Verseful: Recent Episodes
Maniza Pritila
Verseful is a podcast about the verses in our lives and how we feel them.
Meaning, it is a podcast about poetry. It is a rather informal and inept endeavor by me and my friend, Meghan, to have fun talking about poems and how we relate to them. This podcast is for those of us who do not necessarily feel well-versed in poetry but who like to feel the poetry of life nonetheless. Perhaps it would be fun for you to eavesdrop on our feelings. (Taking a shot for every time I wrote "feelings"? There is more of where that came from ;).
Lake Gatun (Verseful 15) -Shyanne Figueroa Bennett
Glimmering membrane of water
split when she enters. Sinks
to clay floor. Sand. Shell.
sedimenting to form
a woman dark
as lake floor. Dark
as they created. In debris
of dynamic heads. Silver men
glisten unsewn and woven
into her being broken,
hollowed to carry
remnants of souls strewn
in man-made waters.
What can be made from nothing?
The question hooks to her neck.
Her curl hair gills for breath.
Iridescent scales shed
from slender sinewy form
as her intricate jawbones
mechanize for an open
-- unprecedented speech
for she who was carved
out of isthmus
intended for silence.
A New Dress by Ruth Dallas
I don’t want a new dress, I said.
My mother plucked from her mouth ninety-nine pins.
I suppose there are plenty, she said, girls of ten
Who would be glad to have a new dress.
Snip-snip. Snip-snip. The cold scissors
Ate quickly as white rabbit round my arm.
She won’t speak to me if I have a new dress!
My feet rattled on the kitchen floor.
How can I fit you if you won’t stand still?
My tears made a map of Australia
On the sofa cushion; from the hot center
My friend’s eyes flashed, fierce as embers.
She would not speak to me, perhaps never again.
She would paralyze me with one piercing look.
I’d rather have my friend than a new dress!
My mother wouldn’t understand, my grownup mother
Whose grasshopper thimble winked at the sun
And whose laughter was made by small waves
Rearranging seashells on Australia’s shore.
A Night in a World * Heather McHugh
I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t stay home
where the big dipper rises from, time
and again: one mountain ash.
And I wouldn’t have thought without traveling out
how huge that dipper was,
how small that tree.
Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem * Mathew Olzmann
Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage
might work: Because you wear pink but write poems
about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell
at your keys when you lose them, and laugh,
loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,
gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials
from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming.
You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents
of what you packed were written inside the boxes.
Because you think swans are overrated.
Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me
to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence.
Because you underline everything you read, and circle
the things you think are important, and put stars next
to the things you think I should think are important,
and write notes in the margins about all the people
you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there.
Because you make that pork recipe you found
in the Frida Kahlo Cookbook. Because when you read
that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing
except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self
and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights
are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed
over the windows, you still believe someone outside
can see you. And one day five summers ago,
when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge
was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments—
there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew,
which you paid for with your last damn dime
because you once overheard me say that I liked it.
Love After Love by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
We will have to slow down the pace of this project. So, a few announcements regarding that and some food for thought.
I Died for Beauty * Emily Dickinson
I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth,--the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms.
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
When Death Comes * Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
Life * Charlotte Bronte
LIFE, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?
Rapidly, merrily,
Life’s sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly!
What though Death at times steps in
And calls our best away?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O’er hope, a heavy sway?
Yet, hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.
Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair!
Time I’m Not Here * Graham Foust
All day on all my days,
the lives I am not to process wash in;
anxieties lullaby on
and quite like to be gotten among;
but now-- and now-- one old,
abundant flower just screws up the room.
A Plain Life * William Henry Davies
No idle gold-- since this fine sun, my friend,
Is no mean miser, but doth freely spend.
No precious stones-- since these green mornings show,
Without a charge, their pearls, wherever I go.
No lifeless books-- since birds with their sweet tongues
Will read aloud to me their happier songs.
No painted scenes-- since clouds can change their skies
A hundred times a day to please my eyes.
No headstrong wine-- since when I drink, the spring
Into my eager ears will softly sing.
No surplus clothes-- since every single beast
Can teach me to be happy with the least.
Wild Geese * Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
No Classes! by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
No classes here! Why, that is idle talk.
The village beau sneers at the country boor;
The importuning mendicants who walk
Our cities’ streets despise the parish poor.
The daily toiler at some noisy loom
Holds back her garments from the kitchen aid.
Meanwhile the latter leans upon her broom,
Unconscious of the bow the laundress made.
The grocer’s daughter eyes the farmer’s lass
With haughty glances; and the lawyer’s wife
Would pay no visits to the trading class,
If policy were not her creed in life.
The merchant’s son nods coldly at the clerk;
The proud possessor of a pedigree
Ignores the youth whose father rose by work;
The title-seeking maiden scorns all three.
The aristocracy of blood looks down
Upon the “nouveau riche”; and in disdain,
The lovers of the intellectual frown
On both, and worship at the shrine of brain.
“No classes here,” the clergyman has said;
“We are one family.” Yet see his rage
And horror when his favorite son would wed
Some pure and pretty player on the stage.
It is the vain but natural way
Of vaunting our weak selves, our pride, our worth!
Not till the long delayed millennial day
Shall we behold “no classes” on God’s earth.
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich-- yes richer, than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
My Words to You
by Jean Valentine
My words to you are stitches in scarf
I don't want to finish
maybe it will come to be a blanket
to hold you here.
love not gone anywhere
Smelling the Wind
by Audre Lorde
Rushing headlong
into new silence
your face
dips on my horizon
the name
of a cherished dream
riding my anchor
one sweet season
to cast off
on another voyage
No reckoning allowed
save the marvelous arithmetics
of distance
I want to use this episode to set the tone for how discussions about poetry, about the verses of our lives, should ensue in this space. This introduction is merely an example of how I traced the contours of a poem's feelings.