Teresa J. Scollon

Jun 05, 2013 3:58 PM EDT

If I want associative, I go to Harrison's ghazals over and over, or Adrienne Rich's or Bly translating just about anyone. I am old and getting older and have lost my tolerance for a shit ton of stuff.

- Delp

Jun 05, 2013 7:19 PM EDT

I don't want associative it clogs the drains and keeps me from digging in the garden and splitting firewood, instead I'm sitting in front, behind inside the poem in my head slapping words like mosquitoes with my bare hands and not a grain of sand under the nails. Love your mother TS, a true associate of mine, a Mama Grande.

- David Zaiss

Jun 06, 2013 12:53 PM EDT

Such a wonderful, whimsical, insightful poem. Thanks for bringing it to my attention! My favorite line (and it's hard to choose) is "Oh even the rain has to love them People
are just too attractive! and the rain places itself
on the window in order to be closer to the people". I certainly will see rain on windows differently in the future :)

- Rob Baker

Mar 14, 2013 2:29 PM EDT

The main emotion that hits me is sadness, it's such a sad poem. It also makes me think about what is friendship? Can a one sided neediness really last, do friends need to love and be loved for the relationship to last? All these things struck me before the reference to tension and release but then I read your take on things and got another view! Wow, so few words, so much meaning.

- Chris

Mar 14, 2013 4:59 PM EDT

Thank you Teresa. I enjoyed reading this.

- Holly Wren

Mar 15, 2013 9:46 AM EDT

Chris, I love your words here. I agree--it is such a sad poem. Cording puts himself right in the middle of that sadness. And friendship? Part way through that poem I think both of these men have to know it isn't working. For pity's sake, stop. But when Cording starts talking about his own frozen-ness, I think, ah. Maybe Cording needs this friendship more than his friend does. Thanks for writing. : >

- Teresa Scollon

Mar 15, 2013 9:47 AM EDT

Thank you, Holly, friend to writers everywhere. : > And thanks for the FB teaser also. Hope you are well and happy.

- Teresa Scollon

Mar 16, 2013 8:07 AM EDT

For twenty years
I have learned to live by doing whatever it takes
not to be hurt.

How much tension does that create? I have only tried it for the past 8 years, and I can testify to the fact that it's plenty stressful. But then:

I kept the receiver to my ear for a moment.

His friend has hung up, but he keeps the receiver to his ear for a moment, starts to listen to the sounds of nature, starts to "breathe in the sappy spring-struck air." Maybe he'll actually send that "love letter sealed inside an envelope years and years ago."

- Judy Mills

Apr 28, 2013 2:38 PM EDT

Lovely. Thanks, Judy.

- Teresa

Jan 03, 2013 12:56 PM EST

Oh gosh Teresa, you are so right, especially about Wendell Berry--though I think the first lines to love me were from Mary Oliver's American Primitive. Thanks for making me remember.

- Anne-Marie

Jan 04, 2013 8:19 AM EST

A wise teacher indeed to hand you Wendell Berry. You're off to a great blog!

- Heather

Jan 06, 2013 9:18 AM EST

My poetry exposure is limited. But a line I've always loved is the last of Emma Lazarus' poem on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I even used it in a haiku I wrote last year, after the Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act:
Poor, tired, huddled masses
Now just might get health care, too
Court did the right thing.

- Cari Noga

Jan 16, 2013 4:29 PM EST

May I borrow your line? I, too, am living as sincerely as I can.

- Amy

Jan 16, 2013 5:06 PM EST

"I want to die in the saddle,
an enemy of civilization."

- delp

Jan 16, 2013 8:21 PM EST

You introduced me to Berry and then in subsequent lives I've studied him, read him more and even - did I ever tell you? - met him at least two times in Kentucky. How stunningly small the world of humans is.
And, I will be so bold on your very own blog to say that yours is the poetry that continues to move me. Was just reading last night. Your turns of phrase stick with me...
*self-satisfied horseshit*
*that mile and a half of public sun*
*all kinds of wishes let loose in the room, knocking up against glass doors and animal print wallpaper*
*grief, this knobby bedfellow-all elbows and crowding in the middle*
*into a blessing beyond telling*
*but he's still here, still trying, still one of us*

- Erin Em

Jan 17, 2013 2:05 AM EST

For me, the poem I always remember is Jane Kenyon's "Otherwise" - a chronicle of her day as, I believe, she contemplates her death. "But one day, I know, it will be otherwise." Makes me cry almost every time.

- Rebecca D

Jan 18, 2013 6:32 AM EST

That last line is lovely! I've already copied it into my little notebook for further reflection.

I feel in love with poetry so long ago that I am not sure I can remember the first line that loved me, but I was often moved, as a teenager, by Rilke. In his poem 'Klage' (Lament) both the German and the translation rung and rung and rung in my young heart:

I would like to step out of my heart
an go walking beneath the enormous sky.
I would like to pray.
And surely of all the stars that perished
long ago,
one still exists.
I think that I know
which one it is--
which one, at the end of its beam in the sky,
stands like a white city...


I look forward to following your blog, Teresa. You can find me at www.thepoetryforge.com

- Holly Wren

Feb 15, 2013 11:06 AM EST

Thanks for all of these lovely examples. Delp, where is yours from?

- Teresa Scollon

Apr 01, 2018 6:33 AM EDT

"and my mom, who wants to know what happened to rhyme; ..." - Glad to see I am not the only one wondering. Sometimes Rhyme gets a bad rap. If Mrs. Scollon misses it, too, then I am not alone. Does modern poetry have any use for rhyme, or is it just rhubarb, without the pie?

- TheGuern