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Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member
Username: db_tompsett

Post Number: 487
Registered: 07-2007
Posted on Friday, April 17, 2009 - 7:32 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Deborah Digges. The story is in today's NYT. Here's one of her poems:

Darwin's Finches
by Deborah Digges


1
My mother always called it a nest,
the multi-colored mass harvested

from her six daughters' brushes,
and handed it to one of us

after she had shaped it, as we sat in front
of the fire drying our hair.

She said some birds steal anything, a strand
of spider's web, or horse's mane,

the residue of sheep's wool in the grasses
near a fold

where every summer of her girlhood
hundreds nested.

Since then I've seen it for myself, their genius—
how they transform the useless.

I've seen plastics stripped and whittled
into a brilliant straw,

and newspapers—the dates, the years—
supporting the underweavings.


2
As tonight in our bed by the window
you brush my hair to help me sleep, and clean

the brush as my mother did, offering
the nest to the updraft.

I'd like to think it will be lifted as far
as the river, and catch in some white sycamore,

or drift, too light to sink, into the shaded inlets,
the bank-moss, where small fish, frogs, and insects

lay their eggs.
Would this constitute an afterlife?

The story goes that sailors, moored for weeks
off islands they called paradise,

stood in the early sunlight
cutting their hair. And the rare

birds there, nameless, almost extinct,
came down around them

and cleaned the decks
and disappeared into the trees above the sea.
"People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski
Judy Thompson
Advanced Member
Username: judyt54

Post Number: 1472
Registered: 11-2007
Posted on Friday, April 17, 2009 - 10:49 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

what terrible thing does this to the creative--that very instrument we play, that poem, that story, is the thing that sometimes keeps us alive, and sometimes kills us.
Anne sexton said once that poetry was the only way she could keep herself from dying.

I try to pretend that we are no different from anyone else, we just pot along as best we can, with our public lives and private ones; and yet when you read the roll call of writer/suicides, you realize we are very different indeed.

I think we all walk a knife edge beside that river, some closer than others.

What a damn shame, and what a lovely poem.
Afraid of the Dark
~M~
Board Administrator
Username: mjm

Post Number: 33865
Registered: 11-1998
Posted on Friday, April 17, 2009 - 10:54 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Very sad, Dan. Thank you for posting the notification and the poem. I read somewhere (can't remember where) that poets on the whole don't live as long as most people. Whether those live are cut short by their own hands or by some other means wasn't specified. But basically, it would seem that selecting poetry as an avocation isn't good for your health.

I guess we take the risk, though. The poetry is worth it. My condolences to Ms. Digges' family and friends.

Love,
M
Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member
Username: db_tompsett

Post Number: 489
Registered: 07-2007
Posted on Friday, April 17, 2009 - 11:12 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Here's a short article on this subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/14/books/exploring-the-links-between-depression-writers-and-suicide.html?sec=health
"People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski