(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-09 The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so. – Louis-Ferdinand Celine, French author and physician ________________________ . 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, writers from age 4 to 84, and every age in between ______________________ October 8 ______________________ 1910 – Hilda Conkling born in New York state, daughter of a poet mother and an English professor father who died when she was four years old. Hilda composed most of her poetry between ages four and fourteen. She never wrote them down herself –instead, they came out in conversation with her mother, who wrote down Hilda's words either in the moment, or from memory later, then she’d read the lines back to Hilda, who corrected any deviation from her original words. As Hilda grew up, her mother stopped recording the poems, but Hilda apparently didn’t write down any for herself. Nature was the theme of many of her poems, and they appeared in several magazines. They were also published in three collections: Poems by a Little Girl; Shoes of the Wind; and Silverhorn. She died at age 75 in June 1986. Dandelion by Hilda Conkling . Little soldier with the golden helmet, What are you guarding on my lawn? You with your green gun And your yellow beard, Why do you stand so stiff? There is only the grass to fight! “Dandelion” from Poems by a Little Girl, by Hilda Conkling – Kessinger Publishing, 2010 reprint ___________________________ . 1958 – Neile Graham born in Winnipeg, Canada; Canadian poet and scholar; a program administrator in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington in Seattle, and also runs the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her poetry collections include Seven Robins; Spells for Clear Vision; and The Walk She Takes. The Goddess of Real Things by Neile Graham . I’m an apple. I’m a stone. Something rounded by the sun, fed by it. Created from it, worn by time. . Made by bees and rain. By pressure and fire. Honey. Lava. . I think I’m alone on a tree full of multiple selves, in a box, on a shelf. Alone in a million million that footfalls crash into on the beach. . That sound: crunch, a clash. What I’m capable of: I am good with spices. I can skip across water. . I’m the core rotting. I’m the one rock cracked along the shore. Falling into broken cells. Split and rubbing along. . Meanwhile, here I am, everywhere in you. Bruising you. I’m the apple seed you swallow. The stone in your shoe. . “The Goddess of Real Things”– © 2023 by Neile Graham – appeared in Polar Starlight, an online magazine, in September 2023 ___________________________ . 1964 – Vasyl Makhno born in western Ukraine; Ukrainian poet, essayist, and translator. In 2000, he moved to New York City. He has published nine collections of poetry, including Thread and Selected New York Poems and Winter Letters: & Other Poems, which are in English. His book The House in Baiting Hollow is a collection of short stories. From Mariupol by Vasyl Makno . To survive a night in Mariupol Under the cracked cupola of sky Beneath the shattered building In this life on another shore Who could have known what would happen in March And who would not survive it? . With these sloping fields With those whose time is due for childbirth Who held on with the last of their strength Smells of blood and smells of urine The mother-to-be is placed on a stretcher Paramedic, carry her somewhere . Go on, carry her, round as the globe Shelling is all around … with every Step, she hears the fruit of her womb grow Dim … and she is also floating аway And the earth recedes and the blood ebbs … So why are you silent, Paramedic? . Are you stunned by the strikes? The shelling? Where is this mother and where is this son? You are also trembling for under their helmets “they truly have no shame” And you have exhausted your strength Our dead have no shame . I will shout in all directions Speak not of shame to the enemy They have killed a mother and son Assaulted clinics and hospitals And you … well, scurry alongside the buildings Run, paramedic, along the street . The veins on your neck are throbbing Carry on, maybe your rescue will succeed Of this birthing mother and her son For his first bath … If I am rushing you — forgive me . – translated from Ukrainian by Luba Gawur “From Mariupol” © 2022 by Vasyl Makhno ______________________ October 9 ______________________ 1924 – Jane Cooper born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but raised in Jacksonville, Florida; American poet, essayist, and teacher. In 1950, Cooper joined the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College where, with author and poet Grace Paley, and later with poet Muriel Rukeyser, she developed and enhanced its writing program. She suffered from a primary immune deficiency, and didn’t publish her first book of poetry, The Weather of Six Mornings, until 1969. Her other collections include Maps & Windows; Scaffolding: New and Selected Poems; and Green Notebook, Winter Road. She died in October 2007 at age 83. Rent by Jane Cooper . If you want my apartment, sleep in it but let's have a clear understanding: the books are still free agents. . If the rocking chair's arms surround you they can also let you go, they can shape the air like a body. . I don't want your rent, I want a radiance of attention like the candle's flame when we eat, . I mean a kind of awe attending the spaces between us— Not a roof but a field of stars. “Rent” from Scaffolding: Selected Poems, © 1993 by Jane Cooper – Tilbury House ___________________________ . 1940 – John Lennon born as John Winston Lennon in Liverpool England; English songwriter, singer, musician and peace activist. He was a founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles, one of the most successful bands in music history. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney produced hit after hit. Lennon as writer or co-writer had 25 number-one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. After the Beatles broke up in April 1970, he recorded over 150 songs as a solo artist. He was murdered in December 1980 at age 40. “Working Class Hero” was on his Plastic Ono Band album, released in December 1970. Working Class Hero by John Lennon . As soon as you're born they make you feel small By giving you no time instead of it all 'Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all . CHORUS: A working class hero is something to be A working class hero is something to be . They hurt you at home and they hit you at school They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool 'Til you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules . CHORUS . When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years Then they expect you to pick a career When you can't really function, you're so full of fear . CHORUS . Keep you doped with religion, and sex, and T.V. And you think you're so clever and classless and free But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see . CHORUS . There's room at the top they are telling you still But first you must learn how to smile as you kill If you want to be like the folks on the hill . CHORUS . If you want to be a hero well just follow me If you want to be a hero well just follow me . “Working Class Hero” © 1970 by John Lennon – © 2009 by Sony/ATV Music ______________________ October 10 ______________________ 1964 – Nick Carbo born in Legazpi, Philippines; Filipino-American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and anthologist. Best known for his poetry collection Secret Asian Man, which won the Asian American Writers Workshop’s Readers Choice Award. Other poetry books include Running Amok, El Grupo McDonald’s, and Andalusian Dawn, for which he won the 2005 Calatagan Award from the Philippine American Writers & Artists. The Filipino Politician by Nick Carbo . When he finds his wife in bed with another man— . The conservative politician feels an ache in his stomach, remembers the longanisa and the tapa he had for breakfast. He doesn't know whether to get the doctor or Cardinal Sin on the phone. He calls one of his bodyguards, tells him to shoot the man and then, his wife. He takes his .38 magnum from his brief case, shoots his bodyguard in the back. . The liberal politician pours himself a glass of Courvoisier, remembers a passage from an Anais Nin story. He is suddenly the one they call the Basque. He removes his Dior tie, his Armani shirt, his Calvin Klein boxer shorts. He puts on a black beret, whispers, tres jolie, tres jolie, que bonito, muy grande my petite amore. He joins them in bed, begins his caresses on the man's calves, kisses his way up the man's thighs. . The communist politician does not call his wife a puta, nor does he challenge the man to a duel with balisong knives. He stays calm, takes out a book of poems by Mao Tse Tung. Inspired, he decides to advance the Revolution. He takes a taxi to Roxas Boulevard, he begins to curse and throw rocks at the American Embassy. . “The Filipino Politician” from Epithalamion, © 2022 by Nick Carbo – Miliflores Publishing ______________________ October 11 ______________________ 1897 – Joseph Auslander born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American poet, anthologist, translator, and novelist. He graduated from Harvard in 1917, and attended the Sorbonne in Paris (1921-1922). He was married to poet Audrey Wurdemann in 1932. Auslander was the first to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1937-1941) – the title was changed to Poet Laureate Consultant in 1985, and is now commonly referred to as U.S. Poet Laureate. He is best-known for The Unconquerables, a collection of poems published in 1943, addressed to the German-occupied countries of Europe. His other collections include Sunrise Trumpets; Letters to Women; More than Bread; Riders at the Gate; and The Islanders. Auslander died of a heart attack at age 67 in June 1965. Home-Bound by Joseph Auslander . The moon is a wavering rim where one fish slips, The water makes a quietness of sound; Night is an anchoring of many ships Home-bound. . There are strange tunnelers in the dark, and whirs Of wings that die, and hairy spiders spin The silence into nets, and tenanters Move softly in. . I step on shadows riding through the grass, And feel the night lean cool against my face; And challenged by the sentinel of space, I pass. . “Homebound” from More Than Bread, © 1936 by Joseph Auslander – MacMillan Company ___________________________ . 1948 – Becky Birtha born in Hampton, Virginia; African American poet and children’s author whose heritage also includes Cherokee and Catawba; known for poems and short stories depicting African-American and lesbian relationships. Her family moved to Philadelphia when she was four, and she attended the Philadelphia School for Girls, a college prep public magnet school. She earned a BS in Child Studies at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and a MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Birtha has worked as a teacher, a librarian in a law library, and as an adoption agency representative. In 1983, her work appeared in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, and her first book was published, a short story collection called For Nights Like This One: Stories of Loving Women. Her first poetry collection, The Forbidden Poems, was published in 1991. Her children’s book Grandmama’s Pride won the 2005 Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Honor Book for Picture Book Text. How I Became A Lesbian by Becky Birtha . It's not that you become this way so much as it is something you always were someone you one day realize you are . like the discovery that you would have always loved star fruit kiwis or mangoes only you never knew they existed until you were halfway through your life. . Maybe you remember the day you discovered mangoes when you and a friend fed thick, pulpy slices into each other mouths open in astonishment. . Maybe you remember your first taste— and the startling comprehension of the possibilities of life in a world that included this incredible sweet reality. . “How I Became A Lesbian” © 1983 by Becky Birtha from Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology –Kitchen Table Press – first edition ______________________ October 12 ______________________ 1896 – Eugenio Montale born in Genoa, Italy; Italian poet, translator, literary critic, journalist, and editor. He worked as an editor for the Florentine publisher R. Bemporad in the 1920s and 1930s. In the late 1940s, he moved to Milan, and became a contributor and the music editor for the newspaper Corriere della Sera. In the 1950s and 1960s, he also worked as a reporter. In 1975, he was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature. Montale died of heart failure in 1981 at age 84. Maybe One Morning by Eugenio Montale . Maybe one morning, walking in dry, glassy air, I’ll turn and see the miracle occur: nothing at my back, the void behind me, with a drunkard’s terror. . Then, as if on a screen, trees houses hills will suddenly collect for the usual illusion. But it will be too late, and I’ll walk on silent among the men who don’t look back, with my secret. . – translated by Jonathan Galassi ______________________ October 13 ______________________ 1896 – Arna Bontemps born in Alexandria, Louisiana, to a Creole family; American poet, novelist, anthologist, and librarian, notable figure during the Harlem Renaissance. The Bontemps family moved to Los Angeles when Arna was three years old, and settled in the Watts district. After graduating from college in 1923, he worked for the post office until he moved to New York in 1924. He wrote several novels, including God Sends Sunday, Sad-Faced Boy, and Drums at Dusk. Bontemps was the editor of Great Slave Narratives and The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, and co-editor of The Poetry of the Negro with Langston Hughes. The Day-Breakers by Arna Bontemps . We are not come to wage a strife With swords upon this hill, It is not wise to waste the life Against a stubborn will. Yet would we die as some have done. Beating a way for the rising sun. . “The Day-Breakers” from The Book of American Negro Poetry – Harcourt, Brace and Company – 1922 edition ______________________ October 14 ______________________ 1867 – Masaoka Shiki born as Masaoka Noboru on Japan’s Shikoku Island; Japanese poet, author, and literary critic during the Meiji period. One of the four great haiku masters, along with Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. He died of tuberculosis at age 34 in 1902. a fancy-free cat is about to catch a quail Autumn wind - met, returning alive you and me ___________________________ . 1949 – Katha Pollitt born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Protestant father and a Jewish mother; American poet, essayist, critic, and feminist. She writes a bimonthly column, “Subject to Debate,” for The Nation magazine, and is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. She was The Frost Place poet-in-residence in 1977, and her poetry collection Antarctic Traveller won the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her 2014 nonfiction book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights is an unapologetic and wholehearted defense of abortion as a moral right and force for social good. She also writes on racism, feminism, poverty and welfare reform. Lunaria by Katha Pollitt . Now that I am all done with spring rampant in purple and ragged leaves . and summer too its great green moons rising through the breathless air . pale dusted like the Luna's wings I'd like to meet October's chill . like the silver moonplant Honesty that bears toward winter its dark seeds . a paper lantern lit within and shining in the fallen leaves. . “Lunaria” from The Mind-Body Problem, © 2009 by Katha Pollitt – Random House ___________________________ . 1988 – Ocean Vuong born as Vuong Quốc Vinh in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. His grandfather was a white American serving during the Vietnam War, who met and married a Vietnamese girl. They had three children, including Vuong’s mother. In 1975, his grandfather, on a visit to the U.S., was cut off from the family when Saigon fell to communist forces. His grandmother separated her daughters into orphanages, concerned for their survival. When Ocean was two, the family fled Vietnam after a police officer became suspicious that his mother was part white, and subject to the regime's discriminatory policies. They eventually reached a refugee camp in the Philippines, then gained asylum and migrated to the U.S., settling in Hartford, Connecticut. His mother renamed him Ocean after they came to America. His father abandoned the family, but Vuong later found his American grandfather. At age 11, he was the first child in his family to learn to read. By 15, he was working on a tobacco farm illegally, which he wrote about in his 2019 debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. After struggling in school, he tried community college, then enrolled as a marketing major, but quickly decided it wasn’t for him. He earned a BA in English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, then an MFA in poetry at New York University. Among his many awards, he has won the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and was short-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. His poetry collections include Burnings; Night Sky with Exit Wounds; and Time is a Mother. DetoNation by Ocean Vuong . There’s a joke that ends with — huh? It’s the bomb saying here is your father. . Now here is your father inside your lungs. Look how lighter . the earth is — afterward. To even write the word father . is to carve a portion of the day out of a bomb-bright page. . There’s enough light to drown in but never enough to enter the bones . & stay. Don’t stay here, he said, my boy broken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry . anymore. So I ran into the night. The night: my shadow growing . toward my father. “DetoNation” – © 2014 by Ocean Vuong, appeared in Poetry magazine’s February 2014 issue _____________________________________ G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies! _____________________________________ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/9/2198161/-Morning-Open-Thread-A-Working-Class-Hero-Is-Something-To-Be?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web 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/