Grace Paley's Anti-Love Poem

♥…

*like one book being a long row of books* -- Carl Sandburg

This poem sings to me.

I found this blog serendipitously...

Sojourner Truth -- Thank You -- Every Day and EveryWhere.

Aint I a Woman?

Aint I a woman?
A found poem from Sojourner Truth's most famous speech, adapted into poetic form by Erlene Stetson


That man over there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me a best place. . .

And ain't I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
and no man could head me. . .
And ain't I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a man--
when I could get to it--
and bear the lash as well
and ain't I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother's grief
none but Jesus heard me. . .
and ain't I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a woman can't have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn't a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.


I did not realize that Sojourner Truth lived in Massachusetts...
There is a page with the above poem and some links which no longer work.
One of the links on the right side of the page, or heehee, let me say Stage (Page) Left, does work, and it leads to a photo of a Sojourner Truth Statue and a page with information about a scholarship and much more...

Special thanks to TCP for bringing this version of these Sojourner Truth words to light....

This Life by Grace Paley

My friend tells me
a man in my house jumped off the roof
the roof is the eighth floor of this building
the roof door was locked how did he manage?
his girlfriend had said goodbye I'm leaving
he was 22
his mother and father were hurrying
at that very moment
from upstate to help him move out of Brooklyn
they had heard about the girl

the people who usually look up
and call jump jump did not see him
the life savers who creep around the back staircases
and reach the roof's edge just in time
never got their chance he meant it he wanted
only one person to know

did he imagine that she would grieve
all her young life away tell everyone
this boy I kind of lived with last year
he died on account of me

my friend was not interested he said you're always
inventing stuff what I want to know how could he throw
his life away how do these guys do it
just like that and here I am fighting this
ferocious insane vindictive virus day and
night day and night and for what? for only
one thing this life this life

See:
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/grace_paley/poems/19518

An Election Blessing

Barack atah Illinois,
Eloheynu melech ha'olam,
hoo-ray p'ri ha-electoral landslide.

Amen.


This was sent me yesterday by my Mom, "...you've probably seen this blessing over election results..." she wrote. I had not!

My searches only find t-shirts with the first line:
http://t-shirtsforobama.com/
But I would gladly give credit to the author(s).

Dear friends, please let me know so I can give credit!

Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes

Let America be America Again


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes

John Cleese's Poem

This is all over the internet, so why not here, too?! I've long appreciated John Cleese.


Ode to Sean Hannity

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

John Cleese

Aztec poem -- in Spanish and English

"La amistad es lluvia de flores preciosas"


"Friendship is like a shower of precious flowers"



I was looking for something else, but found this at the following:
http://www.inside-mexico.com/SAN.htm

Reading Grace Paley's poems in the hospital

I read several of the poems from Fidelity out loud this morning. What Rhett thinks of them I do not know.

What would you want read to you -- prose, poetry, cartoons, et cet.-- if you were hearing your last voices?

Any experiences that folks want to share is greatly appreciated.

PROVERBS by Grace Paley in Fidelity (2008)

PROVERBS

A person's anger should be respected
even when it isn't shared

a person's happiness should be shared
even if isn't understood

a person should be understood ,,, though
he has brought both his brows together
in anger and also suddenly begun to laugh

a person should be in love most of
the time ,, this is the last proverb
and may be learned by all the organs
capable of bodily response

Anti- Love Poem by Grace Paley

Grace's Anti-Love Poem

The link above leads to a poem by Grace Paley.

I had posted without permission the Anti--Love Poem, which thankfully is one of the three. Poetry Daily received permission...

Blossom Kirschenbaum wisely counseled me to get my act together!

Horny Women at the Sewing Factory

Grace Paley must be appreciating this poem and the post which precedes it ( Fourteen Women in Search of a Poet)--by Jennifer Semple Siegel.
http://www.literaryagentblog.com/.

a summer poem by Grace Paley for a cold day

Here


Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa ask him
to sit beside me for a minute I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips.


Grace Paley