Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Maya Angelou Closes National Poetry Month: Phenomenal Woman


Enjoy the poet Maya Angelou reading one of my favorite poems of hers, "Phenomenal Woman."  

The first time I heard her voice, I melted. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.

Don't let National Poetry Month end: keep sharing poetry year-round!  

Send me your favorite poems (original or written by others) and I'll post them — after all, every Wednesday is Poetry Wednesday! (Come back tomorrow and find out just what that is...)


Monday, April 29, 2013

To You — National Poetry Month



  To You
I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut

That will solve a murder case unsolved for years

Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window

Through which he saw her head, connecting with

Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red

Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;

For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not

Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a

Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails

In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from

The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Always, to be near you, even in my heart

When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you

Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to

The place where I again think of you, a new

Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow

Of a ship which sails

From Hartford to Miami, and I love you

Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun

Receives me in the questions which you always pose.


by Kenneth Koch
from The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch
Courtesy Poetry Foundation (click here to hear the poet read his poem)

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Little Night Prayer During National Poetry Month



Little Night Prayer
 

Lord, I’m tired,
the bunion on my right foot is throbbing,
I worry about myself.


Who is this anguished man, Lord?
it can’t be me,
so woeful and sluggish.


I would like to trust quietly,
but like waves in the ocean,
tempers bubble up in me.


I try a smile,
but some hairdespair
impedes me.


This isn’t all right, Lord,
feel pity for me, be scared,
reward my endeavors.


Evaluate things with me,
delete with my own hand
what isn’t needed.


Taste with me what needs to be tasted,
and say to me:
this is sweet! this is sour!


Remind me
of the small red car,
of something that was good.


There was a lot that was good, wasn’t there?
a lot of sunken islands,
crumbled glamour.


Place a net into my hands
to fish with, in the past
and in the present.


I’m a fish too, in the night,
puckering silver,
bubble-lifed.


Turn me inside out, freshen me up,
throw me up high and catch me!
What’s it to you, Lord?


If you must,
lay down your cards,
show me something new.


How your leaves fall!
your sun scorches
your wind whistles.


Speak to me!
Talk with me through the night,
it’s nothing to you, Lord!


by Péter Kántor
translated by Michael Blumenthal  

Courtesy of  sorry that user name is taken

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Shakespeare's Poetry for National Poetry Month


Shakespeare's baptism day is April 26 — which we celebrate because we have no idea on what day he actually was born, so let's enjoy his Sonnet 98.


From you have I been absent in the spring... (Sonnet 98)


From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him,
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

This is a Photograph of Me: National Poetry Month


This is a Photograph of Me

It was taken some time ago
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or how small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion.

but if you look long enough
eventually
you will see me.)


Wednesday, April 24, 2013

National Poetry Month: A Woman Without A Country



Thanks to Poetry Daily for this unsettling, gorgeous poem.


A Woman Without A Country

As dawn breaks he enters
A room with the odor of acid.
He lays the copper plate on the table.
And reaches for the shaft of the burin.
Dublin wakes to horses and rain.
Street hawkers call.
All the news is famine and famine.
The flat graver, the round graver,
The angle tint tool wait for him.
He bends to his work and begins.
He starts with the head, cutting in
To the line of the cheek, finding
The slope of the skull, incising
The shape of a face that becomes
A foundry of shadows, rendering —
With a deeper cut into copper —
The whole woman as a skeleton,
The rags of  her skirt, her wrist
In a bony line forever
                                severing
Her body from its native air until
She is ready for the page,
For the street vendor, for
A new inventory which now
To loss and to laissez-faire adds
The odor of acid and the little,
Pitiless tragedy of  being imagined.
He puts his tools away,
One by one; lays them out carefully
On the deal table, his work done.

by Eavan Boland

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Toots the Cat — National Poetry Month



Resting

In a sun pool
like a curled fur shell you lie
breathing light prrs,
inhaling the scene
through one green screscent,
one half-open eye.

When our cat is at rest
our house is at rest
and so is the earth and sky.



Toots is up to a lot in this delightful book. Check it out from your library!

Monday, April 22, 2013

This Compost — National Poetry Month


This Compost

1

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my 
   lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other 
   flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not 
   sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs,
   roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses 
   within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with 
   sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many 
   generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and 
   meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps 
   I am deceiv'd,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my 
   spade through the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
2

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick 
   person--yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in 
   the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the 
   apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale 
   visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the 
   mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while 
   the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the 
   hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt 
   from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark 
   green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs 
   bloom in the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful 
   above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash 
   of the sea which is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all 
   over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that 
   have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-
   orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, 
   will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch 
   any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of 
   what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm 
   and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with 
   such endless successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such 
   infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, 
   annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts 
   such leavings from them at last.

courtesy poets.org

Sunday, April 21, 2013

National Poetry Month Includes A Wire Jewelry Haiku


A Wire Jewelry Haiku

 A handmade glass bead,
framed with elegant chain links,
hanging brilliantly.



Thanks to Beth and Beading Daily for this great poem! If you see something, say something: share that fab poem!

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Take Hold of The Flame During National Poetry Month

Take Hold of The Flame

We see the light of those who find
A world has passed them by
To late to save a dream that’s growing cold
We realize that fate must hide it’s face
From those who try
To see the distant signs of unforetold
Oh... oh, take hold

From a haze came a rage of thunder
Distant signs of darkness on the way
Fading cries scream of pain and hunger
But in the night the light will guide your way

So take hold of the flame
Don’t you see life’s a game
So take hold of the flame
You’ve got nothing to lose, but everything to gain

Ride, to a place beyond our time
Reach, for the edges of your mind, and you are there
See, that the light will find it’s way
Back to a place where it will stay, make it stay

Throw down the chains of oppression that bind you
With the air of freedom the flame grows bright
We are the strong, the youth united
We are one, we are children of the light

So take hold of the flame
Don’t you see life’s a game
So take hold of the flame
You’ve got nothing to lose, but everything to gain 


Thanks to Stacy (and Poem Hunter) for sharing this lyric by Queensryche. Have anything you want to share for National Poetry Month (and beyond)? Send it to me!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Poem in Your Pocket: Emma Lazarus to Print and Carry!


Here's a lovely poem from the American Academy of Poets. Print it and stuff it in your pocket, then print an extra for a friend.

Long Island Sound

I see it as it looked one afternoon
In August,-by a fresh soft breeze o'erblown.
The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon,
A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon.
The shining waters with pale currents strewn,
The quiet fishing-smacks, the Eastern cove,
The semi-circle of its dark, green grove.
The luminous grasses, and the merry sun
In the grave sky; the sparkle far and wide,
Laughter of unseen children, cheerful chirp
Of crickets, and low lisp of rippling tide,
Light summer clouds fantastical as sleep
Changing unnoted while I gazed thereon.
All these fair sounds and sights I made my own.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Sharon Olds, Pulitzer Prize-Winner — National Poetry Month



I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, 
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the 
red tiles glinting like bent 
plates of blood behind his head, I 
see my mother with a few light books at her hip 
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the 
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its 
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, 
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop, 
don't do it--she's the wrong woman, 
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things 
you cannot imagine you would ever do, 
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of, 
you are going to want to die. I want to go 
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body, 
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I 
take them up like the male and female 
paper dolls and bang them together 
at the hips like chips of flint as if to 
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

by Sharon Olds

Congrats to   the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner for her book, Stag's Leap. Read a few more of her earlier poems here.

Monday, April 15, 2013

National Poetry Month: Newly Discovered Fitzgerald


From BookTryst:

A cache of never before seen original and revealing F. Scott Fitzgerald autograph material has surfaced and (was) introduced into the marketplace... estimated to sell for $75,000-$100,000.

Read more about this poem, and what it meant to those who wrote and read it, on the BookTryst blog.



Sunday, April 14, 2013

Tongue Twisters During National Poetry Month



Thank you

I was thinking of thanking you,
as you can see,
I wanted to thank you
for thinking of me.
But now that I've thanked you,
I guess I am free
of thinking of thanking you
thinking of me.






Saturday, April 13, 2013

National Poetry Month: Listening to Grownups Quarreling



 Listening to grownups quarreling,

standing in the hall against the
wall with my little brother, blown
like leaves against the wall by their
voices, my head like a pingpong ball
between the paddles of their anger:
I knew what it meant
to tremble like a leaf.
Cold with their wrath, I heard
the claws of rain
pounce. Floods
poured through the city,
skies clapped over me,
and I was shaken, shaken
like a mouse
between their jaws.

                     

by Ruth Whitman
courtesy Longwood University 

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Splash — It's National Poetry Month




Turtle Says

On land
I'm a mud soldier
in a homemade helmet,
slowpoking my way along.
I'm told
I creep
like a sleepwlker,
and it's true.
               No matter.
In water,
on the other hand,
I'm a star,
a swooper, a glider,
a leaper, a flyer,
a ballet dancer
in my green tutu.
That's true, too.

Enjoy other poems by Constance Levy from her delightful book, Splash! Poems of Our Watery World (with illustrations by David Soman).


Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Small Frogs Killed On The Highway — for Poem in Your Pocket



This year, Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 18. Get ready by reading this tidbit, my personal favorite pocket poem. What's yours? Let me know!

Small Frogs Killed On The Highway

Still,
I would leap too
Into the light,
If I had the chance.
It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field
On the other side of the road.
They crouch there, too, faltering in terror
And take strange wing. Many
Of the dead never moved, but many
Of the dead are alive forever in the split second
Auto headlights more sudden
Than their drivers know.
The drivers burrow backward into dank pools
Where nothing begets
Nothing.

Across the road, tadpoles are dancing
On the quarter thumbnail
Of the moon. They can't see,
Not yet.

by James Wright
courtesy of Poetryconnection.net

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

National Poetry Month: The Crossing


The Crossing

The elk of Orick wait patiently to cross the road
and my husband of six months, who thinks

he's St. Francis, climbs out of the car to assist.
Ghost of St. Francis, his t-shirt flapping, steps

tenderly onto the tarmack and they begin
their trek, heads lifted, nostrils flared, each footfall

a testament to stalled momentum, gracefully
hesitant, as a brace of semis, lined up, humming,

adjust the air in their brakes. They cross
the fourlane like a coronation, slow as a Greek

freize, river wind riffling the wheat grass
of their rumps. But my husband stays on,

to talk to the one who won't budge, oblivious
to her sisters, a long stalk of fennel gyrating

between her teeth. Go on, he beseeches,
Get going, but the lone Elk only stares back,

their noses less than a yard apart. One
stubborn creature staring down another.

This is how I know the marriage will last. 


by Dorianne Laux
(click here to hear the poet read her poem)
with thanks to Except In Dreams
 

Share a poem with me during National Poetry Month and you may win a free book of poetry!

Monday, April 8, 2013

Once Upon a Tomb, During National Poetry Month



Gardener

When his days concluded
His final wish was granted:
First he was uprooted.
Then he was transplanted.



Weightlifter
Unh...
Unh...
Unh...
Uh-uh.



Find out what J. Patrick Lewis had to say about editors, schoolteachers, soccer players and bullies in his delightful book, Once Upon a Tomb: Gravely Humorous Verses. Find it at your library!

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Beauty — National Poetry Month



Beauty

Beauty is seen
In the sunlight,
The trees, the birds,
Corn growing and people working
Or dancing for their harvest.

Beauty is heard
In the night,
Wind sighing, rain falling,
Or a singer chanting
Anything in earnest.

Beauty is in yourself.
Good deeds, happy thoughts
That repeat themselves
In your dreams,
In your work,
And even in your rest.


by E-Yeh-Shure'

Thanks to Karen for sharing! 
Have you sent me your favorite poem yet? What are you waiting for?

Saturday, April 6, 2013

National Poetry Month: Because I Could Not Stop My Bike


Because I Could Not Stop My Bike, and other poems by Karen Jo Shapiro (with delightful illustrations by Matt Faulkner) features complimentary, poems written "with apologies" to the original poet. See if you can guess who received the apology for the title poem:

Because I could not stop my bike
it kindly stopped for me.
Unluckily, it did not stop
until I hit a tree.

How fast we rode; at what a speed
I pedaled down the hill!
I did not know the brakes were stuck
until I took that spill.

I must admit, it was a thrill
to feel so fast and free —
I think we would br whissing still
If we'd not hit that tree!

Friday, April 5, 2013

Thursday, April 4, 2013

National Poetry Month: The World Doesn't Want Me Anymore, and it Doesn't Know It




Cultivate a second source of poetry this month: sign up for Poem-a-Day from the the Academy of American Poets. Below is one of the poems sent out by the academy. Enjoy!
The World Doesn't Want Me Anymore, and it Doesn't Know It

 




I am the corner and the cab's glow-up roof.
A tuba and air synth march down Stanton St.

Do a rhumba for an espresso foam by the green lights.
Notice how this dude in the yellow pants is embarrassing himself.

Trying their best to dougie to "My Favorite Things"
And a sexy woman poured-into jeans twirl-a-whirls.

When we see what we were in New York
And what we leave behind

Only stay human is great
Leave your weakness in a jar. 

by Sean Singer