I spent about five hours at what I think is my favorite coffee shop in Chattanooga: Pasha’s, which has the irresistibly cute slogan “Coffee with authority.” They serve tea in adorable super-tall ceramic mugs with built-in loose leaf tea baskets and have both Turkish coffee and halvah (cold hazelnut coffee), which seems pretty unique. I finished off my two final papers for the semester, wrote three poems, went for a walk in the nearby graveyard, and sent a proposal to a conference on a whim.
The three poems are what excite me the most. I haven’t had the time or creative energy to write much in the past couple years which makes me sad. But I had a sudden spurt in the past couple days and it’s made me want to return to reading poetry, which I regrettably often don’t have the patience for. A couple that have struck my fancy today:
Drag up false, Edwardian sentiments, and I remember my maternal grandmother from Vienna. As a schoolgirl she gave roses to Franz Josef. The burghers sweated and wept. The children wore white.
-From “Candles” by Sylvia Plath
In human closeness there is a secret edge,
Nor love nor passion can pass it above,
Let lips with lips be joined in silent rage,
And hearts be burst asunder with the love.
And friendship, too, is powerless plot,
And so years of bliss with noble tends,
When your heart is free and known not,
The slow languor of the earthy sense.
And they who strive to reach this edge are mad,
But they who reached are shocked with anguish hard –
Now you know why beneath your hand
You do not feel the beating of my heart.
-Anna Akhmatova