Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 15h

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she's in her dotage . . .

from "Skunk Hour" by Robert Lowell

buff.ly/y688jSj

1

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 1d

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow

from "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke

buff.ly/ptkwRFo

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 2d

Identifying the Pathogen, the latest collection from UNCG Creative Writing alum Jennifer Millitello, is now available for pre-order from Tupelo Press buff.ly/D7yYSms @mfagreensboro.bsky.social

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 2d

So hangs the hour like fruit fullblown and sweet,
Our strict and desperate avatar,
Despite that antique westward gulls lament
Over enormous waters which retreat
Weary unto the white and sensual star . . .

from "San Francisco Night Windows" by Robert Penn Warren
buff.ly/meVeUMC

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 3d

Your voice, with clear location of June days,
Called me outside the window. You were there,
Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare
Of uncontested summer all things raise
Plainly their seeming into seamless air . . .

from "June Light" by Richard Wilbur
buff.ly/fT1rID7

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 4d

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets . . .

from "Epitaph on a Tyrant" by W.H. Auden

buff.ly/ShtDDhO

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 5d

Live in the Triad? UNCG Creative Writing alum Evan Fackler will be reading his award-winning story "IDP’s.” one week from today (Saturday, October 11th) at 2PM at Scuppernong Books, 304. S. Elm Street. The ehttps://buff.ly/9NVurHX

To read more about the Doris Betts Fiction Prize: buff.ly/Gugtaxf

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 5d

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm . . .

from "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm" by Wallace Stevens

buff.ly/CgVAlXB

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 6d

The parrot, screeching, flew out into the darkness,
Circled three times above the upturned faces
With a great whir of brilliant outspread wings,
And then returned to stagger on her finger.
She bowed and smiled, eliciting applause…

from "Duval's Birds" by Conrad Aiken

buff.ly/6eQFgXY

1

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 7d

Readings Might Be Turning Into America’s New Favorite Pastime | ELECTRIC LIT
"Across the country, the number of untethered readings disconnected from a specific publisher or magazine has skyrocketed over the past couple of years." buff.ly/zO1WYZS

1

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 7d

The tremulously mirrored clouds lie deep,
Enchanted towers bosomed in the stream,
And blossomed coronals of white-thorn gleam
Within the water where the willows sleep—
Still-imaged willow-leaves whose shadows steep . . .

from "Imagery" by Archibald MacLeish

buff.ly/gY5pShY

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 8d

Man looking into the sea,
taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to yourself,
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,
but you cannot stand in the middle of this . . .

from "A Grave" by Marianne Moore

buff.ly/N7obXW8

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 9d

Happy Pub Day to UNCG Creative Writing alum James Daniels! God-Damned Eden lunches today from Bull City Press buff.ly/fgmanXj @mfagreensboro.bsky.social

1

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 9d

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers . . .

from "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" by Wallace Stevens
buff.ly/ihjtREQ

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 10d

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—

from "Approach of Winter" by William Carlos Williams

buff.ly/2mhsXjI

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 11d

from "My Father as Cartographer"
buff.ly/egLdtI2

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 11d

In dim light now, his eyes
straining to survey
the territory: here is the country
of Loss, its colony Grief;
the great continent Desire
and its borderland Regret;

vast, unfathomable water
an archipelago—the tiny islands
of Joy . . .

1 1

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 12d

The orchard was on fire, but that didn’t stop him from slowly walking
straight into it, shirtless, you can see where the flames have
foliaged—here, especially—his chest . . .

from "Dirt Being Dirt" by Carl Phillips
buff.ly/oWhB4p1

3 7

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 13d

I thought by now my reverence would have waned,
matured to the tempered silence of the bookish or revealed
how blasé I’ve grown with age, but the unrestrained
joy I feel when a black skein of geese voyages like a dropped
string from God . .

from "Thinking of Frost" by Major Jackson
buff.ly/1oXzgdX

1

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 14d

Take today. I want there
to be less
of everything—wind

& worry, of leaves
littering the ground
& love letters, addressee

unknown. Return
to sender—
this, my quarrel

with what
must be
told.

from "Dog Star" by Kevin Young
buff.ly/7Ffn7T1

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 15d

My father was an enormous man
Who believed kindness and lack of size
Were nothing more than sissified
Signs of weakness. Narrow-minded,

His eyes were the worst kind
Of jury — deliberate, distant, hard.

from "Sticks" by. Thomas Sayers Ellis
buff.ly/bARVASe

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 16d

Like a wide wake, rippling

Infinitely into the distance, everything

That ever was still is, somewhere,

Floating near the surface, nursing

Its hunger for you and me

And the now we’ve named

And made a place of.

from "Everything That Ever Was" by Tracy K. Smith
buff.ly/JksD974

1

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 17d

when I see the shadow of the hawk
but not the hawk itself do you know
what it feels like Boss a stone a stone
set on my chest it weighs me down
it's stronger than the horse's strain
against the plowlines . . .

from "Bucolics [LIX]" by Maurice Manning
buff.ly/6PFWKMf

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 18d

You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one—
by—one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life.

from "Theories of Time and Space" by Natasha Trethewey
buff.ly/gVxVk26

3

Terry L. Kennedy @terrylkennedy.bsky.social · 19d

It has taken thirty-five years to be this confident
of what happens between the noun and the verb.

Eventually, love goes. The image. Then the thought.
No? Then you are still alive. Only a little . . .

from "The Language of Love" by Rodney Jones
buff.ly/f1ndCmZ

1