Women Poets I Have Loved

Have I oversold the poetry thing? I know it is possible to some of you I have and for this I am sorry. I have a zealot streak about things I love.

I am zealot about beautiful breaking open writing; yoga (in all forms); animals (to the point of ridiculousness and concern!); friendship (I think being a “bad friend” is the worst of all insults); coffee; good dog walking (off leash) spots; politics (I am not telling but you can guess); singing; being an aunt who matters to my nephews and niece; my “la familia” in general; books; mother nature; well-made meals and all ice cream; the traits of inclusion, kindness, nonviolence and community; and the practice of being present to every moment I have in this life.  

So…I also love the celebration of women. I would like to recommend poems from women who have been my writing teachers. Some I have known and others I have worshiped from afar!

The first is a poem from my longest teacher: Susan Deborah King from her book “One-Breasted Woman.” Susan was my professor in college and she has continued to read, edit and encourage my work. She is a woman of depths and she has lots of fight, vigor and strength to her. I am so grateful for her writing and her just being.

Her book is about her fight with breast cancer. (She also has other books. Please Google her!) This is one of her poems:

Convergence

In the market, the organic market where

We can find healing, untainted food,

They called out my name with gusto.

I looked over. I didn’t know them.

Whose were these radiant faces?

They shouted: It’s Jean! It’s Ruth!

I’d never seen them with their hair!

Only bald and turbaned from the chemo.

Only gaunt, quiet, braving tentative smiles.

Now pouring from the tops of their heads

fountains of gold and silver-silken, curled.

One with each arm, I embraced them both,

Felt them warm against me, wet-faced,

Torsos shaking with laughter.

We are still here.

I have also had the sincere privilege of writing with Ms. Sharon Olds. She’s damn famous, so I will not name all her books! She is a very raw poet, with images that are both bold, daunting and inspiring. She told us that she puts “tiny saucers out and asks poems to come to her” and come they do. Here is one of her poems: 

The Daughter Goes To Camp

In the taxi alone, home from the airport,
I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept
creeping over the smooth plastic
to find your strong meaty little hand and
squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the
noble ribbing of the corduroy,
straight and regular as anything in nature, to
find the slack cool cheek of a
child in the heat of a summer morning—
nothing, nothing, waves of bawling
hitting me in hot flashes like some
change of life, some boiling wave
rising in me toward your body, toward
where it should have been on the seat, your
brow curved like a cereal bowl, your
eyes dark with massed crystals like the
magnified scales of a butterfly's wing, the
delicate feelers of your limp hair,
floods of blood rising in my face as I
tried to reassemble the hot
gritty molecules in the car, to
make you appear like a holograph
on the back seat, pull you out of nothing
as I once did—but you were really gone,
the cab glossy as a slit caul out of
which you had slipped, the air glittering
electric with escape as it does in the room at a birth.

I also want to recommend these women poets: Lucile Clifton, Mary Oliver, Nikki Giovanni, Tess Gallagher, Patricia Lee Lewis and Jane Kenyon. When I tell you about these poets it is like I am introducing you to my own sisterhood of life learners, teachers adventurers. Please go meet them I am sure they will welcome you to their table and you both will break the bread of how it is to be a women and a human in the poetry of this wild life.

And because I promised, this is a poem I wrote (which I am utterly humbled to put in this blog with superstars of poetry so please do not compare.) Ahhh, thank you, April, for National Poetry Month! Happy spring!

Emancipation

“…because of its limited geographic range and rarity in Oklahoma a closed season has been established for this species that prohibits trapping, possession …” 

You had Gram stop the car so you could unclasp

your seatbelt, failing - as Gram helps uncontain you

bounding out to rescue-

(in hot Oklahoma summer road)

It could have been-

                 Red-eared slider

                                 Three-toed box

                                              Skink pot or a Common Map

Turtles

kept in Gram’s collection of claw foot tubs out by the barn

Creeping towards capture you clasped 1, then 3, then 5, then 8 then 14…

Crunched near them, staring at sunning turtles.

Yoked to you - some simple slice

of specialness.

You hoard them like Halloween candy, hold

them like Gram’s attention, you have a fragment

of being in nature.

You court them with flowers, greens

 the coldest,

           freshest water brought by

bare feet and tiny hands holding a swinging pink sand bucket.

Sun, burned face, lips are no match for your ardor…

Your intent serious autumn eyes vowed in alliance.

Bound to them intertwined, as we all are- to what we hold that holds us.

Enthralled by rare- your tiny half-moons by cuticles stroking cool shells

You have a piece of wildness.

Yours is to capture the abandon of the Divine.

One day as you watch as they climb over and around the crowd of turtles.

It goes wrong.

You want them: untamed, open –released- as all real love does,

you see all at once they as confined, imprisoned!

You carry them free

Leaving wildness in you instead.

As always …PLEASE consider writing with me: www.explorewritingworkshops.com I am looking to start a new session of youth writers and adult writers!