Poetry Friday: National Poetry Month, Day 3

You know how you always wished you could be home all day every day during National Poetry Month so you could savor all the poems? Your wish is granted! Hope you are enjoying NPM, the Coronavirus Edition. Or at least surviving it.

I'm attempting daily posts again this year, and I managed day one and day two, so I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself so far. (I'm also posting and reading many poems on Facebook during the #PoeticQuarantine.) My plan for my daily blog posts is to share tabs that are open on my desktop, so that, in a yearly act of spring cleaning, I can close them. (I explained it a little more in my post on the first day.)

I'm not sure how long this one has been open, but I know I referred to it in a post back in July 2018. At that point I was traveling away from home, so thinking about home more. Now I'm locked in my home, so thinking about home more. Home: it's a constant preoccupation, I guess.

In this poem, Maggie Smith begins with a line from Wisława Szymborska's wonderful poem The Joy of Writing. My idea was to take a line from Maggie Smith's poem and write my own, and I actually started the attempt yesterday, but didn't get far enough to have anything to post. Maybe next week? Meanwhile, here's Maggie Smith's meditation on home.

Written Deer
by Maggie Smith

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
- Wisława Szymborska

My handwriting is all over these woods.
No, my handwriting is these woods,

each tree a half-print, half-cursive scrawl,
each loop a limb. My house is somewhere
here, & I have scribbled myself inside it.

What is home but a book we write, then
read again & again, each time dog-earing

different pages.

Here's the rest of the poem.

One of the NPM activities I always look forward to is the progressive poem. Jone has today's line, offering two options for the next poet again. Raising the bar this year!

Here's the whole schedule:

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at https://kaymcgriff.edublogs.org/
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan  

Heidi has the roundup today, and she's sharing sheltering poems. I can't wait to read them, and to see what everyone else has today! Stay safe and healthy, everybody!