- April is National Poetry Month
- Join the Vorhoff Library as we celebrate a woman poet each day during the month!
- Serendipitous Poetry
- Serendipitous Poetry
- Posted April 11, 2009
Sometimes it's possible to find really excellent books, literature that will stick with you for life, just by aimlessly browsing the shelves in a library or bookstore. In fact, I often prefer browsing to recommendations; there is a certain joy in serendipity that is not present in checking off a list of books-to-read. (I've made lists hundreds of books long, lost the notebook in a desk drawer, so few ever even looked for.) The two books of poetry featured today were found merely by browsing--I pulled them off the shelves because they looked like poetry.
Country Women's Poetry is an anthology of reader submissions published in 1975 by Country Women magazine, a back-to-the-earth sort of publication out of California. The poems are certainly not the pastorals or songs of work that the title suggests. Many speak to the feminine through a strong sexual theme associated more with the decade of the '70s and women's liberation than the country--a lovely reminder through poetry of human universals, as well as the extreme diversity that exists in those different from ourselves.
Erotikon, by Susan Mitchell, is not as the title might suggest a collection of erotic poetry. Rather, it is a series of poems about sex and its meaning, about the connection between sex and life. Highly abstract and metaphorical, the poems in this collection are nevertheless quite sexy--though not so much as some of the offerings found in Country Women's Poetry. Maybe today's theme should instead be sex poetry? But the poem of the day I've picked out is quite non-erotic, out of respect for the image of this library, and is instead an song of explosive and joyous femininity.
Poem of the day:
Gypsy Song
Stephanie Mines
Gypsy ladies hold hands with white birds
In a dance that replaces words
And the music is air, no spectators there
In the sweet valley of my mind.
Gypsy ladies partners with white birds
In the midsummer night of fireflies
And the tunes flow from their eyes
Naked bodies, oh how they wind.
Gypsy Indian Aztec goddesses
Jazz jewesses and mountain strutters
In the poplar grove of my dream
Whisper of limber muscles, finger cymbals gleam.
Can bodies make music only at night?
Is levitation a fantasy, sprung rhythm from the right?
In this paradise of jewelled dark hair
Plateau above the planet in the breathless everywhere.
Photo by surrealmuse
