Regardless of age, all artists need encouragement in some form or another. There are no gas stations to refuel our faith in our work. So, today’s buffet is focused on offering a little needed boost in our belief that our art is something worth doing, something of value, something needed.
While we hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve put on the table for you today, this is also a potluck and we look forward to seeing your best dishes. Poets are invited to post one of their own poems in the comment section. (If you’re new, just click here to learn more about our weekly Poetry Potluck and Inspiration Buffet.)
First we have Aquilah Nelson from Bowie High School reading Marge Peircy’s poem “To the Young Who Want To” at the 2014 Poetry Out Loud Maryland State Final Competition.
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Next is Patti Smith with her wonderful advice to the young and her thoughts on how technology has put artists into a position of new power.
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Lastly, here’s an old a dish of mine:
Live Your Own Language
I wanted to send you letters that would heal
the dark ache in your torn heart. I wanted
to give you a language that could bring life
back to your soul, your convictions, your hopes,
and your God given bounty of beautiful gifts.
Wanted to give you a literary expression
that could lift you from the slow low hum
of everything you thought you could never become,
lift you above the lifelong embedded lies,
lift you up and out of the century old family history
of hurt and hit and hate.
Wanted to give you the alphabet of love, of joy,
of lasting friends, of solace and promise.
Wanted to arrange strong sentences to protect you
from the vicious tongues, the dangerous hands, and
the lethal yet commercially advertised depths of hell.
Wanted to give you a voice that needed no screams.
I wanted to take you from the prison
of illiteracy and silence to the free
and moving and miraculous world of vocabulary.
But my words are only mine. It is not my words,
their words, or anyone else’s words that you need.
What you need are your own words.
You must find your own voice,
create your own dictionary,
develop your own definitions,
and live as though you are
a language that was never spoken
until you entered this world.
You must speak in your language
even if they do not understand.
Communicate in your own words
even if it seems no one is listening.
Write your own letters
even if no one reads them.
And remember,
the infinite universe has ears
and understands every language,
even the language of your life.
-Kay Kestner
…and now it’s time for your poems.
Poetry Breakfast 
March 2, 2016 at 3:56 PM
To Myself
If your poems are pierced by shafts of light
in a battered gray barn, let the dust float
there awhile as red hens squawk
through weather-beaten boards.
If your poems shine
with her blue eyes and pillow talk
and some very heavy breathing,
offer to light them a cigarette after.
If they contain too much
wondering if they’ll remember
you when they’re grown and gone,
just cradle them into heaviness.
When they hide in the forgotten darkness
of your scariest dreams, stare them down
until they skulk into your back pocket
and try to get lost in the wash.
First appeared in Blue Lake Review
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February 29, 2016 at 11:35 AM
if you want to write
you don’t need to prep
you don’t need the latest gadget
you certainly don’t need to wait
you don’t need to even spell
what you need to do –
write.
write more than you tv
write more than you worry
write more than you think
write more than you know –
and you don’t need to know much.
see no matter what you do
no matter what you live
no matter what your experience
its all material
its all educational
its all inspirational
if only you will –
write.
then read.
CSC_7966
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February 28, 2016 at 12:55 PM
Write What You Know
Write what you know, they say
so he writes the first draft of
the fog and gravel of Route 16
all the way from Barton to Hardwick
every morning before the sun;
and before the sun goes down
he’s revised the revised revision
until all he really thinks he knows
is what they say he’s written.
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February 28, 2016 at 12:40 PM
Write it.
Unspool it from your heart’s core.
Wait for the words that come.
Make them your own.
Then sing them.
Someone is listening.
It will never be heard
Quite the same way.
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February 28, 2016 at 10:22 AM
These are three rich and nutritious buffet dishes, and I intend to share this widely! I have to say, Ann, that your own poem so validates all my own efforts, my own life, and that of any “individual” who has this calling, trying to transcribe from the eternal blank page of–what to call it?– Silence, aliveness, originality. All three contributions articulate this elusive coin of the realm, actually, so another big Sunday THANK YOU!
The poem I will share does not explicitly deal with writing, but in discovering, in the sometimes blinding maze of life–or “being taken to,” THAT, within and without, which is worth lifting a pen to say, in the first place:
The Stars
The stars that were over my head this morning
were there from the First Day,
those stars I hid crook-necked from in cities
while traveling my wayward way.
Slowly at first, then faster,
I began to see, eyes blinded at first
by neon and streetlamps,
and the stars’ nights’ closeness only speaking
in a few forays into the midnights between cities,
bedazzling my eyes to see the jewels
darkness was strung with.
And always I wanted to stop
and enjoy and stare and pray,
but a motor inside me was going too fast
and in vans or cars
I sped back to cities
to undo my mind’s
tightly wound springs.
Then in a dozen years
I came out under the stars
and behold! The canopy
of heaven was still there,
and I murmured and prayed in valleys
like green cups for my love, and It said,
“You were too busy before,
but we have always been here
and we always shall be.”
That which I was to busy to love
patiently waited for me.
Now I have finished my business
and am free to love,
and the Morning Star’s song
has come to me with a joy
that had always been concealed
within my breast,
and the heavens have exploded
Into singing
and the weeping
of the morning dew.
© Max Reif
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