Bumping into the world
This is Freya’s day. Her mailbox was filled with poetic remembrances.
It is the 96th birth anniversary of poet Robert Bly. He was an anti-war activist, translator and among the leaders of the mythopoetic men's movement of the 1990's. He was born on this date in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota (1926). He died last year on November 21, 2021.
British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow, Scotland on today's date in 1955. She grew up in Staffordshire, England.
It's also the 162nd anniversary of the birth of Harriet Monroe, one of the great champions of poetry, and founder of Poetry magazine. She was born in Chicago today in 1860. Poetry Magazine was first pubished in 1912.
Another writer of classic American literature, Norman Maclean, was born on this date in 1902, in Clarinda, Iowa. A River Runs Through It was published in 1976.
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” – Norman Maclean
The poetic state of mind isn't grasping, nor is is passive. Receptive is the better word. Don't close all the doors, in advance, for yourself and your poem, for your reader. – after Kim Addonizio.
No [one] was ever yet a great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher.– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I always liked that Saint Kateri Tekakwitha’s name “Tekakwitha” means “she who bumps into things.” What if holiness is a contact sport and we are meant to bump into things? This is what it means to embrace a contemplative, mystical way of seeing wholeness. It gives a window into complexity and keeps us from judging and scapegoating and demonizing. If we allow ourselves to “bump into things,” then we quit measuring. We cease to Bubble-Wrap ourselves against reality. . . Our attempts to distance the secular also distances us from those ordinary things and moments that become epiphanies. – Greg Boyle