rivanna Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 (edited) The new poet laureate in the US is Natasha Trethewey, the daughter of a black mother and a white father who grew up in the deep South. Here is a poem of hers, with the Renaissance painting it’s based on, below. Kitchen Maid with Supper at Emmaus, or The Mulata —after the painting by Diego Velàzquez, ca. 1619 She is the vessels on the table before her: the copper pot tipped toward us, the white pitcher clutched in her hand, the black one edged in red and upside down. Bent over, she is the mortar and the pestle at rest in the mortar—still angled in its posture of use. She is the stack of bowls and the bulb of garlic beside it, the basket hung by a nail on the wall and the white cloth bundled in it, the rag in the foreground recalling her hand. She's the stain on the wall the size of her shadow— the color of blood, the shape of a thumb. She is echo of Jesus at table, framed in the scene behind her: his white corona, her white cap. Listening, she leans into what she knows. Light falls on half her face. Edited June 20, 2012 by rivanna Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeorgeW Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 Rivanna, Very nice. This is the world I grew up in. George Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rivanna Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 Tariki mentioned Jane Hirshfield, a great poet, which reminded me of another great poet I’m reading, Mary Oliver--her latest book is A Thousand Mornings (2012). A couple of samples – I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall—what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do. AND BOB DYLAN TOO “Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.” Which is why we have songs of praise, songs of love, songs of sorrow. Songs to the gods, who have so many names. Songs the shepherd sings on the lonely mountains, while the sheep are honoring the grass by eating it. The dance-songs of the bees, to tell where the flowers suddenly, in the morning light, have opened. A chorus of many shouting to heaven, or at it, or pleading. Or that greatest of love affairs, a violin and a human body. And a composer, maybe hundreds of years dead. I think of Schubert, scribbling on a café napkin. Thank you, thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnieG Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 (edited) Rivanna Thanks for reopening this thread. There are some real treasures here. I've started re-reading Middlemarch, by George Eliot. "Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam." Edited December 8, 2012 by AnnieG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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