Wanda Phipps: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Morning Poem #27

 

I should have stayed

here with the beautiful

strong cold Corinna Mae

I should have stayed here

all those years ago

with the known and familiar

I shouldn't have called so much

I shouldn't have been so callous

I should have stuck by you

after recovery

I should have moved to DC

when you asked me to

I should have taken that editing job

I should have taken that TV PA job

I should have gone through with

that graduate school acceptance

I should have loved you

when we first met

I should have been a performance poet

a spoken word artist

I should have gone every place

I was afraid to go

I should have helped you find an apartment

I should have been more interesting

and less the clinging vine

I should have protested loudly

about some things and not at

all about others

I should have learned Spanish and German

I shouldn't have been so easily discouraged

I should have listened to my mother

my life could have been so much better by now

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Wanda Phipps is a writer/translator and author of the books Field of Wanting: Poems of Desire and Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems among others. Her poetry has appeared in more than a hundred publications and has been translated into Ukrainian, Hungarian, Arabic, Galician, and Bangla. She's curated several reading/performance series at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and is a founding member of the theatre company Yara Arts Group.  She has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Agni Journal, the National Theater Translation Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Her third full-length book of original poetry, Mind Honey, was just published by Autonomedia.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning,1930.

Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

Wanda speaks for us all in her colloquial musical inimitable voice

[Howard Bass]

Shoulda, coulda, woulda--that's me in a nutshell. An excellent poem, perfectly encapsulating the frustrations of so many of us humans.

[Eileen]

Love this poem. It’s so true for any one of us.

[Clarinda]

I shoulda waited till Monday morning to read this poem— instead it’s what I’ll Siena Sunday night with, reciting a list— thank you both for keeping me up all night or dreaming of what coulda been

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Clarinda. I guess we all have a version in our heads of Wanda's poem.

[Vlrlana Tkacz]

Love this poem

[Maureen]

I love Wanda's underlying humor in this cascade of items/choices we can all relate to. I'm laughing in recognition.

[Indran Amirthanayagam]

This poem and its nostalgic, wistful question is as basic as bread and water, familiar as a kiss and the memory of the last time we said goodbye. Thanks.

[maggie dubris]

I love this poem! Thank you!

[India Radfar]

I love the form and how Wanda breaks it at the end, dropping her casual fun tone after keeping us laughing as we moved
through all the big and small 'should haves.' I hope this poem is widely read.
It deserves to be. Cheers, Wanda!

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

A sight gag in the movie NOTTING HILL features a too-late-sober sailor leaving a tattoo parlor with two words engraved on his upper forearm: “No Regerts.” We all have “regerts” tattooed on our psyches and souls. We wouldn’t be human without these scars of wanting, failing, learning, and coming to often ill-fitted peace with them. Wanda Phipps’s sharply observed “Morning Poem #27” dangles clues and insights to remind us that regrets are the emotional emblems of self-doubt and second-guessing left by our pasts. Who among us hasn’t asked, at one time or another, “what if?” But regrets can also impart a hard-won wisdom. Consider this line from Cormac McCarthy’s NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: “You never know what worse luck bad luck has saved you from.” This is a provocative, masterly poem from Wanda Phipps that will linger long in my mind.

[Peter Kearney]

If the author had stayed long ago right where she is now, as she wishes at the start of the poem, we would not have her words awakening echoes in our memories as we read her lines.

[Maria Grazia Bruschi]

So simple... so true.... so inspirational for the rest of our days! Thank you for these words of wisdom, Wanda!

[Chris Mason]

Wonderful poem!

[lally]

one of my favorite humans and poets, wanda phipps poems always make me want to dance, either in delight or rhythmic transcendence of disappointment...as this one does too (see my blurb on the back of her latest collection: MIND HONEY

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

She speaks to me! Terrific. Thanks.

[Wanda Phipps]

Thanks for all the great comments. I really appreciate it and most of all thanks to Terence Winch for choosing my poem!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for to you, Wanda, for that terrific poem.