Maiden Name, a poem by Philip Larkin.

Post 662 - Maiden name, a poem by Philip Larkin.

Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.

Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it,scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since you're past and gone,

It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers, a poem by Adrienne Rich.

Post 661 - Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was considered one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century, and was credited with bringing the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse. In 1971, she was the recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974. She also was awarded the Ruth Paul Lilly Poetry Prize in 1986, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters from NYU, and the National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry in 1989. In 1997, Rich declined the National Medal of Arts in protesting against the House of Representatives’ vote to end the National Endowment for the Arts as well as other policies of the Clinton Administration regarding the arts generally and literature in particular. In 2002, she was appointed a chancellor of the newly augmented board of the Academy of American Poets. She was the winner of the 2003 Yale Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers by Adrienne Rich.

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool

Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band

Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie

Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made

Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Woman Waving to Trees, a poem by Dorothea Tanning.

Dorothea Tanning was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer. She also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theatre. She died earlier this year at 101 having just published her second anthology of poems, Coming To That.

Woman Waving to Trees, a poem by Dorothea Tanning.

Not that anyone would
notice it at first.
I have taken to marveling
at the trees in our park.
One thing I can tell you:
they are beautiful
and they know it.
They are also tired,
hundreds of years
stuck in one spot—
beautiful paralytics.
When I am under them,
they feel my gaze,
watch me wave my foolish
hand, and envy the joy
of being a moving target.

Loungers on the benches
begin to notice.
One to another,
"Well, you see all kinds..."
Most of them sit looking
down at nothing as if there
was truly nothing else to
look at until there is
that woman waving up
to the branching boughs
of these old trees. Raise your
heads, pals, look high,
you may see more than
you ever thought possible,
up where something might
be waving back, to tell her
she has seen the marvelous.