poet laureate

Today Carol Ann Duffy became the first woman poet laureate of Great Britain, and the first openly gay poet laureate. I celebrate this day, and I celebrate her wonderful body of work. I am a better woman myself for having read and digested her words. Here's her poem Valentine:

Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

dream, ferment, and dream

Beautiful illustration by design Studio K. The text is from Oda a Walt Whitman by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, which he wrote in 1930 while completing a year of study at Columbia University. The poem was not published in its entirety until 1940, more than three years after the poet was executed by Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s fascist troops during the Spanish Civil War.

Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.
This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.
Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks,
war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats,
the rich give their mistresses
small illuminated dying things,
and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.
Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desire
through a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body.
Tomorrow, loves will become stones, and Time
a breeze that drowses in the branches.

the meaning of certainty is getting burned

"The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the score."
- Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle