The Mnemosyne Monthly: Poem Forty-Four (Evening Chant) and TIferet Talk with Natalie Goldberg

Photo by Kevin Moul

Tomorrow I will have the great fortune of speaking with author, poet, teacher, and painter, Natalie Goldberg about her forthcoming book, The True Secret of Writing for Tiferet Talk. Goldberg is the author of the seminal writing books Writing Down the Bones, Wild Mind, Thunder & Lightning, and Old Friend from Far Away, which, together with her life-changing workshops, have rent open the landscape of creativity and inspired a revolution in the practice of writing in this country. Goldberg’s own gorgeous creative works include the novel Banana Rose; the memoirs Long Quiet Highway and The Great Failure; and the painting and poetry books Living Color, Top of My Lungs, and Chicken & In Love. 

Goldberg’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and her extraordinary teaching methods have drawn students from across the globe. The True Secret of Writing, due for release 3/19/13, is the capstone to four decades of Goldberg’s teachings and reveals newly-developed methods not found in Goldberg’s previous books.

Of The True Secret of Writing, Noah Levine states, “Natalie Goldberg has done the unthinkable, she has shared the secret teaching. The buddhas of time immemorial are rejoicing and the literary bodhisattvas are smiling in silent approval. Read this book, then write a revolutionary manifesto!” 

In celebration of this interview, I'd like to do something a little different with Mnemosyne this month and memorize a chant instead of a poem. Mnemosyne started because I was so in love with certain poems that I wanted to bring them into my breath and being. I wanted to feel them in the beats of my heart. I feel the same way about this chant, "Evening chant," which is a traditional opening for mediation sessions and which has many variations. I like Goldberg's version the best of any I've heard, because it is more immediate and visceral than the others.  

Enjoy!                                            

I beg to urge you everyone:

Life and death are a Great Matter
Awaken, awaken, awaken
Time passes quickly
Do not waste this precious life

(Natalie Goldberg's version of the Evening Chant, written on the wooden han)

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Forty-One (Zagajewski)

I'd like to dedicate this week's Mnemosyne Weekly to the victims and survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and their families and friends. The poem, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” written by one of my grad school professors, Adam Zagajewski, ran on the final page of The New Yorker's 9/11 issue. Though it was written a year and a half before the attacks, it became the most well-known poem cited in relation to the tragedy. Now that we are once again blindsided by the agonizing symptoms of a mutilated world, I think again of this poem.

According to The Daily Beast, "'Try to Praise the Mutilated World' recalls a trip Zagajewski took with his father through Ukrainian villages in Poland forcibly abandoned in the population transfers of the post-Yalta years." No stranger to tragedy himself, Zagajewski was just an infant when his family was deported from their home, thus beginning a state of exile that would become a motif in both his life and his poetry. Bless him for transforming his experience into art.

As I memorize this poem this week, I'll be thinking of the community of Newtown, Connecticut, and sending prayers for healing.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

By Adam Zagajewski


Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Forty (Dickinson)

This Thursday, 12/13/12, I'll join twenty other fabulous poets to read at the Annual Gathering of the Poets Emily Dickinson Birthday Bash. The reading, which is hosted by Dave Parsons and the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council, will take place at at 7 PM at The Corner Pub in Conroe, TX. We'll each read one poem of Emily's and one of our own. I've selected the lovely little poem, "How happy is the little Stone" for both the birthday reading and this week's Mnemosyne Weekly. My favorite thing about memorizing Emily Dickinson poems is having her unusual syntax, slant rhymes, and coupling of the concrete and abstract bouncing around in my head. I hope you enjoy this one too--

How happy is the little Stone

Emily Dickinson

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears --
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity --

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Nine (Amichai)

San Carlos Wildflowers

John Fowler

This week I've fallen in love with a new (to me) poet, Yehuda Amichai, whose selected poems I picked up at Half Price Books a few weeks ago and have been devouring since. Amichai writes in Hebrew and has been translated into more than forty languages. The poems in The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (the collection I've been reading) were translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell.

According to another well-known translator, Robert Alter, "Yehuda Amichai, it has been remarked with some justice, is the most widely translated Hebrew poet since King David.” And I have to say, I can see why. The poems are stunning. Both universal and deeply personal, they deal with the most important aspects of humanity through compelling, brilliant metaphors and images.

Before you read the poem I've selected for this week's Mnemosyne, here are a few lines that really struck me from other poems: "God's hand is in the world / like my mother's hand in the guts of the slaughtered chicken / on Sabbath eve" (From "God's Hand in the World," translated by Stephen Mitchell). And from another poem ("Yehuda Ha-Levi"), also translated by Stephen Mitchell: "But in the white fist of his brain / he holds the black seeds of his happy childhood. / When he reaches the belovèd, bone-dry land-- / he will sow."

Yehuda Amichai

Photo by Layle Silbert

Wildpeace
By Yehuda Amichai

Translated By Chana Bloch

Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Eight (Adair)

Photo Credit: ESA/Hubble

A star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud

This week's poem, "Riding a Koan," by Virginia Hamilton Adair, moves me for so many reasons. I love the way it sustains the extended metaphor through flights of fancy and torrents of weather and words, connecting the poet and the koan more and more concretely to the elements until the boundaries break down and the koan itself disappears.

In the end, she is alone, and there is work to be done. Regular life. The literal. What a journey she takes us on in so few words.

Adair's personal and professional life are an inspiration. She published poems in magazines in her twenties (1930's and 40's), and unhappy with the publishing world, discontinued publishing for fifty years. She did not publish again until the 1990's, and her first book came out when she was eighty-three years old and blind. She'd been writing the whole time. In fact, she'd been writing since she was two years old, but the thing is that she wrote for herself and for her own sensibility.

Adair's husband committed suicide in 1968, and many of her poems deal with that loss and loneliness in a powerful, understated way that I admire, sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly, as we see at the end of this poem.

And finally, I'd like to mention how well her poem fits with this blog's background image and theme of unbridling the muse, or in this case, the koan.

Virginia Hamilton Adair

Riding a Koan
By Virginia Hamilton Adair

My koan waits
unsaddled, unbridled
tied to nothing.

I mount and ride
out of the map
into a tangle of stars.

Currents of grass
move through me,
and the scented rain.

I peer through snow
dust, fire, tornadoes,
into the vulture's eye.

Suns stampede
cantering through me
in my thicket of bones.

My koan whisks away
flies and words
finally, itself.

The earth opens
like a beak
through which I sing.

Alone on the prairie now
sod to cut
a well to dig.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Seven (Reznikoff)

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth 

by Jennie A. Brownscombe

This week for Mnemosyne I've selected, "Te Deum," a simple little poem of praise in honor of Thanksgiving. The poet, Charles Reznikoff  lived from 1894 - 1976 and was an objectivist, which means he was part of a group of second-generation Modernists whose tenets were to treat the poem as an object, and to emphasize the poet's clear view of the world, intelligence, and sincerity.

In case you're not familiar with the term "Te Deum," it's an early Christian hymn of praise. The title is taken from the opening Latin words, "Te Deum laudamus," or "Thee, O God, we praise."

I'm attracted to this poem because of the humility and gratitude of the speaker and because it's a perfect poem for reciting at the table.

I hope some of you choose to memorize it with me this week, and I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Charles Reznikoff

photo by Abraham Ravett

Te Deum 

by Charles Reznikoff

Not because of victories

I sing, 

having none, 

but for the common sunshine, 

the breeze, 

the largess of the spring. 

Not for victory 

but for the day's work done 

as well as I was able;

not for a seat upon the dais 

but at the common table.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Six (MacLeish)

A Black Bird With Snow Covered Red Hills

by Georgia O'Keeffe

Well, we've all got our ideas about what a poem should be--at least in my fantasy world, where everyone cares about poetry enough to debate the topic. In this week's selection, "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish,we have a poem about what a poem should be. And though I'm not in full agreement, I do admire what MacLeish says, and, even more, I love the way he says it--the images and metaphors, the sections, the clean lines and flighty couplets--all inspire a sense of quiet beauty. And, I'm sure you can tell by the O'Keeffe pairing what one of my favorite couplets is: "A poem should be wordless /As the flight of birds."

It will be rather a long poem to memorize, but it will be worth it. Enjoy!

Archibald MacLeish

Ars Poetica

By Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Five (Millay)

Nana

Édouard Manet

Oil on Canvas, 1877

This week's poem, "First Fig," by the ever clever Edna St. Vincent Millay, is quite different from the other short poems I've memorized in that the others have had a zen sort of quiet, and a modest, internal spaciousness, whereas Millay's feels packed to bursting with wit. You may have noticed that my aesthetic leans in two very distinct lyrical directions--the short, quiet meditation that I just mentioned, and the dense, image-rich metaphorical poem. Millay's, obviously, is neither. Nor do I currently subscribe to the sentiment in Millay's poem. But with each posting I make, I learn. And there are a couple of things I want to learn from Millay this week--the brevity of cleverness built into the very sounds of words, and such perfect marriage between content and form--

Edna St. Vincent Millay 

photo by Arnold Genthe

First Fig

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Three (Nye)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Onions

I'm always a fan of that which praises something humble--in this case, the onion of Renoir's still and of Naomi Shihab Nye's beautiful poem, "The Traveling Onion." Leave it to a poet to look at a passage in a cookbook, and from it, create something so full of depth and beauty--so simultaneously simple and complex. The onion, the stew, the efforts in the kitchen--these may all be transient--but the poem is forever.

The Traveling Onion

Naomi Shihab Nye

“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship — why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way the knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.

And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Two (Sōin)

Martin Johnson Heade

Blue Morpho Butterfly

This week's selection is a haiku from the collection Japanese Haiku by Peter Beilenson. The poem is by Nishiyama Sōin, a Japanese poet of the early Tokugawa period. Sōin lived between 1605 and 1682 and was a samurai retainer before he began to pursue poetry. As with much Asian poetry, so much is said in the silences, and we are shown how easily, simply, and gracefully on can exhibit brilliance.  

                                                                 Life? Butterfly

                                                                 On a swaying grass

                                                                 That's all ...

                                                                 But exquisite!

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-One (Cisneros)

Painting: The Clown and the Tightrope Walker by Herbert Schondelmaier

Little Clown, My Heart

Sandra Cisneros

Tonight Sandra Cisneros is reading in Houston, and though I intended to go, it turns out I cannot make it after all. So here's my consolation to myself: I get to memorize "Little Clown, My Heart." I only discovered and read this poem a week ago, and I fell instantly in love with its rollicking stunts and jumps--with the humor, the sorrow, and the joy--the amazing imagery and energy--the eyes-closed leaps of creativity. I would have loved it no matter what, but I loved it even more due to the fact that it came to me in a serendipitous way: Just two days before I found Cisneros' book, I'd written a poem about death in which the predominant metaphors and images were circus and carnival related. So, as soon as I saw this poem, I knew I was meant to buy the book and share the poem here. I hope some of you will join me in memorizing this one. 

The Ever Beautiful Cisneros

Little Clown, My Heart

Little clown, my heart,
Spangled again and lopsided,
Handstands and Peking pirouettes,
Back flips snapping open like
A carpenter's hinged ruler,

Little gimp-footed hurray,
Paper parasol of pleasures,
Fleshy undertongue of sorrows,
Sweet potato plant of my addictions,

Acapulco cliff-diver corazón,
Fine as an obsidian dagger,
Alley-oop and here we go
Into the froth, my life,
Into the flames!

"Little Clown, My Heart" is the first 

poem in the collection Loose Woman.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty (Strand)

Mark Strand

Keeping Things Whole 

"Keeping Things Whole," is one of Mark Strand's most frequently anthologized poems, and it's easy to see why. In so few words, he accomplishes not only his own fascinating meditation on self, emptiness, identity, and more; in koan-like fashion, he also invites readers to their own meditations on these subjects. The speaker may embrace change and continue moving to keep things whole, but we are left feeling that, however clever, this is not the entire answer. The emptiness that has become the speaker's identity moves forward in space and time, impacting, always, the next field and leaving behind it not only a return to wholeness but a trail of questions too. 

Photo of Mark Strand by Lilo Raymond

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

From Sleeping with One Eye Open, Also found in Selected Poems

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Nine (Stevens)

Wallace Stevens

"Gray Room"

Sometimes a poem builds in perfect and unanticipated ways towards the last line. The journey is beautiful, though seemingly not extraordinary, and then BAM--we're hit with that line--the one that makes our bodies shudder and our minds and hearts split open. "Gray Room" had that sort of impact on me. I was lured in by the lovely description--which is polite, composed, and refined--but it felt pleasant and nothing more--until I got to the end. The last line, which is so vital and alive, hit me with all the more force due to the contrast in tone to all of the lines preceding it. I went from being a tourist looking out the window at a mountain to realizing I was in my native land, right at the lip of the volcano.

Gray Room

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Eight (Rabia)

Rabia, depicted in an Islamic miniature

Image is in public domain (expired copyright)

Poem translated by Charles Upton from Persian

This week I'm still thinking about stars, but we've stepped back a few centuries to 717–801 C.E. to read the work of the female Muslim saint and Sufi mystic, Rabia. Rabia is often considered the most important of Sufi mystics and is credited with having introduced the concept of Divine Love, or loving God for God's own sake, rather than out of fear. I love the raw simplicity of this poem, which so perfectly exemplifies Rabia's life choice to remain in contemplative solitude instead of marrying. Enjoy!

O my Lord, the stars glitter 

O my Lord,
the stars glitter
and the eyes of men are closed.
Kings have locked their doors
and each lover is alone with his love.

Here, I am alone with you.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Seven (Sexton)

The Starry Night 

painting by Vincent Van Gogh

poem by Anne Sexton 

Planning my December ekphrastic poetry course for The Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative has got me thinking about ekphrasis, and though I may not use this particular pairing for the workshop, Sexton is one of my favorite poets, and Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters, so, needless to say, this poem thrills and delights me, despite the grim subject matter! In fact, as you will see below, Sexton herself expresses a great deal of zest and ecstatic feeling--again, despite (or maybe because of) the grim subject matter. 

I'm sure everyone already knows who Van Gogh is, and I hope everyone knows who Sexton is, but if you are not familiar with her, she was one of the confessional poets of the 1950's and 1960's era of American poetry. I've always admired her unique voice, her incredible gift with imagery, and her capacity to lay herself bare on the page.

So here's one masterpiece inspired by another:

The Starry Night

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. –Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Six (Wilbur)

Richard Wilbur

"Apology" 

From Things of This World

I've long admired Richard Wilbur's beautiful poetry, which is playful, formal, and perfectly polished. This poem, which I pulled from New and Collected Poems, but which originally appeared in Things of This World, is a little more whimsical than the typical Wilbur poem, so if you aren't familiar with his work, I urge you to take a look at one of his books to bask in his incredible range. Almost two years ago, David Orr of The New York Times Book Review stated, "At 89, Richard Wilbur still cuts a straight path through the shifting landscape of American poetry." How true this is!

And for your enjoyment, here is a link to Wilbur reading "Apology": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdfuFI6TPKY.

Have a great week!

                 Apology

A word sticks in the wind's throat;

A wind-launch drifts in the swells of rye;

Sometimes, in broad silence, 

The hanging apples distil their darkness.

You, in a green dress, calling, and with brown hair, 

Who come by the field-path now, whose name I say

Softly, forgive me love if also I call you

Wind's word, apple-heart, haven of grasses.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Five (Rukeyser)

Muriel Rukeyser

"The Sixth Night: Waking"

From Out of Silence

Sometimes it only takes a few words to make a stunning poem that shoots into the heart of truth. These poems seem to roll into the waking world as if from a dream--effortless and surreal. Bless Muriel Rukeyser for this one!

If you're not familiar with Rukeyser's work, she was an extraordinary poet and human being. She was also a reporter and political activist, and she's known for her poems about feminist issues, social justice, and equality. 

In an interview with the Paris Review, former US Poet Laureate William Meredith said, "She was a very amazing human being and any traces of honesty in my life come from having seen how beautifully honest she was in administering her life and her poetry without any separation—you couldn't get a knife between the two things with her."

This poem, though short, so perfectly exemplifies the central role that poetry played in Rukeyser's life and what her poetry meant to other people. I hope you will join me in memorizing it this week!

The Sixth Night: Waking

That first Green night of their dreaming, asleep beneath the

   Tree,

God said, "Let meanings move," and there was poetry.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Four (Jeffers)

"Praise Life"

Robinson Jeffers

First, just let me say that, without question, there should be more postage stamps of poets. I'm sure all of you reading this entry would agree--and you might even tell me that there should be more magazine layouts, billboards, coffee cups, and t-shirts too. I wholeheartedly concur. But more importantly, we should be reading poems and carrying them with us in our hearts and minds. 

This week, I'll be carrying "Praise Life," by Robinson Jeffers, with me wherever I go.  "Praise Life" strikes me because it reminds me that anguish and despair are a very true and intrinsic part of this glorious thing we call life. Every time I think I'm so happy that I can never feel low again, some deep sorrow drops into my life to remind me that I am not immune--that, really, every moment carries the twin seeds of suffering and joy. Yet, like Jeffers, I choose to make the brave decision to praise life anyway and to remember, even when I'm happy, that suffering exists and needs our care and compassion.

Praise Life

This country least, but every inhabited country
Is clotted with human anguish.
Remember that at your feasts.

And this is no new thing but from time out of mind,
No transient thing, but exactly
Conterminous with human life.

Praise life, it deserves praise, but the praise of life
That forgets the pain is a pebble
Rattled in a dry gourd.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty (Hopkins)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pied Beauty 

What a delicious poem this is. I could just eat it. The glorious, delight in sound is a true celebration of language, infused with divinity--dappled, pied, plotted, and pieced. As you can tell by now, I have drifted far from my original intention not to talk about the poems in the body of the post. They're just too exciting.

So, this week our poet is Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins was a Victorian poet and Jesuit priest, known for developing a poetic technique known as sprung rhythm, which sought to imitate the natural patterns of speech.

To hear a beautiful reading of the poem, please click HERE.

If you're new to the blog, you might want to look at the first Mnemosyne Post to find out what this project is all about.

                                             Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                Praise him.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Nineteen (Valentine)

Jean Valentine

"Night"

Join me this week for a journey into Jean Valentine's Home Deep Blue to memorize the poem "Night." I read this piece for the first time just a few days ago and was awestruck by it. The first two lines and the last line, in particular, render me captive of the moment, delightfully bound to the girl, the poet, the train--to the sticky, crooked wonder of it all.

If you're not familiar with, Jean Valentine, she has published eleven collections of poetry, won numerous awards, and taught at several colleges and universities, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program of New York University, and Columbia University.

Of her poetry, Adrienne Rich says, "Looking into a Jean Valentine poem is like looking into a lake: you can see your own outline, and the shapes of the upper world, reflected among rocks, underwater life, glint of lost bottles, drifted leaves. The known and familiar become one with the mysterious and half-wild, at the place where consciousness and the subliminal meet. This is a poetry of the highest order, because it lets us into spaces and meanings we couldn't approach in any other way."

If you're new to the blog, you might want to look at the first Mnemosyne Post to find out what this project is all about.

Night

From this night on God let me eat

like that blind child on the train

touching her yogurt as I'd touch a spiderweb

the first morning in the country--sky red--

holding the carton and spoon to her mouth

with all her eyeless body, and then

orientally resting, the whole time smiling

a little to one side of straight ahead.