Hungry Spring and Ordinary Song E-Book

Phyllis Tickle

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Paraclete Poetry
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 69

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

"I think that Phyllis was a poet first and foremost, before anything else. Here she has attentively gathered all of the poems she wished to preserve from the last half century. A handful of them were written in the last few years. This book should surprise a lot of people. It honestly leaves me breathless." —Jon M. Sweeney, editor of Phyllis Tickle: Essential Spiritual Writings (Orbis), and author of the biography, Phyllis Tickle (forthcoming)

Leseprobe

Hungry Spring & Ordinary Song

COLLECTED POEMS

(an autobiography of sorts)

Hungry Spring & Ordinary Song

COLLECTED POEMS

(an autobiography of sorts)

PHYLLIS TICKLE

2016 First Printing

Hungry Spring and Ordinary Song: Collected Poems (an autobiography of sorts)

Copyright © 2016 by Tickle, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-61261-788-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tickle, Phyllis.

Title: Hungry spring and ordinary song : collected poems : an autobiography of sorts / Phyllis Tickle.

Description: Brewster, Massachusetts : Paraclete Press, 2015. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015037854 | ISBN 9781612617886

Classification: LCC PS3620.I28 A6 2015 | DDC 811/.6—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037854

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

ONE

SONGS OF GENDER

Love Poems

THE HYMNS OF HYMEN

I

Hymen Yet Unbroken

II

Hymen Still Unspoken

III

Hymen Broken

IV

Hymen Spoken

In Perpetuum

Perspective

Interstate 40

After an Illness

Anniversary Song

Poems of Loss

The Laments

Medusa Quietly Screaming

Poems Written in Eve’s Garden

Menarche

For Rebecca on a Sunday Morning

To My Daughters

For Each Daughter on Their Wedding Day

Morning Song

Upon Receiving, after Her Death, My Mother’s Earrings in the Mail

Eve’s Other Daughters

Excerpts from “THE MOTHERS OF THE FAITH”

A Change of Courses

Guiltless Ease

The Re-Decorating

The Not–Yet Gendered

FOR THE LITTLE ONES

I

A Winter Song

II

A Springtime Tale

Portrait

Young Together at Our House

Mary in Church

TWO

THE PLACES OF OUR LIFE

Memphis in Mid-Century

The War

The Song of Walthal

The Hungry Spring

As It Should Be

In the Times of Trouble

Solstice, 1974

Autumn Rain

At Home in Lucy

April in Lucy

Lucy at Dusk

Ringnecks Return

The Cranes

View from the Bedroom Window

A Sweet Sadness

The Liturgical Year in Lucy

THE “WOMAN AT MIDNIGHT” POEMS

I

Epiphany in Lucy

II

Lent in Lucy

III

All Saints in Lucy

IV

Michaelmas in Lucy

All Hallows in Lucy

Midnight Services: Christmas Eve in Lucy

Portraits

Country Funeral in Lucy

Summer Social at a Village Church

The Bull Shooter

Burglary

Sunday Lunch at Grandpa’s

Other Places of the Heart

The Clouds

Mountain Songs

Old Man River

Tiptonville, Tennessee

Atlantis: The Isle of Palms

Thunderbolt Island

Hope, Arkansas

THREE

ARS POETICA

Of Poetry

The Business of Versifying

So Fragile a Thing

Restless

Morning Lament

Brooks Memorial: Poet-In-Residence

FOUR

ENUIGS

In the Company of Poets

A Somewhat Sardonic Corrective

Of Theologians

Yet Another Professional Meeting

On Study

Bathroom Chores: A Ditty

FIVE

COMMEMORATIVE

The Comet Kohoutek, 1973

Robert Hollabaugh, M.D.

Ordinary Song

American Genesis

Chet

SIX

ENDINGS

All Celibacy Laid Aside

To Sappho

Wisdom

The Hiatus

Aubade

Old Woman

Remembrance in Maturity

In Memoriam

The Wake

The Campanile

Manual Labor

On Leaving

INDEX TO THE POEMS

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

IAM NOT A POET, or at least not one as that term is usually applied or technically defined. But over the years of my writing life, I have come upon experiences and events and even perhaps a few epiphanies where the rhythm and the cadence of the thing was as much of its truth and vitality as were the words themselves. To the extent that that phenomenon is poetry, or at least describes it, then what follows is poetry.

Many though certainly not all of the pieces assembled here have appeared from time to time over the years in various and sundry venues; and I have made no attempt to trace their bibliographic history here. What I have done over the last few months is to organize the disparate parts and moments, perceptions and givens, of my years into some kind of coherence or whole. The result, almost by default, is “an autobiography of sorts.” And thus my subtitle. But I have also attempted to add from place to place a few comments that I hope will enrich the whole by making some of the attendant circumstances clearer.

As for the organization of the pieces themselves, I have looked back over my own years, as well as the poetry that has arisen from them, and come to believe that some areas of life are so central as to be core to what we are. Certainly for me, gender has been an informing and perhaps even the centralizing factor. By gender, of course, I do not mean sexuality, though, thank God, that is certainly here and part of the whole. I mean rather that I think we come into life with a gendered predisposition not only to roles and physical abilities, but also to sensibilities and sensitivities and proclivities for bonding and alliances, joys and vulnerabilities. Mine, as recorded here, are those of a woman, as is my conviction that such has informed and shaded everything else I have known or lived.

The second most formative and informing part of experience and its interpretation, it seems to me, is place itself: the places where we stop awhile, where we plant ourselves, where we give ourselves to an environ and in which we give ourselves to others who are likewise stopping there. Like most older post-twentieth-century Americans, my husband Sam and I not only lived our years in several places, but also lived our free or wandering time in others. Each of those places seems to me to have been part of the pastiche of sensibilities and experiences that make any life story, and certainly have made mine.

As for the other categories, I trust they will be equally useful, if not quite so fraught with need for explanation or annotation. I hope even that some of them will be “fun” or a source of droll humor, if nothing else, for I have enjoyed using words sometimes to parry with life. Otherwise, the whole might have proved too much. I have enjoyed as well the opportunity from time to time to commemorate events and people that, almost without my playing scribe, were themselves poetry.

And last of all, sometimes some of us are blessed with a creative or writing partner whose affections and perceptions are not only sympathetic to one’s own, but also invigorating and instructive. Years ago I was so blessed by coming to know and write with Margaret Bartlum Ingraham. We have done a good deal of work together, some small bits of which are included here. Thus, when a piece is marked as “A Natalie Bartlum Poem,” it is of our work together, for my middle name is “Natalie,” and hers, obviously, “Bartlum.” I hope I am correct in saying that we both are, and have been, grateful for this sharing over these years.

As for the rest, I shall leave the “Endings” section to say what may yet be left to say. Certainly, as I conclude my eighty-plus years of life, for the grace of endings I am perhaps most grateful of all.

Phyllis Tickle

The Feast of St. Bartholomew, 2015