snowed in with poetry

One of the high school teachers at CCA (Jesse Hake) and my friend/mentor, Christine Perrin asked me to compile a list of poems to present to CCA's senior class and basically do a workshop with them in preparation for a private reading at a local bookstore. The theme is self-disclosure and all it involves...vulnerability, trust, risk. There are only 5 seniors and the 3 of us (Jesse, Christine, and myself) will also read and reflect. So out of the canon of poems that involve self disclosure, I must choose 8.

So we p00led our most beloved resources. Christine brought Czeslaw Milosz, Scott Cairns, Emily Dickinson, and Adelia Prado. I can't live without Louise Gluck, Rilke, Hopkins, and Christina Rossetti. And why not through Frost in the mix and see if he fits?

I am excited to do this but it is so hard to choose! Thank goodness we got 16 inches of snow last night and having nowhere to go, I must stick with it and come up with a list today. I will keep you updated. I would ask for suggestions but I am afraid to throw anything else to the mix.

Here is a Rilke poem I am mulling over.

From "Sonnets to Orpheus" I.16

You, my friend, are so alone,

because...with words and pointing fingers

slowly we make the world our own,

perhaps the frailest part, most full of danger.

Who points with his finger to a smell? -

But of the powers that we dread

you feel many...you know the dead

and are frightened by the sorcerer's spell.

Look, we together must bear alway

parcel and part, like a whole at last.

It's hard to help you. Don't plant me in

your heart - for I would grow too fast.

But I'll guide my master's hand and say:

Here. This is Esau in his skin.