Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Dance

   

“Never give a sword to a man who cannot dance.”— Confucius

SOURCE

“Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame.”— W.B. Yeats

       Midweek Motif ~ Dance

As I was thinking about this Dance motif some lines of Leonard Cohen sang out loud in my mind:

          “Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

     Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in

    Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

                              Dance me to the end of love

                              Dance me to the end of love….”

The whole universe is in a dance mode. It would be interesting to see where you find that rhythm and beat to capture it in your lines.

It might be in the flow of a river; in rolling of waves; in raindrops; in the rhythm of seasons, day and night; in the flight of a bird; in birth; in death; in a stage performance.

There are numerous forms / types of dance. It would be lovely to read about them if you choose one of them to write about; or about the life of any well-known dancer.

And why not about dance costumes, props, masks and shoes?

Give today’s motif a unique interpretation of your like:

A few poems to share with you: 

The Dance

by William Carlos Williams

In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling
about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.

SOURCE

326

by Emily Dickinson

I cannot dance upon my Toes—
No Man instructed me—
But oftentimes, among my mind,
A Glee possesseth me,

That had I Ballet knowledge—
Would put itself abroad
In Pirouette to blanch a Troupe—
Or lay a Prima, mad,

And though I had no Gown of Gauze—
No Ringlet, to my Hair,
Nor hopped to Audiences—like Birds,
One Claw upon the Air,

Nor tossed my shape in Eider Balls,
Nor rolled on wheels of snow
Till I was out of sight, in sound,
The House encore me so—

Nor any know I know the Art
I mention—easy—Here—
Nor any Placard boast me—
It's full as Opera— 

Here is another link to a poem by Langston Hughes:

Dream Variations

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Magaly's Midweek Motif will be ~ not-so-old-fashioned 'Hobbies')

The Living Dead

A Kite is a Victim

By Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

A kite is a victim you are sure of.

You love it because it pulls

gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won’t give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you’ve written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don’t let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory

that must be made with the sun,
so make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.


– from The Spice-Box of Earth, 1961 

Not all songs are breath-taking poems. I think we'd all agree that Leonard Cohen's are. In fact he was a published poet (and novelist) before he launched his musical career, and that was how I first encountered him.

This poem is the first in his second book, The Spice-Box of Earth, first published in 1961. I still have the copy I was given in the early seventies, a 1968 Bantam edition in its 6th printing. It was perfect-bound badly, and all the pages have been loose a long time, but I still cherish it and keep them in the right order. Around the same time I acquired his novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers (quite different in flavour from each other, and equally wonderful) and Poems 1956-1968. 

They were all given to me by a lovely lover who also sang me lines from Suzanne, and later, when we ended, bits of Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye. Cohen is forever associated, for me, with one of the most romantic episodes of my life.

For many people that might be enough reason to love a poem or a song. For poets, we have to love the word-crafting too. It was more a case of loving my lover a little more because he had such an ear for good writing, and gave me gifts I could treasure for their own sake – making them, of course, even better as love-tokens. The affair ended long ago, but my passion for the words of Leonard Cohen never did. And didn't he give us decades of extraordinary words!

Most of them were songs, and all the more beautiful for that. But I wanted to give you something that perhaps not so many of you would already know. I chose it not because it came first in the book, but because it is a little unusual. Many of the poems are love poems, often very beautiful and tender; others are spiritual, or socio-political. These are the great preoccupations of Cohen's work. This piece has a topic of its own, yet one that most of us can relate to (all kids try to fly kites, don't they, or at least watch?). It has the beauty and startlingly original imagery characteristic of his poems, and even a little touch of the bizarre – which is also a characteristic – but here softened.

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about such a famous artist's life and career, particularly so soon after his death and all the eulogies. If you feel a need to enquire further, you could try the Wikipedia article, and there's also a wealth of material at his official website.

His books are still available at Amazon and don't look like losing their popularity any time soon. The same link takes you to books about him and his work.

In an interview shortly before his death, he joked gently that he had decided to live forever. I believe he very likely will.

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older poems may be out of copyright)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Invisibility

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. 

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” 
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.” 

― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“I don't know why people are so keen to put the details
of their private life in public; they forget 
that invisibility is a superpower.” 

― Banksy

“Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; 
and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.” 

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“ I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in a circus sideshow, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination- indeed, everything and anything except me.” 

― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“The people stared through her as though she were invisible until she thought she was, and walked more easily then, just a cloud reflected in a stream.” 

― Louise Erdrich

Midweek Motif ~ Invisibility

(The motif you suggested.)

Your Challenge:    [             ] 

in a new poem, please.

Palladiums

by Carl Sandburg

IN the newspaper office—who are the spooks?
Who wears the mythic coat invisible?

Who pussyfoots from desk to desk
 with a speaking forefinger?
Who gumshoes amid the copy paper
 with a whispering thumb?

Speak softly—the sacred cows may hear.

Speak easy—the sacred cows must be fed.

#

Excerpt from Ghazal: America the Beautiful


by Alicia Ostriker, 1937


Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity
in first grade when we learned to sing America


The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner
and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America


We put our hands over our first grade hearts
we felt proud to be citizens of America


I said One Nation Invisible until corrected
maybe I was right about America

School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days
when we learned how to behave in America

What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents
who didn’t understand us or America


Only later learning the Banner and the Beautiful
live on opposite sides of the street in America

. . . . 
(Read the rest HERE. From Poems for After the Election by Poets.org.)
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Excerpt from All the Women Caught in Flaring Light


Related Poem Content Details


BY MINNIE BRUCE PRATT





1 



Imagine a big room of women doing anything, 

playing cards, having a meeting, the rattle 

of paper or coffee cups or chairs pushed back, 

the loud and quiet murmur of their voices, 

women leaning their heads together. If we 

leaned in at the door and I said, Those women 

are mothers, you wouldn’t be surprised, except 

at me for pointing out the obvious fact. 



Women are mothers, aren’t they? So obvious. 



Say we walked around to 8th or 11th Street 

to drop in on a roomful of women, smiling, intense, 

playing pool, the green baize like moss. One 

lights another’s cigarette, oblique glance. 

Others dance by twos under twirling silver moons 

that rain light down in glittering drops. 

If I said in your ear, through metallic guitars, 

These women are mothers, you wouldn’t believe me, 

would you? Not really, not even if you had come 

to be one of the women in that room. You’d say: 

Well, maybe, one or two, a few. It’s what we say. 



Here, we hardly call our children’s names out loud. 

We’ve lost them once, or fear we may. We’re careful 

what we say. In the clanging silence, pain falls 

on our hearts, year in and out, like water cutting 

a groove in stone, seeking a channel, a way out, 

pain running like water through the glittering room. 





2 



I often think of a poem as a door that opens 

into a room where I want to go. But to go in 




here is to enter where my own suffering exists

. . . . 
(Read the rest HERE.)








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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others 
in the spirit of the community.  AND: please put a link to this prompt with your poem.  (Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ Hyperbole ~ Stretch the Truth)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Diary Stories

http://www.quotesncaptions.com/anne-frank-quotes-2/

The Diary of a Young Girl 
(better known as The Diary of Anne Frank) 
was published on the 25th of June 1947.

Midweek Motif ~ Diary Stories

Your Challenge is to create a poem from an entry in a journal, yours or someone else's.  You might also want to reflect on the writer or on the journal.   Or write a poem as if it is a journal entry.

Poetic Inspiration:

DEAR DIARY

You are greater than the Bible

And the Conference of the Birds

And the Upanishads

All put together

You are more severe

Than the Scriptures

And Ham­mura­bi’s Code

More dangerous than Luther’s paper

Nailed to the Cathedral door

You are sweeter

Than the Song of Songs

Mightier by far

Than the Epic of Gilgamesh

And braver

Than the Sagas of Iceland

I bow my head in gratitude

To the ones who give their lives

To keep the secret

The daily secret

Under lock and key

Dear Diary

I mean no disrespect

But you are more sublime

Than any Sacred Text

Sometimes just a list

Of my events

Is holier than the Bill of Rights

And more intense” 

― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

       (copied from goodreads Quotes)

i'll have the usual

an old knuckle baller, he still wears the cap he wore in high school,
yellow&brown, embroidered LH, faded&nipped in time's toll---it
contrasts his grey temples, face full of whiskers, red rimmed eyes,
still wide, cheeks sagged, creased, work the salt off a peanut, teeth,
tongue shuck the shell & spit it in an ever increasing pile, like
bones at a chicken feast

one hand works the cover of a browned baseball, fingers flipping
around the leather&laces, through the repertoire of pitches he once
threw, the other works a pencil along a score card. he keeps
every hit, strike, ball, foul---every statistic of importance, a scratch,
scratch, scratch of lead, impression on paper, the game reflecting
in his cornea---spits another shell, works the ball, scratch, scratch
sisyphus

man on first, one out, pop, scratch, scratch, double play & it's
over, he folds the card in half, then quarters so it fits neat in
his back pocket, shuffles up the concrete steps between bleachers
to wherever he goes & whatever he does until tomorrow when
he'll be there, in his usual spot, spitting shells, hand running through
the memory of pitches & marking his card,
with one thing that makes sense

leaving me
to sit,
notebook in hand,
scratching away,
                       just the same 

~ Brian Miller, waystationone

           (Used with permission)

 Please:  

1.      Post your diary story poem on your site, and then link it here.

2.      Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 

3.      Leave a comment here.

4.      Honor our community by visiting and commenting on others' poems.

(Next Week's Midweek Motif will be Half Year and World UFO DAY)

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I Wish I'd Written This

Summer Haiku

For Frank and Marian Scott


Silence




and a deeper silence




when the crickets




hesitate



Would it surprise you to know this was written by Leonard Cohen? It comes from his book The Spice-Box of Earth, first published in 1965. My copy, a Bantam edition printed in the seventies, is falling apart beyond repair, but treasured nevertheless. It's still available from Amazon‚ the hard cover version regarded as collectible and very expensive, but my 'mass market paperback' affordable.

He is of course much better known as a wonderful song-writer — one of those whose lyrics are true poetry. I first encountered him, however, through the printed words of his early poems, and through his two novels, also first published in the sixties, The Favorite Game and the astonishing Beautiful Losers.

I have been trying to write haiku for several years now, and consider it the hardest form to master. The above doesn't look like a haiku, the way we're used to seeing them written in English, but I think it's right up there with the best.

You certainly don't need me to tell you anything about so famous an artist as Leonard Cohen, so instead I'll treat you to a longer piece from The Spice-Box of Earth, a beautiful love poem. All his love poems are clearly man to woman, so I'll just say I could wish to have had something like this written for me.

Beneath My Hands

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.

Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.

I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.

I dread the time
when your mouth
begins to call me hunter.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.

I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).