Great Poetry by Women - TBD2024-03-29T04:46:51Zhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/forum/topics/great-poetry-by-women?groupUrl=gettingourgayon&commentId=1991841%3AComment%3A1670707&x=1&feed=yes&xn_auth=noDam Piercy's work just knocks…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2014-02-27:1991841:Comment:16707072014-02-27T15:48:43.465ZThe Dyslexic Dodgerhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/TheDyslexicDodger
<p>Dam Piercy's work just knocks me uot!</p>
<p>Dam Piercy's work just knocks me uot!</p> Always Unsuitable ~ Marge Pie…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2014-02-26:1991841:Comment:16703282014-02-26T17:13:34.418ZAngharadhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/Angharad
<h2 class="title">Always Unsuitable ~ Marge Piercy </h2>
<div><div class="KonaBody"><p>She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.<br></br>They were grinning politely and evenly at me.<br></br>Unsuitable they smirked. It is true<br></br><br></br>I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts<br></br>too big for the silhouette. She knew<br></br>at once that we had sex, lots of it<br></br><br></br>as if I had strolled into her diningroom<br></br>in a dirty negligee smelling gamy<br></br>smelling fishy and sporting a…</p>
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<h2 class="title">Always Unsuitable ~ Marge Piercy </h2>
<div><div class="KonaBody"><p>She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.<br/>They were grinning politely and evenly at me.<br/>Unsuitable they smirked. It is true<br/><br/>I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts<br/>too big for the silhouette. She knew<br/>at once that we had sex, lots of it<br/><br/>as if I had strolled into her diningroom<br/>in a dirty negligee smelling gamy<br/>smelling fishy and sporting a strawberry<br/><br/>on my neck. I could never charm<br/>the mothers, although the fathers ogled<br/>me. I was exactly what mothers had warned<br/><br/>their sons against. I was quicksand<br/>I was trouble in the afternoon. I was<br/>the alley cat you don't bring home.<br/><br/>I was the dirty book you don't leave out<br/>for your mother to see. I was the center-<br/>fold you masturbate with then discard.<br/><br/>Where I came from, the nights I had wandered<br/>and survived, scared them, and where<br/>I would go they never imagined.<br/><br/>Ah, what you wanted for your sons<br/>were little ladies hatched from the eggs<br/>of pearls like pink and silver lizards<br/><br/>cool, well behaved and impervious<br/>to desire and weather alike. Mostly<br/>that's who they married and left.<br/><br/>Oh, mamas, I would have been your friend.<br/>I would have cooked for you and held you.<br/>I might have rattled the windows<br/><br/>of your sorry marriages, but I would<br/>have loved you better than you know<br/>how to love yourselves, bitter sisters. </p>
<p></p>
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<div class="poet"></div>
</div> Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Son…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2011-05-17:1991841:Comment:11824732011-05-17T14:28:41.042ZAngharadhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/Angharad
<p>Anne Sexton (1928-1974)</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font size="+1">Song For A Lady</font></p>
<p>On the day of breasts and small hips <br></br> the window pocked with bad rain, <br></br> rain coming on like a minister, <br></br> we coupled, so sane and insane. <br></br> We lay like spoons while the sinister <br></br> rain dropped like flies on our lips <br></br> and our glad eyes and our small hips. <br></br> <br></br> "The room is so cold with rain" you said <br></br> and you, feminine you, with your flower <br></br> said novenas to my…</p>
<p>Anne Sexton (1928-1974)</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font size="+1">Song For A Lady</font></p>
<p>On the day of breasts and small hips <br/> the window pocked with bad rain, <br/> rain coming on like a minister, <br/> we coupled, so sane and insane. <br/> We lay like spoons while the sinister <br/> rain dropped like flies on our lips <br/> and our glad eyes and our small hips. <br/> <br/> "The room is so cold with rain" you said <br/> and you, feminine you, with your flower <br/> said novenas to my ankles and elbows <br/> You are a national product and power. <br/> Oh my swan, my drudge, my dear wooly rose, <br/> even a notary would notarize our bed <br/> as you knead me and I rise like bread. <br/> <br/> (1969)</p> Ha! WONDERFUL, DD!!! Happy da…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2011-05-04:1991841:Comment:11680632011-05-04T03:32:35.799ZAngharadhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/Angharad
<p>Ha! WONDERFUL, DD!!! Happy dance back!</p>
<p>Ha! WONDERFUL, DD!!! Happy dance back!</p> Diving Into the Wreck...A poe…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2011-05-03:1991841:Comment:11669932011-05-03T14:11:43.084ZAngharadhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/Angharad
<p><em><strong>Diving Into the Wreck</strong></em>...A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich, an American poet, essayist, lesbian, and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."</p>
<p>First having read the book of myths, <br></br>and loaded the camera, <br></br>and checked the edge of the knife-blade, <br></br>I put on <br></br>the body-armor of black rubber <br></br>the absurd flippers <br></br>the grave and awkward mask. <br></br>I am having to do…</p>
<p><em><strong>Diving Into the Wreck</strong></em>...A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich, an American poet, essayist, lesbian, and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."</p>
<p>First having read the book of myths, <br/>and loaded the camera, <br/>and checked the edge of the knife-blade, <br/>I put on <br/>the body-armor of black rubber <br/>the absurd flippers <br/>the grave and awkward mask. <br/>I am having to do this <br/>not like Cousteau with his <br/>assiduous team <br/>aboard the sun-flooded schooner <br/>but here alone. <br/><br/>There is a ladder. <br/>The ladder is always there <br/>hanging innocently <br/>close to the side of the schooner. <br/>We know what it is for, <br/>we who have used it. <br/>Otherwise <br/>it is a piece of maritime floss <br/>some sundry equipment. <br/><br/>I go down. <br/>Rung after rung and still <br/>the oxygen immerses me <br/>the blue light <br/>the clear atoms <br/>of our human air. <br/>I go down. <br/>My flippers cripple me, <br/>I crawl like an insect down the ladder <br/>and there is no one <br/>to tell me when the ocean <br/>will begin. <br/><br/>First the air is blue and then <br/>it is bluer and then green and then <br/>black I am blacking out and yet <br/>my mask is powerful <br/>it pumps my blood with power <br/>the sea is another story <br/>the sea is not a question of power <br/>I have to learn alone <br/>to turn my body without force <br/>in the deep element. <br/><br/>And now: it is easy to forget <br/>what I came for <br/>among so many who have always <br/>lived here <br/>swaying their crenellated fans <br/>between the reefs <br/>and besides <br/>you breathe differently down here. <br/><br/>I came to explore the wreck. <br/>The words are purposes. <br/>The words are maps. <br/>I came to see the damage that was done <br/>and the treasures that prevail. <br/>I stroke the beam of my lamp <br/>slowly along the flank <br/>of something more permanent <br/>than fish or weed <br/><br/>the thing I came for: <br/>the wreck and not the story of the wreck <br/>the thing itself and not the myth <br/>the drowned face always staring <br/>toward the sun <br/>the evidence of damage <br/>worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty <br/>the ribs of the disaster <br/>curving their assertion <br/>among the tentative haunters. <br/><br/>This is the place. <br/>And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair <br/>streams black, the merman in his armored body. <br/>We circle silently <br/>about the wreck <br/>we dive into the hold. <br/>I am she: I am he <br/><br/>whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes <br/>whose breasts still bear the stress <br/>whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies <br/>obscurely inside barrels <br/>half-wedged and left to rot <br/>we are the half-destroyed instruments <br/>that once held to a course <br/>the water-eaten log <br/>the fouled compass <br/><br/>We are, I am, you are <br/>by cowardice or courage <br/>the one who find our way <br/>back to this scene <br/>carrying a knife, a camera <br/>a book of myths <br/>in which <br/>our names do not appear.</p> "Saved" Maria Teresa Horta
Po…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2011-04-29:1991841:Comment:11633982011-04-29T14:10:46.860ZMaricel Evascohttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/MaricelEvasco
<p>"Saved"<br></br> Maria Teresa Horta<br></br> Portugal, 1937--<br></br>
<br></br>
From the wind I get<br></br>
the predicate of plants<br></br>
<br></br>
And feel the wider cleavage<br></br>
of your lips<br></br>
grazing and razing<br></br>
what is torn from the climate<br></br>
at the apex of a road<br></br>
<br></br>
Of the pools I Have only thought<br></br>
where once I swam and drowned<br></br>
<br></br>
a memory I quench and cannot grasp<br></br>
now that I am yours<br></br>
<br></br>
yours and saved.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI…<br></br></p>
<p>"Saved"<br/> Maria Teresa Horta<br/>
Portugal, 1937--<br/>
<br/>
From the wind I get<br/>
the predicate of plants<br/>
<br/>
And feel the wider cleavage<br/>
of your lips<br/>
grazing and razing<br/>
what is torn from the climate<br/>
at the apex of a road<br/>
<br/>
Of the pools I Have only thought<br/>
where once I swam and drowned<br/>
<br/>
a memory I quench and cannot grasp<br/>
now that I am yours<br/>
<br/>
yours and saved.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI<br/> <br/>
"THE RIVER"<br/>
I lie on the grass and listen<br/>
to the river inside me. It<br/>
pulses and churns, surges up<br/>
against the clenched rock<br/>
of my heart<br/>
until finally it spurts from my head<br/>
in a dark jet. Behind,<br/>
the clouds swoop and dive<br/>
on paper wings, the palace walls<br/>
grow taller, brick by brick, till they rise beyond<br/>
the painting's edge. The river<br/>
<br/>
is deep now and still, an opaque lake<br/>
filled with blue fish. But look,<br/>
the ground tilts, the green touch-me-not plants<br/>
angle away from my body. I am falling.<br/>
The lake cups its liquid fingers for me,<br/>
the fish glint like light on ice. Evening. The river pebbles<br/>
<br/>
are newborn pearls. The water rises.<br/>
I am disappearing, my body<br/>
rippling into circles. Legs, waist,<br/>
armpits. My hair floats upward, a skein<br/>
of melting silk. I give<br/>
my face to the river, the lines<br/>
of my forehead, my palms. When the last cell<br/>
has dissolved, the last cry<br/>
of the lake-birds, I will, once more,<br/>
hear the river inside.<br />
</p>
<font color="#FF995B" size="7"><font color="#FF995B" size="3"><font color="#FF995B"><font color="#FF995B" size="2"><b><font color="#FF995B" size="4"><i> </i></font></b></font></font></font></font><br />
<p> </p> These are WONDERFUL, Maricel!…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2011-04-29:1991841:Comment:11634642011-04-29T04:20:52.289ZAngharadhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/Angharad
<p>These are WONDERFUL, Maricel!!!! I hadn't known of Marjorie Evasco, and I look forward to reading more.</p>
<p>The tropical images in the first poem take me back to life in the early 1960s in Hawaii...I was fortunate enough to live there then. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I remember the jasmine and the sweet, juicy flesh of the mango..."you are goldened on my tongue"...I can't think of much that's more sensual.</p>
<p>And the second poem...beautiful and poignant, just like La Condition Humaine. </p>
<p>These are WONDERFUL, Maricel!!!! I hadn't known of Marjorie Evasco, and I look forward to reading more.</p>
<p>The tropical images in the first poem take me back to life in the early 1960s in Hawaii...I was fortunate enough to live there then. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I remember the jasmine and the sweet, juicy flesh of the mango..."you are goldened on my tongue"...I can't think of much that's more sensual.</p>
<p>And the second poem...beautiful and poignant, just like La Condition Humaine. </p>
One of my favorite Filipino…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2011-04-29:1991841:Comment:11629862011-04-29T01:38:19.972ZMaricel Evascohttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/MaricelEvasco
<p> </p>
<p>One of my favorite Filipino poets shares my surname, but I am not related to her: Marjorie Evasco</p>
<p> </p>
<strong><em>Elemental</em> - marjorie evasco</strong><br></br>
<br></br>
There is a season to this ripening<br></br>
the way sap of tree rises to fulfill fruit of the topmost branch,<br></br>
or the motion of jasmine climbing trellises<br></br>
to show off a single blossom at new moon tide<br></br>
In my garden bamboos arch over patch of grass,<br></br>
river stones, upturned earth.<br></br>
Alone where…
<p> </p>
<p>One of my favorite Filipino poets shares my surname, but I am not related to her: Marjorie Evasco</p>
<p> </p>
<strong><em>Elemental</em> - marjorie evasco</strong><br/>
<br/>
There is a season to this ripening<br/>
the way sap of tree rises to fulfill fruit of the topmost branch,<br/>
or the motion of jasmine climbing trellises<br/>
to show off a single blossom at new moon tide<br/>
In my garden bamboos arch over patch of grass,<br/>
river stones, upturned earth.<br/>
Alone where weeds grow wildest, I think:<br/>
How the golden skin of mango broke between your teeth;<br/>
how you swallowed the seamless sky over Siquijor,<br/>
you body becoming an entire land I could intimate black moons from,<br/>
taste of earth, rush of river songs, smell of air before rain,<br/>
spray of flowers with strange names.<br/>
Yes, there is Reason for this ripening.<br/>
You are goldened by my tongue.<br />
<br/>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif";">LA CONDITION HUMAINE</span></strong></p>
<p>There is a room where a man lies next</p>
<p>To a woman whose shoulders are lit</p>
<p>By morning. He wakes her to drift</p>
<p>Of clouds, wash of skies, drizzle</p>
<p>Of leaves in the air. “Magritte,”</p>
<p>He says into her ear, tracing </p>
<p>With a long slender finger,</p>
<p>A frame beyond the windowpane.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Another room in another time</p>
<p>Suddenly opens inside her.</p>
<p>She is standing by a window</p>
<p>Before the painting’s expanse of grass,</p>
<p>The cut of dirt road, and on the horizon</p>
<p>A stand of mountains measuring the reach</p>
<p>Of a single aspen. “La Condition Humaine,”</p>
<p>She turns to the man beside her,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As if to say she understood how inside</p>
<p>And outside the rooms of love</p>
<p>The landscape was not always seamless;</p>
<p>How, every time she turned her heart</p>
<p>Into an eye to invent with words the true form</p>
<p>Of being, dustmotes were already trapped</p>
<p>In the light of images, like this morning</p>
<p>Vanished fast into another day.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In no time they shall each be elsewhere. <br/> <span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif";"> </span><a href="http://marjorieevasco.jimdo.com/" target="_blank">http://marjorieevasco.jimdo.com/</a></p>
<p> </p>
<font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><i><br/></i></font></font> Beautiful.tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2011-04-27:1991841:Comment:11613892011-04-27T04:34:19.138ZAngharadhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/Angharad
Beautiful.
Beautiful. Edna St. Vincent Millay
To…tag:teebeedee.ning.com,2011-04-27:1991841:Comment:11612352011-04-27T04:30:56.977ZAngharadhttp://teebeedee.ning.com/profile/Angharad
<p>Edna St. Vincent Millay</p>
<font color="#008040"> <br></br></font>
<h4><font color="#008040"><cite><a id="Message" name="Message" rel="nofollow"><span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-1 goog_qs-tidbit-hilite">To One Who Might Have Borne a Message</span></a></cite></font></h4>
<br></br>
<p>Had I know that you were going<br></br>I would have given you messages for her,<br></br>Now two years dead,<br></br>Whom I shall always love.</p>
<p>As it is, should she entreat you how it goes with me,<br></br>You must…</p>
<p>Edna St. Vincent Millay</p>
<font color="#008040"> <br/></font>
<h4><font color="#008040"><cite><a name="Message" rel="nofollow" id="Message"><span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-1 goog_qs-tidbit-hilite">To One Who Might Have Borne a Message</span></a></cite></font></h4>
<br/>
<p>Had I know that you were going<br/>I would have given you messages for her,<br/>Now two years dead,<br/>Whom I shall always love.</p>
<p>As it is, should she entreat you how it goes with me,<br/>You must reply: as well as with most, you fancy;<br/>That I love easily, and pass the time.</p>
<p>And she will not know how all day long between<br/>My life and me her shadow intervenes,<br/>A young thin girl,<br/>Wearing a white skirt and a purple sweater<br/>And a narrow pale blue ribbon about her hair.</p>
<p>I used to say to her, "I love you<br/>Because your face is such a pretty colour,<br/>No other reason."<br/>But it was not true</p>
<p>Oh, had I only known that you were going,<br/> I could have given you messages for her!</p>