Tuesday poem #618 : Alison Stone : Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Ugly Duckling

 

 

1.     Hans Christian Anderson was an “ugly” boy – tall with a big nose and big feet. He grew up to have a beautiful singing voice.

2.     It’s speculated that Anderson was the illegitimate son of King Christian VIII of Denmark and discovered this shortly before writing The Ugly Duckling.

3.     In the Disney version, the young bird’s struggles last a few minutes, not a few months.

4.     The creatures who abused the cygnet don’t come to see his beauty. Rather, he widens his social circle and finds others like himself.

5.     Some middle and high school students lack access to a wider social circle.

6.     For bullied teens, the seven years of middle school and high school can feel like an eternity.

7.     Though seen as a happy story because of its ending, The Ugly Duckling reinforces, rather than presents solutions to, the problem of tribalism.

8.     In philosophical logic, the Ugly Duckling theorem argues that classification is impossible without bias and that a duckling is as similar to a swan as two swans are to each other.

9.     Is a pimply, coarse-featured girl as similar to a prom queen as two prom queens are to each other?

10. What about a fat kid? A trans kid? A refugee?

11. The cygnet’s suicide attempt is forgotten once he joins the swans.

12. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Americans aged 15-24.

13. The leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States is firearms. In this way, American youth resemble the wild geese the cygnet found refuge with, who were then shot.

 

 

 

 

Alison Stone is the author of nine full-length collections, Informed (NYQ Books, 2024), To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023), Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Masterplan, a book of collaborative poems with Eric Greinke (Presa Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize, New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award, and The Lyric’s Lyric Poetry Prize. She was Writer in Residence at LitSpace St. Pete. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. https://alisonstone.info/ Youtube and TikTok – Alison Stone Poetry.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #617 : Beatriz Hausner : The Music of the Sea

(on a collage by Ludwig Zeller)

 

 

I sat on a cliff by the sea.
I heard and heeded
the deep sounds 

                                    of liquids inside the box
                                    of water. Play, play, play
                                    the strange music of the sea.

 

Oceanus girding earth places
himself closer to the Goddess
receiving in mouth the slow

                                    

                                    misplaced likeness of other seas
                                    fades into waves rising with
                                    large mollusks as greater

 

waters begin illuminating the
night. Crashes of thunder burst out
amid flashes of lightning the fish

                                    

                                    and the creatures of the world
                                    jump out of the water and rejoice.
                                    A gaping breach brings inside to

 

outside of water and echo of
strange land animals returned
to the origins of water. In prayer

                                    

                                    is woven the route to the sea of stars
                                    in their eyes: night is day with
                                    inverted milky way contained

 

inside folds of shell surrounding
us. While we delicately strum on string
ridged instruments the polyphony

                                    

                                    of fish and all living things is
                                    resurrected in deep sea: this throat
                                    bails out the masses of salt water

 

these lips surround noise the music
of the waves and their sound rise
like mountains of foam.

 

 

 

 

Beatriz Hausner [photo credit: Maria Vega] has published several poetry collections, including Sew Him Up (2010), Enter the Raccoon (2012), Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (2020) and She Who Lies Above (2023), as well as many limited edition chapbooks. Hausner’s translations of Spanish American surrealist poets have exerted an important influence on her own writing. Hausner has edited many publications in the past, including three issues of Open Letter, Ellipse magazine, is the poetry Editor of Exile Quarterly and is the Editor of Someone Editions.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #616 : Beth Follett : Store Window View #6

1973
Watercolour

 

 

Where shall I make my home?
          In the vast emptiness of
          the spacious heart? Its four
          chambers, its four seasons?
          My childhood home in the
          left ventricle, beach umbrella below.

Night sky, Perseids in August,
          all the skies of summer, heavy
          as forest, as dreams.

Where shall I make my home?
          In the vast memory of the
          shadow world? The river of
          childhood, its four seasons.
          Desire in the right ventricle,
          my secret place below.

Where shall I take the colour blue?
          I could make my home in sorrow’s
          face, its four seasons,
          Maxfield Parrish blue.
          The road below the house,
          below the night sky, the road
          through story, through
          river, the road, the
          dance, four seasons.

 

 

 

Beth Follett lives in St. John’s NL. She was the publisher of Pedlar Press for twenty-five years.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #615 : Maria Hardin : Devotion IV

 

 

be your own pony
your own mother
birth a world without fathers
lose yourself in the holy ghost

the cosmos is withdrawing
but we just want to keep on touching

as longing impregnates
the soil
the humidity
our lungs

as wild brains lag
as wild horses cease to exist

 

 

 

Maria Hardin is a Swedish-American artist and bilingual poet based in Stockholm. She is the author of Cute Girls Watch When I Eat Aether (Action Books) and Sprawl Coquette (Creative Writing Department). Maria’s work has been exhibited across Scandinavia and her writing has appeared in American Chordata, Burning House Press, Denver Quarterly, Fanzine, Gutter, LIGEIA Magazine, SLFFCK, Spam Zine, Spectra Poetry, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. She can be found at mariaology.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan