Send Your Haiku to Mars!

From the NPR website:
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this close-up of the red planet Mars in 2007, when it was just 55 million miles away.

Got a haiku? Send it to Mars!

NPR is holding a contest, and the winning haiku is sent to Mars.

The only rules are:

• You must be a resident of Planet Earth.
• You must be 18 years old to create a login profile at NPR to submit. (So kids, get help from your parents or teachers.)

Want to know more? Read the article on NPR!

But hurry: the deadline is July 1.

Poetry Wednesday: Spiders and E.B. White

This isn't really a scary poem, but spiders have a rep to uphold. Therefore, I will glorify spiders and E.B. White today on this, the sixtieth year since Charlotte's Web was published (listen to the NPR radio story about it). Happy Halloween.

The Spider’s Web (A Natural History)

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.


And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.


Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.

by E.B. White

with thanks to Gregory Maguire, for reminding us about this gem

The Day Disco Died

It is 12:15 in Washington D.C., a Monday,
the day after an earthquake in Italy, and I'm listening
to "I Feel Love," the song Bryan Ferry said would change
music for good. In Afghanistan a Marine
sergeant tweets about boredom and generators
from a gritty keyboard in Combat Outpost Marjah.

I conjure up the unrelenting sand he describes
in 140 characters while a new Barnard BA strategizes her type
of rekindling and a poli-sci grad at Liberty types up an op/ed
on Romney and values,
and stories get made this way, then taken down.

Just as quickly, the imprint of one a ghost
in the other, the way Harvard links two opponents,
the way a fracture is also a seam.
Songs about rivers inflect an Italian art revolution
against austerity,
or we're forces multiplied both in the streets
of Chicago or in the alliances of nations.

Or we once listened to a soundtrack in falsetto
that sounded like the end of the past
and also the future as our parents waited hours for gas,
but still danced to these new thumps in the analog network
we made of our lives then,

except that time or history whispered their own songs
along the keyboard
and pushed us into the tangle of before,
and the web of last
where everyone and I are still that held breath,
made sharp and vital harmony.

by Carmen Gimenez Smith, NPR news poet

All Things Considered's NewsPoet is produced and edited by Ellen Silva with production assistance from Rose Friedman.

NPR Has a NewsPoet

NPR has a NewsPoet: Monica Youn.

You read that right: newspoet. That's a poet who captures the day's news in a poem. Read the poem for Friday, April 27 —  and marvel.

24

Fear is the coin dropping into its slot;
two dollars fall to the liquor shop floor.
The day is a net of twenty four knots.

A modestly veiled woman poses no threat,
but the veil truly masks a thief's face and hair
Fear is the coin dropping into its slot.

300 Priuses that someone forgot
voluptuously rust in the Miami air.
The day is a net of twenty four knots.

The primary insight of Keynesian thought:
the way out of debt is for us to spend more.
Fear is the coin dropping into its slot.

A lawsuit, foreclosure, inescapable debt
is the price of a new mother's prenatal care
The day is a net of twenty four knots.

A blind man trapped in a ring of perpetual light
slips the noose, vanishes into the glare.
Fear is the coin dropping into its slot.
The day is a net of twenty four knots.

by Monica Youn

All Things Considered's NewsPoet is produced and edited by Ellen Silva with production assistance from Rose Friedman.

Two Words

As this, the cold, flu and (apparently) sinus infection season, heads into full gear, I have two words for you: sinus irrigation.

I am enjoying my first sinus infection of the calendar year, and I continue to beat the drum for the healthy practice of sinus irrigation. I am not the only one — NPR noted the same thing in one of its most e-mailed articles from last year, "Got a Runny Nose? Flush it Out!" (NPR Morning Edition, February 22, 2007).

The idea is simple: keep the area irrigated and clean, and sinuses have a chance to stay healthy. A lot of people (including Alicia) are convinced they cannot do this. You're talking to a woman who couldn't even use a nose spray — and who, in desperation, gave irrigation a try. I am grateful I did, and I heartily recommend it to everyone.

I make my own saline solution: using a mayonnaise jar (clean, of course), I mix three teaspoons of canning/pickling salt and one teaspoon of baking soda. (Do not use table salt.) Mix well and deliver into the sinuses. I use a small syringe (the ear size, not the huge one) to inject the solution directly into each nostril.

As you can see, it doesn't always keep sinus infections completely at bay, but it does help stave them off. Had I not begun this practice years ago, my chronic sinus infections would never cease.

So, as I heal from this discomfort, think of all of the things you'd like to mention, ponder, discuss and otherwise mull — then leave a comment at the end of this post so I know what's on your mind. In the meantime, I'm downing Mucinex-D like there's no tomorrow and trying to sleep away the pain.

See you on the other side of this illness.

Cleaning Up Poetry

How do today's poets view domesticity? Find the answer in Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework by Pamela Gemin.

Check out the NPR interview (which is what drew me to this book) and read a couple of the poems on the NPR Web site, including one of my favorites that asks the eternal question, "What's the use?"

Here's one of the poems from the book that was featured by The Writer's Almanac:


When Our Women Go Crazy

When our women go crazy, they're scared there won't be
enough meat in the house. They keep asking
but how will we eat? Who will cook? Will there be enough?
Mother to daughter, it's always the same
questions. The sisters and aunts recognize symptoms:
she thinks there's no food, same as Mommy
before they sent her away to that place,
and she thinks if she goes, the men will eat
whatever they find right out of the saucepans.
When our women are sane, they can tomatoes
and simmer big pots of soup for the freezer.
They are satisfied arranging spice tins
on cupboard shelves lined with clean paper.
They save all the leftovers under tight lids
and only throw them away when they're rotten.
Their refrigerators are always immaculate and full,
which is also the case when our women are crazy.

by Julia Kasdorf