Here Come The Wild Dogs

Patti Smith Inducted

2007-02-04T18:12:00.000-08:00

Long overdue-Patti Smith has finally been inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

Plan B. Where's Yours?

2006-12-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

Did you know that you can actually prevent unintended pregnancy if your primary birth control fails?

I want to make sure you have the facts about the emergency contraception Plan BÂ®, also called the "morning-after" pill.

If every woman across the country knew about this option - what it does, how it works, and where they can get it - and used it correctly and consistently, then we could cut in half the three million unintended pregnancies in this country every year, and greatly reduce the need for abortion.

A little prevention goes a long way. Here are the facts:
Emergency contraception can prevent an unintended pregnancy after sex. It can even work up to five days after sex, but it's most effective if taken in the first 24-72 hours.

Emergency contraception does not cause abortion; rather, it prevents pregnancy by inhibiting ovulation, fertilization, or implantation before a pregnancy occurs. If a woman is already pregnant when she takes it, the medication won't harm the pregnancy.

Emergency contraception is a safe, effective birth-control option: that's why the FDA's scientific and medical experts said it should be available to women over the counter.

Plan BÂ®, a brand of emergency contraception, is now available for sale at pharmacies without a prescription for women and men 18 and older. Just bring your ID to the pharmacist. If you are under 18, in most states you will need to get a prescription from a doctor. Nine states (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington) have laws in place that allow specially trained pharmacists to dispense Plan BÂ® to women without a prescription regardless of a woman's age. If you live in one of these states, ask your pharmacist for more information. You can visit www.not-2-late.com for more information about emergency contraception.
It's really that safe and that effective. If you are ever in a situation when you might need Plan BÂ®, remember these important facts - and if you want to take them with you, download a Plan BÂ® flyer here-http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/choice-action-center/take-action/plan-b/

With My Back to City Hall, On Yom Kippur

2006-09-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

With My Back to City Hall, On Yom Kippur
by Jordan Davis

The gnats love the highway dividers,
the freelance pickup artists love the softness of the hands
of the women who love their friends
for walking with them laughing at the situation,
lost people love that I am sitting here looking likely to know,
I love it when I know, knowledge in the form of radar
loves the cloud cover which resembles my headache
in its topography and its effect on my mood,
the path which connects Park Row with Broadway
loves the paranoia which has closed off all the paths closer than this to City Hall,
Jesus loves the balding man in the striped windbreaker
who looks at my small script and remarks, "Jesus loves you,"
I love the silk suit and the hard candy curl hair
of the middle-aged black woman going by with her dry cleaning,
I love the sock the bundled baby recumbent in an Aprica stroller kicks out,
I love from a distance the speck this woman in the tight clothes
reaches to brush from her shoe, I love the effect it has on her distraction, I love
the ties tucked into the short sleeve shirts of the men returning from lunch,
I love the men and women my age strolling
with purpose in their Pumas, the feather tumbling by,
the drift of the hulking red haired woman with psoriatic elbows,
the opal in the hairbow of the Hindi woman in white robes
and the tuck of her husband's shirt into his jeans,
the ticking of the wheel of the bicycle rolled along
by a backpack-wearing man on foot,
the acceleration of an open-roof double-decker tour bus,
the ignition cough of the not-in-service kneeling bus,
the change clod and leaf-shuffle of the lower torsos
and the carry-out conveyor sound of a closed up shopping cart,
I love the downturned glance of the woman carrying the Borzoi College Reader crossing against the light and going into Pace,

may all these people have rent-stabilized leases,
and may they be registered to vote, in their unions,
and in the next election.

Poem from Million Poem Journal, reprinted with permission of Faux Press Books

One More Reason to Love Autumn

2006-09-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

Mallomars are back!

Women's Equality Day

2006-08-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

Join the Nation in Celebrating Women's Equality Day, August 26, 2006

Voting is the foundation of our democracy. In this election year with the Voting Rights Act stalled in Congress, we are reminded that barriers to voting can still exist.

Women's Equality Day, August 26th is an opportunity to celebrate the vote and also an opportunity to remind others, especially our children, about the importance of voting.

Women's Equality Day, August 26, 2006, honors the 86th anniversary of women in the United States winning the right to vote.
To win the right to vote, women conducted a 72-year political campaign.
This political campaign began at the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls in July of 1848 and ended with the passage of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920.
When you vote, you are taking action to support this democracy and to recognize the unrelenting tenacity and spirit of women who worked to secure the vote for women in the United States

Dorothy Parker

2006-08-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

Belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DOROTHY PARKER (8/22/1893- 6/7/1967)

Comment

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

And my favorite:

The Flaw in Paganism

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

Epitaphe D'Un Chat

2006-08-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

From Epitaphe D'Un Chat

For three days now I have lost
My well-being, my pleasure, all my love.
My heart is almost breaking in me
When I speak or when I write
For Belaud my small grey cat
Belaud who was, by chance,
Nature's most beautiful work
Thus made, as cats are made,
Belaud whose beauty was such
That she is worthy to be immortal.

-Joachim Du Bellay

What Do Teachers Make?

2006-07-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing
life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with
education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from
someone who decided his best option in life was to become a
teacher?"

He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about
teachers: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a
teacher. Be honest. What do you make?"

Having a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You
want to know what I make?

"I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I make a C+ feel like the winner of the Congressional Medal of
Honor.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute
silence.

"You want to know what I make?
I make kids wonder.
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them show all their work in math and perfect their final
drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you have the brains, and follow
your heart, and if someone ever tries to judge you by what you
make, you must pay no attention because they just didn't
learn."

I paused and continued.
"You want to know what I make?
'I MAKE A DIFFERENCE.'
What do you make?"

Quiz-No's

2006-07-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

Quizno's claims that nutritional info is "not available." They only provide nutritional info for 2 sandwiches. Just 2 items on their entire menu. How hard is to calculate the nutritional value of tuna on bread? Boycott Quizno's and eat someplace that does have nutritional info available.

Here's the reply I received in response to my request for nutritional info:

I appreciate your interest in our menu here at Quizno's. I would like to point out that there is a list of selected sandwiches available on the website. The others are still being changed due to vendor changes and the data is not available as of yet. Please keep checking back for more information at www.quiznos.com

Sincerely,

Quizno's Customer Service Department

contact Quizno's and demand that they provide nutritional info:
http://www.quiznos.com/contactus0.asp?id=1&sid=9999

Parental Notification

2006-07-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

Cartoon by Jack Ohman at Slate.com

More cartoons at: http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?topicid=74&image=0

2006-07-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

Martina Newberry - Outlook

"If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"
—Tyler Durdin, Fight Club

I’ve been ripe all my life; it is my
mother’s gift to me along with her
madness—but “ripe" doesn’t make it now.

I want to see my taut flesh pulled down
over my frame, no softness, no place
that gives. I want to be pared down to

the bone, no places left to pinch. I
want to find birds with beaks like straws to
suck the fat from my fat places and

fly away with it. I want to be
an abstraction, a wraith, a nymph. I
want to be unreachable, remote

as the eye of a needle. I want
to leave sweat out of the equation
that is my body and put sylph in

its place. I want my bones to be
remarkable, my face chiseled marble.
If I am to return to the same

darkness from which I rose, I want to
do it with fingers like twigs, ankles—
impossible, hummingbird ankles.

This is the way to perfection, this
longing to be going, going, gone—
pushing hard against the adversity

of silken chocolates, sweet plums, red wine,
roasted chicken, buttered bread—things that
stay and will not be replaced by ice

water and grape skins. All this will come
back to haunt me. At some point, I will
not remember the difference between

shadows and radiance. I will only
be aware that light will shine through me,
ignoring flesh, headed toward paradise.

Martina Newberry’s most recent books are Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Arabesques Press 2006) and Running Like a Woman with Her Hair on Fire (Red Hen Press 2005). She was the winner of i.e. magazine’s Editor’s Choice Poetry Chapbook Prize for 1998: An Apparent, Approachable Light. She is also the author of Lima Beans and City Chicken: Memories of the Open Hearth, a memoir of her father (E.P. Dutton and Company 1989). Her work was included in the Ascent Aspirations anthology and has been widely published in many literary magazines. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Brian, and their cat, Gato.

thepedestalmagazine.com

For Shame, Nana!

2006-07-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

iVillage - solutions for women

Good Housekeeping
Diet Central

Dieting Nutrition

Calorie Counts You Can't Trust

Calorie Counts You Can't Trust
Nana's all-natural oatmeal-raisin and sunflower cookies are yummy and huge. Both treats claim to have less than 300 calories. Since these babies are almost CD-size and more than half an inch thick, that count struck us as too good to be true. An independent laboratory confirmed that the oatmeal-raisin cookie, listed on the label as having only 264 calories, actually has 460! The sunflower flavor, labeled as 240, has 436. What's more, the sunflower cookie has twice as much fat as the label claims; the oatmeal flavor is almost as bad. Both are sold nationwide at Whole Foods Market and health food stores, so buyer, beware, unless you want to splurge.
—Delia A. Hammock, M.S., R.D.

© iVillage Inc. 1995-2005.

Contact Nana to complain at:
http://www.healthycrowd.com/default.asp?pageid=4209

Creatures From The Far Right

2006-07-08T05:23:00.000-07:00

Creatures from the Far Right are out to win this November. But you can stop them.

Forget imaginary monsters under your bed... the real creatures are lurking in your government.

• Starring South Dakota Governor Rounds as Ban-a-thor!
• Featuring U.S. Senate candidate from Florida, Katherine Harris, as Swamp Thing!
• And many more of your most feared right-wing extremists...
Click here to watch our new movie:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/elections/creatures2/

Decisions, Decisions, What's a Girl to Do?

2006-07-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

http://minimumsecurity.net/toons2006/6034.htm

Cartoon by Stehanie McMillan. Those really are/were the Senator's phone numbers.

A Partial History of My Stupidity-Edward Hirsch

2006-07-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

A Partial History of My Stupidity

Traffic was heavy coming off the bridge
and I took the road to the right, the wrong one,
and got stuck in the car for hours.

Most nights I rushed out into the evening
without paying attention to the trees,
whose names I didn't know,
or the birds, which flew heedlessly on.

I couldn't relinquish my desires
or accept them, and so I strolled along
like a tiger that wanted to spring,
but was still afraid of the wildness within.

The iron bars seemed invisible to others,
but I carried a cage around inside me.

I cared too much what other people thought
and made remarks I shouldn't have made.
I was slient when I should have spoken.

Forgive me, philosophers,
I read the Stoics but never understood them.

I felt that I was living the wrong life,
spiritually speaking,
while halfway around the world
thousands of people were being slaughtered,
some of them by my countrymen.

So I walked on--distracted, lost in thought--
and forgot to attend to those who suffered
far away, nearby.

Forgive me, faith, for never having any.

I did not believe in God,
who eluded me.

-- Edward Hirsch

Hirsch on poetry:
I do believe that lyric poetry puts us in touch with something deep and mysterious within ourselves. It also evoke the grandeur of large mysteries beyond us. The earliest roots of poetry are in religion, and I suppose that poetry has never entirely lost its sense of the sacred. It still trembles with a holy air.

More at:
www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/hirsch/poetsonpoetry.html

The Coming of Light-Mark Strand

2006-07-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

The Coming of Light
by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light.

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine

and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

Excerpted from The Story of Our Lives by Mark Strand. Copyright © 2002 by Mark Strand. Poets.org

Buy The Story of Our Lives at Amazon.com

ttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375709754/sr=8-
2/qid=1151844223/ref=sr_1_2/002-4065108-0810401?ie=UTF8

Shakespeare in the Park - Macbeth

2006-06-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare in Central Park

MACBETH PREVIEWS BEGIN
JUNE 14!
MACBETH
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Moisés Kaufman

June 14 - July 9, 2006
Tuesday through Sunday
All shows at 8:30pm!
No performance July 4, added performance July 3.
*Click here for a performance schedule.

Featuring Tolan Aman, Teagle F. Bougere, Sterling K. Brown, Lynn Cohen, Sanjit DeSilva, Seth Duerr, Jennifer Ehle, Amefika El-Amin, Stephanie Fieger, Jacob Fishel, Herb Foster, Phillip Goodwin, Hollie Hunt, Florencia Lozano, Joan MacIntosh, Graeme Malcolm, Michael Markham, Andrew McGinn, Mark Montgomery, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe, Clancy O'Connor, Pedro Pascal, Liev Schreiber, Ching Valdes-Aran

Macbeth takes place in a world torn by war, in which treachery, ambition and superstition rule. Macbeth is a victorious war general who applies the rules of war to domestic politics and in the process turns his country upside down. This savage political thriller has never been more timely.

DELACORTE THEATER
Entrances at Central Park West & 81st Street and 5th Avenue & 79th Street.

Pick up your FREE tickets to Shakespeare in the Park on the day of the performance beginning at 1pm at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, or from 1 to 3 pm at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street. Tickets will also be distributed in each of the five boroughs on selected dates. Please note, there is a limit of 2 tickets per person.

call 212.539.8750 for more info

http://www.publictheater.org/view.php?mode=eventdisplay
&eventid=210&returnURL=%2Fview.
php%3Fmode%3Dseasoneventlisting%26seasonid%3D1

Newly Appointed US Poet Laureate-Donald Hall

2006-06-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

Two poems from our new Poet Laureate. One on Love and one on Death. What else is there?

Gold

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.

We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.

Affirmation
To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Bio at:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/264

“Mr. Hall, a poet in the distinctive American tradition of Robert Frost, has also been a harsh critic of the religious right's influence on government arts policy. And as a member of the advisory council of the National Endowment for the Arts during the administration of George H. W. Bush, he referred to those he thought were interfering with arts grants as "bullies and art bashers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/books/14poet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Indifference

2006-06-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Indifference

If you took a butter knife
and stuck it in
just two inches
below my ribs
and pulled it out
it would be clean:
then you would know
that I
was done
with you.

Beverly-jane Vasquez
Evolution
Fall 2005
Suffolk County Community College

Skills

2006-05-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

Skills
by Jonathan Aaron

Blondin made a fortune walking back and forth
over Niagara Falls on a tightrope—blindfolded,
or inside a sack, or pushing a wheelbarrow, or perched on stilts,
or lugging a man on his back. Once, halfway across,
he sat down to cook and eat an omelette.

Houdini, dumped into Lake Michigan chained
and locked in a weighted trunk, swam back to the boat
a few moments later. He could swallow more than a hundred needles
and some thread, then pull from between his lips
the needles dangling at even intervals.

I can close my eyes and see your house
explode in a brilliant flash, silently,
with a complete absence of vibration. And when I open them again,
my heart in my mouth, everything is standing
just as before, but not as if nothing had happened.

Poets.org

To Die for

2006-05-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

The Basic Con
by Lew Welch

Those who can’t find anything to live for,
always invent something to die for.

Then they want the rest of us to
die for it, too.

Poets.org

The least-known member of the trio of Beat poets who met at Reed College in Oregon, Lew Welch was perhaps even more tuned into literature than the other two, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. But he did not share the remarkable Buddhist calmness that Snyder and Whalen had in common, and when these two poets became instantly famous after participating in the landmark Six Gallery poetry reading in 1955, Lew Welch was away in Chicago, working as a marketing researcher while recovering from a nervous breakdown.

He had been writing poetry since discovering Gertrude Stein as a young man. William Carlos Williams read Welch's poems while visiting Reed College, and tried to help Welch publish his thesis on Gertrude Stein. But Welch's emotional illnesses and nervous breakdowns crippled his promising literary career, although he did gain recognition after joining Snyder and Whalen in San Francisco.

Lew Welch is the hard-partying Dave Wain in Jack Kerouac's novel 'Big Sur.' Matching Kerouac drink for drink during the joyless events described in this book, he appears destined for the same troubles that faced Kerouac (although even he tells Kerouac to stop drinking by the end of the novel). During this time he was in a relationship with Lenore Kandel, later the author of a well-known book of erotic poetry, who appears as Ramona Swartz in Kerouac's book. He and Kandel broke up shortly after.

Lew Welch appears to have committed suicide while staying at Gary Snyder's house in 1971, although his body was never found. He left the following note, discovered by Snyder:

"I never could make anything work out right and now I'm betraying my friends. I can't make anything out of it - never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It's all gone. Don Allen is to be my literary executor- use MSS at Gary's and at Grove Press. I have $2,000 in Nevada City Bank of America - use it to cover my affairs and debts. I don't owe Allen G. anything yet nor my Mother. I went Southwest. Goodbye. Lew Welch."

Aram Saroyan wrote a book about Welch and the Beat scene, 'Genesis Angels.' This book offers a touching and well-written consideration of the short life of this enigmatic poet.

http://www.beatmuseum.org/welch/LewWelch.html

Take Action Against Fake Women's Clinics

2006-05-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to one of Indiana's Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called "crisis pregnancy center" run by an anti-abortion group, one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their "other office" (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there. The "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl's home and calling her father's workplace. Planned Parenthood's clinic director reports that the girl was "scared to death to leave her house." They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

The anti-choice movement is setting up these "crisis pregnancy centers" across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but they dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to a recent article in The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers. What's more, these centers have received $60 million in government grants. They're being funded by our tax dollars.

A bill has just been introduced in Congress to stop the fraudulent practices of fake clinics, but it desperately needs more support. Tell your representative to take a stand: anti-choice extremists must not get away with this any longer!

Go to: http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/fake

Continuity

2006-05-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

Continuity
by A. R. Ammons

I've pressed so
far away from
my desire that

if you asked
me what I
want I would,

accepting the harmonious
completion of the
drift, say annihilation,

probably.

poets.org

Poem In Your Pocket Day

2006-04-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

Today is poem in your pocket day. The New York City Department of Education, in collaboration with the Office of the Mayor, Department of Cultural Affairs, City University of New York, and the New York Times, is co-sponsoring the fourth annual Poem In Your Pocket Day on Friday, April 28, 2006. New Yorkers are encouraged to carry a poem in their pocket and share it with friends, family, coworkers and classmates.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/poem/

Keep A Poem In Your Pocket
By Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

Keep a poem in your pocket
And a picture in your head
And you'll never feel lonely
At night when you're in bed.

The little poem will sing to you
The little picture bring to you
A dozen dreams to dance to you
At night when you're in bed.

So - -
Keep a picture in your pocket
And a poem in your head
And you'll never feel lonely
At night when you're in bed.

Here are 2 poems in my pocket today. I discovered this author through one of my students:

In the Night

I longed for companionship rather,
But my companions I always wished farther.
And now in the desolate night
I think only of the people I should like to bite.

Not Waving but Drowning
by Stevie Smith
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

From Collected Poems of Stevie Smith by Stevie Smith, published by New Directions Publishing Corp. Copyright © 1972 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher.

Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith was born in 1902 in Yorkshire, England. Her father left the family to join the North Sea Patrol when she was very young. At age three she moved with her sister and mother to the northern London suburb Palmers Green. This was her home until her death in 1971. Her mother died when she was a teenager and she and her sister lived with their spinster aunt, an important figure throughout her life, known as "The Lion." After high school she attended North London Collegiate School for Girls. She began as a secretary with the magazine publisher George Newnes and went on to be the private secretary to Sir Nevill Pearson and Sir Frank Newnes. She began writing poetry in her twenties while working at George Newnes. Her first book, Novel on Yellow Paper, was published in 1936 and drew heavily on her own life experience, examining the unrest in England during World War I. Her first collection of verse, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), also contained rough sketches or doodles, which became characteristic of her work. These drawings have both a feeling of caprice and doom, and the poetry in the collection is stylistically typical of Smith as it conveys serious themes in a nursery rhyme structure.

While Smith's volatile attachment to the Church of England is evident in her poetry, death, her "gentle friend," is perhaps her most popular subject. Much of her inspiration came from theology and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. She enjoyed reading Tennyson and Browning and read few contemporary poets in an attempt to keep her voice original and pure. Her style is unique in its combination of seemingly prosaic statements, variety of voices, playful meter, and deep sense of irony. Smith was officially recognized with the Chomondeley Award for Poetry in 1966 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1969. Smith died of a brain tumor in 1971.

Paris in the Spring

2006-04-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

Jack Gilbert, now in his eighties, writes verse that reveals his fierce ideals and provides us with a beautiful, sometimes stark view of what a life devoted to poetry has meant for him. "How Much of That Is Left in Me?" appears in his recent book, REFUSING HEAVEN, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Other poems from that book are featured in today's episode of the Knopf Poetry Podcast and in the downloadable broadside, designed by Abby Weintraub, using a photograph by Dale Satorsky.

How Much of That Is Left in Me?

Yearning inside the rejoicing. The heart's famine
within the spirit's joy. Waking up happy
and practicing discontent. Seeing the poverty
in the perfection, but still hungering
for its strictness. Thinking of
a Greek farmer in the orchard,
the white almond blossoms falling and falling
on him as he struggled with his wooden plow.
I remember the stark and precious winters in Paris.
Just after the war when everyone was poor and cold.
I walked hungry through the vacant streets at night
with the snow falling wordlessly in the dark like petals
on the last of the nineteenth century. Substantiality
seemed so near in the grand empty boulevards,
while the famous bronze bells told of time.
Stripping everything down until being was visible.
The ancient buildings and the Seine,
small stone bridges and regal fountains flourishing
in the emptiness. What fine provender in the want.
What freshness in me amid the loneliness.

Knopfpoetry.com