Poetry Friday: Memory and Desire

Tomorrow begins National Poetry Month.  Every year I quote the line from T. S. Eliot: "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire."  I've been thinking about that line, and its focus on the past (memory) and the future (desire).  I've also been thinking about the hundreds of poems I have posted on this blog in the nearly eleven years (my blog birthday is this month!) that I've been writing here.

Many of the Poetry Friday bloggers are full of fabulous project ideas for this month.  Amy's writing about colors.  Heidi's on a math kick.  And, of course, Irene's organized the Progressive Poem.  (And there are so many other creative projects planned! Here's Jama's list.)  I know myself better than to commit to writing a poem every day in April, because April in middle school is, indeed, the cruelest month.  Who knows what could happen?  But I do want to do a daily post this month.  (I'll be linking you to each new line in the Progressive Poem, at the very least.)

So here's what I came up with:  six days a week in April, I'll write a post linking up to a wonderful poem or two from my archives.  And on Fridays, I'll post something new.  I'll attempt to make it something newly written (by me), but some weeks it may just be something newly discovered.  In other words, Saturday through Thursday will be about memory, and Fridays will be about desire.  Or something like that.

So for today, I will link to the poems that got me thinking about this idea.  I was browsing past posts, and in June 2012 I had written about my husband reading "Tintern Abbey" while we were on vacation at our friend's cabin in the woods.  I wrote: "As we sat on the porch of the cabin, looking out over the woods, my husband said, 'This reminds me of Tintern Abbey.' He read the poem aloud to us. From now on whenever I hear or read it, I'll think of our friend P. killing bugs in a kind of rhythmic counterpoint."

I love that idea, expressed in Wordsworth's lines below, that our moments are precious not only for the delight they bring us while they're happening, but also for the memories we have to ponder later.

And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.

Here's that post.

And in December 2009, I wrote another Tintern Abbey related post, this time referring to Billy Collins' poem "Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey."  This one skewers the idea of nostalgia, beginning:

I was here before, a long time ago,
and now I am here again
is an observation that occurs in poetry
as frequently as rain occurs in life.

Here's that post.

In this article, Garrison Keillor tells us that April isn't the cruelest month - March is.  (And it's almost over!)  He also suggests that you shouldn't read poetry, necessarily, but you should definitely write a poem to someone you love, and he gives some tips for doing so.

Here's to a fabulous National Poetry Month!  And Amy has today's roundup at The Poem Farm.

Coming Soon: The Progressive Poem, 2017!

It's almost April, and you know what that means: National Poetry Month!  And you know what else that means: the sixth annual Progressive Poem!

The Progressive Poem travels around blogs all around the blogosphere, with each blogger adding a line.  This year we're doing a poem specifically for kids.  It is always fun, as you can see by looking back at past Aprils.

2012
2013
2014
2015
2016

Below you'll find the schedule for this year.  The fun starts on Saturday!

April1 Heidi at my juicy little universe
2 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
3 Doraine at Dori Reads
4 Michelle at Today's Little Ditty
5 Diane at Random Noodling
6 Kat at Kat's Whiskers
7 Irene at Live Your Poem
8 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading
9 Linda at TeacherDance
10 Penny at a penny and her jots
11 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
12 Janet F. at Live Your Poem
13 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
14 Jan at Bookseedstudio
15 Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales
16 Joy at Poetry for Kids Joy
17 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
18 Buffy at Buffy's Blog
19 Pat at Writer on a Horse
20 BJ at Blue Window
21 Donna at Mainely Write
22 Jone at Jone Ruch MacCulloch
23 Ruth at There is no such thing as a godforsaken town
24 Amy at The Poem Farm
25 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
26 Renee at No Water River
27 Matt at Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme
28 Michelle at Michelle Kogan
29 Charles at Poetry Time
30 Laura Purdie Salas at Writing the World for Kids

Poetry Friday: A Box Full of Darkness, Response

Last week I shared a prompt from my writing group.  Three of us wrote poems in response to it, and lively discussion ensued.  Here's mine.  I found it a lot of fun to write.  I kept paring it and paring it; my final version was probably a third the length of my first draft.  I enjoyed the process so much - even though the subject of the poem is so sad - that I found myself wondering again why I don't routinely write every day.  The only reason I made myself sit down and write this was that I had my group meeting coming up.  I think the answer to my question is that I usually prioritize my "real work," which involves reading student writing, and on the rare occasions when that is finished, my brain is tired and picking up my own writing seems too much.  Yet writing is the one thing that reliably makes me feel better when I'm tired and down.


Box Full of Darkness

Someone I love gave me
A box

A box full of velvety black-hole darkness,
Sound-swallowing silence,
Absence, not-there-ness, all-gone-ness,
A box filled to the brim with emptiness,
A box of goodbye.

I’d throw the box away,
But it will take me years to unpack,
And besides, it’s from someone I love.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: A Box Full of Darkness

One of the members of my writing group sent us this poem to use as a prompt for our meeting next week.  I haven't written anything yet, but I've been thinking about it.  Maybe you'd like to think about it, too. 


The Uses of Sorrow
by Mary Oliver
 
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Birthday Gifts Edition

Today is a busy day for me because it's a due date in both seventh and eighth grade.  The seventh graders made poetry anthologies, and the eighth graders are turning in a variety of things, but the main genre of the quarter was feature articles, and there are lots of very interesting topics, based on interviews they have done.  The piles are a little daunting, but there should be some great reading.

Speaking of great reading, I got some in the mail yesterday, too.  For my recent birthday, I received two Amazon gift cards, and I decided to treat myself to some poetry that had been on my Wish List for a while.  I got three books, one a download and two analog (I've typed and deleted several ways of referring to the book books - I'm not sure what to call them!).  I got a box from Amazon yesterday, and as soon as I get a little control of the grading, I'm excited to dig into these books.

I downloaded Derek Walcott's Omeros, which is a Caribbean retelling of the Odyssey (Walcott is from the island of St. Lucia).  I've been wanting to read this for a long time, and I couldn't wait, so I started it already.  It begins with a description of the building of canoes.  An islander called Philoctete is explaining to tourists:

"Wind lift the ferns.  They sound like the sea that feed us
fishermen all our life, and the ferns nodded 'Yes,
the trees have to die.' So, fists jam in our jacket,

cause the heights was cold and our breath making feathers
like the mist, we pass the rum.  When it came back, it
give us the spirit to turn into murderers.

I lift up the axe and pray for strength in my hands
to wound the first cedar.  Dew was filling my eyes,
but I fire one more white rum.  Then we advance."

I'm sure I'll write about this when I'm done with it, or maybe even while I'm in the process of reading it.

I've been reading poems by Gregory Djanikian for several years, and have posted some on this blog in the past (here, here, here), but have never read any of his books.  The one I got is called Years Later. 

Djanikian immigrated to the United States from Egypt as a young child, and if you follow the links to the poems I've posted by him, you'll see that he writes a lot about his experiences.  

The third book I got is by Jan Richardson, whose blog I love.  In fact, I've read several of the poems from this book, The Cure for Sorrow, there.  I have been wanting to get the book since it came out.  It's about her sudden loss of her husband after less than four years of marriage, but her format is blessings, with titles like "Blessing in the Chaos," "Blessing of Memory," "Blessing for a Whole Heart." 

There are few better feelings than having a whole little stack of books you are looking forward to reading.  Yay!

Here's today's roundup. I'm looking forward to reading that, too!

Reading Update

Book 6 of the year was Love Well: Living Life Unrehearsed and Unstuck, by Jamie George.  "God does not delete your story - " writes George, "He redeems it!"  He shares his own experiences with God redeeming his life story.

Book 7 was News of the World, by Paulette Jiles.  It's 1870.  Johanna was abducted from her family when she was six, and now that she is ten, she's been ransomed and she's on her way "home."  Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is a man who travels around and reads newspapers to audiences who pay a dime each to hear the "news of the world."  He's agreed to take Johanna back to her original family, whether or not she wants to go.  I loved this book, with its intricately detailed portrayal of Johanna and Captain Kidd, and the way they grow in importance to one another.  Highly recommended.

Book 8 was Ann Patchett's latest book, Commonwealth.  It took me a while to figure out what was going on here, because there were lots of characters whom I couldn't keep straight very well.  But when, about halfway through, I figured it out, I was glad I hadn't given up.  The book explores issues about childhood, siblings, and how much of our story belongs to us.

Book 9 was The Girl with All the Gifts, by M. R. Carey.  If I had known what this book was about, I wouldn't have picked it up, and that would have been a shame.  I know that is no help at all for you if you're trying to decide whether to read it, but I think it's best read without knowing too much about it, since you're supposed to realize the situation gradually.

Book 10 was The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country, by Helen Russell.  I hadn't read any of the current spate of Denmark books, and knew very little about the country.  I learned a lot reading this book, written by a British woman whose husband got a job at Lego, sending the couple to Denmark for a year.  It's a mixture of very personal memoir and investigative journalism, and great fun.

Book 11 was Three Sisters, Three Queens, by Philippa Gregory.  I have been waiting for this to become available for download from my library ever since it came out.  The three queens of the title are Katherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII, and her two sisters-in-law, Mary and Margaret.  I'm quite familiar with Katherine and Mary, but Margaret's story is much less known, and while it's pretty harrowing - like all the Tudors and anybody who came near them, particularly women, Margaret had a rough time of it - it also makes for exciting and entertaining reading.  I think I've read all Philippa Gregory's novels about the Plantagenets and Tudors, and now I'm ready for the next one!

Book 12 was A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.  I've wanted to read this ever since a good friend mentioned years ago that it was her favorite book.  I read it aloud to my husband, and since it's over 600 pages long, it took us a while.  This was only my second Irving book, and my husband's first.  Owen Meany is an unforgettable character, and I loved the leisurely manner in which the story is told.  At times hilarious, at times reverent, at times shocking and profane (language and content alerts for days), always vivid, this is the story of John and Owen's friendship against the backdrop of the late sixties and the beginning of the Vietnam War.  John Irving is a simply brilliant writer, and it's a pleasure watching this story unfold.  As John is trying to figure out how he will handle the threat of the draft, he tells Owen that he wants to go on reading, as a student and a teacher: "I'm just a reader."  Owen tells him that's nothing to be ashamed of, because reading is a gift.  It certainly is, when there are books like this to be read.

This post is linked to the March 4th Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon.

It's also linked to Modern Mrs. Darcy's "What I'm Reading Lately" post for March.

Poetry Friday: Strange Lands

Today, in honor of Billy Collins' 76th birthday this month, we have an all-Billy episode of Poetry Friday.  Our host, Heidi, suggests that "all who care to will post a favorite Billy Collins poem (or Billy-inspired original)." I've got one of each - one of his and one of mine - for you today.

I've been thinking a lot about photography lately, since I'm doing a year-long photo-a-day project.  For the last couple of years, I've also done a photo-a-day project during Lent, so this year during Lent (which started on Wednesday), I'm posting two photos each day on Facebook, responding to prompts I got here as well as the regular ones I got here.  I'm very much an amateur photographer; my husband bought me a nice camera that is able to do way more than I know how to do, but I'm experimenting and learning, and having all kinds of thoughts about connections between photography and writing, photography and being fully present in the moment, and photography and love.  Maybe I'll develop some of these thoughts further in writing in the future.  

Meanwhile, I picked the Billy Collins poem "Strange Lands" to share today.  This poem is from Collins' 1988 collection  The Apple that Astonished Paris.  In the poem, people back from a trip pass out their vacation photos, "like little mirrors," to friends after dinner.  Isn't that quaint and old-fashioned?  Even though the technology is dated, though, I like what the poem has to say about taking pictures and why we share them with others: "to make them believe we really found / some sweet elsewhere, away from here."  

Here's the poem:

 
Strange Lands
 by Billy Collins

The photographs of the summer trip are spread
across the table now like little mirrors
reflecting our place in European history.

They are the booty of travel, bordered and colorful,
split seconds that we pass to friends after dinner
one by one to make them believe we really found
some sweet elsewhere, away from here.

There we are, the familiar gazing out of the foreign,
stopped in front of a carved Cistercian door,
or leaning obliquely against a kiosk;
frozen behind a blue and white Della Robbia,
or parked at a café table strewn with phrasebooks,
obscured there in the underexposed shadow of an awning.

Here's the rest, including the travelers walking on after taking a photo, "unfocused, unphotographed...two blurs," as though they really only fully exist when they are documenting their travels.  

I wish Billy Collins would update this poem, but in the meantime, I tried my hand at it.  I sound a bit more negative and cynical about social media than I really am; I enjoy connecting with people that way, but it is, let's face it, a pale substitute for being with our friends in person. 



Strange Lands on Social Media
by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

The photographs of the trip are posted,
like little digital gifts,
ready for friends all over to like,
be startled or saddened or angered by,
or even love.
Pics, or it didn’t happen.

See what a good time we’re having?
That’s us, in the pictures,
smiling, or posing ironically duck-faced.
That’s what we ate, what we drank, 
artfully arranged and gleaming,
the walks we took.
Those are the sights we saw,
and you can see them now, too.

We can’t share the smells or tastes or textures with you - yet -
But you can experience some of the sounds in this short video.
Hear those exotic birds?  Those foreign-sounding voices?
(Feel free to share.)

Do you have any comments for us?
If so, we’d like to read them.

We wish you were here,
next to us,
laughing and swapping stories,
spilling your drinks in an unpicturesque manner,
instead of far away,
scrolling through our photos 
on your phone.
 

Here's today's roundup. 

Poetry Friday: How to Mend a Broken Vase

At an early meeting of my writing group, a member shared the Frank O'Hara poem "Why I Am Not a Painter".  It was photocopied from a book, and it was prefaced by this suggestion: "Make a title beginning with 'How' or 'Three Ways That...' or some such implied promise, and then in your poem that follows break or defy the promise, or complicate it."

The poem that follows was my effort to respond to that prompt.  This is a second draft, changed using some of the group's criticisms.


How to Mend a Broken Vase

First, gather up the shards.
Don’t forget that the shattering sent them in all directions;
There’s one, under the fridge,
And over there is another.
You’ll probably be finding pieces for quite a while.

Once you have them all picked up,
Put them in a pile,
And stare at them.

Think about whatever possessed you
To pick up that vase full of dead flowers
With butter on your hands
And scold yourself roundly.

When you’re ready, get to work with the glue.
Make a smeary mess.
Peel glue off your fingers and try again.
Cut yourself on pieces of glass,
Drop some on the ground and step on them,
Generally fail to mend the broken vase.

Give up.

Leave the pile where it is
And get irritated with it every time you see it.

Start enjoying the way the slivers of glass
Shine and sparkle as the light hits them.
Think about what you could add
To make a mosaic.

If, by chance,
It is your heart instead of a vase that you have carelessly
Allowed to get broken,
The same procedure will work.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


 Karen Edmisten has the roundup for this week.

Poetry Friday: Love, by Classic Authors, and by Me

This week, in honor of Valentine's Day, that festival of hormones and sugar, I read love poetry with my eighth graders.  I chose some classic poems to share with them, and I made the point every day that people throughout history have had some of the same experiences and emotions as we do now, even though their technology and surroundings were very different.  On Monday we read Michael Drayton's "Since there's no help," on Tuesday "The Constant Lover," by John Suckling, on Wednesday "To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars," by Richard Lovelace, and on Thursday, Ezra Pound's "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter." 

I framed "Since there's no help" as "a break-up poem," and taught the word ambivalent to discuss the difference between Drayton's claim: "And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, /That thus so cleanly I myself can free" and then his wistful suggestion in the couplet at the end that his girlfriend might be able to make their love recover, even at this point.  We also talked about the amazing metaphor of their relationship as a patient in a hospital bed.  Here's the poem, or you can read this photo I took of my handout, on the floor, with footprints on it.

(By the way, I really think ambivalent is a highly useful vocabulary word, no matter how old you are, and I was reinforced in this belief by the delighted response of a girl in the front row as I explained that you could feel both that you loved someone and that you hated that person, or both happy and sad, and that was called ambivalence: "Hey!  That's how I feel!")

Tuesday's poem, "The Constant Lover," was a chance to talk about how it feels to have crushes on lots of people at once.  I taught the word constant (used ironically in the poem), and we evaluated the idea that if this girl Suckling is currently in love with were any less wonderful than she is, he'd have loved a dozen dozen others during the three days he's loved her.  How much is a dozen dozen?  (Someone always says twenty-four, but then we figure out that it's...well, look at what my white board said.)  Here's Suckling's poem.

On Wednesday, with "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars," we looked at the idea of going off to war, from the point of view of the guy who's leaving, and from the point of view of the girl who's getting left behind.  And that fabulous line: "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more."  Here's that poem.  I just about jumped for joy today when an eighth grader turned in a response from Lucasta.

And then on Thursday, with "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter," we talked about arranged marriages and falling in love with someone you're already committed to, the opposite of the way we think of it today in the culture we live in.  Being married at fourteen to someone your parents picked for you?  Ew!  (Although one boy remarked, "Well, it depends who it is.")  But missing someone you love?  They have all experienced that.  Here's that poem.

I absolutely love all these poems, and you probably already know (especially if you're a teacher) that the students aren't quite as enthusiastic about them as I am.  But still, we have fun.  Yes, we do!

For my own love, I wrote a sonnet as my Valentine's gift, and he was very pleased with it and gave me permission to share it here.  You will probably recognize my opening couplet as a borrowing from William Shakespeare.  My husband and I were in a seminar together in college where we read all of Shakespeare's sonnets.  (We met in college, when I was still a teenager, and got married when I was twenty-one.)


Valentine for my Husband

“Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.”

In all these years of Monday - Friday weeks
Our hair’s grown grayer, happy days and glum
Have been and gone.  Our fortunes rise and fall,
We’re sick, then well, our children quickly grow,
And still our love abides, and through it all
We learn some more of what we need to know.

It’s thirty years since we first read those lines.
Back then we thought we understood how time
Would reinforce our love, how Valentines,
Poems, and roses would endure, sublime.
Earthquakes of life we didn’t then foresee,
And yet, here we still are, my love and me.

by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Waiting

On Tuesday morning I was listening to the radio, and I heard a Syrian refugee talk about his journey to the US, interrupted by the travel ban but then completed when the ban was lifted.  It struck me that this is the story of humanity: ordinary people's lives getting altered by what people with power decide to do, and how those ordinary people make the best of it.  What I heard turned into this poem.

 Image from  https://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/istanbul 

Waiting, February 2017


The voice on the radio, according to the interpreter, says:
“I waited very long in Istanbul.”

I wonder how many times in history
This exact phrase has been used:

“I waited very long in Istanbul.”

And before that:

“I waited very long in Constantinople.”

And before that:

“I waited very long in Byzantium.”

For three thousand years,
People have waited,
Observing the vagaries of empire, war, and power,
Without being able to do much about them.

Meanwhile,
There’s baklava,
Turkish tea and coffee,
A cruise down the Bosphorus,
A Turkish bath.

I wonder how many of these things
And the other delights of Turkey
Came into being
To entertain those who were waiting,
Waiting
Waiting
Waiting very long in Istanbul.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com



When I shared this poem with my writing group, one of the members played this song:

I did some research on Istanbul for the poem, and now I really want to go.  Check out this link on fifty things to do there.

Here's today's roundup.

Reading Update

So far in 2017, I've finished five books.  Here they are, with brief reviews.

Book 1 of 2017 was Heart of the Matter: Daily Reflections for Changing Hearts and Lives, from New Growth Press.  This was a devotional book I downloaded last January and finished in the first week of this January.  The daily entries were written by people associated with the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation, and the book was overall helpful and worth reading.

Book 2 was The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture, by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.  I had had this on my Kindle for a while, and it seemed to go well with my OLW for the year (ROOTED), so I decided to read it.  I recommend it highly.  As Wilson-Hartgrove puts it in the first sentence of his introduction: "This is a book about staying put and paying attention."  Here's a taste: "Stability is a commitment to trust God not in an ideal world, but in the battered and bruised world we know.  If real life with God can happen anywhere at all, then it can happen here among the people whose troubles are already evident to us."  With my background of multicultural living and frequent moves, this is profoundly against the grain stuff for me some days.  I don't want to invest in people and their lives because they always, always leave.  I want to hide away and protect myself from being hurt again.  If you're like me, read this book.

Book 3 was Sins of the Fathers, by Susan Howatch.  Fans of the Starbridge books will recognize a lot of the same themes in this earlier Howatch book: multiple points of view, deeply broken characters, multi-generational drama.  The Starbridge books, written after Howatch's conversion to Christianity, add the element of deep spiritual understanding and quest.

Book 4 was The Cruelest Month, by Louise Penny.  So far I'm not hugely taken with this series, the Chief Inspector Gamache Mysteries, but I hear Penny hits her stride in book four, so I'll read at least that one before I give up.

Book 5 was The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd.  The last book I read by this author, The Mermaid Chair, did not impress me.  (I must have read it before I started putting everything I read on this blog.)  This one, though, is wonderful.  It's the fictionalized story of the Grimké sisters, growing up in Charleston, South Carolina at the height of slavery.  Sarah Grimké receives a slave girl, Handful, as a gift for her eleventh birthday, and the chapters alternate between Sarah's and Handful's points of view.  While it's at times hard to read, I really appreciated that this book made no effort to romanticize the relationship between the two girls.  Slavery was and is always brutal, and Charleston was a particularly horrifying, dystopic place for African Americans at this time.   Eventually the Grimkés, Sarah and Angelina, became well-known (and notorious) for opposing slavery and for their early feminism.  Highly recommended.

This post is linked to the Saturday Review of Books for February 4th at Semicolon.

Poetry Friday: Refugees and Bright Wings

I have a little collection of things to share today on this first Poetry Friday in February, three pieces I read this week that helped me deal with the world as it is.

First of all, here's a poem written this week called "Odysseus at O'Hare."   Odysseus compares the hospitality he received among people who fear the gods in ancient times with the welcome he's getting at the airport in Chicago in 2017.

On Thursday I finished the verse novel I was reading with my seventh graders, Inside Out and Back Again.  This is the story of Hà and her family, living in Saigon in 1975, as the Viet Cong move closer and closer to the city.  Eventually the family is forced to flee, and even at the end of their harrowing journey, when they wind up in Alabama, things aren't easy for them.  Hà says at one point:

"No one would believe me
but at times
I would choose
wartime in Saigon
over
peacetime in Alabama."

I have been using this book with my seventh graders for several years now, and certainly couldn't have anticipated that refugees would fill the news this year as we read it.  It provided a great springboard for discussion of what refugees go through at every stage of their odyssey.  Hà, at ten, is younger than most of the protagonists of books my kids enjoy, and the novel could definitely be used with younger students than mine.  To me, the most poignant scene in the book is the one where Hà's teacher, in a well-meaning effort to inform the other kids about Vietnam, shows the class war photos.  Hà, instead of appreciating the teacher's gesture, is angry and sad that her beloved country has been represented as a place of only war and suffering.  Some of my students could relate to this, remembering going to the US after the earthquake, and having their classmates know nothing about their country except for the destruction they were seeing on the news.

Lastly, I want to share "God's Grandeur," a poem which a friend left as a comment on my Facebook page this week.  It's filled with the hope I need, because I believe that God's grandeur is also part of the world as it is.


God's Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast with ah! bright wings!



The roundup is here today.

What's Saving My Life Right Now

Anne Bogel at Modern Mrs. Darcy invited us to share what's saving our life right now.  She reflected that this is the midpoint of winter, but I don't deal with cold weather or Seasonal Affective Disorder where I live.  Like others, however, I have been struggling with the mess in the world and in my own passport country, the United States.  After a long and brutal election season there and in the country where I live (the one in the US was more brutal, but the one here in Haiti went on longer, with postponements and even a redo), the political news didn't quiet down, but instead got louder and more insistent.

When I stopped to reflect on Anne's question (originally from Barbara Brown Taylor's memoir Leaving Church), I realized that the answers all have to do with my OLW for the year, ROOTED.  The things that are saving my life right now involve focusing on where I am and on situations where I can have some impact.

The people around me are saving my life.  My husband, my children (one here, one via Skype from college, and yes, that still counts as "where I am," since my heart is with her as much as it is here), my extended family and household, my friends, my colleagues, my students, my church family.  The people in my life.  The people I love.

My writing group is saving my life.  I've wanted to be in a writing group for years, and now that I finally am, I'm finding it a rich experience.  Even if I don't get much done in the two weeks between meetings, I love the conversation.  We start with a piece by another writer (not one of us), and then we talk about what we've all submitted.  We drink tea and laugh and swap ideas and act all English-majory, and it's wonderful - like being back in grad school but without the competitive angst I used to writhe in back then.  Writing saves my life; it's one of the things that reliably makes me feel better, but it takes a lot of effort, and often when I feel the worst, I have the least motivation to make myself write.  The writing group helps with that, giving me the extra oomph to work and to know that I'll have sympathetic, smart readers.

Taking photos is saving my life.  I started a photography project at the beginning of this year, in which I'm taking photos every day, and posting one a day on Facebook in response to prompts from http://captureyour365.com/. It's making me look around my world more closely, finding what's beautiful and what's ugly and what's worth capturing.  Some days I'm happy with my photo and some days I'm not.  Some days lots of my friends pay attention, and other days hardly anyone seems to notice.  All of that is all right.  It's a way of grounding myself, of being exactly where and when and who I am. 

Reading always saves my life, and it continues to do that.  I read to relax, to reflect, to learn, to grow, to escape, to live other lives.  I know that doesn't sound like being rooted, but it is.  It's being rooted in who I really am, and always have been since I learned to read when I was four, and even before then when my parents read to me.  I am a reader, a book person.  I am so blessed to have a job that lets me be a book person and encourage others to join me.  And it's also saving my life to be a Book person, a person who reads the Bible in the morning before I read my news feed, to orient myself with ancient wisdom and love before plunging into whatever awful thing just happened.  (I still plunge - I don't see how I can close myself off to it - but I have a more eternal perspective.)

How about you?  What's saving your life right now?

This post is linked to Modern Mrs. Darcy's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Mending Wall

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."


Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: How Long Does it Take?

Almost a year ago, I read this post where Margaret linked us to "How Long Peace Takes," by Naomi Shihab Nye.  Margaret and her students had written poems inspired by Nye's idea.  Margaret's was called "How Long Healing Takes."  The day I read the post, I decided to write a poem on the same idea, and this past week, I finally did.  I started out thinking about healing in general, but given the time of year and the place my mind had been, I ended up writing about the Haiti earthquake.  I feel as though I should apologize for writing about it so much, but since not everyone is in my head all the time the way I am, maybe it doesn't seem as frequent a topic to you as it does to me.

There are two of us in my writing group who were here in Haiti when the earthquake happened in 2010.  This week we talked about it.  She reported having a difficult, painful anniversary.  This year it all seemed a little more distant to me, as though healing might finally be coming to my heart.



How Long Healing Takes in Port-au-Prince


As long as fault lines.

As long as a crack stretches on a concrete wall.

As long as the date January 12th
And the time 4:53
Make your stomach hurt,
And then a little more.

As long as rain falls on unmarked graves.

As long as a row of tents fades in the sun.

As long as the flamboyant tree is bare of red blossoms,
And then until it blooms again,
But maybe not this year or next or the next.

As long as someone remembers before and during and after.

As long as the earth moves every day somewhere,
Even if it isn’t here.

And longer
If it’s here again.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com



Healing takes as long as it takes, and I hope that whatever wounds you're experiencing now or healing from, you'll have hope today.  A good place to start is Violet's roundup today, where she has some very hopeful words, plus links to everybody else's Poetry Friday offerings.   

Poetry Friday: Memento Mori

I'm writing this post on Thursday night, January 12th, the seventh anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti.  The poem I'm sharing today is one I wrote in the fall and read to my writing group.  One of the other members said that although he wasn't in Haiti on that day, he has read so many earthquake accounts that he feels he was.  Like me, he is a writing teacher.  I, too, have read countless earthquake stories.  I never assign them as a topic, but I do encourage kids to write about what happened to them if they feel ready to.  Each time someone entrusts an earthquake story to me, I accept it as an honor, a holy moment. 

Even though it has been seven years, some things haven't faded.  (If you want to read what I wrote at the time, you can find many posts in my archives.)  This poem is about those ordinary days, not anniversaries, when suddenly I am visited by vivid earthquake memories.  


Memento Mori

Sometimes when I sit in my living room
My mind superimposes an image on what my eyes see,
The giant bookcase on the ground,
Sent there by the shaking of the earth
The rocking chair where I nursed my son, crushed,
Books scattered all over the floor.

And sometimes when I worship in the chapel at school
I see us in there on the night of the earthquake
Trying to sing and pray, but frightened by aftershocks,
Bodies thrumming with adrenaline in the cold evening air.

And sometimes there are kids playing hard on the soccer field
And I suddenly see people huddled on the ground,
Spending the night under the sky instead of under a concrete roof
Since so many concrete roofs have crushed so many bodies
Only hours before.

In the middle of life we are in death,
And sometimes I know it with all my being,
Conscious of how fragile that chair, that chapel, that roof,
Aware of the skull beneath the skin,
From dust we came and to dust we shall return.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's the roundup.

Seven Years Ago

This day seven years ago was a completely normal one, until 4:53 in the afternoon, when everything changed.   I had left my classroom that afternoon to walk home, with my lesson plans on my desk for the next day, and it was six months before I taught again.  The earth shook, and many died - even seven years later, nobody knows exactly how many.

I never knew before seven years ago how common earthquakes are.  They happen all the time.  The earth is not solid, not stable; it can move, and everything you counted on can be different in a moment.  I can't look away from earthquake stories.  And I can't read one without remembering that night on the soccer field, those terrifying aftershocks, those hours and days filled with fear, grief, and adrenaline.

This day, January 12th, will always be full of emotion.  We mourn for those who were lost.  We remember.  We will never forget.

Poetry Friday: Roots

On New Year's Eve, we all shared our words for the year.  Mine is ROOTED.  My daughter immediately went in search of the Hopkins book, and read me this poem.

She is a big Hopkins fan, even using Gerard's photo as her profile picture, and a big reason for that is the way he expresses depression, frustration, futility.   In this poem, nothing that he tries is successful.  He looks around and it's spring; everything else is blooming.  The birds are hard at work at their nests. But he's stuck in a sterile, monastic existence, with nothing to show for it.   He doesn't know what to do about it, except pour it out on paper, and then that last line: "Send my roots rain."

I'm hoping, and praying, for rain this year, too.


'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend'
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen
justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c. 

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
    Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.


It's also Epiphany today, so here's a bonus poem, one with more hope:  "Where the Map Begins" at Painted Prayerbook.

Linda has the roundup today, this first one of 2017.

My Photography Project for 2017

In 2016, I did photo-a-day challenges in Lent and Advent, and I found that responding to those prompts each day was an experience I enjoyed.  I went looking for a way to continue the photo-a-day habit, because it makes me feel rooted and grounded in my everyday life, finding things that are beautiful and meaningful in what I see around me all the time.  I discovered Capture Your 365, and at least for now, those are the prompts I'll be following.

I'm posting my photos on Facebook, but I may share some here, too.  I decided that if there's a photo I've already taken in the past, I can use it if it fits with the prompt; it doesn't have to be one I took in the past 24 hours.  (For my Lent and Advent challenges, I even used some photos I didn't take - with attribution, of course - but I haven't 100% decided whether that's going to be OK for CY365.)  However, part of the assignment I've set myself is that I must take at least one photo every day of the year. 

My first photo for 2017; the prompt was "Happy New Year," and I posted the traditional New Year's food here in Haiti, pumpkin soup.  

I think that in Lent and Advent, I'll use prompts similar to those I used this year (from Rethink Church and Alive Magazine), but I haven't decided if I'll double up and still use the CY365 prompts, or not.

So there you have it, my half-baked plan for the year, with more "I haven't decided" statements than definites.  We'll see how it goes.

OLW 2017

In 2016, my One Little Word was LOVED.  2016 was a rough year for my family and me, but it was a year with many beautiful moments, anyway.  I knew myself beloved.

This year, I thought about SEE, to remind myself to focus on those beautiful moments.  I thought about HERE, because the best moments are when I am fully present where I am, not the past or the future, and not elsewhere on this planet.  I ended up choosing the word ROOTED, for the way it combines those ideas.

Roots are a complicated concept to a transplant like me.  I've lived in many places around the world, and change is a constant in my life.  People move on; that's just the way it is.  Here's the Bible verse I cling to, and the other reason why I love this year's OLW: "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:17-19).  My roots are not necessarily in an individual place, from where I could be uprooted in a moment.  My roots are in love.

This year I will seek to be fully present exactly where I am, and I will also sink my roots deeper into God's love and the love of the people in my life.

Last week when we were at the beach, a family walk brought us to the tree in the photos.  My son, having no idea of the word I had been thinking about, commented, "Wow, that is a tree that knows how to adapt itself to its circumstances.  It's just laying down roots everywhere."

I may be uprooted this year from my physical surroundings.  People I count on may disappear from my life.  But I will lay down roots anyway.  In 2017, I will be ROOTED.