August 25, 2009

Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment

American Life in Poetry: Column 231

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

This column originates on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and at the beginning of each semester, we see parents helping their children move into their dorm rooms and apartments and looking a little shaken by the process. This wonderful poem by Sue Ellen Thompson of Maryland captures not only a moment like that, but a mother’s feelings as well.

Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment

This is all I am to her now:
a pair of legs in running shoes,

two arms strung with braided wire.
She heaves a carton sagging with CDs

at me and I accept it gladly, lifting
with my legs, not bending over,

raising each foot high enough
to clear the step. Fortunate to be

of any use to her at all,
I wrestle, stooped and single-handed,

with her mattress in the stairwell,
saying nothing as it pins me,

sweating, to the wall. Vacuum cleaner,
spiny cactus, five-pound sacks

of rice and lentils slumped
against my heart: up one flight

of stairs and then another,
down again with nothing in my arms

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, and reprinted from When She Named Fire, ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009, and reprinted by permission of the poet and publisher. First printed in The Golden Hour, Sue Ellen Thompson, Autumn House Press, 2006. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:02 PM | Comments (1)

August 17, 2009

Currently Reading...

... Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, by Louise DeSalvo. I have this idea to develop a writing curriculum for people in recovery. I have found a few resources out there, but nothing that's precisely what I have in mind. Any suggestions?

I like the book so far, and am only 20 or so pages in, but I scanned the bibliography at the end and was surprised to not find Edmund Wilson's, Wound And The Bow: Seven Studies In Literature, which I have always thought of as a cornerstone book in this field. I could be overlooking something, though, and it will be good for me to go back and read Wilson as well.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:12 AM

August 8, 2009

Back from Ferry Beach...

... where I was able to write a few short things, including this tanka and this extended haiku. I hope you enjoy.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:39 PM

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