{"id":1479,"date":"2015-09-09T11:37:39","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T15:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1479"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:49:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:49:19","slug":"1479","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2015\/09\/09\/1479\/","title":{"rendered":"Sept 9 – Mid-week after Labor Day,\tTom Hennen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tree\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“God never made an ugly landscape.
\nAll that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.\u201d
\n~John Muir<\/p>\n

Wednesday, September 9<\/strong><\/p>\n

Classes are no longer just beginning. \u00a0Students and faculty have begun to settle, be glad for successes, put up with failures. \u00a0Sometimes the rhythm of ordinary work looks to be mostly routine. \u00a0 Only occasionally does a student, or a teacher, recognize the power of what they try to do each day. \u00a0When I taught lots of students, there would be moments, rare, when all the little sounds of random body movements all stop at the same time. \u00a0When that kind of stillness occurred, better said: when I noticed that kind of stillness, I would be filled with awe. \u00a0An entire group in a class room all stopped random noise to listen intently.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I would understand what we were discussing that opened the stillness collectively; sometimes I would not understand. \u00a0 Either way, the sheer beauty of that group of human beings took my breath away.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Tom Hennen\u2019s provocative \u201cLove for other things\u201d stirs in my memories. \u00a0What can surprise and quiet me? \u00a0There\u2019s a good question for the middle of an ordinary work week, no?<\/p>\n

Have a good day. \u00a0 Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.<\/p>\n

john st sj<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post: \u00a0\u00a0Tom Hennen: “Love for Other Things”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to love a deer
\nBut try to care about bugs and scrawny trees
\nLove the puddle of lukewarm water
\nFrom last week\u2019s rain.
\nLeave the mountains alone for now.
\nAlso the clear lakes surrounded by pines.
\nPeople are lined up to admire them.
\nGet close to the things that slide away in the dark.
\nBe grateful even for the boredom
\nThat sometimes seems to involve the whole world.
\nThink of the frost
\nThat will crack our bones eventually.<\/p>\n

\"Tom-Hennen\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom Hennen\u2019s short bio (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tom_Hennen<\/a>) makes this poem look like a perfect poem for Labor Day week. Even though I hadn\u2019t read the wiki article until after I wrote the post.<\/p>\n

Tom Hennen<\/strong>\u00a0(born 1942,\u00a0Morris, Minnesota<\/a>) is an\u00a0American<\/a>\u00a0poet<\/a>. He grew up on a farm and began work in 1965 as a letterpress and offset printer. Switching careers, he then worked for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wildlife section in the 1970s and later as a wildlife technician at the Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota. He is now retired.<\/p>\n

In 1972 he helped found the Minnesota Writers\u2019 Publishing House (MWPH), a publishing cooperative, backed by Robert and Carol Bly, established to highlight Midwestern literature. For many years, Hennen operated the MWPH press in his garage.<\/p>\n

“Love for Other Things” by Tom Hennen. Text as published in\u00a0Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems<\/a>\u00a0(Copper Canyon Press, 2013).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.\u201d ~John Muir Wednesday, September 9 Classes are no longer just beginning. \u00a0Students and faculty have begun to settle, be glad … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1479"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1487,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions\/1487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}