Evening Hawk, poem by Robert Penn Warren

EVENING HAWK
by Robert Penn Warren

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,
Out of the peak’s black angularity of shadow, riding
The last tumultuous avalanche of
Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time.

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.

Look! Look! he is climbing the last light
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings
Into shadow.

Long now,
The last thrush is still, the last bat
Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom
Is ancient, too, and immense. The star
Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain.

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear
The earth grind on its axis, or history
Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.

PHOTO: “Evening Hawk” by Tony Hisgett

Happy Birthday, Robert Penn Warren

April 24, 2014 marks the 109th anniversary of the birth of multi-hyphenate Robert Penn Warren — a poet-novelist-essayist-editor-critic — the only person to win a Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry, and likely the most decorated American author of all time.

Warren (1905-1989) received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for his novel All the King’s Men and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. From 1944-1945, Warren served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. His other honors and awards include Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980), MacArthur Fellowship (1981), designation as first U.S. Poet Laureate (1986), and National Medal of Arts (1987).

PHOTO: Robert Penn Warren working on the revisions of a book in a barn near his home (April 1956 by Leonard McCombe, Time/Life, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED).

Let’s celebrate this remarkable writer’s birthday with one of his most beautiful poems.

TELL ME A STORY
by Robert Penn Warren

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

The Oak, poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

THE OAK
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Live thy Life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;

Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed
Soberer-hued
Gold again.

All his leaves
Fall’n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough
Naked strength. 

Photo: “Old Oak Tree” by Sue Bristo, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria’s reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. His most famous composition is “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854), written about a battle during the Crimean War. The poem includes the often-quoted line: “Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die.” (For more about Tennyson, visit Wikipedia.)

Laughing Song, poem by William Blake

LAUGHING SONG
by William Blake

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing “Ha, ha he!”

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
Come live, and be merry, and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of “Ha, ha, he!”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. For the most part unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered one of the greatest poets of all time in any language. As a visual artist, he has been lauded by one art critic as “far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced.” (Source: Wikipedia)

PHOTO: Zsaj, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

January Morning, poem by William Carlos Williams

JANUARY MORNING (Excerpt)
by William Carlos Williams

Long yellow rushes bending
above the white snow patches;
purple and gold ribbon
of the distant wood:
what an angle
you make with each other as
you lie there in contemplation.
***
Read “January Morning” by William Carlos Williams in its entirety at poemhunter.com.

Evening Hawk, poem by Robert Penn Warren

EVENING HAWK
By Robert Penn Warren

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,
Out of the peak’s black angularity of shadow, riding
The last tumultuous avalanche of
Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
               His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time.
 
The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.
 
Look!  Look!  he is climbing the last light
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings
Into shadow.
 
          Long now,
The last thrush is still, the last bat
Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics.  His wisdom
Is ancient, too, and immense.  The star
Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain.
 
If there were no wind we might, we think, hear
The earth grind on its axis, or history
Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) was a poet, novelist, and literary critic. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for his novel All the King’s Men and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person who has won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. From 1944-1945, Warren served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. His other honors and awards include Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980), MacArthur Fellowship (1981), designation as first U.S. Poet Laureate (1986), and National Medal of Arts (1987).

Photo: “Evening Hawk” by Tony Hisgett

Still Missing the Jays, poem by Stanley Plumly

STILL MISSING THE JAYS
by Stanley Plumly

Then this afternoon, in the anonymous
winter hedge, I saw one. I’d just climbed,
in my sixty-year-old body—with its heart
attacks, kidney stones, torn Achilles tendon,
vague promises of ulcers, various subtle,
several visible permanent scars, ghost-
gray hair, long nights and longer silences,

impotence and liver spots, evident
translucence, sometime short-term memory loss—
I’d just climbed out of the car and there
it was, eye-level, looking at me, young,
bare blue, the crest and marking jewelry
penciled in, smaller than it would be
if it lasted but large enough to show
the dark adult and make its queedle
and complaint. It seemed to wait for me,
watching in that superciliary way
birds watch too. So I took it as a sign,
part spring, part survival. I hadn’t seen a jay
in years—I’d almost forgotten they existed.
Such obvious, quarrelsome, vivid birds
that turn the air around them crystalline.
Such crows, such ravens, such magpies!
Such bristling in the spyglass of the sun.
Yet this one, new in the world,
softer, plainer, curious. I tried
to match its patience, not to move,
though when it disappeared to higher ground,
I had the thought that if I opened up my hand—

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in 1939, Stanley Plumly is a professor of English at the University of Maryland. HIs poetry has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, American Poetry Review, New Yorker, New York Times, and Paris Review. In 2009, Plumly was named Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland. He has received many awards and honors for his work, including six Pushcart Prizes and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Photo: “Baby Blue Jay” by Drewcjm, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Photographer’s note: This baby Blue Jay fell out of a tree while trying to fly on May 14, 2011. Photo shot in the Merchants Walk parking lot, Lakeland, Florida.

Leaving Pacific Grove, poem by Mark Malandra

LEAVING PACIFIC GROVE
by Marc Malandra

1.
Land’s end—
gulls on an updraft, trawlers
setting out to gather shrimp—
I had something to say.
Jade sea unsaid it.

2.
A stinkbug labors over a leaf.
Seals bake, far, furred sausages on the rocks.
An otter daydreams on a bed of kelp.
A raven’s shrill reveille, gull cries, rushing
tides sighing and crumpling over seaweed;
one last afternoon educated at my leisure.

3.
If I stay here to watch pines
twist into limbs, sap-strong
yet seeming-rotten, would I learn
language wind uses to entice
clouds into apparition?
If I strip fears like bark
from these trees will the exposed self
stand salt blasts and flood rains?
Am I less myself when divided
or more myself when less
the sum of my parts, some
of my parts tree-like, rock-
like, though less noble?

4.
I’m looking at my cloud-self
as it passes over a pool,
over chance-grasping anemones.
I’m thinking about surfaces,
how far down I have to look.

5.
A white dove arcs over the cove.
A raven scavenges among the rocks,
strutting bundle of tar with wings.
Shards of light, sand, and stone oscillate,
scenes from the life of saint
change, patron of tides. Wind
ripples the inlet into mosaic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marc Malandra grew up primarily in Avalon, on Santa Catalina Island, California. He attended and has degrees from U. C. Santa Barbara, U. C. Davis, and Cornell University, where he received both an MFA in Creative Writing and a Ph. D. in English. Over the last twenty years, he has published poetry in approximately three dozen different venues, including America, Cider Press Review, Flyway, Literature and Belief, Orange Coast Review, Poetry Northwest, Radix,South Florida Poetry Review, and Zocalo. Currently Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Biola University.

“Leaving Pacific Grove” and other poetry by Mark Mallandra appears in the  Silver Birch Press Green Anthology — a collection of poetry and prose from over 70 authors around the world — available at Amazon.com.

PHOTO: “Pacific Grove at Sunset” by Joshua Tobash, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Morning, haiku by Matsuo Bashō

MORNING 
by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)

I like to wash
the dust of this world
in the droplets of dew.

Photo: “Morning Dew” by Ashley Whitmoyer, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Happy Birthday, Robert Penn Warren

April 24, 2013 marks the 108th anniversary of the birth of multi-hyphenate Robert Penn Warren — a poet-novelist-essayist-editor-critic — the only person to win a Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry, and likely the most decorated American author of all time.

Warren (1905-1989) received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for his novel All the King’s Men and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. From 1944-1945, Warren served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. His other honors and awards include Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980), MacArthur Fellowship (1981), designation as first U.S. Poet Laureate (1986), and National Medal of Arts (1987).

Photo: Robert Penn Warren working on the revisions of a book in a barn near his home (April 1956 by Leonard McCombe, Time/Life, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED).

Let’s celebrate this remarkable writer’s birthday with one of his most beautiful poems.

TELL ME A STORY

by Robert Penn Warren

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.