Reformissionary

NPM '08: One of the Most Beloved Poems...Ever

The 23rd Psalm
(KJV)
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

NPM '08: Taylor Mali

Can't neglect introducing (or reintroducing) you to Taylor Mali this National Poetry Month.

NPM '08: Czeslaw Milosz

I enjoy the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz (Wikipedia, Poets.org), winner of the Nobel Prize in 1980.  I think you will too.  Milosz died in 2004.

Forget

Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.

Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.

The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute.

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago.Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

NPM '08: More Billy Collins

I can't help myself.  I need to point (or re-point) you to Billy Collins.  Last year I linked to his animated poetry, which I find amazing.  Here's one...

Here's his poem "Vade Mecum" found in Questions About Angels...

I want the scissors to be sharp
and the table perfectly level
when you cut me out of my life
and paste me in that book you always carry.

Here's Billy reading 3 poems (including "The Lanyard")...

Music-o-Poetry

I've been out-of-pocket for a couple of days, so here's a post with just a little bit of Music Monday, Lots-o-Links, and National Poetry Month.

MUSIC MONDAY

A new video from Hot Chip.  Pretty cool...

One Pure Thought

In case you didn't know, here's the reason wearing red jock straps over your pants is SO popular now...

LOTS-o-LINKS

Driscoll loves the ESV Study Bible. 

John Piper: Preaching as Concept Creation, Not Just Contextualization

Founders gets a facelift.

I love this clip.  If you ever need to work on your business card envy, here's how.  (WARNING: A little colorful language.  This clip is for Mommies and Daddies only.)

NPM '08

Love this stuff from Borders Open Door Poetry.

Check out The Poetry Center of Chicago.

NPM '08: Finding Good Poems

Poetry, to some, is a difficult art form to appreciate and enjoy.  Some poetry is just weird.  It can be hyper-cryptic and hard to understand.  Other poetry is so syrupy sweet that it's just unpalatable.  So how can a busy person, like you, start to actually enjoy poetry on a regular basic and feel that it adds to your life without wasting your time?  I have a two step plan, both involving Garrison Keillor. 

1. Subscribe to the podcast of Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac.  It's free through iTunes (or whatever you use).  It a very cool, and very short (just over 5 minutes) daily podcast with historical stuff of interest to writers and writing, and a poem read by Keillor.  Hearing poetry read aloud is an easy way to begin loving poetry.  Read the show notes in order to get a flavor of the content. 

2. Buy and read Good Poems by Garrison Keillor.  Dana Gioia (a dude), a wonderful poet and thinker, and a critic of the unapproachable poets of our day, writes...

Good Poems left me grateful for Garrison Keillor, whose Writer’s Almanac has probably done more to expand the audience for American poetry over the past ten years than all the learned journals of New England. He understood that while most people don’t care much for poetry, they do love poems, provided they are good poems. He also understood that most people would rather hear a poem than read it, though they harbor a sensible suspicion that anyone who reads them one poem aloud may be dangerously capable of going on for hours. Presenting only one poem a day at the end of Writer’s Almanac, Keillor has engaged a mass audience without either pretension or condescension. A small victory perhaps, but one that restores faith in the possibilities of public culture.

This is a helpful book of poems, good ones, that come from a variety of authors.  The best way to start with poetry is anthologies.  From the poetry of many you will then find a few you like, and then you will have your favorite poets and can search out for more of their work.

Hope this is helpful.  If you are a poetry lover, feel free to share how you would introduce people to the world of poetry.

NPM '08: Ted Kooser @ UC Davis

One of my favorite poets, Ted Kooser, reads his poetry and speaks about poetry at UC Davis...

NPM: 22 Contemporary Poets

Karsten Piper has listed 22 contemporary poets worth reading, via Abraham Piper.  Well worth checking out.

NPM '08: Remembering Mom

Anyone who has been reading my blog for the last year year may remember the poem I read at my Mom's funeral.  Mom died a year ago today, April 3rd, 2007.  Here is "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins...

"The Lanyard" by Billy Collins (NPR)

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.        

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

NPM '08: Fire and Ice

"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

It's National Poetry Month!

Throw some confetti and blow a shofar...it's National Poetry Month!  Love this time of year, when all things are becoming new again, when the doldrums of winter are washed away by April showers, and when poetry is in the air.

Far too many of us weren't raised on a steady diet of poetry, except maybe in the form of popular music.  But that isn't usually very good poetry.  Some of us have been introduced to poetry by an artsy parent, a literature teacher in High School, or maybe we discovered it much on our own.  Regardless, poetry is a powerful and beautiful thing to discover and something we should continue to rediscover for the rest of our lives. 

Over the next month I'm going to post poems, info on poets, poetry websites, thoughts on writing poetry, and more. Whether you are a poetry lover or not, this month is for you.  Let's begin by watching a video from a prominent U.S. poet, Dana Gioia as he gives a commencement speech at Stanford last spring.  He speaks of the loss of recognition of art and artists in our culture...

Lots-o-Links 3.21.08

I'm trying to make time to blog on the changes coming in my local church, and especially focus on some evangelism stuff I'm working to begin soon.  Sorry it's taking so long, but it's been a nutty last few weeks.  Maybe I'll blog on the nuttiness as well.  Might be therapeutic for me.

"Alcohol, Acts 29 and the Missouri Baptist Convention" is a bunch of information put out by some Missouri Baptists that has finally proven, without question, that some people will never get it because they spend all their time trying to get worked up over extra-biblical issues.  It's actually a very funny read for those of us who see how ridiculous it all is.

In Timothy Keller news, the Washington Post's Michael Gerson has a review of The Reason for God.  It's a good one.  USA Today quotes Keller, Driscoll and others on "Has the 'Notion of Sin' Been Lost?" (via Stet)

"Parks and squares aren't a luxury, but an essential feature of the urban infrastructure."

Bob Franquiz is looking to only work 4 hours a week.  I've perused the book, and it looks interesting enough.

Speaking of books, how about the 2008 Christianity Today Book Awards.  I picked up the "The Church/Pastoral Leadership" category winner The Call to Joy & Pain by Ajith Fernando at last year's Desiring God Conference.  I like Ajith's writings and the topic was intriguing.  It got buried in a stack of books, but is back on my "to read" shelf.

This looks VERY interesting to me: The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures.

The top 80 church websites (because 80 is a nice round number). :)

Oh that more of us would do what they are doing in Austin for city-wide church planting.

It won't be Longfellow until National Poetry Month.  It's my Gioia to blog on poetry every April.  Keats your eyes open for more very soon.

Lots-o-Links 11.15.07

Me and a certain pastor friend are going to see this tomorrow.  I'm pumped! 

-Bob Hyatt is good reading, as usual.  80-20 and the Organic Church Part 1 and Part 2
-Harry Potter as "Shared Text"
-Seth Godin's "Unleashing Your Ideavirus" (Part 1 and Part 2) was an excellent and thought-provoking read.  It's not very new (2000), but it was good.  More Godin here.
-I really dig this creative photography of kids.
-Must reading for those mashing the Thanksgiving potatoes.

New Billy Collins Animated Poetry

Good news.  I've just heard that some new Billy Collins Animated Poetry (older stuff linked here) should be online in the next month. You should subscribe to JWTNY at YouTube in order to get an update when the new stuff goes up.

Here's the newest put up last week, "The Country."

National Poetry Month Posts

Since April is over I thought it might be helpful to list all of my National Poetry Month posts for your convenience.

It's National Poetry Month!
Mom and The Lanyard
Can Poetry Matter?
Poetry Quotes
Men and Poetry
What is Poetry?
Billy Collins, Animation
National Poetry Map
Billy Collins Poetry Reading
On Reading American Poetry
A Few Poems
On Writing Poetry

Let me also add the podcasts that I failed to mention.  I listen to some writing and poetry podcasts worth looking up: Writers on Writing, Poetcast from poets.org, Writer's Almanac from Garrison Keillor, and Poem Present.

NPM: On Writing Poetry

Poets.org has a nice page of essays on writing poetry and the writing life. 

What advice can you get from Edgar Allen Poe or Ralph Waldo Emerson?  What do rhyme, meter, metaphor, elision, and free verse mean?  What is a haiku, a limerick, or a sonnet?  Check these resources out.

NPM: A Few Poems

A few poems to continue with National Poetry Month.

Czeslaw Milosz (found in)

"A Confession" (via)

My Lord, I loved strawberry jam
And the dark sweetness of a woman's body.
Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitress's neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,
Able to recognize greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I knew what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud,
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.

Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass. 

Haiku from Billy Collins (first two via, third via, found in)

Mid-winter evening,
alone at a sushi bar—
just me and this eel.

Awake in the dark—
so that is how rain sounds
on a magnolia.

Moon in the window—
the same as it was before
there was a window.

Robert Frost

"The Road Not Taken" (via - with audio, found in)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

NPM: On Reading American Poetry

On Thursday during the question and answer time with Billy Collins he gave some great insight and advice on poetry.  I thought his comment on reading American poetry was worth repeating.

87% of American poetry is not worth reading.

Wow. 

NPM: Billy Collins Poetry Reading

It's not everyday a world renowned poet, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, and the author of the poem you read at your Mom's funeral comes to your hometown.  So I just had to go see Billy Collins (via poets.org, bigsnap.com, bestcigarette.us) author of "The Lanyard," when he came to Woodstock today. 

We didn't know he was coming until a few days after Mom's funeral.  So I immediately contacted the Woodstock Opera House for tickets and learned they were sold out.  That was disappointing.  But I talked to a friend and Opera House employee about it and he called the next day with the news that some tickets opened up.  We picked up two.

This morning we dropped off the two youngest at a friend/church member's house and went to see Billy Collins.  He read poems for about an hour: a sonnet or two, a handful of haiku, and the rest his typical, informal-style poetry.  He was funny, thoughtful, and engaging.  The crowd clapped and laughed, and even gasped at insightful lines.  It was brilliant, just brilliant.  I can't believe anyone can think poetry is over their head if it comes from Billy Collins. 

I have three of his books and wanted them signed, so I got in line and met Billy Collins.  I told him I read "The Lanyard" at my Mom's funeral.  The lady next to him (I don't think I've ever met her before) said something like, "Are you the guy with the Woodstock blog?  I was telling Billy about what you said on your blog."  How cool is that?  He was very personable and showed real concern.  He asked how well I got through the poem, you know, without crying.  I told him I did fine.  So then he signed my three books, including just above "The Lanyard" poem, and then we posed for a photo via my hot wife.  He said the photo would probably end up on the blog.  He was right. 

I think Billy Collins has become my favorite living poet.  Watch his animated poetry, buy his books, listen to his live readings, or attend a live reading.  Here's a big archive of Billy reading poems.  I think you may just learn to love poetry, or love it even more.

NPM: National Poetry Map

Man, this is so cool.  Poets.org has a National Poetry Map so you can click on a state and find out about local poets and poetry, the state Poet laureate, literary organizations, poetry friendly bookstores, writers conferences, etc.  For example, when I click on Illinois I find out that Li Young Lee is one of our local Chicago poets (already knew that) and that Kevin Stein is our Illinois Poet laureate (didn't know that).

This is a great resource for finding local stuff as well as expanding your horizons.  The more I use Poets.org, follow their RSS feed, and listen to their Poetcast (podcast), the more I love this site.  Get on it.

NPM: Billy Collins, Animation

These Billy Collins action poetry videos are just fantastic.  Brilliant.  He is the dude who wrote "The Lanyard" and is speaking at the Opera House here in Woodstock on Thursday.  My wife and I have tickets.  Enjoy these wonderful short videos.  (Videos not available to embed are "Men in Space," "No Time," "Today" and "The Country."
.

NPM: What is Poetry?

The spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility. –William Wordsworth

The art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors. –Thomas Macaulay

What ideas feel like. –Karl Shapiro

The art that offers depth in a moment. –Molly Peacock

Memorable speech. –W.H. Auden

Perfection of form united with a significance of feeling. –T.S. Eliot

Poetry essentially is figurative language, concentrated so that its form is both expressive and evocative. --Harold Bloom in The Best Poems of the English Language

This, I believe is the ultimate direction and goal of poetry, metaphor, and symbol—to express what is inexpressible, to fuse together what still remains separate. --Robert Siegel, The Christian Imagination, 351

NPM: Men and Poetry

If you are interested in taking online poetry writing classes, you may want to look at Zarafa Tutorials.  I haven't used them, but like where they are coming from.  They link to Douglas Jones' interesting, short article "Men Hate Poetry."

...if you hate poetry or don't have the time or are just indifferent, consider that this might be symptomatic of some deep failure in you instead of in the poetry. And then, don't just admit to the failure and go on hanging your head. Hunt for beauty. Track it down. A passion for beauty certainly is characteristic of those great men in the past whose lives were characterized as after God's own heart. Remember David's psalms and Beowulf's celebrations, full of life and faithfulness.

I also recommend looking at the articles on poetry over at Credenda Agenda (where Jones' article is published).  If you search for poetry on their site, you get many articles.  Check them out. 

NPM: Poetry Quotes

Some quotes about poetry (and art) from The Christian Imagination (which happens to be a fantastic book of essays on the "practice of faith in literature and writing").  These are quotes in the book, not quotes from the book.

The poet's job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place but the kind of thing that always does take place. --Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says "look at that" and points.  --C.S. Lewis, The Personal Heresy

It is the function of all art to give us some perception of an order in life, by imposing an order upon it. --T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. --George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. --Percy B. Shelley, A Defense of Poetry

Reading poetry gives experiences there is no other way to have.  It gives them quickly, suddenly, just about whenever we want.  --Kenneth Koch, Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry

Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another.... We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections.  --Robert Frost, "Education in Poetry"

NPM: Can Poetry Matter?

I thought it would be on topic this National Poetry Month to mention that I read "The Lanyard" at my Mom's funeral.  My brother said he hadn't cried all week until I read that poem.  Something to think about concerning how poetry can matter in life, and death.

Dana Gioia's essay, "Can Poetry Matter?" (originally published in 1991, also found in his book Can Poetry Matter?) is must reading on this subject.  His concern is that poetry now belongs in a subculture in America and has been lost from "the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life."

It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes.

One of my all-time favorite poems is by a famous writer of frontier/adventure novels, Louis L'Amour.  "An Ember in the Dark" is found in his book of poetry, Smoke From This Altar. 

An Ember in the Dark by Louis L'Amour

Faintly, along the shadowed shores of night
I saw a wilderness of stars that flamed
And fluttered as they climbed or sank, and shamed
The crouching dark with shyly twinkling light;
I saw them there, odd fragments quaintly bright,
And wondered at their presence there unclaimed,
Then thought, perhaps, that they were dreams unnamed,
That faded slow, like hope's arrested flight.

Or vanished suddenly, like futile fears--
And some were old and worn like precious things
That youth preserves against encroaching years--
Some disappeared like songs that no man sings,
    But one remained--an ember in the dark--
    I crouched alone, and blew upon the spark

NPM: Mom & The Lanyard

Another poem for National Poetry Month.  I've posted this poem before, but I find it timely and beautiful.  My Mom is nearing the end of her life (at 59).  Cancer.  We are headed to see her today, not knowing how many hours, days she might have left.

"The Lanyard" by Billy Collins (first heard on NPR)

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.        

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

It's National Poetry Month!

April is National Poetry Month and I hope to provide a number of posts this month with some good poems, links, and encouragement to make poetry a regular part of your diet.  I'll have some stuff for aspiring poets as well. 

A few quick links to start off the month.

A lot of great stuff on NPM from Poets.org.
Receive a poem a day in your inbox this month.
Scholastic gives some helpful links for teachers.
Charles Bernstein says he is Against National Poetry Month, As Such.

Listen to W.H. Auden (died 1973) read his poem First Things First. (bio, wikipedia)

The Next Poem by Dana Gioia (link)

How much better it seems now
than when it is finally done–
the unforgettable first line,
the cunning way the stanzas run.

The rhymes soft-spoken and suggestive
are barely audible at first,
an appetite not yet acknowledged
like the inkling of a thirst.

While gradually the form appears
as each line is coaxed aloud–
the architecture of a room
seen from the middle of a crowd.

The music that of common speech
but slanted so that each detail
sounds unexpected as a sharp
inserted in a simple scale.

No jumble box of imagery
dumped glumly in the reader's lap
or elegantly packaged junk
the unsuspecting must unwrap.

But words that could direct a friend
precisely to an unknown place,
those few unshakeable details
that no confusion can erase.

And the real subject left unspoken
but unmistakable to those
who don't expect a jungle parrot
in the black and white of prose.

How much better it seems now
than when it is finally written.
How hungrily one waits to feel
the bright lure seized, the old hook bitten.

The Lanyard

Billy Collins is a former Poet Laureate of the U.S. and creator of Poetry 180.  I heard an interview of him on some podcast, I think.  Maybe this one.  He read his poem, "The Lanyard."  I think it's brilliant and wanted to share it here. 

"The Lanyard" by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.        

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Slowness: Among Trees

I'm planning a series of posts on the art and importance of slowness.  Here's a poem worthy of meditation.

The opening poem from A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
Where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
And lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
And the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
And the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
Mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
And I sing it. As we sing,
The day turns, the trees move.

Poetry: Brain Food

Good article on the goodness of poetry for deep thinking.  We need to read more poetry.

Just a couple of poet suggestions (all guys, sorry): Dana Gioia, Wendell Berry, Ted Kooser, and Li-Young Lee.

Words
by Dana Gioia

The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.       

And one word transforms it into something less or other—
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
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