Tag astrology

* three years of the influence

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

This weekend marks the 3 year anniversary of this blog.

Yay!

This week’s poem – “A Flock of Sheep Near the Airport” by Yehuda Amichai – takes on the idea of attention in a way that ties into the spirit in which I started the blog. The first stanza evokes the kind of conflicted feelings one goes through in everyday life, the “combinations” that “wound” as well as “heal.” The second stanza, with its focus on one sound, evokes for me in a way the act of being engrossed while reading.

Each week I hope to share a poem that has, for a little while, been for me “the only sound in the world.”

I see this as a kind of reader’s blog, a way of putting a bit of good energy out into the world. I’m excited to still be going strong and to have you along for the ride.

* near the what now? *

* near the what now? *

A Flock of Sheep Near the Airport – Yehuda Amichai

A flock of sheep near the airport
or a high voltage generator beside the orchard:
these combinations open up my life
like a wound, but they also heal it.
That’s why my feelings always come in twos.
That’s why I’m like a man who tears up a letter
and then has second thoughts,
picking up the pieces and pasting them together again
with great pains, sometimes
for the rest of his life.

But once I went looking for my son at night
and found him in an empty basketball court
lit by a powerful floodlight.
He was playing all alone.
And the sound of the ball bouncing
was the only sound in the world.

***

Happy sounding!

Jose

* moon tidings via kathleen jamie

José Angel Araguz 1 Comment

First, a bit of news: the new issue of RHINO Poetry is available for purchase! Check out my poem “Joe” – selected for the 2015 Editor’s Prize – here as well as selections of other fine work in issue here. Thank you to everyone at RHINO for their support!

***

This weekend brings with it a total lunar eclipse which is being reported to be the shortest lunar eclipse of this century. In honor of its brevity, here’s the shortest poem I have about the moon:

Moon – Jose Angel Araguz

A widow turning over in her sleep.

 

* blushing moon *

* blushing moon *

Working on a recent manuscript recently, I got called out about the moon: It’s always the moon! And it’s true, I do try to hang too much on it. It’s hard not to. From Li Po getting drunk underneath it and Sir Philip Sidney’s “sad steps” to Philip Larkin’s “lozenge of love” and this week’s poem, the moon keeps being sought after with interest and fascination.

…like a coin we spend, only to find again (sorry couldn’t help it 🙂 ).

This week’s poem – “Moon” by Kathleen Jamie – put the moon on my mind again when I read it earlier this week. It does what I work hard to do when talking about the moon, which is bring it into conversation with the personal in a new way.

Jamie’s poem was featured in The Best American Poetry Blog series “Introducing Scottish poets” curated by Robyn Marsack – find out more about her work and others here.

Moon – Kathleen Jamie

Last night, when the moon
slipped into my attic-room
as an oblong of light,
I sensed she’d come to commiserate.

It was August. She travelled
with a small valise
of darkness, and the first few stars
returning to the northern sky,

and my room, it seemed,
had missed her. She pretended
an interest in the bookcase
while other objects

stirred, as in a rockpool,
with unexpected life:
strings of beads in their green bowl gleamed,
the paper-crowded desk;

the books, too, appeared inclined
to open and confess.
Being sure the moon
harboured some intention,

I waited; watched for an age
her cool glaze shift
first toward a flower sketch
pinned on the far wall

then glide to recline
along the pinewood floor
before I’d had enough. Moon,
I said, we’re both scarred now.

Are they quite beyond you,
the simple words of love? Say them.
You are not my mother;
with my mother, I waited unto death.

 from The Overhaul  (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2015)

***

Happy mooning!

Jose