{"id":1011362,"date":"2023-04-25T18:02:21","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T23:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/?p=1011362&preview=true&preview_id=1011362"},"modified":"2024-08-26T13:11:35","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T18:11:35","slug":"usurped-emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/usurped-emotions\/","title":{"rendered":"Usurped Emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Usurped Emotions<\/h2>\n
Anger is the Queen of Misrule\nUntil she's denied - \nShoved aside - \nDiminished, \nLike a distressing damsel\nOvercome, but not becalmed.\nImpotent Rage, dark\nGrief will serve \nHer only companions.\nLocked in her stoic tower cell - \nStubbornly, she swallows the key,\nEats her feelings,\nThinking their power \nUsurped. Denial \nHer warden; Contentment \nHer lady's maid.\nJoy pours through open windows\nDrenching cold stone\nIn golden sunfire.\nAnger would draw the curtains,\nIf she could. Hang tapestries\nAgainst the dawning light.\nShe smothers Hope\nLets it languish\nDrowning, in a tub\nOf gray and tepid water.\nPersistent Joy flashes warm:\nPink, orange, and yellow roses\nCast at the Queen's bare feet\nBefore the purpling dusk.\nJoy launches an assault - \nDemands white bedsheets;\nTill Anger, laughing \nSurrenders, at last\nTo happy Dreams.\n<\/pre>\n
Unfeeling<\/h2>\n
Dammed up for half a life, \nDenied, so many salty drops \nUncried refuse to flow. \nThey called her cold - \nUnfeeling. Unaware\nThe faintly beating heart \nStill beat within \nThough dried up, brittle\nAs her mother's fragile\nSkin; a parchment\nPage unwritten\nWaiting to be placed\nUpon an empty shelf\nForgotten\nAs the feelings \nOf a hollow vessel.\n<\/pre>\n
Today’s Poet<\/h2>\n
Wislawa Szymborska<\/strong> – a\u00a0Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996\u00a0Nobel Prize in Literature\u00a0“for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”<\/p>\n
Wis\u0142awa Szymborska \u2013 Poetry – NobelPrize.org<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
April is National Poetry Month<\/a>. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo<\/a> – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).<\/p>\n
This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge<\/a>, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once.\u00a0You can see the list of participants<\/a> – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.<\/p>\n
This month, my goal is to:<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated<\/a> – here; and<\/li>\n
  2. Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.<\/p>\n
    Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers<\/em>, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)<\/p>\n
     <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    It’s not just boys who are taught to hide their emotions. We all are, as if feeling anything – positive or negative – is a sign of weakness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1012215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[],"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-1011362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 20:52:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011362"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012216,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011362\/revisions\/1012216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1012215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011362"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=1011362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}