Poetry Journal

Paying Attention

8/3/2022

Rabbi Jacob used to say:

Better a single moment of awakening in this world
than eternity in the world to come.

And better a single moment of inner peace
in the world to come than eternity in this world.

Why?
A single moment of awakening in this world
is living in this world with full attention.

The two are one, flip sides of a coin
forever tumbling and never caught.

Pirke Avot 4:22

P - 174

John Cage, poet, three quotes. No, four. And a Mountain Farmer

7/14/2022

"I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetry
as I needed it"
--John Cage

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage.

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." --John Cage.

"Rather than create meaning in the traditional way, as something for the reader to absorb -- one isolated ego moving thoughts over into another isolated ego -- the poem becomes a meditative practice, an emptying of the mind, a return to the interior wild."
-- David Hinton, The Wilds of Poetry

U.S. POET LAUREATE ADA LIMÓN

7/13/2022

Ordered this book yesterday from bookstore.com, by the new poet laureate of the US. Very eager to see it!

Pádraig Ó Tuama

6/30/2022

A Solstice Blessing
As night stretches here,
day contracts elsewhere.
And in their night, we are
bathed in light. In all nights
there is light; in long days
there can be ache too.
For you, we call the sun
to stand still a while, and
the moon too, and stars, and
the waters and the heavens.
Hells as well — just for a
second; just for a breath.
May that breath rest you.
And may each breath rest you,
as it has until now, and now
and now. This one, after
that one, after that one after
that.

Loy Ching Yuen

2/27/2022

Sit quietly behind your wooden door:
Spring will come again.

O Sweet Irrational Worship

1/22/2022

By Thomas Merton
(1915 - 1968)

Wind and a bobwhite
And the afternoon sun.

By ceasing to question the sun
I have become light,

Bird and wind.

My leaves sing.

I am earth, earth

All these lighted things
Grow from my heart.

A tall, spare pine
Stands like the initial of my first
Name when I had one.

When I had a spirit,
When I was on fire
When this valley was
Made out of fresh air
You spoke my name
In naming Your silence:
O sweet, irrational worship!

I am earth, earth

My heart's love
Bursts with hay and flowers.
I am a lake of blue air
In which my own appointed place
Field and valley
Stand reflected.

I am earth, earth

Out of my grass heart
Rises the bobwhite.

Out of my nameless weeds
His foolish worship.

In the Dark of Things

11/14/2021

In the Dark of Things

I love to remain
In the dark of things, in their secrets.
I love to fathom creation,
To flee like a belief,
Like exiled art
Like an unnamed obscurity, without certainty--

In every tomorrow I’m born anew.

Adonis

Poetry is... (David Hinton)

10/15/2021

Poetry is most deeply a way of doing philosophy -- not as mere juggling of abstractions, but as lived and felt experience. --David Hinton in The Wilds of Poetry

Five/Seven/Five

10/3/2021

Taking the form of haiku and making it... something different.

One of these days I
One of these days I will be
One of these days I

Every Time You Sit

9/28/2021

Every time you sit you will find your life begins to feel opaque, as if everything that has ever happened to you is apparent and true, even as the world around you begins to appear more transparent, as if life itself was some sort of magic act, conceived only for the purpose of delighting the senses. You will find this paradox absurd, even hilarious, a wonderous gift of mercy, and you will laugh often and with deep gratitude.

Every time you sit will feel like the first time and the last time, as if you had never been there before and yet had never truly been anywhere else. You will notice your breath is not your own breath, and yet has never been anyone else’s. Your cushion under you will feel like the safest place in the world even though your entire body is on fire. All the world around you will appear to be in blossom, while you, and you alone, draw life from the world’s taproot.