Poet of the Day #2

Naomi Shihab Nye gets today's honor by virtue of the fact that she has written this totally amazing poem using only things she overheard her son say when he was two and three years old. Here 'tis:

One Boy Told Me

Music lives inside my legs.
It's coming out when I talk.

I'm going to send my valentines
To people you don't even know.

Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop.

Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground
When they swing. I hate that.

Look at those 2 o's with a smash in the middle—
That spells goodbye.

Don't ever say “purpose” again,
Let's throw that word out.

Don't talk big to me.
I'm carrying my box of faces.
If I want to change faces I will.

Yesterday faded
But tomorrow's in BOLD FACE.

When I grow up my old names
Will live in the house
Where we live now.
I'll come and visit them.

Only one of my eyes is tired.
The other eye and my body aren't.

Is it true that all metal was liquid first?
Does that mean if we bought our car earlier
They could have served it
In a cup?

There's a stopper in my arm
That's not going to let me grow any bigger.
I'll be like this always, small.

And I will be deep water too.
Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?
Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?

Your head is a souvenir.

When you were in New York I could see you
In real life walking in my mind.

I'll invite a bee to live in your shoe.
What if you found your shoe
Full of honey?

What if the clock said 6:92
Instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?

My tongue is the car wash
For the spoon.

Can noodles swim?

My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?

From now on I'll only drink white milk
On January 26.

What does minus mean?
I never want to minus you.

Just think—no one has ever seen
Inside this peanut before!

It is hard being a person.

I do and don't love you—
Isn't that happiness?

Quote of the Day #20

"Poetry should be passionate and outrageous and political and most of all revolutionary.''
-Gerald Stern

I think Stern's poem below stays true to this ideal:

My Sister's Funeral

Since there was no mother for the peach tree we did it
all alone, which made the two of us closer
though closeness brought its loneliness, and it would
have been better I think sometimes to be sterile
from the start just to avoid the pain
which in my life this far has lasted seventy
years for I am in love with a skeleton
on whose small bones a dress hung for a while,
on whose small skull a bit of curly hair
was strung, and what is dust I still don’t know
since there was no mother to turn to then and ask
what else was she wearing, did she have on shoes,
and were the two trees from Georgia, and was it
true somebody said the other peach
should have died instead of her; and I could
imagine the nose going first though forty years later
the trees were still there and not as big as you’d think;
and it was my cousin Red with the flabby lips
who said it, he had red eyes, a red monstrosity,
a flabby body, half the house was filled with
male cousins, they were born in rooms a
short distance from the rats, I can’t remember
which ones had the accents nor what his
Hebrew name was, nor his English.

Poet of the Day #1

Brian Turner, who published a book called Here, Bullet about his experience as a soldier in Iraq. Check out his reading on YouTube here:



Also, there's a good interview with him on NPR.