“Digging” by Seamus Heaney

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(For text, click on this link: Digging by Seamus Heaney : The Poetry Foundation.) Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was an international treasure, a native of Ireland, and a longtime professor at Harvard. His poem, “Digging,” contrasts his own work of writing, with his father’s manual labor. I thought it would be a nice follow-up to Grace Paley’s, “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative.”

My habit–these past four days–has been to 1) post the poem here; then 2) write it out in my notebook; and then, 3) try writing my own poem, using the original as a kind of model. One way to do this is strictly, so if the poet begins with an adjective, you begin with an adjective, then a noun, and so forth. But another way is simply to free associate from the poem’s theme or approach. After rereading “Digging,” a few times, I think I’ll write about my mother’s work and the extent to which it has differed from mine.

If you’re looking for more inspiration, remember Chris Jarmick’s blog, Poetry Is Everything, and notice that he recommends the video prompts by Washington State Poet Laureate, Elizabeth Austen.

 

Readings During National Poetry Month

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Want to make sure everyone sees this —

Grace Paley (1922-2007)

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Yesterday afternoon I met a few of my Artist Way friends for pie in Port Townsend, at Hillbottom Pie, a little cafe on Tyler street. For dessert, I ordered strawberry-rhubarb pie, with ice cream. It was delicious. It made me think of my cousin Joan, who served us strawberry-rhubarb pie, warm from the oven, when I took my mother to visit just before Memorial Day, 2014. It made me think of the Dryad cemetery, which my mother and I also visited that day, and how, when Mom walked across the wet grass to put the flowers on the graves, I worried because she had fallen in the night. It made me think of this poem, by one of my favorite writers, Grace Paley.

What did you do today instead of writing a poem? Could you write a poem about that? 

THE POET’S OCCASIONAL ALTERNATIVE

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead    it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft    a poem would have some
distance to go    days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it    many friends
will say    why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership    I do not
want to wait a week    a year    a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

A Letter for Emily Dickinson

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Poet Annie Finch

Nothing like waiting until the last minute. But here I am, finally spending a little time with my laptop and ready to introduce you to my NaPoWriMo Day Two poem.

This poem is from Visiting Emily, poems inspired by Emily Dickinson, and published by the University of Iowa Press in 2000. I love the simple first line, how Annie Finch just steps and begins talking to us, talking to Emily, and, at the same time, explaining some rather essential things about her own life. Bread. Sewing. Poetry.

If you want to use this poem as a kind of model for your poem today (or tomorrow), here are some of things you might notice about it (quickly, as it really is late-ish, and I already wrote my attempt for today): In addition to being an homage to Emily Dickinson, notice the cascade of rhymes, not only in the end of lines, but along the lines. Notice the repeated coda. If you’re looking for inspiration, think about the voice, utterly accessible, intimate, familiar. You could imitate the form, or you could just write a poem to Emily, or to another figure whose biography you’ve ingested.

A Letter for Emily Dickinson

Like me, you used to write while baking bread,
propping a sheet of paper by the bins
of salt and flour, so if your kneading led
to words, you’d take them, looping their thin shins
in your black writing, as they sang to be free.
You captured those quick birds relentlessly,
yet kept a slow, sure mercy in your deeds,
leaving them room to peck and hunt their seeds
in the white cages your vast iron art
had made by moving books, and lives, and creeds.
I take from you as you take me apart.

When I cut words you might never have said
into fresh patterns, pierced in place with pins,
ready to hold them down with my own thread,
they change and twist sometimes, their color spins
loose, and your spider generosity
lends them from language that will never be
free of you after all. My sampler reads,
“called back.” It says “she scribbled out these screeds.”
It calls, “she left this trace, and now we start,”
in stitched directions following the leads
I take from you, as you take me apart.