Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Heidi White, and today is Wednesday, July 19th, 2023. Today's poem is by Robert Morgan, and it's called Bell Rope. I'll read it once and offer a few comments, and then I'll read it one more time.

Bell Rope. The line through the hold and the dank vestibule ceiling in One more time. Bell rope.

The line through the hold and the dank vestibule ceiling ended in a powerful knot worn slick, swinging in the breeze from those passing.

Half an hour before service, Uncle Alan pulled to call to worship, hauling down the rope like the starting cord of a motor,

and the tower answered and answered, fading as the clapper lulled aside.

I watched him before Sunday school, heave on the line as on a well rope,

and the wheel creaked up there as heavy buckets emptied out their startle and spread a cold splash to farthest coves and hollows then sucked the rope back into the loft leaving just the knot within reach trembling with its high connections.

Robert Morgan is an American poet who's born in 1944 and he's still living. He's also a novelist and he teaches English and creative writing at Cornell University.

Born in North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains, his poetry and prose explore

Appalachian culture, specifically the lives of poor families in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

This particular poem is about an object, a bell rope. I've been choosing poems lately from a wonderful

anthology called A Book of Luminous Things, which I bought entirely just for the title, and then it turned out to be wonderful.

The book is compiled and edited by Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner, Sheshla Milosj.

In his short commentary on this poem, Miloge writes that, quote, Robert Morgan's ambition is to describe objects in a

matter of fact manner, end quote. I like that so much because this poem shows us that writing in a

matter-of-fact manner is neither simplistic nor anti-poetic. It's actually beautiful and creative to be matter of fact,

which just means to describe and understand things as they are.

In this case, the narrator describes a simple, ordinary object, a bellrope.

But this isn't just any bellrope. It's a bell rope at what we seem to perceive

through the poem by the tone as a local country church where the narrator worships. And in

describing the bell rope in a matter-of-fact manner, the poem tells us what the rope looks like,

what it feels like, where it hangs, it's setting and sound

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