The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Mon 5/26/2008)

[RetroLounge]

Mock Orange

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.

I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man's mouth
sealing my mouth, the man's
paralyzing body--

and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union--

In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.

How can I rest?
How can I be content
while there is still
that odor in the world?

Louise Glück

********************



Louise Elisabeth Glück (pronounced “Glick”) was born April 22, 1943 in New York City and grew up on Long Island.

Glück graduated in 1961 from Hewlett High School, in Hewlett, NY. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, and Columbia University, New York City. Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris. Glück is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award (Triumph of Achilles), the Academy of American Poet’s Prize (Firstborn), as well as numerous Guggenheim fellowships.

She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was previously a Senior Lecturer in English at Williams College in Williamstown, MA.

********************

:hi:

RL

[Lyric]

1. Beautiful.

Heartbreaking, too--as always. The last stanza is so raw...

:hug:

[RetroLounge]

4. Thanks for the poem suggestion...

:hug:

RL

[lizziegrace]

2. ...

"one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms."

:(




:hug:

[RetroLounge]

5. ...

:hug:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My dear Retro...

Well now, there's one unhappy woman...

This is stunning!

And very sad...

Thank you

:hi:

[xchrom]

6. ...

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.

[BlueIris]

7. Oooh, mind-meld. I've almost posted this three times. nt