When I was young, a fortune-teller told me that an old woman who wanted to die had accidentally become lodged in my body. Slowly, over time, and taking great care in following esoteric instructions, including lavender baths and the ritual burial of keys in the backyard, I rid myself of her presence. Now I am an old woman who
wants to die and lodged inside me is a young woman dying to live; I work on her.

Mary Ruefle

#TodaysPoem #Poem #Poetry #MaryRuefle

#TodaysPoem is rooting for everyone.

I don't actually know what a football looks like.
I think they have something to do with babies.
The man is carrying a baby across a field.
He is trying to save it.
It's hard.
Sometimes people die trying to do things.
That's OK.
There are things more important
than life or death.

#Poetry #MaryRuefle #SuperBowl

Yeah, it might be 14F/-10C over here and I've very little confidence in humanity or my place in it, but the #sun is out, and I'm wielding a couple of lines from #MaryRuefle like my sanity depends on it: "the sun was a siren, the siren / was its singing and its song was 'again'."
(from "A Picture of Christ) #poetry #poem #winter

#introductionpost
Hi, I’m Adlai. I’m an artist and writer but primarily I have SP multiple sclerosis. It dominates and devours my life. I’m trying to figure out how to manage an art and poetry blog without it being permeated by my kvetching about being in pain and being disabled. I’m still working on that. #MSChat #multiplesclerosisart #multiplesclerosis #art #poetry #maryruefle #wendyartin

My #introduction (part one)
Hi. I’m Adlai. I try to devote myself to making art while #multiplesclerosis seems to be devoted to ripping me apart.
Sorry to be so gloomy there, but I had to get that out of the way.
Originally from the States, I’ve been living in the Czech Republic for the past 16 years. My passions include #maryruefle, #elizabethbishop, #wallacestevens, #borges, #bach, #Schnittke, #wendyartin, #linguistics, #gratefuldead, #ontology, #epistemology and all sorts …

@FoxesandRoses I'm not a poet, but I love this essay by the poet Mary Ruefle on dread and fear:

"Dread. I like it better than the word fear because fear, like the unconscious emotion which is one of its forms, has only the word ear inside of it, telling an animal to listen, while dread has the word read inside of it, telling us to read carefully and find the dead, who are also there."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69815/on-fear

#MaryRuefle

@matthewharrison Mary Ruefle. Both her poetry but, especially, her collected lectures 'Madness, Rack and Honey.'

Also, these sadness-as-color poems

https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/04/30/mary-ruefle-sadness-colors/

#MaryRuefle