Inside The Hearts' Walls

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

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The summer days are coming at last, we can't hold them back. And that means our season of poetry clubbing has come to an end. Don't forget about the book signing on Thursday at 3:00 in the atrium of North Santiam Hall. It will be the final Poetry Club event of the year.

I want to thank everyone for the prompts, the personal feelings and ideas shared, the inspirations, the encouragement.  I only wrote because you asked me to. I only promised that I would try. And in trying to write, I was forced to figure out whether or not I had anything worth saying. And I discovered that I did.

I was wrong last time. Whitney has one last prompt for us. It comes from the Mary Oliver poem above.

"What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

That's your prompt for next year.
That's your prompt for the rest of your life.

Thanks Whitney. You were a really good poet laureate for us.

by Turtle Shell


It takes a courageous person
to turn a train around.
The weight of sunk costs
builds a momentum quite profound.

It's a rare leader who
can turn to their followers and say:
"This course we've now been on so long
isn't the correct way."
  They won't want to believe.
  They'll rationalize and cleave.

No one wants to admit to being wrong.
But when truth confronts conviction,
then you'll see
either integrity,
or a need to be right that borders on addiction.

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This was our submission to The Commuter this week. I don't know whether or not they'll be publishing any more issues this year though, so this may well not be getting published.

Leaving Spaces

by Kay Ryan


It takes a courageous
person to leave spaces
empty. Certainly any
artist in the Middle Ages
felt this timor, and quickly
covered space over
with griffins, sea serpents,
herbs and brilliant carpets
of flowers – things pleasant
or unpleasant, no matter.
Of course they were cowards
and patronized by cowards
who liked their swards as
filled with birds as leaves.
All of them believed in
sudden edges and completely
barren patches in the mind,
and they didn’t want to
think about them all the time.

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The final week of the year is at last upon us. This won't be the final update for the blog this year, but I won't be surprised if this is the final blog-post some of the Poetry Club blog's (no doubt incredibly numerous) followers read, since there aren't going to be any more prompts after this one and I'm well aware that prompt reminders are the primary draw to this site for many of you.

Let's not beat around the bush any longer. This week's prompt comes from the poem Leaving Spaces by Kay Ryan, and it goes a little something like this: "It takes a courageous person to _________".  Like our "Grateful Word" prompt from back around Thanksgiving, you get to fill in your own blank. Hmm... that's kind of like a metaphor for life, isn't it. "You get to fill in your own blank." Or possibly a censored epithet. "Why don't you go fill in your own blank!" It's weird the places my mind wanders when I know I'm writing for a bunch of word-nerds. What was the point of this paragraph again?

"It takes a courageous person to _________"

Last one. Get to it.

by Turtle Shell


First and last
on every list
every day
is sleep.

You can kill yourself without dying
Cast your spirit into an unliving stupor
Too tired to focus, too depressed to care
Too desperate for any meager drops
of fun, or feeling,
to go to bed when you should.

Sleep deprivation
self-perpetuates.

For seven weeks
Winter term
Junior year
I was my own zombie horror flick
A stumbling, despondent parody of life

I am horrified that it took me so long to wake up.
I will never forget
I will never reprise
those dolorous delirious days.

So here is my second lesson:

First and last
on every list
every day
is sleep.

Alright, here's the second to last prompt for the year. It's not a line from a poem this time, but an instruction. Write a list of ten or eleven things you have to do tomorrow (it is suggested that the items be listed more abstractly than concretely), then pick one and write a poem about it.

Also, on June 4th from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, at Fireworks restaraunt there is going to be an Art for Hope benefit concert. We have been invited to have poets perform at the event. To do so, one would need to send a copy and or video of the poem to Abrianna Marie, the artistic director by May 28th. The link below apparently has more information.

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102896463135671

Thursday, June 2, 3:00.  This is when the book signing will be. That's the last week of classes. Half-a-week before Finals. One week before commencement. Three weeks and two days from today. Twelve days after Judgement Day, from what I hear. Mark your calendars.

Also, a prompt:
"I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."
Whitney is keeping the poem it is from secret so that our inspirations on how to write to it will not be tainted. So don't google it until after you've written your poem!


Edit: Okay, here's where the prompt was from.

When Death Comes


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 his 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 a 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.

~ Mary Oliver ~

by W


I know
 what happened to a dream.

It was diffused, not deferred, it was a silver dandelion
that blew away in a spider web and  sprinkled
its dream  pollen on ground and on grass and caught
in long  hair and landed in the wondering eyes of small children.

People once thought it would melt in the sunlight.
It grew into fields full of stars.
 
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This is this week's submission to the Commuter. Whitney's stuff is always so dreamy, isn't it?

by Turtle Shell


Where do dreams come from?
And where do they go?

It's hard work, dreaming.
More than wishing or wanting,
A dream is an intention, a belief.
Amidst the hard lessons life teaches
It's difficult to hold faith
That a distant desire can actually be had.

It's harder still to make one come true.
To dream is to sacrifice, to persist,
Inch ever forward, practicing and learning.
Keep betting on it,
Keep rolling the dice,
Keep paying the price,
Until they finally roll right.

Not every dream gets chased.
Mutually exclusive dreams will rip a person in half.
Impossible dreams must be let go, or fail.
There is a catacomb of once living dreams
Starved withered husks clutter a psyche's dusty alcoves;
Curios, nostalgics
Don't stare too long, you'll only make yourself sad.

And be warned,
Some aren't as dead as they appear.

Oh hey, here's something I probably should have linked to a couple weeks ago: It's a book!

That's right, the Words & Pictures book is available to be printed on demand and shipped to wherever things like that are able to get mailed to. But before you rush over to buy your very own copy, don't forget that Robin is buying a bunch of them in bulk to save on shipping costs and that the Poetry Club will later on this month be getting together for a book signing/selling party where they will be dispersed.

Edit: By "this month" I of course mean "next month".

by Langston Hughes


What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

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Our prompt for the week is 'what happens to a dream when it gets deferred?' I don't think we have to restrict ourselves to the list of options that Langston Hughes provided.

In other news, we're looking for LBCC Poet Laureate applicants for next year. Not 'we' the LBCC Poetry Club, precisely, but near enough. So if you know anyone who might be interested, get them in touch with someone who can help them apply (Robin probably would be best, or someone else in the English department). There's apparently a $250 per term stipened sweetening the pot for whoever is chosen to take up the mantle.

A Nathan is a name that claims the bearer is a gift from god.
As if that were more true for them than any other random clod.
While pompous parents gasconade their divine honorarium,
The apostate child conceives an autonomic planetarium.

Now to be named a Knight implies a certain measure of command,
Of horses, weapons, armor, plus a duty to the sovereign hand.
The prudent, pious, gallant man must vow to serve the polity,
And demonstrate a creed of polished gender inequality.

The baggage of a storied name is not that which I long to bear.
Though knights are fun and 'gift from god' yet has a charming ancient air.
Tav is the name that I go by and means just what I want to be,
It connotes naught and no-one else, it's wholly, solely, only me.
 
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I think this one is only half as long as it deserves to be, but it was hard to write and I don't feel like spending hours more coaxing words into tight verses just to make the flow feel less abrupt. Sorry if it sends you scurrying to find a dictionary, thesauruses are just a little bit too fun sometimes. And speaking of having too much fun while writing poetry, in case you didn't notice reading it through the first time, this poem has a verse structure (and implicit background music) ganked from a well-known song called The Elements by Tom Lehrer. 
 
...hee-hee, just kidding, I know it's actually originally from The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan. Though you should click here if you want to see the version of the tune that got glued to the inside of my skull in my formative years.