Poetic Discourse

It was great to talk to Ted Kooser and Nancy Arbuthnot
yesterday. There were a couple of poems and resources that we referred to, and
I wanted to make sure that you had them. We talked about three books that Ted wrote Delights and Shadows, Valentines and The Poetry Home Repair Manual. Here are the two poems we referred to, which can both be found in Delights and Shadows:

Praying Hands

There is at least one pair

in every thrift shop in America,

molded in plastic or plaster of paris

and glued to a plaque,

or printed in church-pamphlet colors

and framed under glass.

Today I saw a pair made out of

lightweight wire stretched over a pattern

of finishing nails.

This is the way faith goes

from door to door,

cast out of one and welcomed at another.

A butterfly presses its wings like that

as it rests between flowers.

Ted mentioned that he writes a lot of poetry, and ends up
with only a few that he really likes. I asked him if he could name one of the poems
that he cared about, and he mentioned this one:

Screech Owl

All night each reedy whinny

from a bird no bigger than a heart

flies out of a tall black pine

and, in a breath, is taken away

by the stars. Yet, with small hope

from the center of darkness

it calls out again and again.

Nancy Arbuthnot read three poems on the air from a
collection of poems based on passages from the Gospel of John that she’s working on. Here are two of them:

Bread

Bread like breath

that breathes through a thousand small holes–

Bread his father used to bake

mixing yeast and sugar

flour and water and oil

letting the dough rise

punching it down

the sweet moist aroma

filling the small apartment

May I have some? he’d ask

and his father would slice the still warm loaf

and place a piece in his hands

What purity of question–

what was wanted, asked for

What purity, the answer–

what was asked for, given

Moth

O moth now dead

that lived only a
day

crawling hidden
beneath the closed lid

of the cedar trunk

where in late
spring I stored for the summer

my wool sweaters,

as I run my cheeks against

the rabbity down
of my pink angora cardigan

the cashmere
elegance of the tight black jewel-neck

I wore to parties, pausing in the
doorway

to toss the purple
silk scarf

over my shoulder,

as for the last time I wrap around
my shoulders

this loose-knit
green sweater-jacket

I loved to read
in, curled on the couch

while outside a red-headed
woodpecker

knocked at the
maple,

O tiny
nibbling-mouthed moth

I cannot find–

nothing of your
self remains,

no papery wings,
no hard slug

of thorax and abdomen–teach me

from what remains

of my beautiful
wool sweaters

to love without
vanity.