Edna St. Vincent Millay Poem

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why (Sonnet XLIII)
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.


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I never thought too much about Edna before, but I came across this poem yesterday on PoemHunter.com and thought it was beautiful and melancholic.
Photograph is The Kiss, Paris 2003 by Gavin Martin.

The Queen and the Soldier

The Queen And The Soldier
- Suzanne Vega

The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door
He said, "I am not fighting for you any more"
The queen knew she'd seen his face someplace before
And slowly she let him inside.

He said, "I've watched your palace up here on the hill
And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill
But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will
Only first I am asking you why."

Down in the long narrow hall he was led
Into her rooms with her tapestries red
And she never once took the crown from her head
She asked him there to sit down.

He said, "I see you now, and you are so very young
But I've seen more battles lost than I have battles won
And I've got this intuition, says it's all for your fun
And now will you tell me why?"

The young queen, she fixed him with an arrogant eye
She said, "You won't understand, and you may as well not try"
But her face was a child's, and he thought she would cry
But she closed herself up like a fan.

And she said, "I've swallowed a secret burning thread
It cuts me inside, and often I've bled"
He laid his hand then on top of her head
And he bowed her down to the ground.

" Tell me how hungry are you? How weak you must feel
As you are living here alone, and you are never revealed
But I won't march again on your battlefield"
And he took her to the window to see.

And the sun, it was gold, though the sky, it was gray
And she wanted more than she ever could say
But she knew how it frightened her, and she turned away
And would not look at his face again.

And he said, "I want to live as an honest man
To get all I deserve and to give all I can
And to love a young woman who I don't understand
Your highness, your ways are very strange."

But the crown, it had fallen, and she thought she would break
And she stood there, ashamed of the way her heart ached
She took him to the doorstep and she asked him to wait
She would only be a moment inside.

Out in the distance her order was heard
And the soldier was killed, still waiting for her word
And while the queen went on strangling in the solitude she preferred
The battle continued on.

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I used to listen to Vega's songs back in college. Remember "Tom's Diner" and "Solitude Standing"? I used to put on my headphones and listen to the tape as a meditative tool, lying on the dorm bed and unwinding my brain.

This song always stayed with me as a poet for its simplicity and the ability to tell a complicated story. The plot is quickly established and the characters are familiar. It has a fairy tale appeal with the surprising message. It moves very quickly.

I always loved the line, "And to love a young woman who I don't understand" because it makes it seem that men and women do not "get" each other and that is a fact of life. It's not a Mars/Venus phenomenon, but what it is and always has been. Also, the soldier's request for it makes male/female relationship become on of the pleasant struggles in life. The soldier wants that since he's seen enough of war and death that ensues.

This song came to mind earlier while listening to the news. In times of war and the unknown motivations of our leaders, it makes us realize that our story is not new. It also shows the common man being more grounded than the queen, and the queen is so vulnerable inspite of her strong facade. Those we deem as powerful are probably the weakest and use their power as a shield. And, the soldier chose to question and once he had the upper hand, she destroyed him for his actions.

(photograph of Arundel Castle, West Sussex England is from Photo-zen.com)

Fall-ing

The Apple Tree
- Dorothy Parker
When first we saw the apple tree
The boughs were dark and straight,
But never grief to give had we,
Though Spring delayed so late.

When last I came away from there
The boughs were heavy hung,
But little grief had I to spare
For Summer, perished young.


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I feel strongly about the last line this year. Summer slipped away so quickly. Living in the northeast, we feel the seasons. I always wondered what it'd be like to live in a place without drastic seasonal changes, like FL or AZ. I don't think I would miss the seasons. I thrive in the sunshine and warmth.

Fall, albeit beautiful in its colors, is very grim to me. We're finding beauty in its decay. The smells of autumn we cherish are only the fallen leaves mixing back to the earth. It's almost as if it's a last exciting show before the curtain falls. Then the theatrical crew cleans up and leaves the stage bare, revealing its harsh structures.

The weather today is in the 80's and there is still much green on the trees. Because we live in the northeast, we treasure our time with summer as long as she'll stay for us. While I love warm weather, I also love the vibrant greenery and lushness my state has to offer.

More on Writing

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for the money.
- Moliere

So, I was happily surprised yesterday to receive a $10 check in the mail as payment for a poem. It was accepted into Thema Literary Society's issue "A Perfect Cup of Coffee" for 2007. This is my first literary journal acceptance. I'm also excited because this brings my total literary earnings LTD (Life to Date) to $30.00.

It's even more ironic because two blogs ago I was wishing for a poetry acceptance (remember the ego boost I needed?). Now, I am wondering if making public wishes mean they will be granted. Were we all misled by believing wishes must be secrets?

Anyway, what I wish for now is help at work. An assistant. A smart person to help me with my workload. I have too much going on and not enough help and it's affecting my work-life balance. If only I could get my literary earnings up so I could quit my day job!

By the way, I also got a rejection today from a South Asian anthology, which is a downer. However, now that I've been keeping track of my submissions, I see there might be problems with the specific piece that I'm peddling. I need to work on that.

However, I'm taking work home these days so it's cutting into my writing time. I need to write so I don't have to work, but I can't write because I have to work.

The quote that drives me the most in my writing endeavors is this one:

There's nobody out there waiting for it, and nobody's going to scold you if you don't do it. - Lynne Sharon Schwartz

I know I am the only one waiting for it and I am the only one to scold myself.

DesiLit,Writers, Writing

So now that I've organized my writing efforts and put my project management skills to work, I'm getting my work published online. I've gotten rejections, but the acceptances outweight the effects of the rejections. Though I could use an acceptance of my poetry somewhere (just for an ego boost!)

Anyway, check out DesiLit's first online magazine for my review of Shashi Tharoor's Bookless in Baghdad. The DesiLit editors did an impressive job in selecting quality work for their magazine and I enjoyed reading the bios of the contributors, since each seem as fascinating as their work.

As for Tharoor, I had the opportunity to meet him last year and saw him speak on two different occasions, just months apart. I wanted to see him at another event, but feared he'd call me a stalker. Here's a picture from the SAJA writers conference last year. I had asked him to sign my "Mirrorwork" book while my cousin and friends took the pictures. (We turned from smart, confident women into giggling author groupies at this event, dribbling phrases like "I loved your book.") He had read a chapter from "Bookless in Baghdad" and it would not be released in the US for a few months. Fortunately, someone brought this book for us from India.

That was a great event with speakers like Anita Desai, Suketu Mehta and Jhumpa Lahiri. For me it was most powerful to see Jhumpa on stage. I admit - as an aspiring and passionate writer - I've been jealous of Jhumpa's success. Usually I think, what does she have that I don't? From what I know, our lives and upbringing are quite similar, except that she continued with her MFA and has a Pulitzer, while I took detours and ended up with an MS in Information Science. (Damn proud of that I am!)

That day, she had come to the event with her husband and children. Her husband was taking care of the little ones and while on stage, she would nervously glance at them. Her husband was taking the crying kids out of the auditorium. As soon as she was able to get off the stage, she raced out of the auditorium and they all left. That made me realize that at the end of the day, when you're done with your Pulitzer and author presentations, you are a mom with a crying baby. This is what is always on the forefront of who you are. In that light, everything looked so different about being a literary success.

I also got over my feelings of frustration, too. I always felt, she's taking my stories. That day she read an excerpt of an upcoming novel. I listened and realized these are her stories and mine are totally different. There's not just one queue for literary success. There are many and we're in parallel queues (and mine just happens to wrap around the block!)

By the way, I blogged about this event for DesiLit.

Neruda, Love & Us..

XVII (I do not love you...)

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Translated by Stephen Tapscott

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I've always loved this poem in the context of my daughter - even before she was born. The last two lines came to mind the other day when I was reading a bedtime story. We're sitting on her bed, she's in my lap and we both have pj shorts. Her bare knees, my bare knees were touching. I wove my arms through hers and let my elbows angle into hers. I just felt my body and her body were so entwined. Ever since she was born, I had this weird sensation. If I'm holding her and I pat her on the back, I'm always surprised that I don't feel my hand through her body. I feel we're still part of each other.

Women Writers

I had this list saved, and wanted to share it. I got it from Chicago Public Library and I've starred my favorites. A bit tricky since I may have read the author's other works and not this particular one (e.g., Isabel Allende)

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Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women *
Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings *
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice *
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture
Boston Women's Health Book Collective Staff, Our Bodies, Ourselves
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre *
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights *
Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape *
Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth *
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring *
Willa Cather, My Antonia *
Mary Boykin Chesnut, A Diary from Dixie *
Kate Chopin, The Awakening *
Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson *
Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health
George Eliot (Mary Ann or Marian Evans), Middlemarch *
Fannie Farmer, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
Francis Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake
Dian Fossey, Gorillas in the Mist
Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl *
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
Emma Goldman, Living My Life
Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
Edith Hamilton, Mythology
Betty Lehan Harragan, Games Mother Never Taught You
Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God *
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life *
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior *
Elisabeth Kr-Ross, On Death and Dying
Frances Moore Lapp, Diet for a Small Planet
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird *
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals
Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party *
Beryl Markham, West with the Night
Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa
Golda Meir, My Life
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems
Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind *
Marianne Moore, Complete Poems of Marianne Moore
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon *
Lady Shikibu Murasaki, The Tale Genji
Anais Nin, The Early Diary of Anais Nin
Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories
Zoe Oldenbourg, The World Is Not Enough
Tillie Olsen, Silences
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels
Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar *
Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born
Margaret Sanger, Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography
Sappho, Sappho: A New Translation *
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein *
Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin *
Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror
Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter
Alice Walker, The Color Purple *
Eudora Welty, Delta Wedding
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome *
Phyllis Wheatley, The Collected Works of Phyllis Wheatley
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women*
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own *