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“My country, I will build you again.
If need be, with bricks made from my life …
I will wash again the blood off your body
With torrents of my tears.
Once more, the darkness will leave this house …”
— Simin Behbahani, ‘the Lioness of Iran’ –
from “My Country, I Will Build You Again”
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“The public welfare demands that constitutional
cases must be decided according to the terms of
the Constitution itself, and not according to judges’
views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have
no fear of constitutional amendments properly
adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution
by judges under the guise of interpretation.”
— Hugo L. Black, Associate Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court (1937-1971)
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Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post
with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic
for the day's posting. We support our community,
invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful,
respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a
feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 Poets born in July,
some see the beauty of their
country, but none are blind
to all that needs to be restored
or changed — defiant of
illness, age, or oppression,
they hymn their truths
Trigger Warning: Esther Popel in her
poem ”Blasphemy — American Style”
realistically puts offensive language
in the mouths of white racists.
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July 14
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1912 – Woody Guthrie born as Woodrow Wilson Guthrie in Okemeh, Oklahoma. After a series of bad real estate deals, his father left the family and went to Texas to work off debts. When Woody was 14, his mother, afflicted with Huntington’s disease, was misdiagnosed as mentally ill, and committed to Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane. The Guthrie children were left fending for themselves. Woody worked odd jobs, or played a harmonica and sang for food and money. He dropped out of high school in his senior year before graduation, but remained an avid reader. His mother died in the mental hospital in 1930. During the Dust Bowl years, Guthrie migrated to California looking for work. He partnered with Maxine “Lefty Lou” Crissman on the “Woody and Lefty Lou Show” on the radio, but were fired after the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939. He, Pete Seeger, Will Geer, and others went to New York City. In February 1940, Guthrie wrote his most famous song “This Land Is Your Land.” His autobiography, Bound for Glory, was published in 1943. He served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during WWII. By the late 1940s, Guthrie started showing symptoms of Huntington’s disease, but like his mother, he was misdiagnosed. He returned to California, and lived at the Theatricum Botanicum, an outdoor theatre founded and owned by Will Geer. His arm was badly burned in a fire, leaving him unable to play his guitar. Increasingly debilitated by Huntington’s, Guthrie was hospitalized at a series of psychiatric hospitals from 1956 until his death at age 55 in October 1967.
I Ain't Got No Home
by Woody Guthrie
.
I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round
Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore
.
My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore
.
Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor
My crops I lay into the banker's store
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore
.
I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore
.
Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore
.
“I Ain't Got No Home” from Best of Woody Guthrie, songs by Woody Guthrie © 2002 – TRO -Ludlow Music
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1926 – Himayat Ali Shair born in Augangabad, Hyderabad Deccan, British India; Pakistani Urdu language poet, author, film song lyricist, actor, and radio drama artist. He worked for All India Radio before migrating to Pakistan in 1951. His first poetry book Aag Main Phool (Today I Am a Flower) was published in 1956 and was honored with the Presidential Award in 1958. Two of his film songs earned Nigar Awards. In 1966, Shair produced and directed Lori (Lullaby song) starring Zeba, Santosh Kumar, and Muhammad Ali (not the American boxer). Shair also taught Urdu Literature at Sindh University (1976-1987). He and his wife frequently visited their adult children and their families in Toronto Canada, and both of them died there. She died of cancer in 2001, and he died of a heart attack at age 93 in July 2019.
A Lament for the Motherland
by Himayat Ali Shair
.
“The vultures sitting over my body
Are snatching every piece of my meat
My eyes, the nest of beautiful dreams
My tongue, the mirror of pearl-like words
My arms, the guarantors of the interpretation of dreams
My heart, in which every impossible, becomes possible
My spirit is watching this whole spectacle
Thinking
Was this entire game
(My corpse over the table-cloth of savages)
Meant for the pleasures of eating and drinking?”
.
“Madar-e-Vatan Ka Nauha” (“A Lament for the Motherland”) was written in 1958 in response to the first military coup in Pakistan, led by the army’s Commander-in-Chief Ayub Khan. It was published in his complete collection Kuliyat-e-Shair, © 2007
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1977 – Christina Goh born in Paris (Ivorian father, Martinican mother) grew up in Côte d'Ivoire – "La perle noire de l'afro-blues" (Afro-blues black pearl). She has published four poetry collections, including: Le chant des coeurs (The songs of the heart); Le concept en poems (The concept in poems); and Poèmes et cheminement avec la vaillance (Poems and journey with valor).
Confinement
by Christina Goh
.
We have become eagles
who glaze over the information peaks
from sunrise to sunset
trumpeted in all languages, in colors,
in plumes of sweetness and vigor
masters of the dreamlike airs…
.
Today we are lions
who roar their fury of life
or spread out, troubled in the sunlight
of their screens, watching the family
of the world, waiting for the best
and theories in the wind
.
But who would have believed it?
by the glow of virtual campfires
for a reconstructed holiday,
the shadows of the past took pity
and before disappearing,
they turned us into griffins.
.
– translation not credited
“Confinement” from Carnet pour simple amour, © 2022 by Christina Goh – independently published in French
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July 15
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1906 – Richard Armour born in San Pedro, California; prolific American poet and prose writer, best known for his short light verse. He studied with Shakespearean scholar George Lyman Kittredge at Harvard, and earned a PhD in English philology, and later was an English professor at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University. Many of his short verses were published in newspaper Sunday supplements in his feature Armour’s Armory. A number of Armour poems have frequently been misattributed to Ogden Nash. His satirical books ranged from Twisted Tales from Shakespeare to his It All Started With… fractured history series (i.e. It All Started With Eve). His poetry collections include: Golf bawls; The medical muse, or what to do when the patient comes; An armoury of light verse; and The spouse in the house.
Congress
by Richard Armour
.
Politics, it seems to me,
For years, or all too long,
Has been concerned with right or left
Instead of right or wrong.
.
“Congress” from Light Armour, © 1971 by Richard Armour – McGraw-Hill revised edition
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1924 – Bub Bridger born as Noeline Edith Bridger of Ngāti Kahungunu (Maori), Irish, and English ancestry, in Napier, New Zealand; New Zealand poet, short story writer, radio and TV scriptwriter, and actor, who often performed her own work. She left school before completing high school, and worked in local factories before moving to Wellington, where she worked as a clerk. After her marriage failed, she raised her children on her own. Though she loved reading and writing from an early age, it was not until she took a course in creative writing at the age of 50 that she began writing for publication. Her first published story “The Stallion” was featured in the New Zealand Listener, a weekly magazine, in 1975. She performed with the Hens’ Teeth Women’s Comedy Company (1988-2001). Her stories have been anthologized. Her best-known poetry collection is Wild Daisies: The Best of Bub Bridger. She died at age 85 in December 2009.
Blatant Resistance
by Bub Bridger
.
I have a new scarlet coat and
I look like a fire engine
And I don't give a damn
One should grow old gracefully
Somebody said - I don't know who
But I've heard it all my life and
So you have to but to hell with that
I refuse to grow old anyway
But reluctantly and bold as brass
And when my arthritis bites in all
My bones and sleep sulks outside
My bedroom window in the dark
I just toss and turn and scratch
And swear the hours away I'm not
Growing older - it's the stupid
Betrayal of bones and flesh
That makes me feel this way but
.
Look at me now with springs in
My heels and the wind in my hair
Any moment I'll start whistling
And might even dance you a jig
And stop all the traffic along the
Quay wearing my new scarlet coat
And looking like a fire engine
.
“Blatant Resistance” from Up Here on the Hill, © 1989 by Bub Bridger
- Mallinson Rendel Publishers
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July 16
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1896 – Esther Popel born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; African-American poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, critic, and activist of the Harlem Renaissance. She self-published her first volume of poetry in 1914 while still in high school. Her collection, A Forest Pool, was privately printed in 1934. After graduating from college, she taught French and Spanish at junior high schools in the Washington D.C. area. Her writing also appeared frequently in the periodicals Opportunity, The Crisis, and The Journal of Negro Education. She died at age 67 in January 1958.
Blasphemy – American Style
by Esther Popel
.
Look, God,
We've got a ni**er here
To burn;
.
A goddam ni**er,
And we're goin' to plunge
His cringin' soul
To Hell!
.
Now watch him
Squirm and wriggle
While we swing him
From this tree!
.
And listen, God,
You'll laugh at this
I know—
.
He wants to pray
Before we stage
This show!
.
He's scared
And can't remember
What to say—
.
Imagine, God,
A ni**er tryin'
To pray!
.
Lean over, God,
And listen while we tell
This fool
.
The words
He couldn't even
Spell!
.
"Our Father
Who art in Heaven,"
(Say it again!)
.
"Thy will be done
On earth . . ." (Laugh, God!)
"Amen!"
.
To Hell with him!
Come on, men,
Swing him high!
.
A prayin' ni**er,
Golly--
Watch him die!
.
"Blasphemy American Style" appeared in Opportunity magazine’s December 1934 issue.
Between 1882 and 1964, 4,745 people were lynched in the U.S., mostly Black Americans in
the Deep South, but some of the victims were Chinese or Japanese on the West Coast.
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1947 – Linda Hogan born in Denver, Colorado; American Chickasaw poet, novelist, storyteller, playwright, essayist, and environmentalist. She has taught at the University of Colorado and the Indigenous Education Institute. Hogan was honored with the 1994 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and in 2016 with the Thoreau Prize from PEN. Her poetry collections include: Calling Myself Home; Eclipse (1983); Seeing Through the Sun, winner of the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award; Savings; The Book of Medicines; and Dark. Sweet. New and Selected Poems.
The Way In
by Linda Hogan
.
Sometimes the way to milk and honey is
through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous,
wounding, and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.
The Way In” from Rounding the Human Corners, © 2008 by Linda Hogan – Coffee House Press
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July 17
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1921 – Hannah Szenes Hungarian Jewish poet and playwright born in Budapest, Hungary, who became a Zionist, and immigrated to Palestine in 1939. In 1943, she became one of 37 Jewish Palmah (Hanagnah strike force) recruits from Mandate Palestine that took part in a British SOE operation, after being trained as paratroopers. In March 1944, she was dropped into Yugoslavia in order to aid local anti-Nazi forces. Szenes was captured in June after entering Hungary, and sent to a prison in Budapest, where she was tortured. Since Szenes would not talk, Hungarian authorities arrested her mother. Both women remained silent. Szenes refused to beg for a pardon in November 1944, and was shot by a firing squad at age 23. Szenes’s mother kept her daughter’s memory alive, publishing Szenes’s diary, poetry, and plays.
Blessed is the Match
by Hannah Szenes
.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.
Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
2 May 1944
– translated from the Hebrew by Marie Syrkin
from Hannah Szenes, Her Life and Diary — Complete First Edition, 2004
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1926 – Nikos Karouzos born in Nafplio, a Peloponnese coastal town in Greece; noted Greek modernist poet, essayist, and literary critic. He took part in the Resistance during WWII and studied law at Athens University. Karouzos published his first poems in 1949, and went on to publish over 20 volumes of poetry. His poetry won the State Poetry Prize in 1972 and 1988. His Collected Poems, translated by Philip Ramp, were published in 2004 in the UK. Karouzos died at age 64 in September 1990.
Solemn Drums of Tragedy
by Nikos Karouzos
.
Electra you are now daughter of a king amid the nightingales
adders in your eyes, tigress in your hands, with silken soles
you tread upon all with gloomy love and lamenting epitaphs
the phallic majesty of your father,
you pad along all alone as
Clytemenstra for a few seconds,
whispers the vile electrons of her body
and Aegisthus drenched in blood abandons his erection
death sovereign of each and all declares itself
winding the catharsis in unblemished gloom.
Justice comes from everywhere and glows all over.
.
“Solemn Drums of Tragedy” from Collected Poems: Nikos Karouzos, translation © 2004 by Philip Ramp – Shoestring Press
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July 18
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1920 – Zheng Min born in Beijing, China; she earned a master’s in literature and philosophy from Brown University in 1952. She returned to China in 1955 and taught at the Beijing Normal University from 1960 until her retirement. Nine Leaves, a collection of poetry by nine poets from the 1940s, was published in 1981. Zheng Min, now the only living poet from the Nine Leaves circle, is a transitional poet between modern and contemporary poetry in China.
A Glance
by Zheng Min
.
What’s beautiful are the two shoulders sinking
into the shadows locking the chest, rich as an orchard.
Only the radiant face, a dream suddenly appearing,
corresponds to the slim fingers that rest on the low gate.
.
River of time carries away another leaf.
From her half lowering eyes, sphinxlike, flows out a tranquility
that dazzles. Her unchangeable calm is facing a limited life
when in a chance evening she casts a long glance
at this changing world.
.
– translator not credited
“A Glance” by Zheng Min appeared on the Poetry International website – © 2022 Poetry International
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1990 ― Xu Lizhi, Chinese poet and factory worker born in Jieyang in Guangdong Province to a farming family. He was interested in reading and learning, but had very limited access to books. After his test scores on the national entrance exams for college were too low to gain admission, he became depressed. In July 2010, he went to Shenzhen, a larger city in his province which is a center for technology and manufacturing. He went to work for Hon Hai, multinational electronics manufacturer. In October, 2010 while recovering from an appendectomy, he posted one of his poems on his blog for the first time. He had a three-year contract at Hon Hai, but working conditions were poor, causing coughing, headaches and trouble sleeping. He wrote for a local newspaper, and published poems and reviews online and in magazines. Xu tried to find other work, applying for jobs in libraries, but wasn’t hired. In September 2014, at age 24, he committed suicide by jumping off a building. His blog posted a new message after his death, and his friends published a collection of his poems, leading to some of them being translated into English.
I Swallowed an Iron Moon
by Xu Lizhi
.
I swallowed an iron moon
they called it a screw
.
I swallowed industrial wastewater and unemployment forms
bent over machines, our youth died young
.
I swallowed labor, I swallowed poverty
swallowed pedestrian bridges, swallowed this rusted-out life
.
I can’t swallow any more
everything I’ve swallowed roils up in my throat
.
I spread across my country
a poem of shame
“I Swallowed an Iron Moon” by Xu Lizhi, translated by Eleanor Goodman – from Technicians of the Sacred, © 2017 by Jerome Rothenberg, editor – 3rd Edition, revised and expanded – University of California Press
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July 19
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1875 – Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson born as Alice Ruth Moore, in New Orleans, Louisiana; African-American author poet, columnist, short story writer, activist, diarist, and teacher. Her heritage was a complex mix: Creole, which in her city meant descendants of early French and Spanish inhabitants; African American, Native American, and Anglo. She published her first book, Violets and Other Tales, when she was 20 years old. Dunbar Nelson was active in politics, and the civil rights and women’s suffrage movements, working as a field organizer for the Middle Atlantic states’ woman’s suffrage movement. In 1918, she was a field representative for the WWI Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1924, she campaigned for passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, but it was defeated by the white Southern bloc. Between 1928 and 1932, she toured as a public speaker for the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee. Dunbar Nelson died from a heart ailment in September, 1935, at age 60.
I Sit and Sew
by Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
.
I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.
.
I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But—I must sit and sew.
.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?
.
The Works of Alice Dunbar Nelson, Volumes 1 and 2, Oxford University Press, 1988
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July 20
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1927 – Simin Behbahani born as Simin Khalili. Her parents met because her mother, Fakhr-Ozmaa Arghoun, wrote a poem, and sent it to Nedaay-e-Islam’ the newspaper where her father, Abbas Khalili, who was also a poet, was editor-in-chief. He liked the poem, but was surprised to find the poet was a woman. This began their courtship. They married, but less than a month layer the political storm at the end of Ahmad Shah Qajar’s reign as Shah of Persia forced Khalili into exile, unaware that his new wife was already pregnant. Abbas Khalili did not see his daughter until she was 14-months-old, then didn’t see her again until she was eleven. Raised by her mother, who became known for her poetry, as a social activist, and as a founding member of the Iranian Committee of Nationalist Women. Her mother married another newspaper editor, Aadel Khalatbari, and changed her name to Fakhr Aadel. Behbahani started writing poetry at age 14, but felt too shy to show anyone her poems. Her mother found one, and not only encouraged her to write more, she also sent the poem she discovered to a literary editor she knew, who was amazed it was written by a 14-year-old. He published it in his newspaper under the name Simin Khalatbari. In 1941, Simin joined the Tudeh Party’s Youth Organization, a Communist group, which caused her trouble at school; when an anonymous report appeared in a newspaper criticizing the administration’s management of the school, she was immediately suspected, and was expelled. She married her first suitor, Hassan Behbahani, and from then on published her work as Simin Behbahani. There was conflict in the marriage almost from the beginning. She continued her studies, went to law school, then became a teacher, but her poetry brought her increasing recognition. She and her husband had two sons and a daughter during the 20 years they lived together, but they ultimately separated. In 2006, Iranian authorities shut down an opposition newspaper for printing one of her works, the same year she was hit by a policeman during an International Women’s Day rally. In 2010, about to board a plane for Paris, 82-year-old Simin Behbahani, now almost blind, was arrested and interrogated for hours about her poems on Iran’s 2009 elections. Her passport was confiscated, and she was barred from leaving the country. No legal basis was given for the travel ban. Simin Behbahani earned her title, ‘the Lioness of Iran.’ She died of heart disease at age 87 in August 2014. Thousands came to honor her at her funeral.
Necklace
by Simin Behbahani
.
Anxious, agitated, sad,
her face uncovered, her head unveiled,
not afraid of arrest or policeman,
oblivious to the order, “Cover! Conceal!”
Her eyes two grapes plucked from their cluster,
squeezed by the times to fill a hundred barrels with blood,
mad, really mad, a stranger to herself and others,
oblivious to the world, beyond being awakened even by the deluge,
a particle of dust adrift in the wind, without purpose or destination,
lost, speechless, bewildered, a corpse without a grave,
carrying around her neck a necklace of curses and tears,
a pair of boots tied together belonging to a dead soldier.
I asked her: what does this mean?
She smiled: my son, poor child, sitting on my shoulders,
hasn’t taken off his boots yet.
.
“Necklace” from A Cup of Sin, © 1999, edited and translated from Persian by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa – Syracuse University Press
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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