Dorothy Livesay

A recent contest held on AP inspired me to revisit this writer's works.

Dorothy Livesay

Born during the first snow of the season in Winnipeg on October 12, 1909.

Symbolically, she died on  December 29, 1996, as a rare snow fell in Victoria.

interview

http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/cpjrn/vol03/sullivan.htm

sources:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/HUM/ENGL/canada/poet/d_livesay.htm

http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/cpjrn/vol12/york.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=UmOW7A-HCA4C&pg=PP7&lpg=PP7&dq=Dorothy+Livesay+poetry&source=bl&ots=eYOzW7MD30&sig=cteqV0NXoVu9HzQ1rc5TwRBXhkk&hl=en&ei=O8HTSriIOIjnlAfzs-CoCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAwQ6AEwATge#v=onepage&q=Dorothy%20Livesay%20poetry&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=dhnciZmMRqwC&dq=Dorothy+Livesay+poetry&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=OZXYDo7vx_&sig=Rca98LS43ONZg0rdDZ9uAMbrRuI&hl=en&ei=O8HTSriIOIjnlAfzs-CoCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBMQ6AEwBDge#v=onepage&q=Dorothy%20Livesay%20poetry&f=false

http://uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/cpjrn/vol20/sparrow.htm

http://podium.deonandan.com/livesay.html

Poems:

Other

by Dorothy Livesay


     1
Men prefer an island
With its beginning ended:
Undertone of waves
Trees overbended.

Men prefer a road
Circling, shell-like
Convex and fossiled
Forever winding inward.

Men prefer a woman
Limpid in a sunlight
Held as a shell
On a sheltering island . . .

Men prefer an island.

     2.
But I am a mainland
O I range
From upper country to the inner core:
From sageland, brushland, marshland
To the sea's floor.

Show me an orchard where I have not slept,
A hollow where I have not wrapped
The sage about me, and above, the still
Stars clustering
Over the ponderosa pine, the cactus hill.

Tell me a time,
I have not loved,
A mountain left unclimbed:
A prarie field
Where I have not furrowed my tongue,
Nourished it out of the mind's dark places;
Planted with tears unwept
And harvested as friends, as faces.

O find me a dead-end road
I have not trodden
A logging road that leads the heart away
Into the secret evergreen of cedar roots
Beyond the sun's farthest ray—
Then, in a clearing's sudden dazzle,
There is no road; no end; no puzzle.

But do not show me! For I know
The country I caress:
A place where none shall trespass
None possess:
A mainland mastered
From its inaccess.

     ———

Men prefer an island.

~~~

Green Rain

by Dorothy Livesay

I remember long veils of green rain
Feathered like the shawl of my grandmother-
Green from the half-green of the spring trees
Waving in the valley.

I remember the road
Like the one which leads to my grandmother’s house,
A warm house, with green carpets,
Geraniums, a trilling canary
And shining horse-hair chairs;
And the silence, full of the rain’s falling
Was like my grandmother’s parlour
Alive with herself and her voice, rising and falling-
Rain and wind intermingled.

I remember on that day
I was thinking only of my love
And of my love’s house.
But now I remember the day
As I remember my grandmother.
I remember the rain as the feathery fringe of her shawl.

~~~

Experience

by Dorothy Livesay

"For your own good" they said,
And they gave me bread
Bitter and hard to swallow.
My head felt tired after it,
My heart felt hollow.

So I went away on my own road
Tasting all fruits, all breads:
And if some were bitter, others were sweet --
So I learned
How the heart is fed.

~~~

Lyrics of The Taming

by Dorothy Livesay

Be woman. You did say me, be
woman. I did not know
the measure of the words

until a black man
as I prepared him chicken
made me listen:
-- No, dammit.
Not so much salt.
Do what I say, woman:
Just that
And nothing more.

Be woman. I did not know
the measure of the words
until that night
when you denied me darkness,
even the right
To turn in my own light.

Do as I say, I heard you faintly
over me fainting:
be woman.

~~~

                                 i

    Implacable woman
    the land reclines: dusty deaf
    heart of stillness    mummified stillness
    black

    Sun rages month on month
    and men light fires     make trees totter
    for fertile ash

    But suddenly in November
    a bird's voice fountains
    thunder rants
    rains tantrum
    demanding   demanding

    In a green swing upwards
    the soil yields — —
          the land is dancing

                              ii

    The still trees in late afternoon
    are nameless elements
    like elms they soar
    like mushrooms wreathe the sky
    At night they burst out suddenly
    and fructify
    with ripe moon-silvered fruit,
    parade in columns
    towards blue stars:

    until the wild cicada shrills
    telling the world their names.

                              iii

    Rooted strong on a hillside
    or as a gnarled shadow
    on windswept fields
    the wild fig tree's
    dry leaves
    whistle November:
    but on the sheltered side
    fat leaves, bursting
    declare April

    And when the fruit forms clusters
    and shoots dark red fingers
    at the lusty sun
    is it summer or winter?

    Happy the self-completing tree
    that brews, in secret,
    its own seasons . . .

          — Dorothy Livesay, "The Land," The Colour of God's Face
~~~

The Unquiet Bed

by Dorothy Livesay

The woman I am
is not what you see
I'm not just bones
and crockery

the woman I am
knew love and hate
hating the chains
that parents make

longing that love
might set men free
yet hold them fast
in loyalty

the woman I am
is not what you see
move over love
make room for me

~~~

http://allpoetry.com/column/by/Night%20Hope