"Dancing with God" by Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn has written fifteen collections of poetry. He won many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Dancing with God
by Stephen Dunn
At first the surprise
of being singled out,
the dance floor crowded
and me not looking my best,
a too-often-worn dress
and the man with me
a budding casualty
of one repetition too much.
God just touched his shoulder
and he left.
Then the confirmation
of an old guess:
God was a wild god,
into the most mindless rock,
but graceful,
looking—this excited me—
like no one I could love,
cruel mouth, eyes evocative
of promises unkept.
I never danced better, freer,
as if dancing were my way
of saying how easily
I could be with him, or apart.
When the music turned slow
God held me close
and I felt for a moment
I’d mistaken him,
that he was Death
and this the famous embrace
before the lights go out.
But God kept holding me
and I him
until the band stopped
and I stood looking at a figure
I wanted to slap
or forgive for something,
I couldn’t decide which.
He left then, no thanks,
no sign
that he’d felt anything
more than an earthly moment
with someone who could’ve been
anyone on earth.
To this day I don’t know why
I thought he was God,
though it was clear
there was no going back
to the man who brought me,
nice man
with whom I’d slept
and grown tired,
who danced wrong,
who never again
could do anything right.

The girl is at a dance with a not suitable date and her “too-often-worn dress” she believes to “not looking her best.” We may not be looking our best when God comes to us. We can be beaten down, in a tough of our life waiting for the peak to come. God comes in and saves that day or according to the poem comes in and asks her to dance. Being with God, many become freer and can find happiness with Him. Even as wild as the music was, God was still there dancing along just like God will hold on in the wild, crazy parts of someone’s life. “When the music turned slow God held me close” it’s when God holds people even when their life is slow. Even when He leaves after dancing, God still cares. Mistaking God for death, the girl felt at peace with it, like she was in heaven with God at that point. The metaphor shows that God is always around at all points in our life and He can come to us in our need to help bring us to Him. At the end of the poem, the girl cannot go back to the man she can with because he is of little relevance to her life, now that God has danced with her. This poem is like when God finds us in our low points-although he can find us in our high as well- we feel him with us, we can see that he is there and wants us. God helps us find who we are meant to be with and watch as people come and go in our lives for a reason. 

Martha Collins was born in 1940 in Omaha, NE. She is an author of poems and has published them many books including a book length poem, Blue Front.

Lies by Martha Collins

Anyone can get it wrong, laying low
when she ought to lie, but is it a lie
for her to say she laid him when we know
he wouldn’t lie still long enough to let
her do it? A good lay is not a song,
not anymore; a good lie is something
else: lyrics, lines, what if you say dear sister
when you have no sister, what if you say guns
when you saw no guns, though you know
they’re there? She laid down her arms; she lay
down, her arms by her sides. If we don’t know,
do we lie if we say? If we don’t say, do we lie
down on the job? To arms! in any case,
dear friends. If we must lie, let’s not lie around.

The author plays with the word lie, laid, lay. According to dictonary.com, lie means a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood. On the other hand, lay means to put or place in a horizontal position or position of rest; set down, with laid be the past tense. The author is showing how these two words, while spoken similarly, but spelt differently, mean to completely different things. While one may not catch that the author is talking about not telling the truth and something horizontal, a few sentences with the right word choice can make it clear from the reading aloud point of view: “but is it a lie for her to say she laid him when we know he wouldn't lie still long enough to let her do it?” Contradictory to the definitions, this seems to be incorrect, although when we read it, it does. The author plays with these words, and chooses when to use which one based off the meaning or idea she wants to get across. Her word choice is confusing when looking into the definitions, but when read aloud, it sounds right. “What if you say dear sister when you have no sister, what if you say guns when you saw no guns, though you know they’re there?” this rhetorical question is defining a lie while in the next sentence-“She laid down her arms; she lay down, her arms by her sides”- is describing lay. The author is tricking us, but making sense in her own way because how she wrote it, her diction exemplifies her meaning. 

"To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan was raised in New York, but lived in Maryland. She won the Mademoiselle Poetry Prize her senior year in college, but decided to stop writing to raise her family. Then she picked back up her writing.

To a Daughter Leaving Home
by: Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

As the speaker pushes her little girl off on a bike for the first time, it shows her whole life. As we grow up, we generally leave our families and move away, having our own lives. Throughout our school years- preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, high school- we are with our parents, unless other circumstances, but once we go to college, many students move away. This short poem expresses a lifetime of the parent-daughter relationship. As the setting being outside because the girl is learning to ride a bike, it is the parent’s perspective of how she takes on her life. Her life starts as she “wobbled away” soon to be growing “smaller, more breakable with distance.” The parents chase after the girl as she grows and is filled with life “screaming with laughter.” Parents often hold onto the children much longer than children hold to parents. The first taste of freedom children taste, they take it all. The sequence of the daughter’s life in the short poem shows how short life seems to be to a parent when their child grows up. The “hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye” is the daughter’s way of saying goodbye. It is never a real goodbye, but the parents know what it is. This poem can be translated to most parents’ life as they see their children going off; they get smaller in the distance as the parents sprint after them, never quite catching back up.