25

25

Joaquin Carvel Lyrics & Maladies tagged me!
I’m to list 25 writers who have influenced ME - as a writer. This is harder than I thought it would be. Like Joaquin, I don’t know where admiration ends and influence begins – or the other way around.
I will divide my list into 12 novelists and 13 poets. The novelists have certainly inspired me in many ways, affecting my writing in one way or another; or their works have influenced my thinking in some way. The poets listed are the poets I read consistently, on an everyday basis. There are many more poets whose work I admire and read – but, for this exercise, I have chosen the top 13 who, I feel, have “taught” me how to write and have given me an appreciation for poetry. – They have most definitely enriched my life with their excellent verse! Honestly, this was hard. I feel guilty about the ones I left out. There are many! ;(
I’ve mixed modern day with historical poets.
Well, here goes! I worked for a couple of hours just paring down the list! They are in no particular order of importance.

The novelists:

1. Somerset Maughan
2. Ann Tyler
3. John Steinbeck
4. William Faulkner
5. Pearl S. Buck
6. Tennessee Williams
7. Flannery O’Connor
8. Conrad Richter
9. Hans Christian Andersen
10. Robert Louis Stevenson
11. Eudora Welty
12. D. H. Lawrence

and the poets...
13. Ruth Stone
14. Walt Whitman
15. William Shakespeare
16. Charles Baudelaire
17. Hart Crane
18. John Keats
19. Theodore Roethke
20. Ted Kooser
21. Jane Kenyon
22. W.H. Auden
23. May Swenson
24. Marianne Moore
25. William Carlos Williams

And now, I am instructed to tag 3 people!
Karen Keeping Secrets
Bob Browning Life and Times of a Sometime Poet
Catherine Vibert Witnessing a World of People and Places

STORY FOR SPRING

STORY FOR SPRING


It was early spring,
when we walked
between the mountains,
bloodroot blotching
the ground like
patches of snow.
Chimney smoke
layered heavy in
the Appalachian valley,
obscuring the fruit
saplings in blue haze.


Over by the creek,
we came upon an
old mountain woman
eating turtle egg soup
in the shadows
of the beechnuts -
her mouth a darkened
slash in sallow skin,
eyes dark lined
and bright blue;
her hands two knots
and sweet smelling
from the black lye soap
she made from the
rendered fat of her pigs.


The soup and her smile
were both offered to us,
and we took both kindly –
the soup in delft bowls.
You slurped yours to be
polite and I spilled mine
out when I knew she
wasn’t watching me.


The old woman smiled
and wiped the grease of
the soup from her lips
onto her black mourning
sleeve, until it shone
like a mirror - reflecting
the shapes of the clouds
above us.


She laughed as she
hugged her shy old breasts,
and bade us to return one day.


Later in life,
when I was starving,
I dreamt of turtle eggs
rolling off marble sills
onto polished floors.
Like ping pong balls,
they bounced and rolled
into all the corners
of my existence,
piling up against
the doors and windows
of my youth,
falling and rolling
into my middle aged years –
soft, leathery, cream-colored
giant pearls, mystical
in their spherical-ness…
falling and rolling.

TAKING SHAPE

Merissa Gilbert Garrison

TAKING SHAPE


The sun shines through my molecules,
making little kaleidoscopic designs
on the early morning walls of my room.


I want to be a child of light

and lightness,
I whisper into the stillborn air.


I want to be that lacy rendering
blushing on the blue -
and what moths are drawn to
on old nights of mossy moons.


I want to be that brilliant point
at which you stare, until I
disappear into the soft air
of black firmament.


I want to be the shine
on the wings of
crows - rainbows
on oily plumage.


I want to be the glint on the white
skin of water that slips over
the ancient stones in a stream -
or in your dream.


And, when the time comes -
I want to be the glimmer
you call hope.

A POET IN LITHUANIA

Painting by Merissa Gilbert Garrison

A POET IN LITHUANIA

The narcissus bulbs
she forced in shallow
pots of stone and water,
stretch up, papery white,
in the window,
tall, slender sentinels.
Some of the weaker stems
droop over in agony
against the frosted glass
of March’s night.
The newly arrived storks
shift in their man-made
nests on the roof above her,
impersonating the souls
of the dead poets of Vilnius.
With her heart,
she listens for a whispered
word from them –
some thrilling word
to help her write,
but none will come.
Instead, she hears
the hollow rattling
of their bills clattering
far into the night.
In a few months,
the storks will lift
from her roof in a quiet hush,
catch a warm stream of air
and without a single
flap of their wings,
they will glide
all the way to the Baltic Sea.
Unable to concentrate
on words any longer
and with no lover
in the city now,
the poet will beg
the storks to take her
with them on their flight.
For her passage, she’ll promise
to speak for them,
as they have no
voices of their own.
But the storks,
afraid of losing their independence,
will refuse to take her along.
Forlorn and detached,
she will crumple page after
scribbled page, and throw them
into the blackened fireplace –
long into winter’s night,
as she waits for the skies to turn white
with the wings of the returning storks.
For her - it is not enough
to pen the poem;
she wants to breathe it.

FOR A MOMENT

FOR A MOMENT


we stop
we hold
our breath
we watch
we listen

by the look of things
by the sound of things
we guess a miracle
has taken place

we grasp hands
just for a moment
the wall of silence
opens up between us

we laugh and cry
we sing and sigh
just for a moment
we touch beyond

what we have been
to each other all these
years for a moment
and then
the moment is gone
and so are we

RETICENCE

RETICENCE


Masquerading as a goddess,
she looks out upon the city
as her lover sleeps.
The city looks different to her,
now that he has come back.


She marvels at this,
as she presses her face to the
dark, cold glass of winter,
studying the lights,
and the buildings -
the bridges, and
the streets below.


Knotted tendrils of hair
fall over her shoulder,
and her legs tremble,
as she looks back to
her lover who beckons
to her now.


Glancing out the
window one last time,
she sees dark animals
running on a windy hill -
and pockets of luminous light
in a dark and foreboding sky.

THE DANCE

THE DANCE


In the late
afternoon sun
of February,


in a room
resplendent
with hearts,


we dance
the polka in
old world style


to long-playing
records that skip
with contentment,


while the crows
on the wall look
impassively on.


I see nothing
but your cornflower
blue eyes.


I feel nothing
but your warm sweet
breath on my cheek.


Your expression says,
let’s dance till the
crows call our names.