The Sylvia Plath Bake-Off

Today is the anniversary of the death of American poet, Sylvia Plath.

On February 11, 1963, on a bitter, cold, dark London evening Plath put her two small children to bed, then she turned on the gas stove in her kitchen, lay down with her head in that oven and she died.

She was 30 years old. She was talented. She was celebrated.

She was heartsick. She was depressed. 

Celebrate Plath’s life and art today by baking something yummy.

Make cookies for someone you love. Bake lasagna for dinner.

Read a poem. Write a poem. 

Cherish your life.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire....God in Us....We are God's Will

Here is a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins, cartainly a Christian poet, whose work is all about the inwardness of our lives. When I read this poem in class the other night I was reminded of our familiar question, "What is God's will for me?" And how so many of us in recovery--even in later recovery --struggle to know what to be when we grow up. And too, I and maybe you, seem to always feel the need to be  better than I am today. This sonnet quiets those questions, and I feel peace each time I read it. Hopkins tells us--in such sensuous language--that how we glorify God is by being exactly who we are. If I could just hold this---such sweet relief.

Sonnet 34--As Kingfishers catch fire:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; 
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells 
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s 
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; 
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came. 
Í say móre: the just man justices; 
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces; 
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places, 
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces. 

Recovery Poems for April

April is Poetry Month so,

“Let us remember…that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.” --Christian Wiman

For this Poetry Month I’ll be adding some poems about recovery, and growth and changing our lives. I hope you’ll make them part of your meditation and that you will share them too.

We begin with Mary Oliver who writes in “The Journey” about the experience that many of us had that got us here: The Journey

One day you finally knew


what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting
their bad advice-


though the whole house

began to tremble


and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,


though their melancholy
was terrible.


t was already late
enough,

and a wild night,


and the road full of fallen
branches

and stones.
But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice


which you slowly
recognized as your own,


that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper


into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do

--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Sylvia Plath's Birthday

Today –October 27^th--is the birthday of the poet Sylvia Plath.  She was one of America’s young, brilliant, and beautiful poets. After the success of her first book she married the British poet, Ted Hughes. They were an envied, successful literary couple.

On February 11, 1963, on a cold, dark London evening Plath put her two small children to bed, then turned on the gas stove in her kitchen, stuck her head in the oven and died. She was 30. She was talented. She was celebrated. She was heartsick. She was depressed.

Celebrate Plath today. Make cookies for someone you love. Bake lasagna for dinner. Read a poem. Write a poem. Cherish your life.

April is Poetry Month: Wild Geese

So now we will close our April Poetry Month with another poem by Mary Oliver. This might be one to memorize and press--like a flower --into your heart.


Wild Geese

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.


---Mary Oliver

April is Poetry Month: Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver is one of America's great writers: fiction and poetry. He is one of the chroniclers of what a drinking life is like and a sober life. His stories have become movies, his poems, plays. Here is a poem he wrote near the end of his life.  This poem is called, "Gravy".

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.


Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and


being loved by a good woman. Eleven years


ago he was told he had six months to live


at the rate he was going. And he was going


nowhere but down. So he changed his ways


somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?


After that it was all gravy, every minute


of it, up to and including when he was told about,


well, some things that were breaking down and


building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”


he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.


I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone


expected. Pure Gravy. And don’t forget it.”

Raymond Carver

April is Poetry Month

April is Poetry Month so,

“Let us remember…that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.” --Christian Wiman

For this Poetry Month I’ll be adding some poems about recovery, and growth and changing our lives. I hope you’ll make them part of your meditation and that you will share them too.

We begin with Mary Oliver who writes in “The Journey” about the experience that many of us had that got us here:

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew


what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting 
their bad advice-


though the whole house

began to tremble


and you felt the old tug 
at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried 
with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,


though their melancholy
 was terrible.

i
t was already late 
enough,

and a wild night,


and the road full of fallen 
branches

and stones.
But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn 
through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice


which you slowly
 recognized as your own,


that kept you company
 as you strode deeper and deeper


into the world, 
determined to do
 the only thing you could do

--
determined to save 
the only life you could save.

Out of the Woods Poetry Contest

April is National Poetry Month and so today we begin the First Annual Out of the Woods Poetry Contest. This year’s theme is Twelve Step Haiku.

The guidelines: Write a haiku about one of AA’s 12 steps. You can do one step or all 12. The description of a haiku is this: Seventeen (17) syllables in three, non-rhyming lines. It typically is like this: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. But we are recovering alcoholics and addicts so for our purposes we’ll be flexible: poetic license not perfection.

The joy of haiku is that they are fast simple and always right. They can be funny or serious or mysterious, and they are often surprising to the reader and the writer. Here are some samples:

Step One:

Admitted, “No power”.

Set the drink on the bar,

Then I called AA.


Step Two:

Not alone, but crazy

I came to ask in the dark,

“Will you make me sane?”


Step Three:

My hands in the air,

I surrender me to you.

Please, God, care for me.


Now it’s your turn. What is the essence of each step for you? Is there a key word or two? Challenge your friends and post your favorites here. You can use the Comments link below or email your 12-step haiku to me and I’ll post them in the blog

Dantes Woods

"In the middle of the journey of our life, I came
to myself in a dark wood where straight the
way was lost.
Ah! How hard a thing to tell what a wild.
and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which
in my thought renews the fear."


These words are from the poet Dante, writing the Inferno.
Doesn’t it sound familiar? He wrote in 1302. But here are the woods which we know as this recovery path we are on together, and look, he says in the middle of “our life”. Yes it is himself but that “our” includes us too.
“A dark wood where straight the way was lost.”
We know that as well
and then he says, “Which in my thought renews the fear”.
When you think about your life before recovery, when you “keep it green”
Doesn’t that renew your fear?