Poetry Friday: Drifting with a Sonnet

Hi, All! Poetry Friday is here today! (Of course, I"m posting it Thursday around 9:00 p.m. PST, but it's already Friday somewhere, right?) Add your links in the comments field below and I'll round-them up here.Scroll to the end of my post for the round-up.

It's launch day for The Poetry Friday Anthology: Middle School Edition. Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell do a wonderful job of seeking out and collecting poems (and adding teaching tips) for classroom use. Janet and Sylvia's production standards are always high for these anthologies. The books are a pleasure to hold in your hands - well-designed covers, lovely paper (can you tell I spent years as a bookseller?), real heft. I'm proud to have poems included.

 

I haven't been back to The Drift Record for awhile because I've been meandering over at Books Around the Table with friends/writers/illustrators  Laura Kvasnosky, Julie Paschkis and Margaret Chodos-Irvine. But the calendar says March 1st and spring is in the air, and I'm home at The Drift Record for Poetry Friday.  I'll be rounding the links up all day, all night, Mary Ann, down by the seashore sifting sand....Oh, I'm drifting to the Brothers Four!!! (If you're in the mood to drift, click on the arrow):

Can't wait to see what everyone posts as March comes roaring in! Here's a sonnet by the under-appreciated poet John Malcolm Brinnin (American, 1916-1999.) It's been on my mind with all the headlines from Rome and the Vatican in the the last few days. I guess it's not really a spring poem, though it does have to do with things coming alive. I just love how it moves between divinity and details. They say that's where God is, right? In the details? Of course, they say that's where the Devil is, too....

Creation of the Animals - Il Tintoretto - ca. 1550

LA CREAZIONE DEGLI ANIMALI

Here that old humpback Tintoretto tells

Of six day’s labor out of Genesis:

Swift from the bowstring of two little trees

Come swans, astonished basilisks and whales,

Amazed flamingos, moles and dragonflies,

to make their lifelong helpless marriages.

Time is a place at last; dumb wonder wells

From the cracked ribs of heaven’s gate and hell’s.

The patriarch in that vicinity

Of bottle seas and eggshell esplanades

Mutters his thunder like a cloud. And yet,

much smaller issues line the palm of God’s

charged hand: a dog laps water, a rabbit sits

grazing at the footprint of divinity.

                              John Malcolm Brinnin

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[Dept. of This-Matters-to-People-Who-Throw-Popcorn-Parties-on-Oscar-Night: I'm in Seattle and I had this scheduled to post at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Everyone on the East Coast would be in bed. My thinking was that if I have to watch the Oscars at 5:00 in the afternoon so everyone back there can watch it in prime time, posting late Thursday night would be fair. Then I thought, "Oh, heck. I'll go ahead and post it right now and show people that there are no hard feelings." So I 'm posting Thursday night....]

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AND HERE'S TODAY'S ROUND-UP
Note: Be sure to notice all the Slice-of-Life poems today 
and follow them day-by-day through the entire month of March.

 

NIGHT OWLS: 

There's a original Fibonacci poem about Coyotes at Poems for Kids Joy - and you can put your name in the hat there to win an autographed copy of Charline Profiri's new rhyming riddle picture book GUESS WHO'S IN THE DESERT.

Over at teacherdance, Linda's reflection on the idea of "convergences" inspires an original poem. 

Robyn Hood Black gives a shout out to The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School and gives us a look at one of the two poems of hers that were chosen to be included in it. 

Poets are invited to share the titles of their favorite old children's poems at Charles Ghigna's Father Goose blog. 

Diane Mayr is a busy blogger, with an original ekphrastic poem at Random Noodling, an Eve Merriam poem at Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet, and a quotation of Ms. Merriam's over at Kurious K's Kwotes to celebrate Women's History Month.

Earlier this week, April Halprin Wayland issued a writing prompt about monsters at Teaching Authors. You'll also find a note there about the March Madness competition, fast approaching! 

Also at Teaching Authors is Carmela Martino's interview of verse novelist Tamera Will Wissinger. You can get a glimpse there of Wissinger's work for Gone Fishin' (and sign up to win an autographed copy!)

Poems celebrating women's suffrage are posted at Tabatha Yeatt's The Opposite of Indifference today.

Head over to Gathering Books for Fats Suela's celebration of the poetry of Janet Wong.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater has a sweet dog (a sweet-dog poem, that is)  visiting The Poem Farm. 

I'll continue with the round-up in the morning -  when the sun comes up over Seattle!

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BIRDS OF THE DAYLIGHT KIND

Tara at A Teaching Life features a poem by Rita Dove about Rosa Parks, as well as a look at the new statue honoring Parks in Washington D.C.

You'll find a postcard poem about "Alligator Wrestling" and an invitation to participate in a National Poetry Month project called "Exploring the TechnoVerse" at Author Amok.

An original poem about a young Haitian girl with AIDS, based on a prompt from a Wordlab writing workshop,  is featured at Reflections of the Teche,

Laura Purdie Salas is in with an original poem - and a video of her reading it! - along with suggestions for teachers about how to use the poem in the classroom. 

Steve Peterson sings an operatic ode to his ax over at Inside a Dog. 

Using Ralph Fletcher as a mentor poet, Ashleigh Robek wrote a poem titled "The Good Old Days," posted by her mom over at Enjoy and Embrace Learning.

Hooray for the spoken word! I love to see/hear audio presentations on more and more poetry blogs - Matt Forrest Esenwine recites an original poem over at Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme.

Katya Czaja at Write. Sketch. Repeat. offers up a poem about spiders by Emily Dickinson.

At Live Your Poem, Irene Latham invites you to sign up for her annual KidLit Progressive Poem, which was such fun last time around!

Poems our mothers shared with us or hung up framed in our house somewhere - there's one today called "Children" over at Across the Page.

"Porkers, oints and grunts" -- poems in honor of National Pig Day over at Jama's Alphabet Soup, where Jama hams it up, of course!

There are three (yes, three!) original limericks from Liz Steinglass over at her blog today.

News of both the March Madness competition and the Slice of Life challenge comes to us from Mainely Write.

Betsy at  Teaching Young Writers returns to Poetry Friday with a Slice of Life-challenge poem.

You'll find an original poem inspired by a story in the Bible over at Violet Nesdoly's blog.

An original poem about a yoga disaster? Yes, and it's called "Yoga Gone Awry" - find it at Wee Words for Wee Ones today.

Be sure to check out Ed DeCaria's March Madness selection video where he seeds the competition - fascinating stuff, and it is causing shouts of delight along with a monumental rash of nerves and hand-wringing all over the kidlitosphere.  For Poetry Friday, he begins a series about his Top Ten Poems of 2012. Check it out at Think Kid Think.

Buffy Silverman practices her free throw with an original poem at her aptly named Buffy's Blog.

Bildungsroman gives us  a poem by Erica Westcott titled "Enigma."
There's a tribute to Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham plus a link to Eric Van Raepenbusch's Happy Birthday Author blog over at Renee LaTulippe's No Water River.

A poem by Robert Hershon is featured at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. (Every time I read the name of that blog, I think of Barstow, California, and wonder if it's true....)

Steven Withrow has an interview of poet Kate Coombs for us over at Poetry at Play. 

Lori Ann Grover offers us a poignant original poem inspired by the a viewing of the last episode of M*A*S*H (among other things.) Find it at her blog, On Point. I felt like I lost a friend when M*A*S*H ended - 30 years ago?? Oh, my.

Check out Check It Out, where you'll find that Ms.Mac has posted some pretty sophisticate haiku by 5th graders! 

Cathy at Merely Day by Day is in for her first post of 2013 with an original poem about small moments, inspired by a visit from some old 1st-graders.

And Janet Squires has posted a review of Paul Janeczko's The Place My Words Are Looking For: What Poets Say about and through Their Books over at All About Books. 

Catherine Flynn and her class took on Rachael's Challenge and wrote about kindness and compassion. Read about it at Catherine's blog, Reading to the Core.

And that's the way it is, March 1, 2013 - another Poetry Friday put to bed (though I"ll add you in if you're still on the fly later tonight.)

Thanks, One and All!






 

 

Poetry Friday: A Blessed Illusion for the New Year

Antonio Machado and his wife, Leonor.

For the new year, here is a poem from Antonio Machado. I found it while reading Naomi Shihab Nye's lovely collection, HONEYBEE,  in preparation for my January residency lecture at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Nye uses Machado's poem as an epigraph to her book, guiding the tone and musical key of her own poems.

Last  night I dreamed -- blessed illusion --
that I had a beehive here
in my heart
and that the golden bees were making
white combs and sweet honey
from my old failures.

          --Antonio Machado
             Translated by Robert Bly


"Old failures" - I can think of many of my own. But here's wishing us all a 2013 filled with white combs and sweet honey. 

Naomi Shihab Nye with her father, Aziz Shihab

P.S. When I read interviews, I'm often impressed by the intelligence of the people being asked questions, but I don't usually find myself thinking, "This person would be a lovely friend." In the case of of this interview of Nye, I did think so.
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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today over at Carol's Corner. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

Poetry Friday: Jack Gilbert

Many years ago, I was in a small workshop led by Jack Gilbert, a lovely poet who died this month at age 87. He was already frail then, and I tremble to think of him living for years with Alzheimer's. Such a lovely man, so spot-on about what did or did not help a poem be at its best. In honor of him, I'm posting this poem for Poetry Friday. You can read more of his work in his critically-celebrated new COLLECTED POEMS, just out this year, and a fine interview with him about "The Art of Poetry" over at THE PARIS REVIEW.

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon
by Jack Gilbert
Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her. The summer mornings begin inch by inch while we sleep, and walk with us later as long-legged beauty through the dirty streets. It is no surprise that danger and suffering surround us. What astonishes is the singing. We know the horses are there in the dark meadow because we can smell them, can hear them breathing. Our spirit persists like a man struggling through the frozen valley who suddenly smells flowers and realizes the snow is melting out of sight on top of the mountain, knows that spring has begun.   -------------------- I've posted a little something about leftovers, longing, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ken Burns, Maria Popova, writing, honesty, usefulness, sandwiches and soup over at my other blog (shared with my writers group) at Books Around the Table. The Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Mary Lee Hahn over at A Year of Reading. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

Poetry Friday: Barley-Corn Thoughts

Walt Whitman - "This is the city and I am one of the citizens...."

Three weeks before an important election, and I have been thinking about participatory democracy, and about how far removed poetry feels from politics. But partly due to a recent trip to New York City (which is a poem  - a multitude of poems - in itself)  I've also been thinking about the most democratic of poets, Walt Whitman - how he embraced life, embraced people, valued them, refused to assign them "high" or "low" status, simply breathed the multitude in. And that man could BREATHE. I wonder what he would think of America in 2012?Would he have been saddened by the devisiveness? Of course, he lived through the Civil War, so he knew a bit about intransigence and combativeness. Just look at the young man in the picture above, and the Walt Whitman of later years. He still seems to have the ability, with that face, to pull you toward him. He still held multitudes. 

If you last read Whitman when you were a student in high school, read "A Song of Myself" again before you vote.

"...for every atom belonging to me, as well belongs to you...''

"In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less...

"I am large, I contain multitudes."

I'll be thinking about these words - about our deep connection to all people - "none more and not one a barley-corn less" than me -  when I cast my ballot in a few weeks.

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by Irene Latham today over at her blog, Live Your Poem. Head over there to see what other people are posting.

Poetry Friday: James Arthur

For Poetry Friday, I offer up this lovely poem by the talented young poet (and my friend, I'm happy to say - we went through the MFA program together at the Univ. of Washington) James Arthur. He read Tuesday night from his new book, Charms Against Lightning, just out from Copper Canyon Press, as part of the Castalia Reading Series at Hugo House in Seattle.

On Day and Night


And as the neighbors' guests retire, coaxing their cars
into the snow (we're gazing through the curtain
into winter's pale hub), two girls gaze up. They're all
going home, like wheels correcting
into steering hands, or drawn breath returning to the air,
but you can't come back to anywhere—there's no perfect here
and there, or now and then—but here we are,
again. A silverfish crosses the windowpane. We peer
into the street, and up at the stranded moon. White wheel,
black field. Black winter, white road. White silence,
black wind. White cars, black wires.

Just look at how he controls sound in this poem, obscuring to the reader's eye the rhymes and near-rhymes while still letting them chime in the ear. In other words, he allows readers to hear the music of the poem (air/there/anywhere, air/are, hub/up, then/again, we're/steering/here/peer, and the bookended rhyme of "retire" in the first line with "wire" in the last line - like the echo of a bell)  without it becoming sing-song.

And I simply love that ending - white/black, black/white, white/black, white/black, the slight crossing of the order of those just once, in the same way black wires seem to cross at one telephone pole and then uncross at the next as you drive down a long highway. This is what good poetry does - the words are evocative on more than one level. They paint the scene (or, in this case, possibly, photograph the scene in black and white) but they mimic the visual pattern found in the scene, as well as the rhythm of the scene - listen to the heavy syllables of those last sixteen words, like tires turning over and over as they come down a road - boom, boom, boom, boom.  In this way, form approximates content.

This is SO much harder to do than it looks - present rhythm and rhyme to a modern reader who has been trained to think formal elements are fusty and archaic - and to do it subtly. It's even harder if you're not just playing a game with the language but you're saying something meaningful, as James is, something with heart. For me, this poem fulfills Ezra Pound's mandate that a poem must appeal to sound (melopoeia), sight (phanopoeia) and mind (logopoeia.)

James Arthur is a poet to watch - just look at the high honors he's already won (taken from his website): "His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, and The American Poetry Review. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, a residency at the Amy Clampitt House, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize...He's currently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton."

Definitely look for this book - it's filled with poems that - well -I'll just admit it: that I would love to have written.
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You'll find the Poetry Friday round-up this week over at Lura Salas's blog, Writing the World for Kids.  Head over there to see what people are posting.   And just in honor of those last lines of James's poem, I'll post this black/white white/black photo of a road in winter: