9/28/2008



by Kathleen Ernst

Handwork

 

Scraps of tatting, yellowed with age.

She found time a burden, I think,

the woman who wound thread tight

around her slender fingers;

that childless housewife cradling her shuttle,

silver and small, in her other hand.

As lonely hours knotted, day after day,

she twisted her dreams into neat loops of lace.

 

Hand-knit mittens, Norwegian styling.

She was homesick, I think,

the woman who knit these intricate patterns,

one on the back of hand, one on the palm;

that immigrant clicking her double-point needles,

minding the thumb gusset, minding the fit.

As she hid from the babble of English words

she summoned her own home with memories and wool.

 

Baby blanket, sewn from a flour sack.

She was worried, I think,

the pioneer woman who picked up her needle

with roughened fingers, and leaned toward the fire;

that gaunt young mother, threading her needle,

straining to see with smoke-squint eyes.

As the white wolves of winter loped toward her soddy

she stitched her fear into faded cloth.

 

Tatted and knitted, quilted and sewn.

It was handwork, I think, that kept them going

over vast ocean, prairie, and plain –

basting together scraps of their dreams,

     knitting new lives, knotting new hopes.

Women unknowingly seamed together,

finding comfort in cadence and color,

finding solace, each on her own. 


-originally appeared in Fox Cry Review, September, 2008


9/27/2008



American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Perhaps you made paper leaves when you were in grade school.  I did.  But are our memories as richly detailed as these by Washington, D.C. poet, Judith Harris?


Gathering Leaves in Grade School

They were smooth ovals,
and some the shade of potatoes--
some had been moth-eaten
or spotted, the maples
were starched, and crackled
like campfire.

We put them under tracing paper
and rubbed our crayons
over them, X-raying
the spread of their bones
and black, veined catacombs.

We colored them green and brown
and orange, and
cut them out along the edges,
labeling them deciduous
or evergreen.

All day, in the stuffy air of the classroom,
with its cockeyed globe,
and nautical maps of ocean floors,
I watched those leaves

lost in their own worlds
flap on the pins of the bulletin boards:
without branches or roots,
or even a sky to hold on to.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Judith Harris, whose most recent collection of poems is "The Bad Secret," Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Reprinted from "The Literary Review," Fall 2008, by permission of Judith Harris. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation.  The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.  We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. 

9/11/2008




American Life in Poetry: Column 181

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Stuart Kestenbaum, the author of this week's poem, lost his brother Howard in the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We thought it appropriate to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001, by sharing this poem. The poet is the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine.


Prayer for the Dead


The light snow started late last night and continued
all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally
enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother
was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware
that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson
of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything
that is born: we are here for a moment
of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us
remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace
we don't know, and each moment contains rhythms
within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece
of your own writing, or an old photograph,
you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you,
it's not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire
and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture
of grief and remembrance.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Stuart Kestenbaum. Reprinted from "Prayers & Run-on Sentences," Deerbook Editions, 2007, by permission of Stuart Kestenbaum. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. ******************************

9/04/2008



American Life in Poetry: Column 180

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006


What's in a name? All of us have thought at one time or another about our names, perhaps asking why they were given to us, or finding meanings within them. Here Emmett Tenorio Melendez, an eleven-year-old poet from San Antonio, Texas, proudly presents us with his name and its meaning.

My name came from. . .

My name came from my great-great-great-grandfather.
He was an Indian from the Choctaw tribe.
His name was Dark Ant.
When he went to get a job out in a city
he changed it to Emmett.
And his whole name was Emmett Perez Tenorio.
And my name means: Ant; Strong; Carry twice
its size.



American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry
magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2000
by Emmett Tenorio Melendez. Reprinted from "Salting The Ocean:
100 Poems By Young Poets," Greenwillow Books, 2000, by
permission of the editor. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by
The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser,
served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the
Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept
unsolicited manuscripts.