After Edna St. Vincent Millay

Karen Eastlund hosts this week's Roundup. Thank you, Karen. Find all the poetic offerings and end-of-June musings over at Karen's Got a Blog!

This week I'm writing from Maine, and it feels so good to be back in my home state. Almost as if to welcome me home, one of my poems aired on WERU Community Radio in Blue, Hill, Maine last week.

During an April online workshop, participants were asked to write a poem using the first line of another poem. I began with the delicious first line of an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, "Elegy Before Death."

There will be rose and rhododendron

   (after Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Elegy Before Death”)

There will be rose and rhododendron

before you take your leave.

Apple blossoms’ heady scent

will welcome swarms of bees.

In the crotch of Cortland branches,

finches will nest and sing.

Eggs will hatch, young will fledge,

blind to your scourge’s sting.

There will be solitary picnics

beneath gnarled apple trees,

gratitude for setting fruit,

for cool shade of leaves.

Oh, would the plucked fruit of Eve,

her curious mind cursed,

yield knowledge of a longed-for cure

before orchard drops are pressed!

Your demise will leave us reeling.

Our wounds are grave and deep.

Not one of us will mourn your passing;

for you, we will not weep.

            ~Joyce Ray © 2020

You can hear the radio recording of the poem on a post on my website, along with a piece about my writing journey.  I'd love to have a visit from you!

Terry Plunkett Maine Poetry Festival

Welcome to Poetry Friday. Sample a smorgasbord of poetry and poetic ideas rounded up at Tabatha’s blog. Thanks for hosting today, Tabatha.

Two weeks ago I walked into a roomful of revolutionaries. After years of encouragement from a family member, I attended the 10th Annual Terry Plunkett Maine Poetry Festival sponsored by the University of Maine at Augusta. The festival honors Terry Plunkett, former U of M professor and poet loved by many.

This year’s theme was Poetry and Revolution. Maine poets gathered to celebrate courageous voices past and present. I came away with a new awareness of poets who have played important parts in both political and social revolution.

A panel discussed the role of poetry in revolution. Many of the panelists were involved in revolutions of their own choosing:

poet Henry Braun chooses not to pay war taxes to the U.S. government,

Gary Lawless translates emerging voices from China and connects with African poets,

Lee Sharkey participates in Split This Rock, a point of convergence for politically engaged poets.

They and panelist Annie Finch, Director of the Stonecoast MFA program, cited Claude McKay (“If We Must Die”), Mahmoud Darwish (“Identity Card”) and al-Shabi (“If the People One Day Aspire to Life”) whose poems either inspired revolution or resistance.

I learned that “Conscientious Objector” by Edna St. Vincent Millay was a response to conflicts in Cuba and the Balkans.

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
Hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

Read the rest of this powerful poem here.

Festival attendees heard a sampler of revolutionary poets. Polish Wislawa Szymborska, Palestinian Rafeef Ziadah, and Nazim Hikmet, who is Turkey’s symbol of free speech, were new to me. Poems by familiar poets Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg and Bertolt Brecht were also read. It was a day well-spent. Consider this annual festival if you’re in the Augusta, Maine area in April.