4 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

I have finally had a moment to sit down and randomly pick a winner from my In Just-Spring Mudluscious Poetry Contest. I have had a lovely time reading the spring poetry that you all chose for this contest! Some of them were old favorites of mine, and some I'd never read before. Take a look at the fabulous entries posted here.

And congratulations to Jennifer at Diary of 1! While I did pick Jennifer totally randomly, I'm happy that she won because she posted a poem that her mother wrote, called "Morning." Someday I'll have a fall poetry contest and post my father's poem called, "Kicking Leaves in Mr. Gage's Orchard."

Lots of people wrote to me and said, "I can't write poetry, so I can't enter." Well, actually I didn't ask you all to write a poem for the contest, just to submit a spring poem that you like. But here lies a phenomenon that seems epidemic: people are intimidated by poetry. Certainly, poetry can be intimidating. I think most of us were exposed to a similar canon of poetry in high school. I can remember reading sonnets by Donne and Shakespeare and finding them obtuse. I remember being utterly perplexed by iambic pentameter and trochaic octameter.

But somewhere along the line I fell in love with poetry. It was something inside of me that insisted upon expressing myself through poetry. I loved the sound of words, the cadence of language. Poets could evoke such a range of emotions with such a sparseness of words.

If you haven't read poetry since high school, please try again. This is National Poetry Month. Try visiting one of these sites and browsing. You may find something that touches your soul:
Poetry Foundation
American Life in Poetry
Poets.org

Thanks, everyone, for playing, and congratulations, Jennifer in OR! I'll be sending off a box of Spring Things very soon!

6 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

Two of my favorite things happen together in April: the full-force of spring and National Poetry Month.

National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets  as a month-long, national celebration of poetry. From their website: "The concept was to increase the attention paid-by individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our poetic heritage, and to poetry books and magazines. In the end, we hoped to achieve an increase in the visibility, presence, and accessibility of poetry in our culture."

And spring? Well, I love spring, "when the world is puddle-wonderful." I've already blogged about spring in SmallWorld here and here and here.  And a highlight of this spring? Two new babies in our family!

In celebration of "the white cloud's intricate maze, And the blue sky's beautiful sheen," I am hereby announcing SmallWorld's In Just-spring Mudluscious Poetry Contest. It's really quite simple. Just copy and paste this orange-lettered section onto your own blog along with a poem that in some way celebrates spring. (Copy the contest photo above if you want, as well!) Leave me a comment with a link to your contest entry. The poem doesn't have to overtly use the word "spring," but it should in some way evoke the feeling of spring. If you don't have a blog, just leave a poem in the comments.

I'll be running this particular contest until April 10, so you've got plenty of time to find just the perfect poem. I will randomly choose a winner, who will receive a box in the mail filled with some of my favorite spring things  (think gardens, good smells, and prettiness, unless the winner is male, in which case, scratch the good smells and pretty things).

* All poetry quotes above are from various e. e. cummings' poems.

13 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

In fitting with Spring as a time of celebration and  new birth, my newborn great-nephew Justus came through yesterday's surgery quite well. I know his Mama and Daddy are eager for the day when they can take him home, probably in about 10 days.

So today is the first day of spring, and the sun is shining and flowers fairly bursting. A good day to get outside and breathe. And now a word from one of my favorite poets, e.e. cummings:

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april (yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)
when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)
when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

1 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

1 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

Apparently today is  Blog Poetry Slam Day and so I chose this poem by e.e. cummings because it is one of my absolute favorites, and also in memory of our friend randy landry, who once rewrote this whole poem with a few changes and claimed it as his own ("I did not copy it from e.e. cummings!"), and who made the last line, "No one, not even the snow, has such fragile wrists."

[somewhere i have never travelled]

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

5 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

From today's American Life in Poetry column:

Sleep

On the ridge above Skelp Road
bears binge on blackberries and apples,
even grapes, knocking down
the Petersens' arbor to satisfy the sweet
hunger that consumes them. Just like us
they know the day must come when
the heart slows, when to take one
more step would mean the end of things
as they should be. Sleep is a drug;
dreams its succor. How better to drift
toward another world but with leaves
falling, their warmth draping us,
our stomachs full and fat with summer?

Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Todd Davis. Reprinted from "Some Heaven," by Todd Davis, published by Michigan State University Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. 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. 

0 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

5 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

It is early for the maples to be coloring and dropping; still, a red leaf is a good occasion for another autumn poem or two. Here's a  very cool thing:  DLTK has all kinds of autumn poetry (not fluffy rhymes but actual Keats and such) with graphics on it for coloring. Very nice for those notebooks! This week in my American Lit class we'll be studying Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, and so:

Nature XXVII, Autumn

by Emily Dickinson

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

1 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

I love the weekly column American Life in Poetry, whose sole mission is "to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture." No doubt the most common complaint about poetry is that it is too complicated--too untouchable. I truly believe that some poets set out to create obtuse poetry, burdening their language with obscure imagery and symbolism that only the author understands. The poems in the ALP column are selected by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006. Kooser's goal is to select poems that represent every day life in America--poems that are profound in their simplicity.  Below are a few of my favorites from the past few months of columns:

Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe
by Bill Holm

Start with the square heavy loaf
steamed a whole day in a hot spring
until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast
grow dense as a black hole of bread.
Let it age and dry a little,
then soak the old loaf for a day
in warm water flavored
with raisins and lemon slices.
Boil it until it is thick as molasses.
Pour it in a flat white bowl.
Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream
to melt in its brown belly.
This soup is alive as any animal,
and the yeast and cream and rye
will sing inside you after eating
for a long time.

Reprinted from "Playing the Black Piano," Milkweed Editions, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Bill Holm.


August Morning
by Albert Garcia

It's ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife's eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?

Poem copyright (c) by Albert Garcia from his latest book "Skunk Talk" (Bear Starr Press, 2005) and originally published in "Poetry East," No. 44.


In November
by Lisel Mueller

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.

Reprinted from "Alive Together: New and Selected Poems," Louisiana State University Press, 1996, by permission of the author. Poem copyright (c) 1996 by Lisel Mueller.



No Children, No Pets
by Sue Ellen Thompson

I bring the cat's body home from the vet's
in a running-shoe box held shut
with elastic bands. Then I clean
the corners where she has eaten and
slept, scrubbing the hard bits of food
from the baseboard, dumping the litter
and blasting the pan with a hose. The plastic
dishes I hide in the basement, the pee-
soaked towel I put in the trash. I put
the catnip mouse in the box and I put
the box away, too, in a deep
dirt drawer in the earth.

When the death-energy leaves me,
I go to the room where my daughter slept
in nursery school, grammar school, high school,
I lie on her milky bedspread and think
of the day I left her at college, how nothing
could keep me from gouging the melted candle-wax
out from between her floorboards,
or taking a razor blade to the decal
that said to the firemen, "Break
this window first." I close my eyes now
and enter a place that's clearly
expecting me, swaddled in loss
and then losing that, too, as I move
from room to bone-white room
in the house of the rest of my life.

Reprinted from "Nimrod International Journal: The Healing Arts," Vol. 49, No. 2, Spring-Summer, 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, whose latest book is "The Golden Hour," Autumn House Press, 2006.

2 Comments..... Post A Comment!..... Permanent Link.....

Page 1 of 4
Last Page | Next Page