Tag: release

It’s been a long day

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The Chinese poet Po Chü-I (772-846) recounts in a poem how he’d traveled so long on horseback that he’d fallen asleep in the saddle. For a moment, his reins had slackened. It seemed like an instant but he’d gone a hundred lengths while asleep. He’d exhausted himself all day; prodding the horse to push on; to go here, then there. But in his sleep, he loosened his grip, gave up control, and the horse, which seemed to wait for this chance, carried him easily. This is the tension between will and surrender. We push and push; insistent on keeping pace with the urgency of our dream. All for the moment that we exhaust ourselves. And letting go the reins, the horse of spirit quickens its pace and carries us on.

~ Mark Nepo, Will and Surrender (Huffpost, Nov 6, 2017)

Notes:

It’s been a long day

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maryna-ignatieva-on-the-verge
Month by month
things are losing their hardness;
even my body now lets the light through;
my spine is soft like wax near the flame of the candle.
I dream; I dream.

~ Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Notes:

Feel it. In both directions.

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floating-swimming

I like swimming against the current,
but only because it makes me feel
I’ve earned the ease and pleasure
of floating back to where I started.

~ Jan Heller Levi, from “Conversation,” Once I Gazed at You in Wonder

 

Poem Source: memoryslandscape. Image: Discover Magazine

Release

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breathe-relax-rest-fatigue-let-go

The spintop wobbles after a dizzying week. It spins, the revolutions breathless. It turns, slower now, spinning on wisps of the remaining adrenaline.

He’s got it half right. It is the steady pounding of days that is our undoing.

I’ve seen what’s to come—
it is the days,
the steady pounding of days,
like gentle rain,
that will be our undoing.

— John Philip Johnson, from “There Have Come Soft Rains,” Rattle (No. 45)

And it’s Yoko Ono’s memories of the Summer of 1961 that beckon. “Stand in the evening light until you become transparent or until you fall asleep.”

Let it go.

Release.

Evaporate into the night.

Bring on the grace of Saturday morning.

Credits:

  • Find John Philip Johnson’s entire poem here: There Have Come Soft Rains. And be sure to note the poet’s wonderful comment below.
  • Photograph – Maria Stolan (Blue Lights Wake Me)
  • Yoko Ono, 1961 Summer, “Body Piece” from “Grapefruit.”

 

Where can I put it down?

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anne-carson

You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that?
And I said,
Where can I put it down?

– Anne Carson, excerpt from “The Glass Essay“

Anne Carson, 63, is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. She was born in Toronto.  She is known for her supreme erudition—Merkin called her “one of the great pasticheurs”—Carson’s poetry can also be heart-breaking and she regularly writes on love, desire, sexual longing and despair.  She taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. A high-school encounter with a Latin instructor, who agreed to teach her ancient Greek over the lunch hour, led to her passionate embrace of classical and Ancient Greek classical literature, influences which mark her work still. She teaches ancient Greek and she frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction. (Sources: Wiki & The Poetry Foundation)

Another favorite Anne Carson quote: “What is a Quote?”

Sources: Quote: Larmoyante. Portrait: Book Review. Find this poem: Glass, Irony & God