the wednesday poem: Magnolia, the Lotus of Trees

Friday, June 28, 2013

Magnolia, the Lotus of Trees

Observing leaves: at first, I doubt they are persimmon—
looking at the blossoms, I doubt they are lotus.
How fortunate there are no fixed forms—
this tree has no comparison.

Hyesim

Translated by Ian Haight & T’ae-yong Ho

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Welcome to the wednesday poem...

I started the wednesday poem over 15 years ago here in Tucson, as I found I needed a "poetry elixir" in the middle of the work week. I sent out the wednesday poem each week by e-mail to just a few friends and family members who were kind enough to indulge me. I have rarely missed a Wednesday, except for the week my son Micah was born! Now, there are quite a few wednesday poetry folks around the globe who receive the weekly poem by e-mail.

As people began asking for poems that I had previously sent out, (some poems from many years back), I realized that I needed a home for the weekly poems; thus, I began the wednesday poem blog in September of 2009! One day, I plan to archive all the poems from the past thirteen years.

If you would like to follow my blog, please add your e-mail address below. And while the blog serves as a place to house and archive the weekly poems, please feel free to leave comments if the spirit so moves you!

I hope the wednesday poem offers you a little poetry soul food...

Elizabeth Carroll Salper (ECS)

THINKING ABOUT...

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible. Theodore Roethke
Check out O, Miami (http://www.omiami.org/I love what they are doing .
Always be a poet, even in prose. Baudelaire.
Poetry is not a luxury...Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. Audre Lorde
One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. Maya Angelou
Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry. - Jack Kerouac
Our lives begin and end the day we become silent about things that matter. Martin Luther King Jr.
Lettuce, apple, or melon, in season - so long as it is good...When their hour is past do not try to move the hand back on the dial & do them again but try that undone something which is in season now, celery, ice, or cucumbers. Emerson
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel within ourselves, poetry. Keats
It was the face of spring, it was the face of summer, it was the warmness of clover breath. Pomegranate glowed in her lips, and the noon sky in her eyes. Ray Bradbury
The poet must be a subversive barbarian at the city gates, constantly questioning reality and reinventing it. Ferlinghetti
Poetry is necessary.
We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. Henry David Thoreau
I dug things up. I was curious. I liked to draw what I found. Mary Leakey
At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.” Rimbaud
There is something very comforting about ritual. I have friends who go to church or sit at the Zen center. I respect that. The ritual of writing fills that need for me. Writing has been a kind of spiritual devotion for me. Listening to language, feeling stories unfold and poems arrive, being present to the page – I do not think of it as a career, I think of it as a devotion. That is a big difference to me. Naomi Shihab Nye
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. ~Carl Sagan from Cosmos
Writing is 90% procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. Paul Rudnick
If you want to write, keep a low overhead ...The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don't live with a lover or roommate who doesn't respect your work. Don't lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don't write. Grace Paley
If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a hyacinth. Persian saying
It was November -- the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. -- L.M. Montgomery
Dolce far niente... beauty in doing nothing
Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. E.L. Doctorow
"Poetry has no proof nor plan nor evidence by decree or in any other way. From somewhere in the twilight realm of sound a spirit of belief flares up at the point where meaning stops and the unreality of what seems most real floods over us." Susan Howe
I do not know which to prefer, /The beauty of inflections/ Or the beauty of innuendoes,/ The blackbird whistling/ Or just after. Wallace Stevens
"Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." -Mary Oliver Love & birthday wishes to Mary!
“We are all one voice of various sounds.” Charles Olson
"I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties..." Charles Olson
"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change." Buddha
"Do one thing every day that scares you." Eleanor Roosevelt
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." Chekhov
It is almost June, and my mind wanders towards bicycles and cool old bike baskets. I checked out the Nantucket Bike Basket Company, and fell in love with a few of their baskets...
Hey all you poetry fools, happy april 1st! make sure to play a prank and eat some pie! It's also the kick-off to poetry month, so let's celebrate by getting even more "wordy" and partake in key lime pie!
Sending love and good energy to Mary Oliver... "Poetry is the warehouse of the world with all its metaphors. There are no nations in poetry." Mary Oliver
Forever — is composed of Nows — Emily Dickinson, From her Envelope Poems

the wednesday poem

Merry Summer Solstice!

Friday, June 28, 2013

Magnolia, the Lotus of Trees

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