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Words
The Sunday Poem: why i feed the birds by Richard Vargas
Most of us probably remember those times when some elder or parent first passed onto us their reverence for the natural world. Often, it’s not until we grow older and mature ourselves that those scraps of memory return in full and vivid detail.
The Sunday Poem: “Self-Compassion” by James Crews
Poet and farmer Wendell Berry once wrote: “Be joyful, though you have considered the facts.” Yet with our packed schedules, and so much negativity and injustice in the world, it can be difficult to believe we deserve any of the daily joys that actually renew us.
The Sunday Poem: From Out the Cave by Joyce Sutphen
This poem is an invitation to become more aware of your weariness, and to do something “with your whole heart” again, with full attention.
The Sunday Poem: “I Come from a Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen” by Kari Gunter-Seymour
All through Kari Gunter-Seymour’s striking and precisely rendered poem, we feel a bone-deep desire to be known, to be touched in the midst of both geographical and perhaps some greater isolation.
The Sunday Poem: “From Our Shadows” by W.S. Merwin
In this poem from his marvelous book, Garden Time, W.S. Merwin gets at the heart of a mystifying truth: It’s often easier to write or speak of grief than it is to describe some sudden burst of joy.
The Sunday Poem: “Winter Sun” by Molly Fisk
Molly Fisk’s simple yet profound poem speaks to nature’s constant cycles of death and rebirth, and our own part in them. She also points out how deprivation, especially in the depths of winter’s shorter days, when we’re forced to stay more distant from each other, can help us appreciate any little light when it does come, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere.
The Sunday Poem: “In My Mind’s Coral, Mother Still Calls Us from Inside” by Jennifer G. Lai
We often dismiss it as nostalgia when we look back with joy on those simpler, more innocent times in our lives. Yet as Jennifer G. Lai’s poem illustrates so well, certain periods in life simply are less complicated, before our culture, families, and peers place their expectations and limitations on us, before a larger awareness of the world seeps in.
The Sunday Poem: “It’s the Season I Often Mistake” by Ada Limón
Looking out at a bleak and seemingly bare winter landscape, I’d just had the same thought a few days before I read Ada Limón’s poem—that it’s hard to tell the difference between the few birds left, and the leaves tumbling over the frozen ground.
The Sunday Poem: “Coffee Break” by Kwame Dawes
The repetition of words and phrases in “Coffee Break”—such as “Coffee would be nice”—lends this poem an incantatory, prayer-like quality that often appears in Kwame Dawes’ work. But what we think will be a portrait of a man offering to make his sick friend a cup of coffee on a cool evening, quickly becomes a larger meditation on life’s transience.
The Sunday Poem: “Ice” by Albert Garcia
A poem of winter delight like this one by Albert Garcia seems the perfect way to mark the turning of another year.
The Sunday Poem: “It Doesn’t Take Much” by Ted Kooser
As Ted Kooser shows us in “It Doesn’t Take Much,” simply noticing the people we encounter in daily life, and really seeing them in all their uniqueness and humanity, can also become a form of kindness.
The Sunday Poem: “My Mother Says She Does Not Know How to Cook” by Shuly Xóchitl Cawood
We often think of resilience as the ability to spring back instantly from a challenging, harrowing time in our lives. Yet Shuly Cawood’s tender portrait of her mother as a resilient woman who has risen above difficult circumstances to make a life for herself and her family in the U.S. implies that resilience is a muscle built more slowly over time.
The Sunday Poem: “Tutuwas” by Joseph Bruchac
One can almost hear the song of a rustling wind passing through tree branches in the word, “Tutuwas,” which the poet uses here. Tracing the etymology of this evocative term, Joseph Bruchac writes that “Tutuwas” carries “more than one connotation. It’s the name of a song that’s also called ‘Little Pines,’ which can be heard in all our various Wabanaki nations throughout New England.
Books to Keep You Warm Over the Holidays
A selection of books from Sunday Poem Editor James Crews
The Sunday Poem: “Arctic Night, Lights Across the Sky” by Linda Hogan
As she does in so much of her work, Linda Hogan fosters a quiet yet wide-sweeping intimacy in this poem. Here, we find the affection of a speaker and her beloved, “em-braced/in animal presence,” curled up with their dog and cat before bed on a winter night. Yet Hogan masterfully extends this closeness until the whole world is also held at the warm center of this late night scene.