"The Moment" by Marie Howe

Maybe your life has also felt filled to the brim—spring break and SXSW traffic and crowded airports and long lists of tasks awaiting your attention. My favorite Marie Howe poem, “What the Living Do,” is in many ways about the way riding this big messy overflow of life is itself what it means to be alive. But this week I came across that poem’s opposite, this small piece about exhaling into quiet, just for a second, and I thought some of us might need it too.

“The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be

slows to silence”

"The Facts of Life" by Padraig O Tuama

I just finished teaching a poetry unit in which I did what we who teach poetry often do: I pushed my students over and over to write with detail and image, detail and image, dropping the general for the specific. I gave them all clementines and walked them through an exercise to feel them, see them, pierce the skin and smell them, listen to the sound they make while being peeled, then taste them. Write those five senses, I told them. They did.

Meanwhile, on my computer was this poem by Pádraig Ó Tuama, which is nothing but idea and which I really love. Maybe next time I teach poetry I need to invite students to write their own facts of life. No clementines needed.

(Do yourself a favor and listen to O Tuama read this poem—or any other poem—on the Poetry Unbound podcast.)

“That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.”

"I Don't Want to Lose" by Mary Oliver

It’s a week for love poems, and wow, are there a lot of love poems in the world. But I never thought to turn to Mary Oliver for one. She was so busy courting the grasshoppers and geese and thistles that I just remember that she wrote about human love as well. Then I found this poem, and this quote: “If I have a secret stash of poems anywhere, it might be about love…” It turns out, some of that secret stash found its way into her 2015 collection, Felicity.

This little poem reflects the kind of love poems I like best—ones that reveals the romance in small and everyday moments. Happy Valentine’s Day.

I want to remember everything.
Which is why I’m lying awake

"Winter Poem" by Nikki Giovanni

It’s possible that I overthought the next poem for the poetry box. During a busy January of travel and family, the neighbors took every last copy of Alberto Riós, and I wondered what was the right poem after a pause. Then an ice storm came through Central Texas, closing schools and leaving the trees dripping icicles, and I knew I needed a poem for winter. Enter, Nikki Giovanni.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a nice list of poems queued up for the weeks to come with a little hope, a little love, and a little nod of the head to brokenness. Stay warm out there, wherever you are.

“...and a web
of snow engulfed me then”

"A House Called Tomorrow" by Alberto Ríos

If the airline gods cooperate, I am flying later today with my mom back to Florida, where I grew up. I’ll see friends I’ve had since I was 11 and walk the beach I knew intimately as a teenager and young adult. So I’ve been thinking about how we are always carrying our earlier selves with us and about poems that capture that strange paradox of being at once old(er) and young, here and somewhere else. And I’ve wondered if I could have imagined, sitting in, say, my seventh grade English class, that I’d still be connected with so many of those people 40+ years later, if I could have imagined 40+ years later at all.

This glorious poem by Alberto Ríos stretches this idea forward, gathering up ancestors and centuries and arriving at a call to action, a cause for celebration. How appropriate that Copper Canyon Press selected its title for its forthcoming anthology of fifty years of poetry.

“The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.
We simply would not be here
If that were so.”

"To Come Home to Yourself," a Blessing by John O'Donohue

For many people I care about—and for me as well—2022 was a rough year. So while I’d happily slip Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Burning the Old Year” into the box each last week of December, I felt like we could all use a blessing to see us into 2023. Here’s one from the late Irish poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue. On the reverse is his “Beannacht: A Blessing for the New Year” for good measure.

 Happy New Year to all!

“May all that is unforgiven in you
Be released.

May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unlived in you
Blossom into a future,
Graced with love.”

— John O’Donohue (1956-2008) from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

"Getting Into Bed on a December Night" by Ellen Bass

It’s a cold and rainy December night here, and it’s been a gray and covid-y month so far. This weekend I tucked a bit of coziness in the poetry box, and I’m sharing it with you now. Be well.

“I think we are like the pages
of a love letter”

"Imaginary Conversation" by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan is a poet I hadn’t read much before I installed the poetry box, but it turns out she is a master at the kind of small, detailed, poignant poems that fit well in an acrylic window on the curb. This poem is from a book she published at age 84—she’s published two since then—a collection that wrestles with living and aging and what we think about in those quiet, middle-of-the-night moments when we find ourselves awake.

“Why not
live each day as if it were the first—
all raw astonishment”

"Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" by Ross Gay

I lost a friend of 40+ years last week, part of a season of loss and change and gratitude. We all have those seasons. So as I pondered a Thanksgiving-appropriate poem for the box, I was glad to receive the writer Suleika Jaouad’s weekly newsletter and its reminder of Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” The excerpt she included, and which I include here, comes from the close of the poem and contains that sense of how the shortness of time is central to our ability to dive deeply into living. And diving deeply also means saying thank you, which I do today. Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

(Cool video of Gay reading the full poem with music from Bon Iver. Yes.)

“what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?”

"Daylight Saving, Age Five" by James Crews

Have you wandered around this morning not knowing what time it is? You’re not alone. And I have a poem for you. I discovered this on Ada Limón’s podcast, The Slowdown, and have held it for just this moment. Happy Sunday.

“I was cupping my hands under every lamp,
keeping the fridge open, so the cold brightness
would pool at my feet.”

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

When I made my first lists of poems for the poetry box in 2020, this well-known piece was there. It’s taken two years to find its place, however. With an election looming and plenty of challenges to go around, many of us may be taxing our “lives with forethought of grief.” But then there’s Wendell Berry.

Yesterday, Chris and I sat on a bench on a perfect late afternoon in fall, watching the paddlers on the river and listening to a busker. A heron soared past, skimming above the water. I didn’t yet know this poem and its great heron were going into the box today, but I definitely experienced a moment of resting “in the grace of the world.”

Listen to Berry read his poem, accompanied a cool animation, here.

“I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.”

"The Orange" by Wendy Cope

It’s not often that a rhyming poem makes its way into the poetry box, but I find this little piece by the British poet Wendy Cope quite irresistible. An Amazon reviewer said of her book, Serious Concerns, “It shows that when the most serious subjects are treated light-heartedly, they become even more telling.” Exactly. Wishing you today the surprise of happiness in the ordinary things and the gladness of knowing you exist.

“And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do”

"What Now?" by Mark Van Doren

My friend Maureen introduced me to this poem years ago, and its final lines – “Well, it is difficult / Dear ones. It is.” – have stayed with me since. I shared them with a friend last week and then went to find the whole piece for the poetry box. It’s curious little conglomeration, and I think the heart of it is how the poet interrupts himself for the dancing, for the weeping, and to claim us as “dear ones.”

“Don’t you hear the dance music,
Old as these hills?”

"When in Doubt" by Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros’ new book, Woman Without Shame, comes out today, though I encountered this poem in a recent issue of Orion magazine. For years I got to witness students responding with full hearts and heads to Cisneros’ much-loved The House on Mango Street as it was taught in Free Minds. In her work the plain-spoken sits beside the poetic, the faux leopard beside the true wisdom. And in this poem, thank you beside thank you.

“When in doubt,
Err on the side of generosity.”

"Mercy" by Rudy Francisco and three more poems

While we were away for a good portion of July and August, our lovely house sitter was updating the poetry box each Monday with the poems I’d left in a manila folder. But I somehow didn’t manage to keep the blog and newsletter going at the same time. So today is a big catch up. It begins with this simple but impactful poem by the California spoken word poet, Rudy Francisco, that will make me think more broadly the next time I get a glass and piece paper to relocate a wayward spider. Mercy is such a potent word. Don’t we all deserve it?

Also, while I was gone, the box held “August Morning” by Albert Garcia, “Self-Compassion” by James Crews, whose anthologies have provided good fodder for the poetry box, and “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon. All of these poems have been little gifts for me to (re)discover as I came home, and I hope they were the same for our neighbors in those hot (merciless?) days that just passed.

I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.

"First Blues" by Saundra Rose Maley

I’ve been learning how to play Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” on ukulele, which is probably not the opening sentence you expected today. It begins, “On a warm summer evening.” And this poem, which went into the box on Monday, begins, “That summer night / was hot.” It’s the season for simmering evenings, tales about trains, and poems about backporch sitting. I think we can agree that this blazing summer can only be made better by savoring some music and “listening like a fool.”

“That summer night
Was hot
Steaming like a crab”

"How to Triumph Like a Girl" by Ada Limón

Last week the fabulous poet Ada Limón was named the 24th U.S. Poet Laureate, to which I say Brava! Brava! A perfect choice. Do you know her podcast “The Slowdown,” where she shares a poem and a story each day? It’s so good!

This isn’t the first Ada Limón poem I’ve put in the poetry box. I love her work. Her “Instructions on Not Giving Up” and “What I Didn’t Know Before” went in that first year, and some of her selections from “The Slowdown” have been there too. But this poem seemed a sweet way to celebrate her new role, one in which she is sure to triumph.

“...somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.”

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats

Most everyone I know in Austin is dreaming of escape from the hottest summer in Texas history. This Yeats poem remains one of my favorite poems about the sweet pull of elsewhere. That lake water lapping and bee-loud glade and the music of these stanzas may be the big exhale we need right now.

“I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore”

"The Sabbath of Mutual Respect" by Marge Piercy

In the wake of the heartbreak and outrage of last week’s Supreme Court decision, I have seen numerous references to the poet Marge Piercy, who is often called “the feminist poet Marge Piercy” as if she is alone in that category. She is not. I’ve chosen this short excerpt from “The Sabbath of Mutual Respect” for the box this week in praise of choices and a breadth of imagination that acknowledges the many lives that might have been ours.

I paired Piercy with RBG for good measure and to tip my hat to the neighbor who is once again flying her DISSENT flag from its second-story pole.

“Praise all our choices. Praise any woman
who chooses, and make safe her choice.”

Three Haiku by Basho

Last night we saw a staged reading of four works by Ukrainian playwrights at Austin’s Hyde Park Theatre. That tiny, scruffy performance space with its worn chairs and simple sets was the site of so many creative experiences during my early years in Austin. Stepping into it was like stepping into the past, an Austin I so rarely encounter now. As we walked to the car after the show, we passed the familiar sign of the Bookcase Store, now shuttered after 32 years. The ache of nostalgia for my younger self and younger city brought to mind this haiku by the Japanese master, Basho.

“Even in Kyoto
hearing the cuckoo’s cry —
I long for Kyoto”

This morning I put it in the box along with two of his poems for summer and asking the question, “What were the ancient warriors’ dreams?”

You can learn about the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings here.