grandmothers and other writers :: poetry friday

on this late January Poetry Friday, a picture of my own grandmother, Nadine Ellen West. and a poem from the epigraph of The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasure of the Writer’s Craft.  returning to this treasure house of a book looking for inspiration + direction as i revise.

Kinds of Writers by Kim Stafford

Emily distilling spent days

into an attar of verse.  Or Basho: bamboo.

Or St. Francis, living the life that commands others

to tell his stories.  Or a Bard with a mind like mossy

shelves heavy with tales.  Or Anansi, spinning creation.

Rumi and Rama spinning spirit.  Or Walt Whitman’s

mother, to bear such a child.  Scheherazade, telling

stories for life, night by night.  Or Homer, whose life-

work of two poems is enough.  Or on the mountain,

singer of the Song of Songs.  Yes, I prefer anonymous–

her naked, indelible call.  Your own grandmother softly

putting you to sleep with a hum.  Or best of all,

someone we have not yet read, someone wide-eyed,

big-hearted, listening among us now, whose fist

can barely hold a pen.

more Poetry Friday goodness can be found this week at A Teaching Life.

…and Viking paper dolls from another Nadene.

and having poems and Vikings, let us be therewith content.