Poems for Feb. 8 - prep w/ Poetry Magazine

The Pure Good of Theory -- Wallace Stevens
Beginning -- James Wright
Swath -- Stephanie E. Schlaifer
The Stimulation is an understatement -- Stephenie E. Schlaifer
A Prayer for Rain -- Lisel Mueller

Poetry (the magazine)founded in 2012, is celebrating 100 years, and part of the February issue is a selection of one poem each by Lisel Mueller, Weldon Kees, Eleanor Ross Taylor, Janet Lewis, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost and Robert Creeley.

Another section is entitled "Various" in which 14 poets chime in "One whole voice".
Let's try the "can you guess game" with who might have said what.
(Jericho Brown, Fanny Howe, Kazim Ali, Jean Valentine, G.C. Waldrep, Joy Harjo, Eleanor Wilner, Dunya Mikhail.)

-- "I've never believed that what attracts us to poems is knowing what's going on in them."
"there is a coincidence, and a slowly developing sense of a hidden structure which increases with work, experience and age. How people stay in your life. How memories are so strong and books passed along through decades, and at the same time there is no evidence of yesterday as a place."
"You can see two things at once, reflections in different directions, and both things are true."
"I am drawn to poets who allow the Other its existence."
"Most Americans compartmentalize, because it is convenient: we find our modern lives intolerable otherwise. ... Poetry is that which conveys a message to a stranger."
"Much of world poetry is incantation and chant. ... The everlasting is who we truly are, where we truly belong. It is the stuff of poetry, music and dance, of all arts. In this place, we are one person, one poem, one story and one song."
"For me, the poem is never just about experience, it IS an experience; we can't know where a poem is going, and should be surprised (and even enlightened) by what it reveals."
"With poetry, I feel I am in love. With prose, I feel I am in marriage."

Paul Celan said, "Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the human soul."

**
On Wednesday, we will look at time, at darkness, beginnning, swath, ... we'll ride horses, observe moons, trees, tornado, listen to the sound of rain.