For National Poetry Month, however belated. My original intention was to publish a weekly feature + poems that would also promote the August Picnic, remind readers of its long, ongoing connectedness to the Sunflower Festival and springboard into increased blog crossover with Poets & Writers Picnic.
The following, American Life in Poetry, Column 266, by Ted Kooser, is a regular feature from The Poetry Foundation.
American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet's close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that's enough, that's adequate, that's good.
Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois [and like Williams, writes about not just plums but everyday experience].
The Yellow Bowl
If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,
if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table
rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,
and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,
if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table
rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,
and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. Poem copyright ©2009 by Rachel Contreni Flynn, whose newest book, Tongue, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Reprinted from Haywire, Bright Hill Press, 2009, by permission of Rachel Contreni Flynn and the publisher. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.
