Day 49

Daily Assignments Chart for Week of 4/27

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

A poem for today: "What Kind of Times Are These" by Adrienne Rich

What Kind of Times Are These

BY ADRIENNE RICH

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

A song for today: "What's Going On?" by Marvin Gaye

Works Cited

Gaye, Marvin (1939-1984). "What's Going On?" What's Going On?, Tamla, 1971.

Rich, Adrienne (1929-2012). "What Kind of Times Are These." Poetryfoundation.org. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51092/what-kind-of-times-are-these. Accessed 30 April 2020.

Day 48

Daily Assignments Chart for Week of 4/27

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

A poem for today: Margaret Atwood's "Spelling." Although best know for her novels (especially The Handmaid's Tale), Margaret Atwood writes powerful poetry as well. "Spelling" includes the memorable stanza: "A word after a word / after a word is power." For a great profile of Atwood, check out this New Yorker piece from 2017.

Spelling

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

A song for today: "I Put a Spell on You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. "Spelling." True Stories, Oxford University Press, 1981.

Hawkins, Screamin' Jay (1929-2000). "I Put a Spell on You." At Home with Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Okey, 1956.

Day 47

Daily Assignments Chart for Week of 4/27

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

A poem for today: Nikki Giovanni's "the drum" is both simple and profound.

the drum

daddy says the world is

a drum tight and hard

and i told him

i'm gonna beat 

out my own rhythm

-nikki giovanni

A song for today: James Brown's "Funky Drummer" is one of the most sampled songs in popular music. 

Works Cited

Brown, James (1933-2006). "Funky Drummer." In the Jungle Groove, Polydor, 1986 (Recorded 1969).

Giovanni, Nikki. "the drum." The Reason I Like Chocolate, Folkways Records, 1976.

Day 45

Daily Assignments Chart for Week of 4/27

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

A song for today: "The Magnificent Seven" by the Clash

A poem to commemorate the 1954 release of Akira Kurosawa's epic Seven Samurai: Robert Hass's "Heroic Simile"

Heroic Simile

When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai 
in the gray rain, 
in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty, 
he fell straight as a pine, he fell 
as Ajax fell in Homer 
in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge 
the woodsman returned for two days 
to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing 
and on the third day he brought his uncle.

They stacked logs in the resinous air, 
hacking the small limbs off,
tying those bundles separately. 
The slabs near the root
were quartered and still they were awkwardly large; 
the logs from midtree they halved:
ten bundles and four great piles of fragrant wood, 
moons and quarter moons and half moons 
ridged by the saw's tooth.

The woodsman and the old man his uncle 
are standing in midforest
on a floor of pine silt and spring mud.
They have stopped working 
because they are tired and because 
I have imagined no pack animal 
or primitive wagon. They are too canny 
to call in neighbors and come home 
with a few logs after three days' work. 
They are waiting for me to do something 
or for the overseer of the Great Lord 
to come and arrest them.

How patient they are!
The old man smokes a pipe and spits. 
The young man is thinking he would be rich 
if he were already rich and had a mule. 
Ten days of hauling
and on the seventh day they'll probably 
be caught, go home empty-handed 
or worse. I don't know 
whether they're Japanese or Mycenaean
and there's nothing I can do.
The path from here to that village 
is not translated. A hero, dying, 
gives off stillness to the air. 
A man and a woman walk from the movies 
to the house in the silence of separate fidelities. 
There are limits to imagination.

Works Cited

The Clash. "The Magnificent Seven." Sandinista! CBS, 1980.

Hass, Robert. "Heroic Simile." Poets.org. https://poets.org/poem/heroic-simile. Accessed 26 April 2020.