Wednesday, December 10, 2014

December 10: Christmas Poem, Lisel Mueller, "Blood Oranges"

I am back to posting two times a day, now that my grading is done and I have a moment to think.  I've decided to focus on not-so-famous Christmas poems this week.

I need to start writing my Christmas poem for this year.  I'm hoping this little exercise will help inspire me a little bit.  Reading great poets and poems usually does.  Lisel Mueller is one of my favorites.  Her Christmas poem is gorgeous.

Saint Marty should be so lucky to write a poem like this.

Blood Oranges

by:  Lisel Mueller

In 1936, a child
in Hitler's Germany,
what did I know about the war in Spain?
Andalusia was a tango
on a wind-up gramophone,
Franco a hero's face in the paper.

No one told me about a poet
for whose sake I might have learned Spanish
bleeding to death on a barren hill.

All I knew of Spain
were those precious imported treats
we splurged on for Christmas.

I remember pulling the sections apart,
lining them up, sucking each one
slowly, so the red sweetness
would last and last --
while I was reading a poem
by a long-dead German poet
in which the woods stood safe
under the moon's milky eye
and the white fog in the meadows
aspired to become lighter than air.


I'm feeling inspired

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