Pages

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Poetry for the heart

Besides hosting the illustrious BEDA project, April is also National Poetry Month. In honor of that, I think I will share two of my favorite poems with you. I read these when I was an undergraduate in a creative writing class and they have stayed with me all this time. The bolded parts are the ones that I remember the most and speak to me. I don't know what it says about me now but it might be a good indication of who I was at 20. I had just started dating my husband around this time and he had moved back to his parent's house for various reasons.

Secret Life

By Stephen Dunn

Why you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don't say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby.
Or, you've just made love
and feel you'd rather have been
in a dark booth where your partner
was nodding, whispering yes, yes,
you're brilliant. The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that's unpopular
in you, all that you know
a Baptist, say, or some other
accountant would object to.
It becomes what you'd most protect
if the government said you can protect
one thing, all else is ours.
When you write late at night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
It's why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who'll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.




Balances


Nikki Giovanni

in life
one is always
balancing

like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers

or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)

3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth

our sweet black essence
or the funky honkies down the street

and lately i've begun wondering
if you're trying to tell me something

we used to talk all night
and do things alone together

and i've begun

(as a reaction to a feeling)
to balance
the pleasure of loneliness
against the pain
of loving you



2 comments:

  1. I didn't know either of those poems - I'm glad you shared, I'm always looking for new poets/poems to add to my memory bank!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, I love both of these. I'm going to print them out for my commonplace book.

    And it gives me a post idea of my own! Maybe I'll do something similar on my blog.

    ReplyDelete