Poetry Month: Day 30

Today is the last day of National Poetry Month, and here is the entire Progressive Poem:

P.T. BARNUM'S GREAT TRAVELING MUSEUM, MENAGERIE, CARAVAN, AND HIPPODROME
by Thirty Poets on a mission in the Kidlitosphere 

When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music and
the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.
Your pen starts dancing across the page
a private pirouette, a solitary samba until
smiling, you’re beguiling as your love comes shining through.

Pause a moment in your dreaming, hear the whispers
of the words, one dancer to another, saying
Listen, that’s our cue! Mind your meter. Find your rhyme.
Ignore the trepidation while you jitterbug and jive.
Arm in arm, toe to toe, words begin to wiggle and flow
as your heart starts singing let your mind keep swinging

from life’s trapeze, like a clown on the breeze.
Swinging upside down, throw and catch new sounds–
Take a risk, try a trick; break a sweat: safety net?
Don’t check! You’re soaring and exploring,
dangle high, blood rush; spiral down, crowd hush–
limb-by-line-by-limb envision, pyramidic penned precision.

And if you should topple, if you should flop
if your meter takes a beating; your rhyme runs out of steam—
know this tumbling and fumbling is all part of the act,
so get up with a flourish. Your pencil’s still intact.
Snap those synapses! Feel the pulsing through your pen
Commit, measure by measure, to the coda’s cadence.

You've got them now--in the palm of your hand!
Finger by finger you’re reeling them in—
Big Top throng refrains from cheering, strains to hear the poem nearing…
Inky paws, uncaged, claw straw and sawdust
Until… CRACK! You’re in the center ring, mind unleashed, your words take wing--
they circle, soar, then light in the lap of an open-mouthed child; the crowd goes wild.


Here are the poets who contributed:

April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

It's been fun!  Let's do it again next year!

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Nine

Can you believe how fast this month went?  Tomorrow is the last line of the progressive poem.  Here's today's line.

Poetry Month: Day 29

Walls are everywhere here in Haiti.  They surround people's property and are often topped with razor wire.  Something there is that doesn't love a wall, for sure.  When people's walls fell down in the earthquake, neighbors could glimpse other lives, but for security's sake, the walls went right back up.  Maybe some day I will write a poem about walls in Haiti, and if so, I hope it has a tiny fraction of the metaphoric resonance in this one, by the master, Robert Frost.

Mending Wall

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."

Robert Frost

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Eight

Wow!  Laura Purdie Salas nailed it with today's line!  Can't wait to see what the last two poets do. 

The Progressive Poem is Here: Poetry Month Day 27

The 27th seemed like a long way away when I agreed to it, and yet here it is already.  As someone else mentioned, last year's line seemed less daunting since I was so much earlier in the poem,  line fifteen. 

I've worked on this line a long time, scribbling many versions of it.  I knew I wanted some internal rhyme, since I'm the third line in the stanza, and all the third lines in all the stanzas have done that.  And as I read and reread the poem, the image I was getting was more and more of a circus, what with the clown, the trapeze, and of course, all the dancers.  All the rapping and tapping and swinging and singing and fumbling and tumbling is coming to an end, and the group act - the poem itself - is on its way.  The audience is on the edge of its seats.

So here it is.  I hope you like it, fellow Progressive Poets, and especially Laura, who's next.


When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music and
the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.
Your pen starts dancing across the page
a private pirouette, a solitary samba until
smiling, you’re beguiling as your love comes shining through.

Pause a moment in your dreaming, hear the whispers
of the words, one dancer to another, saying
Listen, that’s our cue! Mind your meter. Find your rhyme.
Ignore the trepidation while you jitterbug and jive.
Arm in arm, toe to toe, words begin to wiggle and flow
as your heart starts singing let your mind keep swinging

from life’s trapeze, like a clown on the breeze.
Swinging upside down, throw and catch new sounds–
Take a risk, try a trick; break a sweat: safety net?
Don’t check! You’re soaring and exploring,
dangle high, blood rush; spiral down, crowd hush–
limb-by-line-by-limb envision, pyramidic penned precision.

And if you should topple, if you should flop
if your meter takes a beating; your rhyme runs out of steam—
know this tumbling and fumbling is all part of the act,
so get up with a flourish. Your pencil’s still intact.
Snap those synapses! Feel the pulsing through your pen
Commit, measure by measure, to the coda’s cadence.

You've got them now--in the palm of your hand!
Finger by finger you’re reeling them in—
Big Top throng refrains from cheering, strains to hear the poem nearing...



Photo Source: GreatestFoolsCircus.blogspot.com

Here are the places the circus act has been already, and where it's going next:

April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland




 

Poetry Friday: To a Frustrated Poet

I believe the technical term for what I'm doing today is Freaking Out.  I started the day with twelve things on my to-do list, and I'm talking Big Things, like three different events at which I have to speak, and fifty-one timed writing prompts to grade.  At this point, five thirty in the afternoon, six of the things are crossed off my list, which I would feel pretty good about, except that there are still six more, and one of them, you guys, is that I have to add a line to the Progressive Poem tomorrow!  Look at it here, and see how Robin casually tosses it to me at the end, saying, "All yours, Ruth!" As though I know what I'm doing.

Breathe.

So anyway, I was looking in Garrison Keillor's anthology Good Poems for Hard Times, and I found this great poem to share today.


To a Frustrated Poet
R. J. Ellmann

This is to say
I know
You wish you were in the woods,
Living the poet life,
Not here at a formica topped table
In a meeting about perceived inequalities in the benefits and allowances offered to employees of this college.
And I too wish you were in the woods,
Because it's no fun having a frustrated poet
In the Dept. of Human Resources, believe me.

Read the rest of it, and find out what happens to the frustrated poet (and what I really don't want to happen to me, no matter how daunting my to-do list) here.

Here's what I've posted since last Friday in honor of Poetry Month:  on Saturday, a Shakespeare sonnet, on Sunday, a Sarah Orne Jewett poem about staying home from church, on Monday a whole mess of excuses, on Tuesday fangirl babblings about meeting Poetry Friday poets at IRA, on Wednesday a celebration of my blog birthday a day late with another Shakespeare sonnet, and on Thursday a Ted Kooser poem on what I later found out was his birthday.

Now off to hyperventilate some more.  I hope to have some time later this weekend to read  today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Month: Day 25

This is today's Poem of the Day at Poetry Foundation, and I couldn't resist it.


In the Basement of the Goodwill Store
by Ted Kooser

In musty light, in the thin brown air   

of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,   

beneath long rows of sharp footfalls   

like nails in a lid, an old man stands   

trying on glasses, lifting each pair

from the box like a glittering fish   

and holding it up to the light

of a dirty bulb.

Here's the rest.

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Five

Here's today's line.



Here's the whole poem so far. I get to add to it on Saturday.



When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music and
the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.
Your pen starts dancing across the page
a private pirouette, a solitary samba until
smiling, you’re beguiling as your love comes shining through.

Pause a moment in your dreaming, hear the whispers
of the words, one dancer to another, saying
Listen, that’s our cue! Mind your meter. Find your rhyme.
Ignore the trepidation while you jitterbug and jive.
Arm in arm, toe to toe, words begin to wiggle and flow
as your heart starts singing let your mind keep swinging

from life’s trapeze, like a clown on the breeze.
Swinging upside down, throw and catch new sounds–
Take a risk, try a trick; break a sweat: safety net?
Don’t check! You’re soaring and exploring,
dangle high, blood rush; spiral down, crowd hush–
limb-by-line-by-limb envision, pyramidic penned precision.

And if you should topple, if you should flop
if your meter takes a beating; your rhyme runs out of steam—
know this tumbling and fumbling is all part of the act,
so get up with a flourish. Your pencil’s still intact.
Snap those synapses! Feel the pulsing through your pen
Commit, measure by measure, to the coda’s cadence.

You've got them now--in the palm of your hand!

Poetry Month: Day 24

I was babbling so excitedly yesterday about meeting Poetry Friday friends in San Antonio that I didn't even mention the fact that it was my Blog Birthday.  I started blogging on April 23rd, 2006, so yesterday marked seven years.  It was also Shakespeare's birthday, so I decided to post some Shakespeare.  I've shared many of his sonnets here, but never this one, and its references to age seem appropriate.  He says the only thing we can do, faced with the inevitable depredations of time, is to have kids.  When we're gone, they'll be there to carry on.

Not very cheerful, I suppose, but still beautiful, even though the violet is "past prime, and sable curls, all silvered o'er with white."  I think what's making me think this way is that my hotel bathroom in San Antonio had much brighter lights than my bathroom at home.  I was quite startled by how old I looked in the mirror.  

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
      And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
   Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Four

Here's today's line. I'm getting more and more nervous as my day, the 27th, gets closer!





April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

Poetry Month: Day 23

I've been up since three this morning traveling, and now I'm home and exhausted.  But I'm still excited about the chance I had while in San Antonio to meet some Poetry Friday people whose blogs I have been reading for years.

I had posted last week that I was going to the IRA convention and wondered whether any of the Poetry Friday bloggers would be there.  Irene Latham wrote me an email giving me some names of people who would. I went to post a comment on Amy's blog and found that she was doing a session with Sylvia Vardell and Joyce Sidman and Janet Wong, so I planned to go to that. Then Mary Lee sent me her phone number, and when we talked, she told me she'd be at that session too.

I went to the session, which was one of the best of the whole convention.  They were talking about this book:

I had already bought it for my Kindle, but was excited to win another copy at the end of the session. I would much rather work with the paper copy, anyway.  All the presenters talked about simple and non-time-consuming ways to use these poems, while still meeting Standards,  the new be-all and end-all of education.  (The photo here is of the Texas edition of the book; there's also an edition with Common Core standards.)  The anthology is full of beautiful poems.  It was fabulous to hear Janet, Amy, and Joyce read. 

Even better than the session itself, though, was meeting the people who were there.  At the beginning, when Sylvia was asking who was from Texas and who was from elsewhere, Amy shouted out, "Who is from Haiti?"  I waved my arms.

When it was over, we took photos and I enjoyed putting faces to names.   Also there was indefatigable commenter Janet F., soon-to-be blogger and already cheerleader for poetry.

The whole way through the conference I felt I was with "my people": folks who love reading and books and think literacy is among the most important gifts there is.  I felt that especially in the poetry session.  I'm so thankful for the community we can build on the internet, for what I can learn from these amazing poets, and for their kindness to me.  

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Three

Here's today's line.

 

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-Two AND Poetry Month: Day 22

Here's today's line.

I have to get up at three tomorrow morning to start the journey back to Haiti, so I am not going to do a full post on today's goings-on (internet troubles and doing touristy things this afternoon prevented posting).  I'll just say that it was pretty exciting to meet several Poetry Friday people today at the IRA conference.  

More on that when I get home. 

Poetry Month: Day 21

At Home from Church

By Sarah Orne Jewett
 

The lilacs lift in generous bloom

   Their plumes of dear old-fashioned flowers;

Their fragrance fills the still old house

   Where left alone I count the hours.

High in the apple-trees the bees

   Are humming, busy in the sun,—

An idle robin cries for rain

   But once or twice and then is done.

The Sunday-morning quiet holds

   In heavy slumber all the street,

While from the church, just out of sight

   Behind the elms, comes slow and sweet

The organ’s drone, the voices faint

   That sing the quaint long-meter hymn—

I somehow feel as if shut out

   From some mysterious temple, dim

And beautiful with blue and red

   And golden lights from windows high,

Where angels in the shadows stand

   And earth seems very near the sky.

The day-dream fades—and so I try

   Again to catch the tune that brings

No thought of temple nor of priest,

   But only of a voice that sings.

I don't know why Sara Orne Jewett stayed home from church, but I know why I didn't go to church this morning.  I was at the IRA convention.  A few times today I thought, "Wow!  Today is Sunday!"  It's an odd feeling to someone who is used to Sunday being special, spent both in going to church and in relaxing at home.

I'm planning a post about the IRA sessions I attended once I get home and can reflect some. 

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty-One

Here's today's line. My time to participate is getting closer...



April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

Poetry Month: Day 20

The first day of the IRA conference was great; I'll post more later about the individual sessions.  When thinking about what poem to post, I recalled that the most commonly used words today were "power" and "powerful."  Reading is powerful, connections with texts are powerful, teachers have power to affect students in ways that may not become apparent for years.  Here's Shakespeare's take on the power we have and how we choose to use it.

Sonnet XCIV: They that have Power to Hurt and will do None

By William Shakespeare

 

They that have power to hurt and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:

They rightly do inherit heaven's graces

And husband nature's riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,

Others but stewards of their excellence.

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet

Though to itself it only live and die,

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. 

Here's to using our power as teachers wisely, doing no harm.  Here's to the joy of reading, and talking about what we read.  Here's to going to bed after a long and busy day of learning!

Progressive Poem: Line Twenty

Here is the twentieth line of the poem!

Poetry Friday: The Alamo

It's my first time in San Antonio, and Jean, the teacher I'm traveling with, is here for the first time too. So what did we do today? We went and picked up our registration materials for the IRA conference we're attending, and then we went to Target.  When you live in Haiti, and you're in the States for five days, there are just some things you have to buy.  We're hoping to go to the Alamo this evening before it closes.  In the meantime, here's a poem about it.

Are any of you Poetry Friday people going to be here at the International Reading Association conference this week?  If so, it would be great to meet you.  Leave a message in the comments!

Within the Alamo

He drew a straight line
Across the dirt floor:
Within, it was death-still--
Without, was a roar
And a scream of the trumpets:
Within, was a Word--
And a line drawn clean
By the sweep of a sword.
No help was coming, now--
That hope was done.
No more the free air,
no more the sun
Bright on the blue leagues
Of buffalo-clover.
Travis drew a line
And they all crossed over.
Travis had a wife at home,
Travis was young;
Travis had a little boy
Whose tight arms clung,
But Travis saw a far light
Shining before:
Travis drew a sword-cut
Across the dirt floor.

And now the old fort stands
Placid and dim,
Blinking and dreaming
Of them and of him;
And now past the Plaza
Other tides roar,
since Travis wrote "Valor"
Across the sand floor,
And the guns they will rust,
And the captains will go,
And an end come at last
To the wars that we know,
But as long as there travails
A Spirit in man,
In a war that was ancient
Before Time began,
Here will the brave come
To read a high Word--
Cut clean in the dust
By the stroke of a sword.

Karle Wilson Baker

Here's are my Poetry Month posts since last Friday: on Saturday I shared "The Love-Hat Relationship," by Aaron Belz, on Sunday I missed a day (I was sick and we had electricity issues at home), on Monday I linked to Robbie's posting of Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "Boston,", on Tuesday I mentioned the poetry reading I'd participated in that evening, on Wednesday I shared Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Pied Beauty", and on Thursday I was leaving on a jet plane, complete with video. Bonus: a link to Edwidge Danticat's beautiful essay about the Catholic cathedrals in Port-au-Prince, the one that was destroyed in the earthquake, and the one that is going to replace it. And the lines to the Progressive Poem, of course. Today you can find it, and the roundup, at Irene Latham's blog here.

Progressive Poem - Line Eighteen

We traveled all day, for almost 18 hours, but I had to make a quick stop in before going to bed to link you to today's line. Glad to be in San Antonio. Back tomorrow for Poetry Friday!

Poetry Month - Day 18

Yep, I'm leaving on a jet plane today, headed for the IRA conference in San Antonio.  I've been singing this song my whole life; my parents tell me that when I was four, it was my favorite.



I do know when I'll be back again - next week.  I'll try to keep posting while I'm there, but I'll be pretty busy attending great sessions and book signings and taking hot showers and shopping in the U.S. of A. 

(I'm pretty sure that's #10 Downing Street in the video. That's not where I live, by the way.)

Edwidge Danticat on Cathedrals

May I post something in April that isn't a poem?  Oh, but it almost could be, with its luscious language.  Edwidge Danticat wrote an essay about one of the two cathedrals that was destroyed in Port-au-Prince during the earthquake, and about the new cathedral to be built.  She writes:

"Yes, Notre Dame de Paris and Our Lady of Strasbourg are magnificent cathedrals, but they were not surrounded by bustling street markets; they did not function in the midst of such a busy atmosphere that the buzz of people's voices and cars honking were always part of the distant echoes of the Mass. These cathedrals might have been more pristine, but their saints probably didn't hear as many urgent prayers as those of Notre Dame de l'Assomption, where worship began loudly outside, in the sun, at the foot of the cross, where novenas were shouted rather than whispered, and votive candles flickered wildly as hot paraffin dripped down the supplicants' arms."

You can read the whole thing here.

Poetry Month - Day 17

A Facebook friend posted a poem on my wall yesterday, and a search shows me that, even though it's an old favorite, I've never posted it here before. Time to remedy that! I love this celebration of the glorious variety of the natural world. Surely it wasn't necessary for the earth to be as beautiful as it is. But it is! Glory be to God!

Pied Beauty

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                Praise him.

At this link you can listen to the poem being read.  I seem to have posted two Hopkins poem on this blog in the past, both paired with another poem.  Last year I chose "No Worst, There is None..." for Good Friday (along with a link to some information about the poet), and I shared "Spring" in March 2010.

Progressive Poem - Line Seventeen

And here's today's line for the Progressive Poem. It looks like it's coming down to earth...

Poetry Month - Day 16

This evening I did a poetry reading at school with two friends.  It's a lot of fun to share our poetry out loud for an audience. 

This has been a rushed week because I'm getting ready to go to the IRA conference in San Antonio.  In addition, we've been having electrical problems at home, affecting my internet access.  I even missed a day of posting.  Sorry!

I'll be back tomorrow with a poem. 

Progressive Poem - Line Sixteen

Here's today's line!

 

Poetry Month - Day 15

Robbie posted this poem about Boston.

Progressive Poem - Line Fifteen

Here's today's line for the Progressive Poem.

April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

Poetry Month - Day 13

The Love-Hat Relationship
by Aaron Belz

I have been thinking about the love-hat relationship.
It is the relationship based on the love of one another's hats.
The problem with the love-hat relationship is that it is superficial.

You can read more about the love-hat relationship here.

Progressive Poem - Line Thirteen

Here's the thirteenth line!

Poetry Friday: Purple Flowers in a Field

I loved this article about a photographer who sent his friends flower photos. Go ahead, click through and read it. I'll wait.

What's even better than that article is the fact that I, too, have a photographer friend, whose photos I have used to illustrate posts here in the past, and who often sends me flower photos. Today I'd like to share a flower photo and a poem that I wrote about it.

Purple Flowers in a Field, July 19th, 2012

On your way to the bank on a weekday afternoon in July
You see the field of hay bales,
A field where Monet would like to paint away the afternoon,
A field sprinkled with pale purple flowers.
You're in a hurry, and you keep going,
But on your way back to work, you see those purple flowers again and know I'll love them
So you stop.

You turn into a driveway across the road from the field,
Park the car, letting the engine idle while you jump out,
Work your way across the highway as several cars pass.
You have a meeting to get to
But you take pictures with your phone.
You don't like them, so you take some more, moving along the fence row, changing your position,
Ending up on the unpaved road leading into the farm.
You realize you have to go,
Rush back to the car.

During your meeting it rains hard,
Thunder and lightning fill the window.
After work you go to take out your parents' trash,
And then, heading home in the summer evening,
You pass the field again.
It's two hours since you took the photos
And the purple flowers are all gone.
The color is all washed away.

I pore over the photos you send,
Google the flowers:
Ruellia?  Wild petunias?
(Named for Jean Ruel, a botanist who published a treatise
In 1536 in Paris.)
Is that what they are, or something else?
I enlarge them until they are meaningless pixels on my screen,
Pondering Ruel sitting in his study in Paris
Writing about the medicinal uses of flowers
(These may treat headaches, but some varieties are poisonous,
And it might be a different flower anyway).
Ruel was from Soissons,
With its twelfth century cathedral and its hedgerows
Blooming with purple flowers.
In Paris he was the court physician, picking flowers for the king.

As I research,
I suddenly wish I were more like you,
Stopping by the road when you don't have time,
Just to give me pleasure,
Just to preserve a scene that will be gone later that same evening,
Just to send me an email filled with love.
And I wish I were less like me,
Fretting over the details.

On a weekday afternoon in July the flowers of the field
Are clothed like Solomon
And wisdom dictates capturing them
Whether that means drawing them 
And writing about them in Latin,
Gathering them for some future illness,
Painting them like Monet,
Or rushing across the road to take pictures of them with an iPhone. 

You, my friend, like wild petunias
(Or whatever they are),
Make me, simply, happy.
For once I will rest in that.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

I've been posting every day for National Poetry Month, and here's what I've offered since last Poetry Friday:
a Natasha Trethewey pantoum on Saturday,
a public poem by Dolores Kendrick from a subway station in Washington D.C. on Sunday,
an account of our family Poetry Night on Monday,
"Desert Places," by Robert Frost on Tuesday,
video performances of three Neil Gaiman poems on Wednesday,
and "Small Moth," by Sarah Lindsay, yesterday.
And, of course, lines from the Progressive Poem, still progressing nicely!

Progressive Poem - Line Twelve

I never got yesterday's line posted, but here's today's.

Poetry Month - Day 11

I heard this poem on a podcast called Poem of the Day.  You can find it at iTunes.  The poet read it herself, after explaining that it's not easy for her to write about happiness. 

Small Moth
by Sarah Lindsay

She's slicing ripe white peaches

into the Tony the Tiger bowl

and dropping slivers for the dog

poised vibrating by her foot to stop their fall

Click here to read the last five lines and to see why this poem is an exception to Lindsay's rule about happiness.

Progressive Poem - Line Ten

Here's today's line! Keep following the poem at the blogs below.




April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

Poetry Month - Day 10

Today, watch the three videos below for performances of three poems by Neil Gaiman.

Progressive Poem - Line Nine

Line nine is here.

Poetry Month - Day 9

Desert Places
by Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
 In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Progressive Poem - Line Eight

Here's the eighth line, from Julie Larios.

Poetry Month - Day 8

There are many things I haven't done well as a mother.  I'm horrible about remembering permission slips.  I can't cook very well.  I have this adorable thing I do where I tolerate mess for weeks, and even feel like it's nice to have a space that's so "lived in," but then one day, completely without warning, I become unable to tolerate the mess and do what my husband fondly calls "rampage" until it's all cleaned up.

But there's one area where I'm a complete success.  I (not on my own, certainly, but let me claim some credit) have taught my children to love reading.  I read to them from their birth, held them in my lap and let them learn that books are pleasure, books are love, books are comfort and cuddling.  Now I don't read aloud to them nearly as much as I used to, but they are always reading, always focused on book or Kindle or computer screen.  (My daughter has views on people who are format snobs; the words are what matter to her.  She is a fan of Project Gutenberg and loves to download out of print books and read them in whatever format they may be.)

Often on a Sunday evening we will have a Poetry Night; it might be any of us (two adults, a teenager, and a ten-year-old) who suggests that it's time for one, and all four of us take turns reading poems that we love.   Last night my son read "April Rain Song," by Langston Hughes, and "To a Mouse," by Robert Burns, and "This is Just to Say," by William Carlos Williams (and then I read this response, which made him giggle), and more, and my daughter read two snippets from "The Four Quartets," by T. S. Eliot (she later sent me this link to the whole thing, when I exclaimed on how beautiful her selections were), and more.  My husband read from Jimmy Carter's book Always a Reckoning and Other Poems.  I read some of what I've been posting here, and one of my own, and from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School (on my Kindle), and some from a sonnet anthology.

I can't tell you how happy our Poetry Nights make me, and how glad I am that my children love words, and poems (they both write their own), and that they love to share poetry with us. 

Progressive Poem - Line Seven

Here's today's line for the Progressive Poem. It's moving along, folks!

Poetry Month - Day 7

My daughter saw this poem in a subway station in Washington DC.

Journeys I

We travel the murmuring city

far into a stoic grid of energies

too swift and deep for us to see

what passes by,  in hope, impatiently.

Here is the lingering language of our

distant dreams that follow us around

like changing children clinging lost and found

within the city's gates, an alphabet of sound.

Here, too, through quickened footsteps deliver now

ourselves from place to blooming place of sound and steel

and glass to that which cannot climb and keep, but last

between our tenured future and our past.

Dolores Kendrick

Progressive Poem - Line Six

Here is today's line in the Progressive Poem. Very interesting. So far, every third line has some internal rhyme, and since my line is 27, that may be what I'll be doing too.

Here's the poem so far:

When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music and
the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.
Your pen starts dancing across the page
a private pirouette, a solitary samba
until smiling, you’re beguiling, as your love comes shining through.






April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

Poetry Month - Day 6

Click here to go to the original source of the infographic, Tweetspeak Poetry, for a larger version you can read. The title "Pantoum of the Opera," suggests that pantoums are a barrel of laughs, and they can be, but here's one of the pantoums the infographic recommends checking out, as evidence that pantoums can be sad or even tragic.

Incident

By Natasha Trethewey
 

We tell the story every year—

how we peered from the windows, shades drawn—

though nothing really happened,

the charred grass now green again.

We peered from the windows, shades drawn,

at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,

the charred grass still green. Then

we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps.

At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,

a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns.

We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps,

the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil.

It seemed the angels had gathered, white men in their gowns.

When they were done, they left quietly. No one came.

The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil;

by morning the flames had all dimmed.

When they were done, the men left quietly. No one came.

Nothing really happened.

By morning all the flames had dimmed.

We tell the story every year.

Poetry Friday: Goodbyes

Usually I only post poetry on Fridays.  But it's National Poetry Month right now, so I've been posting a poem each day.  But my fingers still want to type "Poetry Friday," and on two of my posts I've had to go back and fix the title, changing "Friday" to "Month."

Here's what I've posted so far this week, in addition to daily updates on the Progressive Poem:
Monday: Jacaranda Tree, by Michelle Garrels.
Tuesday: A spine poem by my daughter.
Wednesday: Ode to the Tomato, by Pablo Neruda.
Thursday: The Flea, by John Donne.
Whew.  Eclectic enough for you?

Today it's the real poetry day.   I decided to share one of my own poems.  Last week my daughter went on a school trip to Washington, D.C.  She had a wonderful time, and I was thrilled to see her take a step toward adulthood and independence.  But I simultaneously wanted to lock her in her room when she got back and make her promise never to leave me, ever again.  While she was gone, I got a glimpse of my life a couple of years from now when she'll be in college, and I'll be happy for her, and wanting her to be herself away from me, because that's the way it works, but at the same time I'll be so very sad.  At least that's how it seems to me now.

While wallowing through these emotions, I dug out this poem I wrote last year.  It refers to my own childhood in boarding school, and I guess you can see where some of my separation anxiety comes from, and why I want, perhaps more even than most mothers, to keep my kids close.  Goodbyes are always hard.


Goodbyes

"Goodbyes cause problems," said the Matron at boarding school.
"It's really better if you just slip away.
If you must say it, make sure it's not prolonged.
You may not drop in for a visit," she added.
"The children's routine is disturbed.
They are more homesick after you leave again."

The parents, feeling vaguely guilty for being so disruptive,
Waved cheerily and didn't fuss.
They wished for their children an orderly universe, untroubled by messy emotions.
Wouldn't it be simpler, they wondered, to avoid goodbyes entirely,
Since they made everyone so sad?

But the children grew up to favor lengthy goodbyes
Rituals of leave-taking that went on for weeks before departure.
They dreaded the end of visits before those visits even began.
They hated for anyone to leave them,
But if someone must go away, a farewell party was obligatory,
With speeches and tearful sharing of memories.

Their motto was "Make a fuss."
They sobbed and wailed,
Grieved extravagantly, soaked handkerchiefs at airports.
They mourned separation and disconnectedness,
Experienced heartbreak to its fullest extent,
Longed for Gondwanaland and Heaven.
They knew that it wasn't goodbyes that had unsettled them as children,
So much as, simply, love.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Robyn Hood Black has the roundup today. And check out the latest line of the Progressive Poem here.

Poetry Month - Day 4

Recent flea issues with our dogs and then, inevitably, us, led me to think of this poem that I read in college.  My then-boyfriend and I had a lot of classes with a certain professor who really enjoyed John Donne's love poetry.  Only Donne could make a fleabite a subject for seduction.  Later that professor married us, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I definitely don't find fleas an aphrodisiac, but this is the kind of steamy stuff that we English majors love.


THE FLEA.
by John Donne

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
    And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill me,
    Let not to that self-murder added be,
    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

Progressive Poem - Line Three

Line three is here!

Here are the first three lines:

When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music
and the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.






Keep following the poem (and the other great posts too) at these blogs:

April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland

Poetry Month - Day 3

Photo Source

Ode to the Tomato

Pablo Neruda

The street
drowns in tomatoes:
noon,
summer,
light
breaks
in two
tomato
halves,
and the streets
run
with juice.
In December
the tomato
cuts loose,
invades
kitchens,
takes over lunches,
settles
at rest
on sideboards
with the glasses,
butter dishes,
blue salt-cellars.
It has
its own radiance,
a goodly majesty.
Too bad we must
assassinate:
a knife
plunges
into its living pulp,
red
viscera,
a fresh,
deep,
inexhaustible
sun
floods the salads
of Chile,
beds cheerfully
with blonde onion,
and to celebrate
oil
the filial essence
of the olive tree
lets itself fall
over its gaping hemispheres,
the pimento
adds
its fragrance,
salt its magnetism -
we have the day's
wedding:
parsley
flaunts
its little flags,
potatoes
thump to a boil,
the roasts
beat
down the door
with their aromas:
it's time!
let's go!
and upon
the table,
belted by summer,
tomatoes,
stars of the earth,
stars multiplied
and fertile
show off
their convolutions,
canals
and plenitudes
and the abundance
boneless,
without husk,
or scale or thorn,
grant us
the festival
of ardent colour
and all-embracing freshness.

translated by Nathaniel Tarn
from Neruda: Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and with a foreword by Nathaniel Tarn, 1972.

Progressive Poem - Line Two

 Here's the second line of the poem.


April
1  Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
2  Joy Acey
3  Matt Forrest Esenwine
4  Jone MacCulloch
5  Doraine Bennett
6  Gayle Krause
7  Janet Fagal
8  Julie Larios
9  Carrie Finison
10  Linda Baie
11  Margaret Simon
12  Linda Kulp
13  Catherine Johnson
14  Heidi Mordhorst
15  Mary Lee Hahn
16  Liz Steinglass
17  Renee LaTulippe
18  Penny Klostermann
19  Irene Latham
20  Buffy Silverman
21  Tabatha Yeatts
22  Laura Shovan
23  Joanna Marple
24  Katya Czaja
25  Diane Mayr
26  Robyn Hood Black
27  Ruth Hersey
28  Laura Purdie Salas
29  Denise Mortensen
30  April Halprin Wayland