Tag Archives: poems

Poetry Project October – Spooky poems!

By Lu Posted in Poetry, Poetry Project Tagged , , , , , , , 2 Replies

October is here! There’s a chill in the air, though the days are still warm. I have two tiny pumpkins sitting on my table, reminding me that October is here. October happens to be my favorite month. When I was younger, school was still exciting and new, the weather is getting cooler and the leaves are changing. I always loved when the leaves would fall and my great-grandfather would rake them up into a pile and I would dive in with my dog again and again.

Now that I’m older, October is the end of a busy summer. It’s the time when I can finally relax and enjoy the season. I can start to wear tights and bake things and really enjoy stew and all the foods I love best. Sure, I love watermelon and fresh corn on the cob, but give me a hearty stew or a roasted butternut squash soup any day. It’s also one of my favorite times of the year to read, with spooky stories. And let’s not forget the yearly viewing of Hocus Pocus. A completely necessary tradition.

But we’re not here to talk about all those things, we’re here to talk about the best thing about this October: spooky poetry for The Poetry Project. Whether you want to go with a classic Edgar Allen Poe poem or you want to branch out and see what contemporary spooky poetry is like, this is your chance!

There are several great resources for spooky poetry:

Poems tagged “Halloween” at the Poetry Foundation
Poems tagged “Halloween” by the Academy of American Poets
A digital collection of poetry by Edgar Allen Poe

But other than spooky poems, there are also a lot of poems written about October and fall. I hope you’ll read some of those as well. This is a good time to completely immerse yourself in the season. Enjoy the cooler air. Take a poem with you. Then, tell us about it and sign up with the Mr. Linky below. Here’s one to get started:

October by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.


Poetry Project – Read a Classic in September

By Lu Posted in Poetry, Poetry Project Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Replies

Ah, September.

The leaves will soon start turning color, the sun is setting sooner, the nights are cooler. The days may still be in the 80s, but school has started and it’s really starting to feel like fall is around the corner. What better way to celebrate getting back to the books than with a classic poem? I hope you’ll join us in reading any classic poem or just in posting about any kind of poetry

“Classic” is such a subjective term and I hope you’ll play around with the meaning, but for the purposes of this recommendations post, I’m going to take “classic” to mean anything published more than 50 years ago. Feel free to twist and turn what classic means to you, just like Snowball did for the Pulitzer Prize theme last month. One good thing about adhering to the “more than 50 years ago” rule is that a lot of the poetry can be found in the public domain.

I got a little excited when I was writing up this post and I found it almost impossible to narrow down. It was hard not to jump up and down and squee about ALL THE POETS. There are hundreds of years of poetry for you to explore, so use this list as a jumping off point, or ignore it entirely. Unfortunately, my list ended up being very focused on the Western canon. If you have other suggestions, please list them in the comments or write your own post!

Let’s Go Waaaaaay Back

Sappho (~615BCE-~550BCE) – We don’t really know much about Sappho, other than the fact that she was born on the island Lesbos in Ancient Greece and much of her poetry has been lost; she was a teacher and poet and was famous, as her bust can be found on statues and her likeness on coins from Ancient Greece. You can read Sappho’s poetry here. (Source: poets.org)

Homer (8th century BCE) - If you want to get really ambitious, why not read the Illiad or The Odyssey? You would be a hero among Poetry Project participants. Bonus! They’re available online: here (Illiad) and here (The Odyssey).

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne!

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 25 October 1400)- Just because a class on Chaucer is what caused me to give up MY English major, please don’t be scared! I’m just kidding – I just happened to be enrolled in a very difficult Chaucer class when I became a Spanish major instead, but I’m disappointed I missed out on reading his work in depth. Also, I just found the coolest website ever. You can read The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, Modern English or side-by-side. So cool!

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) - We’re celebrating Shakespeare over an entire month in July 2013, but that’s forever away. Get a head start by reading some of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Read them here.

John Donne (1572 – 31 March 1631) – Reading John Donne in high school is one of my favorite reading experiences. I connected with Donne’s poetry in a way that I didn’t really think was possible of a poet so old. His poetry is accessible, but so nuanced. You could spend a lifetime reading Donne, or enjoy his poems on one read. Check out John Donne’s Poetry Foundation page to read a collection of his poems.

Skipping A Whole Bunch of Years to the 19th and 20th Century!

WB Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) -I’ve always been interested in the poetry of Yeats, but I’ve never spent quality time with him. When I was putting together my list of poetry to read for Jillian’s Classics Club, I knew that he would be high on the list. The Poetry Foundation has a collection of 58 poems by Yeats.

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) – Reading Walt Whitman is like reading nothing else. If you haven’t read him yet, I highly recommend it. Walt Whitman’s Poetry Foundation page.

Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) – With the possible discovery of a new photograph of Emily Dickinson, this poet has been in the news a lot the past few days. Emily Dickinson is, in my opinion, a must-read. Here are her Complete Poems.

I lost a little bit of steam there at the end, because it was really hard to think of who to include. There are hundreds more that could have gone on this list, but these are the poets I am most familiar with and the ones that I think you might get the most out of reading. Of course, this list is entirely subjective. I encourage you to create your own list. Take this month to read one “classic” poet or read a smattering of poems from various poets. I look forward to reading your posts!

Unless otherwise noted, my source for dates is Wikipedia.

Poetry Project August Round Up

By Lu Posted in Poetry, Poetry Project Tagged , , , , 7 Replies

Hello poetry darlings! Today is the official end of the Poetry Project for August. This was an amazing month. I can’t tell you how happy reading your posts made me all month. I am very pleased with the way the new format is working. The conversation really flows from one blog to the next. This Project wouldn’t exist without all of you who participate, so thank you. I really can’t tell you how amazing it has been to see so many blogs talking about poetry.

One exciting thing that has come out of the Poetry Project is all the new poetry blogs that have found their way here. Welcome! It’s also been great to see people really exploring poetry for the first time. I hope you’re a little less intimidated at the end of August than you were at the beginning.

If you are posting today and you want your post to be included in a round up, please link to it in the Mr. Linky for September, which will be hosted on my tireless, amazing co-host Kelly’s blog.

Now, onto the round up!

Kristin @ Matched: With posts this month featuring poems by Wallace Stevens, WH Auden, and Anne Sexton, Kristin really shared some amazing poems! She also wrote her own poem, modeled after Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird.”

Snowball @ Come Sit By The Hearth: Snowball read Pulitzer Prize-winner Earnest Hemingway for this month’s challenge, working her way around the prompt a little bit since he won the prize for fiction, not poetry. You know what I say, “rules” were meant to be broken! The poems she includes are interesting and one of them is very funny. She also posted a reaction to “A poem a day” by William Sieghart and a few poems from Rita Dove’s collection American Smooth. 

Amy @ New Century Reading: Amy shared the poem “Morning Song” by Sylvia Plath, commenting that she really loves the way Plath represented motherhood in her poetry.

Jeanne @ Necromancy Never Pays: Jeanne shared two amazing poems and poets with us this month: “The Lake Isle at Innisfree” by WB Yeats and “Spiral Notebook” by one of my favorite poets, Ted Kooser.

Gavin @ Page 247: Gavin shared two poems by new-to-me poet Lisel Mueller called “Sometimes, When the Light” and “Why We Tell Stories.” She also shared “Thanks” by WS Merwin.

Nancy @ Simple Clockwork: Nancy shared poetry connected by a theme: adultery. In her post, she compared the poems “For My Lover, Returning to his Wife” by Anne Sexton, “What My Lips Have Kissed” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I Knew A Woman” by Theodore Roethke, and “Sonnet to a Gardener: II” by Filipino poet Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido. This post is fascinating! She also posted about Angela Manalang-Gloria, another Filipino poet. She included the poems “Revolt from Hymen” and “Soledad.”

Evelyn N. Alfred @ Librarian Dreams: Evelyn shared the poem “Straw Hat” by Rita Dove, another new-to-me poet that I’ll be exploring more now.

AnnaEA @ Knit-Write: AnnaEA shared the poem “Sorrow” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay is one of my very favorite poets, so I was thrilled to have a reason to read so many of her poems this month!

Lizzy @ Lizzy’s Literary Life: On Lizzy’s blog, she is giving away two signed copies of The Magicians of Edinburgh by Ron Butlin. You have until September 2nd to enter!

Vasilly @ 1330v: Vasilly posted about a lovely poem called “The Healing Time” by Pesha Joyce Gertler. It was also her birthday! Go wish her happy birthday.

Kaye @ the road goes ever ever on: Kaye did something different and great for the Poetry Project – she highlighted a blog, DS at The Third-Storey Window, who often features poetry. I love this!

Trish @ Love, Laughter & a Touch of Insanity: Trish! I have been begging and begging Trish to participate and I’m so happy and grateful she did. Trish is so honest about talking about poetry and how it can be difficult sometimes, especially if we’re used to blogging about books. They’re very different to talk about. Trish does an amazing job discussing her reaction to Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song.”

Here, on Regular Rumination: This month, I talked about my favorite Pulitzer Prize-winning poets, I wrote a how-to post called “How to Love A Poem,” I posted the poem “At Some Point, They’ll Want to Know What it Was Like” by Tracy K. Smith, and I did a few random poetry lines from random poetry books.

Kelly @ The Written World (my co-host!): Kelly posted her thoughts on two books of poetry: New Hampshire by Robert Frost (Part 1 and Part 2) and The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I absolutely love how she blogs about each poem!

I hope you’ll take some time to click through these links and read the poems that the Poetry Project participants shared or suggested. There are amazing poems included in this list and it would be a great way to discover new poets.

Thank you again for making August such a huge success for the Poetry Project! Remember, next month’s theme is a “classic” poem. Play with that theme! Kelly will have more about this month’s theme on her blog on Wednesday, September 5 and I will have a list of my suggestions, just like this month. I hope to see you there!

Poetry Project – Pulitzer August

By Lu Posted in Poetry, Poetry Project Tagged , , , , , 2 Replies

This is your friendly reminder that you have only a few days left in August to post about  poetry and, if you decided to follow along with our prompt, Pulitzer Prize-winning poets. Please be sure to sign up with the Mr. Linky at the bottom of this post by August 31st. On September 1st, I will post a round-up of all the poetry posts you send me! I can’t wait to read them all.

Anyway, let’s play Random Line from a Random Poem from a Random Poetry Magazine on Lu’s shelf! I have Poetry Magazines from September-June on my shelf. I just pulled this random number sequence from random.org (because I’m cool like that): 5, 4, 4.

he thinks he knows

That’s poem 4, line 4, from the April 2012 issue of Poetry magazine. It’s from a poem called “Work” by Nate Klug.

This experiment was not nearly as fun as I thought it was going to be. You win some, you lose some.

Should we try again? What if we do random lines from a random poem from a random Poetry magazine? I’ll pick 4 numbers: 4, 4, 9-10

and nibble like sleepwalkers held fast –
brittle beauty – might this be the last?
(“Wherof the Gift is Small” by Maxine Kumin)

Okay, now that was fun. I love seeing these lines out of context. They are beautiful on their own, but I suggest you seek out the poem in its entirety. You can read the full poem on the Poetry Foundation website.

 

How to Love A Poem

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , , 13 Replies

(I am posting this as a part of this project. Join in!)

We fall in love with words all the time. We are word-lovers. Passionate about stories. Fans of paragraphs and characters and punctuation. We can love a novel so hard that it becomes more like a friend than a collection of one word after another. We talk about characters like they are real. We are readers.

I have talked about how to read a poem, how to understand a poem, how to study a poem. Recently, Reading While Female listed her Top Ten Tips for Reading Poems. They are excellent. Go read them.

That’s how you read a poem. But how do you love a poem?

Sometimes, you love a poem because of one line. You might read all the words that come before that one line absentmindedly, reading the poem halfheartedly, understanding the words but not feeling them and then that one line or stanza or word simply stops your heart.

Sometimes that’s all it takes. The rest of the poem will probably catch up to your love and admiration for that one line, but sometimes it won’t. Sometimes a poem is nothing but a vehicle for an amazing line. Sometimes a poem is nothing but that shortest, most perfect combination of words.

It’s okay to just love that line. You don’t have to love the rest of the poem. Have you ever seen a baby taste their first piece of fruit? Until that moment it’s been all milk and cereal and milk and cereal. Suddenly there’s sweetness and tartness and all these flavors that the baby has never experienced. The first bite is a shock. The second is a test, to see if the first one was a fluke. But it’s not! The fruit always tastes as good and different as it did the first bite. Babies eventually learn that not every piece of fruit tastes that good, but they have the taste.

You have the taste now. You’ve read that line that stopped your heart and you want more. Maybe you read more poems by that one poet. Maybe you start picking up new poets. You try to find the lines that, if you were a teenager, you’d write across the cover of your angsty journal over and over again. I still do that. Maybe you start to find entire poems, entire books of poetry, that are comprised of lines you love. You are loving poetry.

It’s possible that you will love a poem you do not understand. There will be poems you don’t understand. Embrace the fact that you really have no earthly idea what it means, but you love the way it sounds. Go with it. Love it. Take those sounds and say them out loud, hold them in your mouth, and release them into the world. Poetry is meant to be spoken, to be seen on the page in all its written glory and set free by your voice, to an empty room or to a crowded room. To your bedroom, to your lover, to your friend. Just speak the words and forget the meaning. Words have a power all their own, just in their sounds and the ways they work together, apart from their connotations. It’s okay to love a poem just because it sounds amazing, even if its meaning is forever elusive.

Sometimes, though, you can only love a poem once you’ve wrestled it to the ground. Once you’ve spent hours digging through the rhymes and the rhythm, the assonance, the consonance, the enjambment, the meter, the symbolism, the imagery, once you’ve done your research, once you’ve read the criticism. Maybe you didn’t care for this poem at first, maybe it simply meant nothing to you, but something, whether it’s a school assignment or something that intrigued you about the poem, made you break out your highlighters, dictionary, and Wikipedia to figure out what the hell that poem means. It’s perfectly possible to spend hours or a lifetime untangling a poem to try and understand it and come out the other side disliking the poem or even hating it. Maybe, though, you’ll have a new appreciation for a poem, an appreciation that turns to love.

The best way to fall in love a poem is to forget what you know about poetry. Just feel it. Hear it. Taste it. Then remember everything you know about poetry. Fall in love all over again. What is a poem? Just a collection of words, put together in such a way that they make someone’s heart skip a beat.

Poetry Project – Reading the Pulitzer Prize Winners

By Lu Posted in Poetry, Poetry Project Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 26 Replies

Welcome to the August introductory post for The Poetry Project! Remember, if you’d like to play along, all you really need to do is write about poetry in the month of August. If you do that, come back to this post and join in our Mr. Linky, available at the end of this post. Link to any and all of your poetry posts, as long as they were posted in August (or after the July round up post, which you can find here at Kelly’s blog.)

If you’re participating in The Poetry Project by posting about our monthly theme, then August’s theme is Pulitzer Prize Winning Poetry. I’ve been accused of starting off a little bit strong here, but if you’re new to reading poetry, then it doesn’t hurt to start off with the best (as determined by an arbitrary committee, choosing based on their arbitrary interests, from a pool of poets that only come from one country). With all those caveats aside, there are some really great poetry collections that have won the Pulitzer. If you don’t know where to start, well, I have a few suggestions.

Welcome to So You Want to Read a Pulitzer Prize Winner! Let me start off by saying that I have not read the Pulitzer list widely, but I have read a fair bit of it. I plan on spending this month really exploring the list in a way that I haven’t had the chance to. My recommendations are based on the books I’ve read or the poets I’m very familiar with. For example, I haven’t read Robert Frost’s New Hampshire specifically, but I’m confident enough in my knowledge of Robert Frost that I can recommend that book to a certain reader.

I know this is a very US-centric challenge. For a future month, I’d love to focus on prizes that focus on poets from other countries. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for poets or prizes to feature!

Show Me the Classics!
If you’re working your way up to reading contemporary poetry, start here.  

The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver by Edna St. Vincent Millay – Winner 1923 – This title poem of this collection is probably most famous because Johnny Cash did a reading of the poem for the Johnny Cash show in 1970. I really recommend watching it, even though he did take some (small) liberties with the wording. If you haven’t read Edna St. Vincent Millay, I recommend it. She balances darkness, a keen eye, and a sense of humor well. The other good news is that this book is available in the public domain! You can read it for free here. I feel this is a good introduction, too, to how contemporary a sonnet can sound.

New Hampshire by Robert Frost – Winner 1924 – I think that everyone has a certain opinion of Robert Frost because they studied his poems in middle school or as Freshman in high school and they can seem very surface. When I was in college, we did a close reading of Frost and I really had a new appreciation for him. If you want to explore Frost as an adult, I really recommend it. As I said, I haven’t read this specific collection, but it does include poems you might have read, like “Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Show Me Those Poet Laureates!
This is, admittedly, a completely arbitrary list, but if you are not as interested in the classics, these poets are an excellent place to start exploring contemporary poetry. 

Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks – Winner 1950 – Poet Laureate of Illinois 1968 – It’s actually fairly difficult to find this book, so you might have to resort to a collection of Gwnedolyn Brooks’s poetry, but you should read it all. Brooks, above all, tells stories with her poems. Sometimes she does it in few words and experiments more with form, but her poems are filled with characters, with real people that you might know. I’ve always thought her poems were so strong because of this. Brooks is, without a doubt, one of the most important poets of the 20th century.

The Carrier of Ladders by W.S. Merwin and The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin – Winner 1971 and 2009 – US Poet Laureate 2010 - The Carrier of Ladders is available as a part of the collection The Second Four Books of Poems. Like Brooks, Merwin’s poems often tell a clear story. His language is clear and concise, but beautiful. Interestingly, when Merwin won the Pulitzer, he gave the prize money to support the draft resistance movement during the Vietnam War.

Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser – US Poet Laureate 2004 – Delight is right. I love Ted Kooser. I love the way he writes poetry, I love the way he reads poetry. I’ve mentioned his American Life in Poetry Column here before. They’re lovely poems that celebrate the small. Try out this poem from Delights & Shadows called “The China Painters” to see if Ted Kooser is a poet you might enjoy.

Late Wife by Claudia Emerson – Winner 2006 – Poet Laureate of Virginia 2008-2010 – Full disclosure: Claudia Emerson was my poetry instructor when I was in college. Her poems are  beautiful and descriptive and if you aren’t sure where to start, but you know you’d like to read a contemporary poet, start with Emerson.

Show Me that Challenge!

Neon Vernacular by Yusef Komunyakaa – Winner 1994 – By describing this book as a challenge, I hope I don’t scare you away. That’s not what I want to do. This is probably one of my most recommended books of poetry. I love it, especially the first section, but Komunyakaa is not always the easiest poet to read. He plays around with form and also has a large number of cultural and literary references in his poems that I don’t often understand without doing research. That being said, there are lines from the poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa that ring so true and perfect. Even if you are a first time poetry reader, you should read Komunyakaa. Yes, his poetry might require a little bit of extra work, but it’s rewarding.

______________________________________________

Hopefully there is something from this list that will intrigue you! I also highly recommend Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard, as I discussed back in February. For my own project this month, I’ll be reading some collections of poetry that won Pulitzer’s that I haven’t read yet. My goal will be to read one book for each decade. Here is my list:

2010-12: Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
2000s: Time & Materials by Robert Hass
1990s:  Black Zodiac by Charles Wright
1980s:  Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove
1970s: Now and Then by Robert Penn Warren
1960s: Pictures from Brueghel by William Carlos Williams
1950s: Collected Poems by Marianne Moore
1940s: The Age of Anxiety by WH Auden
1930s: Collected Verse by Robert Hillyer
1920s: Complete Poetical Works by Amy Lowell

Happy August poetry reading! I hope you find a Pulitzer prize-winner to fall in love with. Remember, any poetry post that goes up from July 25-August 30 (round up will be posted on August 31) counts, even if it is not about a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Please add your links to the Mr. Linky below:

Saturday Personal Readathon

By Lu Posted in Books, Readathon Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Replies

Today, I’d like to escape this world with a few good books. It’s been a while since I’ve just sat down on a Saturday afternoon and read, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Michael and I might go see Spiderman later today, but between now and the time I go to bed, I will be sitting on my couch and reading. I already spent most of the morning reading With My Body by Nikki Gemmell. I’m also reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed and The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa. Also on the list to read today: Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks, The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson and more poetry

With My Body by Nikki Gemmell - When Harper Perennial pitched this book to me, I wasn’t really looking for a well-written alternative to 50 Shades of Grey, but the enthusiasm of the person from Harper who sent the email really convinced me. It’s written in the second person, which is usually something I despise, but I am actually loving it. I’m about 200 pages in.

After finishing – I ended up writing so much about this title, I decided to save it for another post. I liked it, but it wasn’t perfect. Now! On to Hicksville.

Poetry Wednesday – Mother, Washing Dishes by Susan Meyers

By Lu Posted in Poetry, poetry wednesday Tagged , , , , 1 Reply

I couldn’t find too much about Susan Meyers online when I first began looking, but while I was looking up her biography, I came across this column and project by Ted Kooser, funded by the Poetry Foundation, called “American Life in Poetry.” All 370 columns are archived and available to read on the project’s website. After scanning through some of the poems there were a few that I immediately liked, like Column 362 – “Fish Fry Daughter”, Column 241 – “Like Coins, November”, Column 168 – “The Laughter of Women”, and Column 16 “Love Like Salt.” I can tell that American Life in Poetry will be a place I return to again and again to read poetry. Each poem is accompanied by one line of biography and one light of insight from the amazing Kooser. It’s everything you need. You can sign up to get the poem emailed to you weekly.

I’m glad Susan Meyers led me to “American Life in Poetry.” Her poem “Mother, Washing Dishes” was featured in Column 267.

Mother, Washing Dishes

by Susan Meyers, featured in “American Life in Poetry”

           She rarely made us do it—
we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased
that some day we’d train our children right
and not end up like her, after every meal stuck
with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring.
The one chore she spared us: gummy plates
in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas,
globs of egg and gravy.

 

           Or did she guard her place
at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss
of the magnolia, the school traffic humming.
Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings
of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon,
delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.

 

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by the Univ. of So. Carolina Press. Susan Meyers’ most recent book of poems is Keep and Give Away, Univ. of So. Carolina Press, 2006. Poem reprinted from Tar River Poetry, Vol. 48, no. 1, Fall 2008, by permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation.

April Read More/Blog More Poetry Event:

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , , , , , , , 7 Replies

It’s here! The April Read More/Blog More Poetry Event. (Can we have a moment here to talk about how fast April went by?!) The Mr. Linky is hosted over at Kelly’s blog this week. Kelly and I have decided to add another element to this “event.” Though there was a list of poems that Kelly was reading, they were all poems that I had already read. Kelly expressed interest in reading Jane Yolen together, but then showed me this list of fairy tale and folklore poems. I like poems, I like fairy tales, and so does Kelly, so it sounded like a lot of fun to read these poems together. To keep things different on our blogs, we’re going to be reading them in reverse order. Kelly will start at the top, and I will start at the bottom. If you’d like to read along, feel free to start wherever you like!

“Winter is No Time” by Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen’s style is simple and sweet, repetitive, but not boring. I will never forget there is a line from Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday about how the poetry magazines are always flooded with poems about the rain right after a big storm. Poems about weather and seasons always remind me of this line, because it’s true. As someone who writes poetry, you can’t help but be swayed by the weather. The urge to write poems about the rain is much stronger when it’s raining. As silly as that sounds, I can’t get it out of my head. By far my favorite line of this poem is “Light is middle-aged here.” That is so descriptive and beautiful, it’s almost as if the whole poem was framed around it. This poem feels a little indulgent, but I’ll go with it. A little indulgence never hurt anyone.

“Family Stories” by Jane Yolen

As much as I don’t mind repetition, I think it should be used sparingly, and I”m grateful to see it doesn’t make an appearance in this poem. This poem in general feels stronger and much more personal than “Winter is No Time.” I’ve only read two of Yolen’s poems, but so far in each poem there has been one image that seems too simple: the attic and the poet in “Winter is No Time” and the crazy quilts in “Family Stories.” I would have liked both poems much more without those images. Maybe it is just the word choice or the way it is described, but they seem almost silly. There’s nothing wrong with silliness in poems, but they stuck out. They took me out of the poems because, for me, they didn’t fit in with the rest. I’m afraid I sound like I’m workshopping Jane Yolen. That’s the last thing I want to do, but something about those images seemed a little, well, obvious I guess is the word I’m looking for. Overall, though, I enjoyed this poem. I am especially fond of the father’s stanza and the nurse’s stanza.

“Weaver’s Cottage” by Terri Windling

I have read The Wood Wife by Terri Windling, so I know a little bit better what to expect. Her poetry reminds me a lot of The Wood Wife in terms of the general feeling I got from reading them. The descriptive language at the beginning of this poem is beautiful, but I was much less enchanted by the second stanza. It’s a little cheesy. The ribbons of color and the weaving of stories, well, those are images that are a bit tired at this point.

“Three Love Prayers for Beckie” by Alan Weisman

This poem is much more my style, especially the first letter. Unfortunately, Weismann lost me in the second two, but part of the problem is that they just weren’t the first letter, if that makes sense.

“May 28” by Ellen Steiber

This is a haunting poem, starting with the heavy “I can’t get at the truth of you.” That is what the poem promises and that is what it delivers, everything of the father figure is hard to pin down, especially now that he is gone and his memory is clouded by grief. He was all those things and none of them. There are good memories that are open and celebratory, the campfires on the beach, a gift of bracelets, but also the sadness, loss and regret. There is the contrast between living in a desert and longing for warmth from something. Yes, I think I like this poem best of all tonight.

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Well! That was fun! I hope you’ll join us in reading a few of these poems next month, but as always the topic for the Read More/Blog More poetry event is open, as long as you discuss poetry. If you need some suggestions, I posted prompts on Sunday. Feel free to use them in your posts this month or any month! Also, I’d like to take this moment to ask you: What do you want to see happen in the Read More/Blog More poetry event over the year? What would keep you interested in poetry and blogging about poetry? I’d love to hear your suggestions!

Sunday Salon: Post-readathon and the last week of National Poetry Month

By Lu Posted in Blogging, Books, Life Tagged , , , , 8 Replies

I don’t know about you, but the day after Readathon has been pleasantly rainy and relaxing. I am finally feeling better. I had this cough for over a month and last week it became clear that it was not getting better, in fact it was getting worse. After going to the doctor and being diagnosed with bronchitis, I settled in for a weekend of antibiotics and rest. I came home from work on Friday and essentially passed out, sleeping for a couple hours, before waking up only to rest on the couch. I haven’t been this sick in a long time, so it’s been hard to make myself sit still and recover, but I’m finally there, thank goodness.

Today I have done a whole lot of nothing, except sit and read and watch many episodes of Supernatural, my current television obsession. I also needed a comfort read, so I’m rereading The Golden Compass, which I haven’t read in almost nine years. Falling back into that world has been lovely, but I’m a little annoyed that I can’t get Nicole Kidman out of my head. I don’t remember much from that abysmal movie, but I do remember Nicole Kidman and her creepy monkey. I have the lovely Everyman Library copy, which will be too heavy to take on the subway, so I think I’ll take my ereader and read some galleys. I have Gone Girl, which I started reading and really enjoyed. I’ve heard great things about it, so that will be my to and from work book. I’ve been in the mood for YA fantasy lately. Do you have any suggestions? I have Pandemonium to read and I’ve requested Hex Hall from the library.

This week is the last week of National Poetry Month! There will be a poem every day, just like the rest of the month, but Tuesday is also the April edition of the Read More/Blog More Poetry event! I hope you’ll consider participating. This month, the Mr. Linky will be hosted at Kelly’s blog. I also thought I’d give you some prompts, just in case you needed something to talk about:

1) Talk a little bit about National Poetry Month. Did you notice a lot of campaigns for National Poetry Month, either on the web or elsewhere? How visual was National Poetry Month for you? What did you think of the efforts? Do you have any suggestions?

2) Choose a poem and talk about it. What do you think about the poem? You don’t need to analyze it, though if that’s what you’d like to do you totally can, but just tell us how it makes you feel.

3) Where do you get your poetry? Last month I blogged about finding poetry on the web, from Twitter to blogs to other online poetry resources. Do you read poetry in books, primarily online, in magazines?

4) How do you think we can teach kids to love poetry?

Feel free to talk about whatever you like this Tuesday, but if you need some inspiration, there you go! I hope to see you here discussing poetry Tuesday.

National Poetry Month – Katherine Larson (April 11)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , , Leave a reply

I love the convergence of poetry and science.

Love at Thirty-Two Degrees

I

Today I dissected a squid,
the late acacia tossing its pollen
across the black of the lab bench.
In a few months the maples
will be bleeding. That was the thing:
there was no blood
only textures of gills creased like satin,
suction cups as planets in rows. Be careful
not to cut your finger, he says. But I’m thinking
of fingertips on my lover’s neck
last June. Amazing, hearts.
This brachial heart. After class,
I stole one from the formaldehyde
& watched it bloom in my bathroom sink
between cubes of ice.

II

Last night I threw my lab coat in the fire
& drove all night through the Arizona desert
with a thermos full of silver tequila.

It was the last of what we bought
on our way back from Guadalajara—
desert wind in the mouth, your mother’s
beat-up Honda, agaves
twisting up from the soil
like the limbs of cephalopods.

Outside of Tucson, saguaros so lovely
considering the cold, & the fact that you
weren’t there to warm me.
Suddenly drunk I was shouting that I wanted to see the stars
as my ancestors used to see them—

to see the godawful blue as Aurvandil’s frostbitten toe.

III

Then, there is the astronomer’s wife
ascending stairs to her bed.

The astronomer gazes out,
one eye at a time,

to a sky that expands
even as it falls apart

like a paper boat dissolving in bilge.
Furious, fuming stars.

When his migraine builds &
lodges its dark anchor behind

the eyes, he fastens the wooden buttons
of his jacket, & walks

outside with a flashlight
to keep company with the barn owl

who stares back at him with eyes
that are no greater or less than

a spiral galaxy.
The snow outside

is white & quiet
as a woman’s slip

against cracked floorboards.
So he walks to the house

inflamed by moonlight, & slips
into the bed with his wife

her hair & arms all
in disarray

like fish confused by waves.

IV

Science—

beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,
every time I make love for love’s sake alone,

I betray you.

National Poetry Month – Jeanne Wagner (April 5)

By Lu Posted in Poetry Tagged , , , , 2 Replies

I have a not-so-secret love for poems that use the title as the first line. I think, when used sparingly, it’s a lovely little trick.

My mother was like the bees

by Jeanne Wagner

because she needed a lavish taste
on her tongue,
a daily tipple of amber and gold
to waft her into the sky,
a soluble heat trickling down her throat.
Who could blame her
for starting out each morning
with a swig of something furious
in her belly, for days
when she dressed in flashy lamé
leggings like a starlet,
for wriggling and dancing a little madly,
her crazy reels and her rumbas,
for coming home wobbly
with a flicker of clover’s inflorescence
still clinging to her clothes,
enough to light the darkness
of a pitch-black hive.