Reproduced here with permission Fine poems should be read and heard more than once, so I\u2019m continuing with my series of relooking at poets who have had multiple poems featured here on \u201c\u2026Anything, Really\u201d<\/em> since I joined the Tuesday Poem community in June 2010. Michael Harlow\u2019s The Longest Day Of The Year<\/em> <\/strong>was posted here on 22 May 2012<\/a>, at which time Michael offered the following comment:<\/p>\n Poems that are lyric moments of recognition of what happens when we stand up and speak in front of ourselves and others; you could say a way of \u2018being restoried\u2019; a way of letting \u2018words dream again\u2019, so that making the \u2018invisible, visible\u2019 is at the heart of what the I call the \u2018persistent imaginal\u2019.\u00a0 From this \u2018the poem springs\u2019<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n And there are poems that come calling on and celebrate the \u2018privilege of ordinary astonishments\u2019\u2013so that one day \u2018a single original carrot shall be pregnant with revolution\u2019 (an echo from the painter C\u00e9zanne)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Poems that acknowledge and reflect on how it is always that the \u2018light lies down with the dark\u2019, however various the shuffling \u00a0weathers of the heart turn up loss and death, time and memory, despair and delight; when \u2018forgetting is always about\u00a0 remembering\u2019<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n And on those occasions that poems return to that inevitable and archetypal myst\u00e9rion, what is it \u2018that love dares the self to do\u2019?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n A poetry that rests on and enacts the belief that we need to \u2018see the sounds and hear the words\u2019, so that despite every dark thing there is in the world, there will always be music, when \u2018words sing\u2019 poetry makes intimate everything that it touches ( there is always the distinct possibility of romance\u2019, and more); naturally, poetry wants to go to the heart of the matter.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n — Michael Harlow<\/span><\/p>\n —<\/p>\n — THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR One word one word and then another, one word and another, waiting for the light to come stealing in, you ask what is it that love dares the self to do? All he wanted was to put his shoes out in the moonlight.\u00a0 To hear music be the saint […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27033"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27036,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27033\/revisions\/27036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n—<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/the_tram_conductors_blue_cap-111x150.jpg\" "\\"the_tram_conductors_blue_cap\\""){kind=spacer}
<\/a>\u201cPoems that ask what it means, in the face of the absurdities and shadowy things thrown up by life, to \u2018risk delight\u2019; and what that might mean when we are looking-out and listening-in for a language to say something about how mysterious we are to ourselves and to the world<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n![\"michael_harlow\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/michael_harlow-124x150.jpg\")
<\/a>Michael Harlow<\/strong> was born in the United States and arrived in New Zealand in 1968. He has published seven poetry collections: Edges (1974), Nothing but Switzerland and Lemonade (1980), Today is the Piano\u2019s Birthday (1981), Vlaminck\u2019s Tie (1985), Giotto\u2019s Elephant (1991), Cassandra\u2019s Daughter (2005, 2006), and The Tram Conductor\u2019s Blue Cap (2009, Finalist National Book Awards 2010). He has been poetry editor of Landfall and Robert Burns fellow at the University of Otago. In March 2014 he received the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Distinguished Contribution to Poetry in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"TuesPoem\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/TuesPoem.jpg\")
<\/a>To check out the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill<\/strong> icon <\/strong>in the sidebar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"