(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: The Music Will Make Your Hips Laugh [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-08-21 The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. – Allen Ginsberg _____________________ . Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day's posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. So grab your cuppa, and join in. __________________________ 13 poets born this week with thirteen answers to “What is Poetry?” ___________________________ August 20 ______________________ 1901 – Salvatore Quasimodo born in Modica, Sicily, Italy; Italian poet and translator, one of the foremost 20th century Italian poets; winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1908, his father took the family with him when he went to Messina to help with the city’s recovery from the deadliest 20th century European earthquake – it killed 75,000 people. The devastation had a great impact on seven-year-old Salvatore. While studying at a Technical College, he published his first poems. In 1919, he moved to Rome to complete his engineering studies, but an economic recession forced him to find work as a technical draughtsman. He took a job with Italy’s Civil Engineering Corps (1930-1934), but also published his first poetry collection Acque e terre (Waters and Earths). By 1934, he was living in Milan, and from 1938 on, he devoted himself entirely to writing. He was anti-Fascist, but during WWII, he worked on translations of religious texts, the Odyssey, and cantos by Catullus. After the war, he won numerous literary awards for his poetry. Quasimodo died of a cerebral hemorrhage in June 1968 at age 66. Refuge of Nocturnal Birds (In alto c’è un pino distorto) . by Salvatore Quasimodo . On the heights a twisted pine; intent, listening to the void with trunk arched in a bow? Refuge of nocturnal birds, it resounds at the ultimate hour, with a beating of swift wings. It even has its nest my heart suspended in the darkness, a voice; also listening, the night. “Refuge of Nocturnal Birds” from Salvatore Quasimodo: Complete Poems, translated by Jack Bevan – Carcanet Classics, 2022 edition __________________________ . 1948 – Heather McHugh American poet and translator, born in San Diego, California, to Canadian parents, but grew up in Gloucester Point, Virginia, where her father directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River. She became a freshman at Harvard at age 17. Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 won the Bingham Poetry Prize of the Boston Book Review and was named by the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year. Her other poetry collections include The Father of the Predicaments; Eyeshot; and Upgraded to Serious. What He Thought by Heather McHugh – for Fabbio Doplicher* . We were supposed to do a job in Italy and, full of our feeling for ourselves (our sense of being Poets from America) we went from Rome to Fano, met the mayor, mulled a couple matters over (what’s a cheap date, they asked us; what’s flat drink). Among Italian literati . we could recognize our counterparts: the academic, the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous, the brazen and the glib—and there was one . administrator (the conservative), in suit of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated sights and histories the hired van hauled us past. Of all, he was the most politic and least poetic, so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome (when all but three of the New World Bards had flown) I found a book of poems this unprepossessing one had written: it was there in the pensione room (a room he’d recommended) where it must have been abandoned by the German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn’t read Italian, either, so I put the book back into the wardrobe’s dark. We last Americans . were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till, sensible it was our last big chance to be poetic, make our mark, one of us asked “What’s poetry?” Is it the fruits and vegetables and marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or the statue there?” Because I was . the glib one, I identified the answer instantly, I didn’t have to think—”The truth is both, it’s both,” I blurted out. But that was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed taught me something about difficulty, for our underestimated host spoke out, all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said: . The statue represents Giordano Bruno, brought to be burned in the public square because of his offense against authority, which is to say the Church. His crime was his belief the universe does not revolve around the human being: God is no fixed point or central government, but rather is poured in waves through all things. All things move. “If God is not the soul itself, He is the soul of the soul of the world.” Such was his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die, they feared he might incite the crowd (the man was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors placed upon his face an iron mask, in which . he could not speak. That’s how they burned him. That is how he died: without a word, in front of everyone. And poetry— (we’d all put down our forks by now, to listen to the man in gray; he went on softly)— poetry is what . he thought, but did not say. . “What He Thought” from Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 © 1994 by Heather McHugh – Wesleyan University Press * Fabbio Doplicher (1938-2003) was an Italian poet, performance artist, and literary critic. Doplicher’s poetry collection ‘La rappresentazione’ (‘The Performance’) won the Premio Montale in 1985, and ‘Compleanno del millennio’ (‘Birthday of the Millennium’) won the Premio Pellegrino in 2001. Some of his poetry has been translated, and published as ‘Selected Poems’ (English translation by Gaetano A. Iannce, with a revision by Ruth Feldman). ___________________________ August 21 ______________________ 1987 – Aja Monet born as Aja Monet Bacquie in Brooklyn, New York; American poet, writer, lyricist, and activist. At age 8, fascinated by storytelling and typewriters, she began writing poetry. She started performing her poems in high school. Encouraged by her teachers, Monet started a club, Students Acknowledging Black Achievements (SABA), and got involved with Urban Word NYC, which helped her see poetry could be a career. At 19, she won the title Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam Champion. Monet earned her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in writing from the Art Institute of Chicago. She published two E-books, Black Unicorn Sings (2010) and Inner-City Chants and Cyborg Ciphers (2014). Her 2017 collection My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry. In 2015, she took part in founding Smoke Signals Studio, a social justice arts collective in Miami, and coordinated the poetry workshop VOICES: Poetry for the People. Monet is currently based in Los Angeles. If you ever find yourself on j street by Aja Monet . Get off at Cleveland Street. You will discover a neighborhood of noise and the music will make your hips laugh the concrete is a pasture of broken nerves more importantly, head towards the house whose shrouded shoulders shiver under the ragged shawl of an amusing sky this is 61 Ashford Street an old woman called my grandmother spends most summers on the front porch if you visit when I am a little girl, you will see me sitting next to her in a beach chair agitated by the humid of spirits and smoke. She blows ghosts from her lips fashioning cigarettes between her fingers like magic wands. Her arms ripple like the branches of willow trees and her hands are ancient I have watched them break the necks of chickens how the blood drips from her wrists like syrup savoring the stick and moist before falling. She is a conjured woman and Cuba is stubborn for her tongue when she came here, to this house of magic and galaxies I wonder if she ever longed for her country If a Santera ever misses her God. . © 2020 by Aja Monet _______________________ August 22 ______________________ 1893 – Dorothy Parker born in Long Branch, New Jersey; American poet, wit, editor, and literary critic. Her formal education ended at 14, but Parker was a founding member of the famed Algonquin Round Table (circa 1919-1929). When the New Yorker debuted in 1925, Dorothy Parker was on the editorial board. As the magazine’s “Constant Reader,” she contributed poetry, fiction — and book reviews famous for pulling no punches: “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” She made four failed suicide attempts, and said in an interview when she turned 70, “If I had any decency, I’d be dead. All my friends are.” In 1967, Parker did die, of a heart attack, at age 73. She bequeathed her literary estate to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom she had never met. Unfortunate Coincidence by Dorothy Parker . By the time you swear you’re his, Shivering and sighing, And he vows his passion is Infinite, undying — Lady, make a note of this: One of you is lying. “Unfortunate Coincidence” from The Portable Dorothy Parker, © 1954 by Dorothy Parker – Viking Penguin _______________________ August 23 ______________________ 1849 – William Earnest Henley born in Gloucester, England; British poet, writer, critic, and editor. His life was beset with problems, beginning in 1861 with tuberculosis of the bone, causing a series of extremely painful abscesses, which led to the amputation of his left leg below the knee in 1868, the same year that his father died. His schooling and early career as a journalist were hampered by long stays in hospital because his right foot had become diseased. He refused to have it amputated in spite of warnings he was risking his life, and instead was treated by surgeon and scientist Joseph Lister in 1873. He spent the next three years in hospital, and wrote the poems for his first collection, In Hospital, including his most famous, Invictus. Robert Louis Stevenson, a frequent visitor during this ordeal, became a close friend. Stevenson later told Henley in a letter: “It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot Long John Silver … the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you.” Henley married in 1878, and he and his wife Anna had a daughter named Margaret, but she died at age five. Henley was devastated, but kept working. In 1902, he fell from a railway carriage, which caused his latent tuberculosis to flare up. In July, 1903, he died at age 53. Crosses and Troubles by William Earnest Henley . Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me. One or two women (God bless them) have loved me. I have worked and dreamed, and I’ve talked at will. Of art and drink I have had my fill. I’ve comforted here, and I succoured there. I’ve faced my foes, and I backed my friends. I’ve blundered, and sometimes made amends. I’ve prayed for light, and I’ve known despair. Now I look before, as I look behind, Come storm, come shine, whatever befall, With a grateful heart and a constant mind, For the end I know is the best of all. __________________________ . 1908 – Musa McKim, American painter and poet born in Oil City, Pennsylvania; she spent much of her youth in Panama because her father was a civil servant in the Canal Zone. During the Great Depression, she worked for the Treasury Section of Fine Arts painting murals in public buildings. In 1930, she met painter Philip Guston (originally Goldstein) when they were students at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, and they married in 1937 after moving to New York. They worked together on a mural for a U.S. Forest Service building and on panels placed on U.S. Maritime Commission cargo ships. In 1940, they moved to Woodstock, New York, but spent time going back and forth to New York, then lived for a time in Rome. After Philip died in 1980, she returned to Woodstock, and began writing poetry. She died at age 83 in 1992. Alone With The Moon: Selected Writings of Musa McKim was published posthumously in 1994 by her daughter. Alone With The Moon by Musa McKim . What about the small game and the dew falling? . The dry leaves of autumn magnify the hop of the lightest bird. . Why don’t you lie down to pass the time? Why not sleep – and never meet? . Let the witnesses be distant mountains. . Should I get back to the city? To be with the guilty? Or stay with the tree, unconscious of me? “Alone With the Moon” from Alone With The Moon, Selected Writings of Musa McKim, © 1994 by her daughter Musa Mayer __________________________ . 1922 – Nazik Al-Malaika born in Bagdad, to a feminist poet mother and academic father; one of the most influential women poets in Iraq; noted as the first Arabic poet to use free verse, in her ground-breaking second book of poetry, Sparks and Ashes. Her poems covered nationalism, social and feminist issues, honour killings, and alienation. She left Iraq with her husband and family in 1970 after the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party (a pan-Arab military-dominated group) came to power, moving first to Kuwait, until it was invaded by Saddam Hussein in 1990, and then to Egypt, where she lived in Cairo until her death at age 83 in 2007. Her other books of poetry are And the sea changes its color, Bottom of the Wave, The Night’s Lover, and Revolt Against the Sun, edited and published posthumously. Elegy for a Woman of No Importance by Nazik Al-Malaika . She died, but no lips shook, no cheeks turned white no doors heard her death tale told and retold, no blinds were raised for small eyes to behold the casket as it disappeared from sight. Only a beggar in the street, consumed by hunger, heard the echo of her life— the safe forgetfulness of tombs, the melancholy of the moon. . The night gave way to morning thoughtlessly, and light brought with it sound—boys throwing stones, a hungry mewling cat, all skin and bones, the vendors fighting, clashing bitterly, some people fasting, others wanting more, polluted water gurgling, and a breeze playing, alone, upon the door having almost forgotten her. . “Elegy for a Woman of No Importance” from Revolt Against the Sun: Selected Poetry of Nazik Al-Malaika, translation © 2020 by Emily Drumate – Saqi Books __________________________ . 1974 – Michelle McGrane, South African poet born in Zimbabwe, who spent her childhood in Malawi, until her family moved to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 1988; her two published poetry collections are Fireflies & Blazing Stars, and Hybrid. She has been a mentor in the Agenda Feminist Media Project Creative Writing Programme. In 2004, she participated in the Centre for the Book’s Turning the Page Festival in Cape Town. A Girl Like That by Michelle McGrane . Corrective rape is a hate crime in which a person is raped because of their perceived sexual or gender orientation. – EE Bartle, ‘Lesbians And Hate Crimes’, Journal of Poverty, 2000 . The newspaper report said the young woman was repeatedly raped, kicked, beaten within an inch of her life, while her mama cried behind the door. . Two manly relatives decided to straighten her out once and for all, give her strong medicine down on her knees, the cheeky cunt had it coming. . A girl like that, what did she expect? Shameful lesbian bitch brought dishonour to the family name, refused to come round to their way of thinking. “A Girl Like That” © 2012 by Michelle McGrane –from Binders Full of Women, edited by Sophie Mayer and Sarah Crewe _______________________ August 24 ______________________ 1591 – Robert Herrick baptized on August 24, 1591, in London; English lyric poet and Anglican cleric; known for his poetry collection, Hesperides, which includes “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” with the opening line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” He was long dismissed as a minor poet, until 20th century scholars began to reevaluate his work. His father, a goldsmith, died when Herrick was an infant. He was apprenticed at 16 to his uncle, also a goldsmith, but left at age 22, and went to Saint John’s College, Cambridge. Limited means forced him to transfer the less expensive Trinity Hall. He took holy orders in 1623, but little else is known about his life from 1617 until 1629, when he was appointed as vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire. A Royalist during the English Civil War, he was expelled from his parish in 1647 for refusing the Solemn League and Covenant. During his exile, he lived in London on the charity of his friends and family until the monarchy was restored. Herrick returned to his parrish in 1662, where he died at age 83 in 1674. Delight in Disorder by Robert Herrick . A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness; A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace, which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribands to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part. __________________________ . 1898 – Malcolm Cowley born in Pennsylvania; American novelist, poet, historian, and critic; an ex-pat American who lived in Paris in the 1920s, which he wrote about in his memoir Exile’s Return (1934). In 1929, his first book of poetry Blue Juniata was published, and he became an associate editor of the left-leaning New Republic. He was involved in leftist politics in the 1920s and 30s. In 1941, when President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Cowley’s friend Archibald MacLeish as head of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures, MacLeish recruited Cowley as an analyst, but Cowley soon ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee. MacLeish was pressured by J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to dismiss Cowley. In January 1942, MacLeish sent his reply that the FBI needed a course of instruction in history. “Don’t you think it would be a good thing if all investigators could be made to understand that Liberalism is not only not a crime but actually the attitude of the President of the United States and the greater part of his Administration?” he wrote. Cowley resigned two months later. In 1944, Cowley began a new career as a literary advisor, editor, and talent scout at Viking Press. He worked on the Portable Library series, an anthology of paperback reprints that could be mass-produced cheaply and marketed to military personnel. His first project was The Portable Hemingway, which sold so well, he followed it with The Portable Faulkner, which rescued Faulkner from falling into literary obscurity. He pushed for publication of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, edited an anthology of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories, and oversaw a reissue of Tender Is the Night. His memoir, The View From 80, was published in 1980. He died at age 90 in 1989. Prophetic by Malcolm Cowley . With blocks of asphalt where the streets ran once, And granite and brick spilling in heaps across them, With girders bridging the rain-washed ravines, it would be More pains than the worth of it to make ten level farms out of Manhattan Island. But in the old graveyards, And under the site of stables and slaughter-houses, What excellent gardens! “Prophetic” appeared in Poetry magazine’s February 1923 issue _______________________ August 25 ______________________ 1910 – Dorothea Tanning born in Galesburg, Illinois; American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. She moved to Chicago in 1930 to work as a commercial artist, and first encountered Surrealism at Chicago’s Museum of Modern Art. Her work for Macy’s department store so impressed their art director he introduced her to gallery owner Julien Levy, who mounted solo exhibitions of her work in 1944 and 1948. Levy introduced her to other painters allied with his New York gallery, including Max Ernst, who left his wife, Peggy Guggenheim, for Tanning. They were married in 1946 in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner, and remained married for 34 years, living for many years in France, where she remained after his death in 1976. Her return to New York in the 1980s caused a shift in focus to her writing, which had been a secondary pursuit for most of her life. She published six books of poetry before her death at the age of 101 in 2012. Woman Waving to Trees by Dorothea Tanning . Not that anyone would notice it at first. I have taken to marveling at the trees in our park. One thing I can tell you: they are beautiful and they know it. They are also tired, hundreds of years stuck in one spot— beautiful paralytics. When I am under them, they feel my gaze, watch me wave my foolish hand, and envy the joy of being a moving target. . Loungers on the benches begin to notice. One to another, "Well, you see all kinds..." Most of them sit looking down at nothing as if there was truly nothing else to look at until there is that woman waving up to the branching boughs of these old trees. Raise your heads, pals, look high, you may see more than you ever thought possible, up where something might be waving back, to tell her she has seen the marvelous. . “Woman Waving to Trees” from Coming to That, © 2011by Dorothea Tanning – Graywolf Press _______________________ August 26 ______________________ 1922 – Elizabeth Brewster born in Chipman, a logging village in New Brunswick, Canada; Canadian poet, author, and academic. The youngest of five children born to a family of limited financial means, her frail health kept out of school for the first few years, but she was a voracious reader. When she was 12, her first poem was published in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal. In 1942, she was given an entrance scholarship to the University of New Brunswick. In 1945, she was co-founder of the literary journal The Fiddlehead. She earned her BA in 1946, and a Master of Arts from Radcliffe College in 1947. On a Beaverbrook overseas scholarship, she studied at King’s College, London (1949-1950), then earned a Bachelor of Library Science from the University of Toronto, and completed a Ph.D. at Indiana University Bloomington in 1962. As a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, she taught creative writing from 1972 until retirement in 1990. Brewster published over 20 poetry collections, including In Search of Eros; Entertaining Angels; Wheel of Change; Footnotes to the Book of Job; Bright Centre; and Time and Seasons. She also wrote two novels, three short story collections, and two memoirs. She died at age 90 in December 2012. Atlantic Development by Elizabeth Brewster Three abandoned churches in a row; tombstones behind them hidden by waving timothy; a farmhouse with broken panes, still shielded by limp curtains, dark with dust; further along the road, a deserted mineshaft. In the neighbouring village the only young men on the street are these granite soldiers carved on the war memorial in front of the Post Office. “Atlantic Development” © 1963 by Elizabeth Brewster, appeared in The Fiddlehead magazine’s Fall 1963 issue __________________________ . 1957 – Nikky Finney born in Conway, South Carolina; American poet and academic; her father was a lawyer, and her mother, a teacher. They were both active in the Civil Rights Movement, and Finney has long been an advocate for social justice and cultural preservation. She was the Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky (1993-2013), and is currently the Bennett Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Head Off & Split, and the 1999 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Her poetry collections include On Wings Made of Gauze, Rice, Heartwood, The World is Round, and Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry. Concerto no. 7 {working out} at the Watergate – from The Condoleezza Suite by Nikki Finney . Condoleezza rises at four, stepping on the treadmill. . Her long fingers brace the two slim handles of accommodating steel. . She steadies her sleepy legs for the long day ahead. She doesn't get very far. . Her knees buckle wanting back last night's dream. . [dream #9] . She is fifteen and leaning forward from the bench, playing Mozart's piano concerto in D minor, alone, before the gawking, disbelieving, applauding crowd. . not [dream #2] She is nine, and not in the church that explodes into dust, the heart pine floor giving way beneath her friend Denise, rocketing her up into the air like a jack-in-the-box of a Black girl, wrapped in a Dixie cross. . She ups the speed on the treadmill, remembering, she has to be three times as good. . Don't mix up your dreams Condi. . She runs faster, back to the right, finally hitting her stride. Mozart returns to her side. . She is fifteen again, all smiles, and relocated to the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, . where she and the Steinway are the only Black people in the room. . ”The Condoleezza Suite” from Head Off & Split, © 2011 by Nikky Finney – TriQuarterly _______________________ G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/21/2188456/-Morning-Open-Thread-The-Music-Will-Make-Your-Hips-Laugh Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/