appeared in a who’s who of poetry publications. She has authored five previous poetry books. Even though, I’m untrained in understanding poetry; I just read what I like for pleasure and relaxation, and I enjoyed After, fully. 
Many of the poems feature various subjects (sky, hope, envy, etc) expressing personal interpretations or understandings.
A few favorite lines, 
From “What Is Usual Is Not What Always Is:”
 
The bitter young man tires;
The aged one sitting now in his body is tender,
His face carries no regret for his choices.
From “To Opinion:”
Ocean Ocean Ocean was the sound of sand
made on moonlit waves
breaking on it.
I felt no argument with any part of my life.
And perhaps my favorite, from “Against Certainty:”
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
No cell of her body is not waiting
This is how she is able so completely to disappear
…
One shadow fully at ease inside another.

The Clouds Should Know Me By Now

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On February 29, 2008

In Poetry, Zen

This book is a collection of poems translated from the Chinese by talented scholars and edited by Red Pine and Mike O’Connor, masters at their craft. Written by Buddhist monks, these spare, elegant poems represent work spanning the 1100 years from the middle T’ang dynasty to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Full of references to nature, sometimes reflecting sadness then fleeting moments of calm pleasure, they are a feast for the mind and soul. Offering at times profound spiritual insights, they call us to moments of quiet reflection—soul searching, so to speak.

This morning
laughing together
just a few such days
in a hundred.

After birds pass
over Sword Gate, it’s calm;
invaders from the south
have withdrawn to the Lu River wilds.

We walk on frosted ground
praising chrysanthemums bordering fields
sit on the east edge of the woods,
waiting for the moon to rise.

Not having to be alone
is happiness:
we do not talk
of failure or success.

-Yvonne

Native Guard by Natasha Tretheway

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On February 29, 2008

In Poetry

native guardNatasha Tretheway was recently in Jackson to receive the Governor’s Award for literary excellence in the arts. I had the opportunity to hear her read from her Pulitzer Prize winning volume of poetry, Native Guard. She read in her rich, expressive voice the poem which sets the tone for this remarkable volume, written for her mother, in memory.

*     *     *

*     *     *

from “Theories Of Time And Space”:

“You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.
Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been, Try this….”

Tretheway speaks of her childhood in the Deep South—she, the product of a white father and a black mother:

“In 1964 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi”

She also speaks of the Louisiana Native Guards–a black regiment serving in the Civil War:

” The ghost of history lies down beside me”

The poems are profound and moving–poems to be read more than once, each reading providing new insight and enjoyment.

-Yvonne

Danger on Peak by Gary Snyder

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On February 13, 2008

In Poetry

danger on peaksDanger on Peaks: Poems

Gary Snyder

Shoemaker-Howard (2004)

In a copy of The Best Buddhist Writing, I read a few poems from Danger on Peaks. Their quality motivated me to read the entire collection of poems, Gary Snyder’s first collection in twenty years.

Danger on Peaks begins with the Atomic Dawn of 1945 and as Nagasaki Snyder ascends Mt. St. Helens for the first time.  In poetic grace, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens is linked in time with the Atomic Dawn.

Bleak as this may sound, this collection is beautiful and picturesque.

I could hear, from Glacier Ghosts:

“you can never hear enough

sound of wind in pines”

I could taste, from Winter Almond:

“eat black bread with smoked oysters”

When I Find You Again It Will be in the Mountains: Selected Poems of Chia Tao

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On January 23, 2008

In Poetry, Zen

When I Find You Again, It Will Be In Mountains:

Selected Poems of Chia Tao

Translated by Mike O’Connor

Chia Tao (779-843) died with only two known possessions, a donkey in bad health and a five-string zither.

Chia Tao’s efforts in poetry were to consciously make poetry less beautiful-hopefully, therefore making it more significant and true. His ordinary and plain verse without emotional attachment, offer insight into everyday life. A simple way to just see things. His spare and morally serious poems were friendly reading to me.

Some favorite excerpts:

I.

A solitary cloud

Just has no fixed home.

II.

A lone shadow

Walks on the bottom of a pond;

Someone,

Now and then, rests beside a tree.

III.

Small clouds, one by one,

Break up, dissolve;

Old trees fall

For firewood.

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