Bread

“It seems to be the five stages
of yeast, not grief,
you like to write about,”
my son says,
meaning that bread
is always rising
and falling, being broken
and eaten, in my poems.

And though he is only half serious,
I want to say to him
“bread rising in the bowl
is like breath rising in the body;”
or “if you knead the dough
with perfect tenderness,
it is like gently kneading flesh
when you make love.”
Baguette . . . pita . . . pane . . .
Challah . . . naan: bread is
the universal language, translatable
on the famished tongue.

Now it is time to open
the package of yeast
and moisten it with water,
watching for its fizz,
its blind energy–proofing
it’s called, the animate proof
of life. Everything
is ready: salt, flour, oil.
Breadcrumbs are what lead
the children home.

– Linda Pastan

Postscript:

I came to read this poem through the blog Better Living Through Beowolf, that primarily deals with how great literature can be related to the quotidian, the mundane.
You can read more about Linda Pastan here and here. You can read an interview with her here.

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Published:
August 15, 2012 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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Heart to Heart

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.
It doesn’t have
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely —
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—
but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me, too.

– Rita Dove

Postscript:

The poem is written as a series of negatives, of declarations of what a heart is not, the things it can’t do, or can’t be done with it. It brings up all the metaphors we use in relation to what is after all a bunch of muscle (cardiologists everywhere will do a collective cringe). At the end of it, the narrator sounds like she (?he) is tired of dealing with something that doesn’t meet her expectations, isn’t what it’s made out to be, and in almost-exasperation hands her heart over – with the condition that she be taken, too.
This poem reminds me of a couple of poems we’ve run; Valentine by Carol Duffy, and The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart by Margaret Atwood.
You can read more about Rita Dove here and here. You can hear her reading out some of her poetry here. You can read an interview with her by the Smithsonian about the future of literature.

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Published:
August 14, 2012 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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Almighty Ruler of the All

Almighty ruler of the all
Whose power extends to great and small,
Who guides the stars with steadfast law,
Whose least creation fills with awe –
Oh grant Thy mercy and Thy grace
To those who venture into space.

– Robert A. Heinlein

Postscript:

Heinlein is a writer whose work was different in so many ways from any other SF I’d read, and some of his characters were so out there that they redefined out there for me at the time. His vision of future Earth included space travel and this was a hymn he’d adapted from the Navy Hymn, which starts thus:

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

You can read a biography of Heinlein here.

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Published:
August 13, 2012 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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