The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Thu 3/13/2008)

[RetroLounge]

Dooryard Flower

Because you are sick I want to bring you flowers,
flowers from the landscape that you love—
because it is your birthday and you're sick
I want to bring the outdoors inside,
the natural and the wild, picked by hand,
but nothing is blooming here but daffodils,
archipelagic in the short green
early grass, erupted
bulbs planted decades before we came,
the edge of where a garden once was kept
extended now in a string of islands I straddle
as in a fairy tale, harvesting,
not taking the single blossom from a clump
but thinning where they're thickest, tall-stemmed
from the mother patch, dwarf to the west, most
fully opened, a loosened whorl,
one with a pale spider luffing her thread,
one with a slow beetle chewing the lip, a few
with what's almost a lion's mane,
and because there is a shadow on your lungs, your liver,
and elsewhere, hidden,
some of those with delicate green
streaks in the clown's ruff (corolla—
actually made from adapted leaves), and more
right this moment starting to unfold, I've gathered
my two fists full, I carry them like a bride,
I am bringing you the only glorious thing
in the yards and fields between my house and yours,
none of the tulips budded yet, the lilac
a sheaf of sticks, the apple trees
withheld, the birch unleaved—
it could still be winter here, were it not
for green dotted with gold, but you won't wait
for dogtoothed violets, trillium under the pines,
and who could bear azaleas, dogwood, early profuse rose
of somewhere else when you're assaulted here, early May,
not any calm narcissus, orange corona
on scalloped white, not even it's slender stalk
in a fountain of leaves, no stiff cornets of the honest
jonquils, gendered parts upthrust in brass and cream:
just this common flash in anyone's yard,
scrambled cluster of petals
crayon-yellow, as in a child's crawing of the sun,
I'm bringing you a sun, a children's choir, host
of transient voices, first bright
splash in the gray exhausted world, a feast
of the dooryard flower we call butter-and-egg.

Ellen Bryant Voigt.

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Ellen Bryant Voigt was born and raised on a farm in Virginia. As a child, she showed an aptitude for music and began playing the piano. Initially a music major, Voigt attended Converse College for its music conservatory, but eventually she shifted her studies to literature and poetry. She went on to receive an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.

She is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007); Shadow of Heaven (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Kyrie (1995), a finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award; Two Trees (1992); The Lotus Flowers (1987); The Forces of Plenty (1983); and Claiming Kin (1976).

Her work as an editor includes Hammer and Blaze: A Gathering of Contemporary American Poets (with Heather McHugh, 2002); The Flexible Lyric (2001), a collection of essays on craft; and Poets Teaching Poets: Self and the World (with Gregory Orr, 1996), a collection of essays on the craft and relevance of poetry. She has also contributed photography for Kathleen Pierce's book of poetry, Mercy (1991).

Voigt's earlier work has been praised by Stanley Kunitz for its "sense of mutability and loss, an abiding set of loyalties, and a fierce attachment to the land." More recently, Philip Levine noted that her poems "are driven forward by lyrical restraint and by a ferocity of attention... Her writing has achieved the ambition of great poetry, the contact baptism of newly created things."

Voigt's honors include the 2002 Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, the 2002 O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize, grants from the Vermont Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund fellowship and a Pushcart Prize.

In 1976, she developed and directed the nation's first low-residency writing program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont—a design for graduate M.F.A. study that has since been emulated by many other colleges and universities. Since 1981 she has taught in the M.F.A. program for writers at Warren Wilson College.

Voigt has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets since 2003. She lives in Cabot, Vermont, where she served as the Vermont State Poet from 1999 to 2003.


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[lizziegrace]

1. Beautiful!

That awful time between the holidays and true spring is so gray and dark. Lelapin always hated having a March birthday. I'm not thrilled mine's in February either.

"I'm bringing you a sun, a children's choir, host
of transient voices, first bright
splash in the gray exhausted world, a feast
of the dooryard flower we call butter-and-egg."

Thank you for this. It's perfect.

[RetroLounge]

5. ...

:hi:

RL

[lizziegrace]

2. Kick

'cause I really like this one. ;)

[RetroLounge]

6. Kick

because you did...

:D

RL

[hisownpetard]

3. Thanks, RL!

EBV was a very accomplished musician, played in a symphony orchestra. What made her turn toward poetry was the thought
she had one day that, as well as she might play something written, say, by Beethoven, in playing it she was still interpreting *his* emotions;
and she decided she wanted to create, instead of 'interpret.'

She's a brilliant teacher (and has a great sense of humor, to boot).
She's also the person who conceived of the first 'low'residency' graduate program, enabling people who have families and/or jobs to get MFA degrees
by attending intensive sessions, twice a year, and completing the rest of their thesis through the mail.

[BlueIris]

4. Ellen Bryant Voight is COOL.

That is all.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. My dear Retro!

Oh, this is beautiful!

I can practically smell the flowers...

Thank you for these, every day....

I always read, even if I don't leave a comment...

:hug:

[RetroLounge]

8. ...

:hug:

RL