I read a poem in the #57 issue of Rattle that I wish I had written. That I should have written ;). It’s so cool, and it’s renewed my interest in writing more posts about “the secret life of objects.”
Maybe I should try some in poetic form.
In the main, of course, the poem reminds me of myself, but it also reminds me of my father who spent the last 8-10 years of his life giving me “stuff” he wanted to pass on to someone who would appreciate them.
Taking a little break this week, so I’m closing comments, but if you like the poem, feel free to share it!
STUFF
—from Rattle #58, Winter 2017
To hear Wendy read it:
__________
Wendy Barker: “I can’t not write poetry. I’ve written essays, even scholarly work, but it’s poetry I always come back to. If I’m not working on a poem, I’m in trouble. Something about placing the words, the phrases, the lines, the images, the sounds on a page brings me alive. Alive in the moment. Writing poetry is also a way of examining conflicts or trouble in my own personal space and in the wider world. I’d like to think poems can make a difference. I guess I’m always in thrall to Rilke’s great line: ‘You must change your life.’ And I like to think of Auden’s lines in his poem ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’: ‘For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives / In the valley of its making where executives / would never want to tamper, flows on south / From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, / Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, / A way of happening, a mouth.’ I guess I keep on going because of all those mouths that came before me and that surround me, continually feeding me. And I long to provide a little something for those who are also hungry, so that we can feed each other.”
I can’t let you go without a cute pic. Here’s a new one of Theo and Gary, my son and ND’s dogs.