I am a kettle made of stainless steel
I am a saint,  for tea  is brewed to heal
And ,unlike kettles on an old  coal fire,
I am not dirty nor do I perspire.

My mirrored sides reflect you as you cook.
Look at me and read me like a book
I’m  full of love and hotter than a man
Oh, dear lady, love me while you can.

Superior mother,  yet inhuman  I;
Even electric kettles sometimes lie.
I shall never punish you, my dear
For perfect love like mine shall wield no fear.

All I ask is that you polish me.
For, in between your hands, I  yearn to be.

Since you died ,I’ve burned eight non-stick pans
But I have not  passed out or fallen down
I have not hung more than a photograph
Though on my solemn face I wear a frown.

Since you  died I do   not  want to eat
I put on silken camisoles that droop
As my  flesh,my body ,seem to shrink
I  tie the straps up in a knotted loop.

Since you died I wish to be with you
And yet my soul and body are alive
I  do not wish to murder my own self
Be  suicidal  widow or ex-wife.

Yet in my dreams I feel your absence bleak
And of my days I do not wish to speak.

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-is-he-thinking/201612/the-decline-empathy-and-the-appeal-right-wing-politics

 

 

“The worst scenarios are ones occurring in conditions over which children have no control, such as the dangers faced by the babies in the still-face experiments.  When we are powerless to prevent our nervous systems and psyches from being overwhelmed, our physical, emotional, and intellectual development is disrupted.  We call this trauma.

As a metaphor for adult life in contemporary society, the “still face” paradigm—the helplessness intrinsic to it and the breakdown of empathy that lies at its foundation—aptly describes the experience of many people as they interact with the most important institutions in their lives, including government. And, as with Tronick’s babies and their mothers, when our social milieu is indifferent to our needs and inattentive to our suffering, widespread damage is done to our psyches, causing distress, anger, and hopelessness.  Such inattention and neglect lead to anxiety about our status and value, and a breakdown of trust in others.

The pain of the “still face” in American society is present all around us.

People feel it while waiting for hours on the phone for technical support, or dealing with endless menus while on hold with the phone or cable company, or waiting to get through to their own personal physician. They feel it in schools with large class sizes and rote teaching aimed only at helping students pass tests.  They feel it when crumbling infrastructure makes commuting to work an endless claustrophobic nightmare.  And, too often, they feel it when interacting with government agencies that hold sway over important areas of their lives, such as social services, the IRS, building permit and city planning departments, or a Department of Motor Vehicles.  Like Tronick’s babies, citizens who look to corporations and government for help, for a feeling of being recognized and important, are too often on a fool’s errand, seeking recognition and a reciprocity that is largely absent. “

A wonderful word is pentameter
Does it  like to be rhymed with thermometer?
If the answer is, No
I will ask you to show
How you kept all the real poets quite outa here.

Pentameter iambic how sweet
That the line has got exactly five feet
So mathematics intersects
And sometimes it wrecks
The  music of words as they leap

 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/my-novel-finally/

 

“With my fiction I focused on chapters and overall conceptions, while in poetry I crawled along in the trenches of each sentence, examining every word for a sign of a deeper significance. Each finished poem felt realized, arrived at directly by way of an inner struggle between whatever emotion had inspired it and the nuanced thought needed to both express and propel its forward movement.

Was I on some unrealized level granting permission to the poet that the novelist was being denied? In any case, The New Yorker magazine, the place I most wanted my fiction published, started taking my poems when I was 28. When one, “Like Wings,” generated a great flurry of letters (including marriage proposals and requests for advice, equaling a record at the magazine, ….”

I have no microwave nor special hob
I  make good food for people whom I like
It may be buttered corn upon the cob.

Into my kitchen you may lemons lob
I’ll freeze them   with my magic lemon spike
I have no microwave nor special hob

I always cooked well though I had a job
I rode to work upon my ancient bike
I may  have buttered corn  for Uncle Bob.

I like my solitude,I fear the mob
I  never smoke though I can strike a light
I haven’t microwaved  induction hobs.

I like a handle better than a knob
I like conversing if I’m feeling quite.
I   fry men battered horns  to fill their gobs

Oh,kitchen unfit, what a  dreadful sight!
Send out the men  to buy me dynamite
I have no microwave nor golden hob
I always  say good morning   with my  love.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/detail/69080

 

“Indeed, the only other areas of American life that have similar inclinations are probably religion and philosophy. Religion is no longer attractive for many poets for reasons that are historical and beyond the scope of this essay. Philosophizing remains a popular endeavor in the poetry world, but only so long as it’s a poetic sort of philosophizing (Nietszche, Heidegger) and not complicated, logic-y stuff that involves formulations like ◊∃xφ→∃x◊φ. Since Anglo-American philosophy has been dominated by the latter sort of thinking for decades, it’s no surprise most poets don’t go in for it.

Which leaves politics as the most favorable non-artistic arena for a certain type of poetic sensibility. In his essay “Absolute Poetry and Absolute Politics,” Michael Hamburger argues that this sensibility, which he connects with the Romantic-Symbolist tradition, “presuppose[s] a high degree of isolation or alienation from society.” Hamburger believes that poets who work in this vein have “a private religion, a religio poetae irreconcilable with the exigencies of the public world,” and that such writers consequently are attracted to “absolute political creeds, mistaking their monomania for a dedication akin to [the poets’] own, and seduced by promises of order.” It’s an interesting point, but we can be satisfied with a more modest related argument: any brand of politics—”absolute” or not—has a vision that supports and sustains it, and in which some poets may find reflections of the structure they seek in their writing. Even a responsible American citizen-poet has a flicker of the old Romantic-Symbolist fire in his belly, and this may cause him to feel a connection to contemporary politics that is often no less intense than Pound’s affection for Il Duce. When Jorie Graham takes on global warming, that’s more or less what’s going on.”

Oh,lavatory,w.c or loo
Without your china, what would people do?
I hate to use a closet filled with earth
And weeing in the garden I feel cursed.

And by the loo we wash out dirty hands
In a shining basin where soap stands.
My soap is grapefruit  scented not by choice
But priests say it’s good for sinners’ voice.

For  when we sin ,we lie to our own souls
We self deceive and make pretend we’re whole.
Our voices falter and we lose our breath;
While God is looking down on us, we laugh.

While closeted for private needs  each day
Be careful  when you ,inadvertent ,pray

 

http://www.poewar.com/poetry-writing-tips/

 

“Listen to criticism and try to learn from it, but don’t live or die by it. When I was in college, I would always take my best reviewed poem from the previous class and submit it to the professor for the next class. Invariably, the next professor hated the poem, and could provide good reasons why it failed.

When you write a good poem, one you really like, immediately write another. Maybe that one poem was your peak for the night, bit maybe you’re on a roll. There’s only one way to find out.

The bigger your theme, the more important the details are. A poem with Love, Destiny, Hate or other huge themes in the title already has two strikes against it (and I like love poems).

Say what you want to say. Let your readers decide what your poem means.

Feel free to write a bad poem.”

Poetry 101: Getting Started

“In a recent Newsweek article, “Poetry is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care?”, Bruce Wexler wrote, “”Poetry” is the only art form where the number of people creating it is far greater than the number of people appreciating it. Anyone can write a bad poem.” Oh, so true. When I was hosting a poetry forum and chat, this is the thing that bugged me most about the so-called poets who posted and chatted there. They didn’t read poetry, which meant they had only a vague idea what a poem was, let alone a good poem. Few owned a book of poetry and most were hard-pressed to name a living poet.I simply don’t understand this. Why would anyone want to write in a genre they don’t enjoy reading? Who’s ever heard of a mystery writer who doesn’t read mysteries?

If you want to have any sort of credibility as a poet, you must read poetry. Hokey verses in greeting cards don’t count. Focus on contemporary poetry, just as you’d read contemporary novels if you were a fiction writer. Many would-be poets, if they read anything at all, seem to stick exclusively to classics. I surmise this is because most pre-twentieth century poetry rhymes, and they see rhyming poetry as being “real” poetry. Reality is, poetry is comprised of many elements; rhyme is but one.

A good place to start is Poetry Daily, which features a new poem every day, culled from literary journals. Many literary journals have online versions, some featuring excerpts from the latest issue. We have an extensive listing of journals at Mustard & Cress. You can find print versions in the magazine section of most bookstores (keep in mind that most lit mags have small circulations, so which ones are available will depend on where you live).

 

I dreamed I was   no Catholic last night
I was in a church,unlit by candlelight
The clergyman had got no vestments on
She gave an extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon

We had no Consecration then at all
But later we had Tizer  and played ball
Apparently we have Communion now and then
After an extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon

We don’t kneel in a Confessional and admit
We kicked our little brother in the butt
So we have got no penance  then to come
After an extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon

We sang these great old hymns by Bunyan
I loved them each and every single one.
But where had all the   ceremonial gone?
Instead it’s extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon.

We mayn’t  pray to  Jude for hopeless cause
Nor ask Our Lady’s aid from  hellish maws
We speak direct to God when we feel glum
On an extremely  stunning,  Lutheran  mobile   phone .

So God  must have got a lot  pairs of ears;
Lots of eyes to weep  about  what he hears
He can’t have any helpers, even nuns
What an extremely lengthy, long and  trying carry on.

I woke up in the middle of the dream
And gave a loud and penetrating scream
My boyfriend said he knew sex was a sin
He rang St Francis on his  mobile   phone

Now I go to Mass on weekdays if  I can
Although I’m so attractive  I’ve been banned
But any ritual is  really better than
That extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n01/tom-paulin/on-being-dealt-the-anti-semitic-card

 

http://www.thebookoflife.org/how-to-get-over-someone/

“Fixation on an absent other allows us to be publicly committed to love while privately sheltered from any of its more arduous demands.”

 

http://www.thebookoflife.org/why-we-sometimes-hope-the-people-we-love-might-die/

Quote:

Being close to someone necessarily involves a high degree of what therapists call ‘ambivalence,’ a blending of deeply negative and positive thoughts. When people play an outsize role in our lives, when they have an enormous emotional power over us, when our debt to them is immense, we will both adore and at points resent them hugely. There will be tenderness and rage; attachment and revulsion. They can let us down like few others can, they know our weakest spots, they enchant but also exhaust us.

We’re not actually going to do anything – of course. We’re not even taking the tiniest preparatory steps; we would never buy poison or encourage them to go cliff-walking on stormy evenings. But there is relief to be found in the odd grim daydream nevertheless.

Fantasies are not plans of action. They don’t correspond to our real values or intentions. They operate as momentary escapes from powerful feelings. We fantasise about the death of a loved one not because we truly want them gone but because being close to them is such a large and therefore at times tricky part of our lives. Our fantasy is a strange but real tribute to the depth of our bond. The guilt is a symptom that despite the inevitable and very real tensions and disappointments of the relationship, we care about them very much. The meaning of the fantasy isn’t that we are sick. It’s that loving someone is never free of frustration.

 

https://bakarichavanu.com/2013/02/19/7-reasons-why-most-people-find-writing-hard-to-do/

 

“6. Most people don’t realize that writing is a process —of hard-to-get-started introductions, messy drafts, and tedious revisions. Students need to be shown that most writing is not done in a single draft, nor should teachers expect it to be.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2007/04/in_praise_of_difficult_poetry.html

“To update Jarrell: When a person says accusingly that they can’t understand contemporary poetry, their tone implies that most of their happiest hours are spent at the fireside reading Eliot’s “Four Quartets“or “The Waste Land.”

Robert Pinsky

Who invented this  sagacious jug,
With lid and spout  and handle all in curves?
Why do  restaurants use  just one tea bag,
So savaged by hot water, it’s unnerved?

Are  teapots reminiscent  of the breast
Which nurtured us and gave us nourishment?
Our  mother’s  milk became   our loving feast.
While deprivation seemed harsh punishment

A ceremony,ritual and a rest,
For friends  enjoy to watch the tea poured out
And family  sit around and  feel well blessed
Such kindness  comes  much better from a spout

A teapot’s more essential than a phone.
Such sphere  nearby, you’ll never feel alone.

 

While we muse in winter darkness here
The sun has turned to  start its kind new year