Friday, January 23, 2009

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "hope made wise by dread"


It's been quite a week.

Rebel Girl found herself humming My Country 'Tis of Thee in the shower, in her car, while she cooked.

Something's up, she thought, or else she's turning back into the girl scout who used to carry the colors with such pride that she'd cry.

Maybe she's becoming, after all these years, Aretha Franklin.

Cool.

Here's a poem from Frank Bidart:

Inauguration Day

Today, despite what is dead
staring out across America I see since
Lincoln gunmen
nursing fantasies of purity betrayed,
dreaming to restore
the glories of their blood and state

despite what is dead but lodged within us, hope

under the lustrous flooding moon
the White House is still
Whitman's White House, its
gorgeous front
full of reality, full of illusion

hope made wise by dread begins again

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...