Tabatha A. Yeatts

Writer

POETRY FRIDAY

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July 2008 | June 2008 | May 2008 | Apr 2008 | Mar 2008 | Feb 2008
Jan 2008 | Dec 2007 | Nov 2007 | Oct 2007 | Sep 2007 | Aug 2007 | Jul 2007 | Jun 2007 | May 2007 | Apr 2007 | Mar 2007

Friday, July 4, 2008

Composer Antonio Vivaldi's violin concertos The Four Seasons were published in 1725. Vivaldi wrote a sonnet to go with each season. You can listen to the music as you read and see how the two complement each other. This is an electric guitar version and here is Willard Scott reading the poem as the music plays. On this NASA site, you can listen to portions of each season and guess which is which.

Summer
By Antonio Vivaldi

Allegro non molto
Beneath this hard season of the burning sun
Man and flocks languish and pines burn;
The cuckoo raises its stuttering voice;
The turtle dove and goldfinch sing in answer.
The sweet Zephyr blows, but is challenged
As Boreas (the north wind) invades his territory.
The shepherd weeps because he fears
The fierce looming storm, and for his destiny.

Adagio e piano - Presto e forte
Depriving his tired limbs of rest
Is fear of lightning and fierce thunder
And flies, large and small
In a furious swarm.

Presto
Ah, his fears are all too true,
Flashes and thunder in the heavens and hail
Dashing the heads from the stalks
Of the ripe grain.

In honor of the 4th of July:

This Land Is Your Land
By Woody Guthrie

This land is your land, This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me, a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Friday, June 27, 2008

First Fig
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths
by Philip James Bailey

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest:
Lives in one hour more than in years do some
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins.
Life's but a means unto an end; that end,
Beginning, mean, and end to all things—God.
The dead have all the glory of the world.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Nobel Prize-winning poet Octavio Paz, who was born in Mexico in 1914.

The Illiterate
By William Meredith

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

William Meredith: "Whatever a poem is up to, it requires our trust along with our consent to let it try to change our way of thinking and feeling. Nothing without this risk. I expect hang gliding must be like poetry. Once you get used to it, you can't imagine not wanting the scare of it. But it's more serious than hang gliding. Poetry is the safest known mode of human risk. You risk only staying alive."

Friday, June 6, 2008

My favorite word that Mr. Eliot rhymes with Macavity has to be "suavity," but I also like "he breaks the law of gravity" and he's a "monster of depravity."

Macavity - The Mystery Cat
by T.S. Eliot

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw--
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air--
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square--
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair--
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office finds a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scap of paper in the hall or on the stair--
But it's useless of investigate--Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
"It must have been Macavity!"--but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, or one or two to spare:
And whatever time the deed took place--MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

~~
Eliot's cat-poem collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats was the inspiration for the musical Cats.

Secondly, I'm going to include a link that is not about Poetry. This new site looks useful, so here it is:

Friday, May 30, 2008

OK, Mike Keith likes a poetic challenge. But as he says here, he also offers a challenge for the reader: "The poem below is a transformation of William Blake’s "The Tyger" via an unusual linguistic constraint. Your challenge is to determine the constraint, given the hint that strict application of the rule will invariably result (as it does here) in a composition containing exactly 109 words."

The first stanza of The Hydra
By Mike Keith

Hydra, hydra, looming bright
(Be calm now, O forest night!),
No man’s art - so plainly, see -
Can ask, know, capture symmetry!

Hercules and the Hydra by John Singer Sargent

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I admit, I did not figure out what he was doing. Don't continue reading if you want to figure it out on your own...

Solution:

"In The Hydra, the first letter of successive words is required to be the same as the first letter of the chemical symbols (in order) in the Periodic Table, thus producing a constrained language that might be called Elemental English."
H H N B B C N O F N S M A S P: Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium, Aluminum, Silicon, Phosphorus, and so on...

Checking in on poetry in England:

• Hear award-winning young slam poets from London.

• Watch Poetry Slideshows on the BBC site. I really enjoyed Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan by Moniza Alvi.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Have you read The Unwritten by W.S. Merwin?

It begins:

Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught

they're hiding

they're awake in there
dark in the dark
hearing us
but they won't come out
not for love for time for fire...

Sixth grader Emily Birnbaum wrote a response to The Unwritten called Longing to be Written:

Inside this paper
Lay trees that
Long to be written on.
It's waited for so long.
Collecting dust in the attic,
It's never been written on.

The pencil won't give way,
In its stubborn way it stays.
So the paper is left sitting,
Full of trees and the long-forgotten stench of factory.
The paper that longs to be written on.

The pencil is full of words,
But the paper is only full of trees.
The pencil is selfish, holding its words inside its slim, yellow body,
Never giving the paper the only thing
It's ever wanted.

Inside this paper
Lay trees that
Long to be written on.

This paper only wants the touch of lead
On its thin, blue lines.
But the pencil won't give way,
In its stubborn way it stays.

Jiyeon Song is an Art Center College of Design student who made a very interesting project called “One Day Poem Pavilion." He took hardboards, cut holes in them at specific angles so over time during the day, the sunlight will cast a poem. Each stanza of the poem lasts for about an hour, and then a new one begins. See One Day Poem Pavilion here.

According to the project description, the holes in the hardboard, "reveal different shadow-poems according to the solar calendar: a theme of new-life during the summer solstice, a reflection on the passing of time at the period of the winter solstice."

Friday, May 16, 2008

This has to be heard to be appreciated:
Television by Todd Alcott.
Mr. Alcott refers to it as a monologue rather than a poem. That brings up an interesting point -- how can you tell the difference when you're listening? Does it make a difference? The Internet Archive describes it as "spoken word."
Hat tip once again to Mlle. Felicite.

Just Thinking
By William Stafford

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot--peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about.

Friday, May 9, 2008

A hat tip to Mademoiselle Felicite for letting me know about Taylor Mali.

Totally like whatever, you know?
By Taylor Mali

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Friday, May 2, 2008

POETRY VIDEOS

Creating visual accompaniment for poems is popular. Here are a few poetry videos:

Humpty Dumpty by Edgar Allan Poe (No, this wasn't really written by E.A. Poe. Someone re-wrote Humpty Dumpty in his style. Just see for yourself.)

Forgetfulness by Billy Collins. This is a popular poem for Poetry Out Loud participants to perform and always a crowd-pleaser.

The Revolution Will Not be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron.

Tuesday 9 a.m. by Denver Butson. I love this poem. This video was made by two 8th graders and won the Shanghai Student Film Festival.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Stanley Cat
By Laura Shovan

Stanley Cat the food critic
Walked into Ed’s Café

Disguised in sunglasses and a wig,
Notebook hidden under his beret.

“I’m sick and tired of fish and fowl.”
He told the waitress, Sue.

She said, “Our specials are spaghetti
And turtle eggs from Timbuktu.”

“Nutritious dishes, sound delicious,”
Stan purred. “Slap some pasta down!”

Sue, the clumsy waitress, slipped.
Stan left with a spaghetti crown.

Stanley Cat by Tabatha Yeatts

Here is a totally cool idea from Education World for making a class Poetry Calendar. Individuals could also make a poetry calendar -- it would be a terrific birthday or holiday gift for a writer/reader/teacher/poetry enthusiast!

Education World's plan:

Arrange students into pairs or small groups and assign each a month. Have students find the names of five poets who were born in his or her group's assigned month, and record on a piece of paper, each poet's birthday and the titles of 1-2 poems by that poet. (Students should read the poems as well.)

Ask students to share with their groups the information they find, eliminating duplicate poets. The goal is to end up with 8-12 unique birthdays per group. Then invite each student to read to the group his or her favorite poem. After listening to the poems, each group should to decide which poet and what image to feature for the month. The image should represent the month (in terms of seasons, holidays, and so on) and the month's poets or their poems.

Friday, April 18, 2008

This week: Poetry for two voices!

Poems can be fun to read together. Getting the rhythm right can be a challenge, but once you get it, it can sound good.

Here's a pretty easy one. (Have you had this conversation before? I have.)

How to hang up the telephone
by Delia Ephron

‘Good-bye.’
‘Bye.’
‘Are you still there?’
‘Are you?’
‘Yeah. Why didn’t you hang up?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I was waiting for you.’
‘I was waiting for you. You go first.’
‘No, you first.’
‘No, you first.’
‘No, you first.’
‘OK, I know. I‘ll count to three and we’ll both hang up at the same time. Ready? One, two, three. ‘Bye.’
‘’Bye.’…
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘What do you mean, me?’
‘OK, do it again. This time for real. One, two, two and a half, two and three quarters, three. ‘Bye.’
‘’Bye.’
‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yeah.’

Teacher Gail Desler has some great ideas for kids studying what World War II was like for Japanese Americans on the West Coast. She suggests reading A Graduation Poem for Two by Stephanie Klose to get a feel for a poem from two different, but sometimes overlapping, view-points.

Then, students can pair up and read copies of Franklin Roosevelt's "A Date Which Will Live in Infamy" speech and An Interview with Marielle Tsukamoto.

In their own words and/or using words from the speech and interview, students use the poetry-for-two-voices format to create a poem on Japanese internment.

Any poet/student could use this idea -- contrasting two points of view in a poem for two voices -- with any historical or current event. Or a situation closer to home.

Here's a Youth Radio podcast of students performing poems for two voices (They also have a podcast of quidditch poems by students who were in a school quidditch tournament!)

Paul Fleishman won the 1989 Newberry Medal for his book Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Margaret Cavendish

Of Many Worlds in This World
by Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673)

Just like as in a nest of boxes round,
Degrees of sizes in each box are found:
So, in this world, may many others be
Thinner and less, and less still by degree:
Although they are not subject to our sense,
A world may be no bigger than two-pence.
Nature is curious, and such works may shape,
Which our dull senses easily escape:
For creatures, small as atoms, may there be,
If every one a creature’s figure bear.
If atoms four, a world can make, then see
What several worlds might in an ear-ring be:
For, millions of those atoms may be in
The head of one small, little, single pin.
And if thus small, then ladies may well wear
A world of worlds, as pendents in each ear.

Poet Trivia:
Margaret Cavendish, a.k.a. the Duchess of Newcastle, wrote one of the earliest examples of science fiction (The Blazing World).

Friday, April 4, 2008

I might use this for Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 17th)...

Friday, March 28, 2008

We've got another song this week. How quickly can you name this tune?

...Have you been half asleep
And have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
Are these the sweet sounds that called
The young sailors?
I think they're one and the same.
I've heard it too many times to ignore it,
There's something that I'm supposed to be.
Someday we'll find it,
The Rainbow Connection,
The lovers, the dreamers and me.

Yes, it's The Rainbow Connection by Kenny Ascher and Paul Williams, most famously sung by Kermit the Frog (Jim Henson), but also performed by Sarah McLachlan, Kenny Loggins, The Dixie Chicks, Justin Timberlake, The Carpenters, Jason Mraz, Willie Nelson, and more. Here's Kermit singing it on YouTube.

Plus, here's a bit of Walt Whitman's Miracles from Leaves of Grass.

WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles...

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass­-
the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

And lastly, an explanation of what is poetry by David McCord:

"Poetry is so many things besides the shiver down the spine. It is a new day lying on a new doorstep. It is what will stir the weariest mind to write. It is the inevitable said so casually that the reader or listener thinks he said it himself. It is the fall of syllables that run as easily as water flowing over a dam. It is fireflies in May, apples in October, the wood fire burning when no one looks up from an open book. It is the best dream from which one ever waked too soon. It is Peer Gynt and Moby Dick in a single line. It is the best translation of words that do not exist. It is hot coffee dripping from an icicle. It is the accident involving sudden life. It is the calculus of the imagination. It is the finishing touch to what one could not finish. It is a hundred things as unexplainable as all our foolish explanations."

Friday, March 21, 2008

This poem from Teaching Tolerance is by teen poet Ashley Thornton.

Building Bridges
by Ashley Thornton

Why does the color of our skin
Affect the world we’re living in?
Many people worked to stop the fight,
The fight between the blacks and whites.
Too bad their dream did not come true,
Bridges ought to be built between me and you.

The Civil Rights Movement
Didn’t end segregation.
I still see it living
All over the nation.
It may not be as blatant as in 1908,
But there’s still a barrier
Between each race.

Many might wonder
About the cause of this grief.
How come both worlds
Will not live in peace?
It is not impossible
Nor an unreachable goal,
For both worlds live
In the depths of my soul.

I am half black, I am half white.
In my heart both worlds unite.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Quote of the week:
To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which all good citizens owe to their country.
~ George Washington

And now a poem:

Watermelons
by Charles Simic

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

From Return to a Place Lit By a Glass of Milk

Mr. Simic is our current U.S. Poet Laureate.

What is a Poet Laureate?

"Laureate" comes from the laurel plant, which in ancient Greece was sacred to the sun god Apollo, and was used to form a crown of honour for poets and other heroes. The word "laureate" came from that to signify eminence or glory.

A Poet Laureate is a poet who is chosen to be honored by a country, state, town, or school for their talents. In the middle ages, England's kings and queens started having personal poet laureates who would compose poems in the royals' honor. In England, poets laureate traditionally receive the title for life; in the U.S., their term is approximately one school year.

In addition to our national poet laureate, there are also state laureates:
Poet Laureates of the individual states

More about Charles Simic:
Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1938 and lived his childhood in the midst of the European battleground of World War II. As he told JM Spalding of The Cortland Review in 1998, “Germans and the Allies took turns dropping bombs on my head while I played with my collection of lead soldiers on the floor. I would go boom, boom, and then they would go boom, boom. Even after the war was over, I went on playing war. My imitation of a heavy machine gun was famous in my neighborhood in Belgrade.” At 15, he moved to Paris with his mother; the next year they joined his father in the U.S.
Becoming a poet in Chicago and New York: Simic’s family settled in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, and he graduated from high school there. He has said that he began to write poems to impress girls: “I still tremble at the memory of a certain Linda listening breathlessly to my doggerel on her front steps.”
from about.com poetry

Lastly, in the spirit of poets writing works for special occasions and political events, here is a link to Maya Angelou's recitation of On the Pulse of Morning at the 1993 presidential inauguration.

Friday, March 7, 2008

The first annual Poem In Your Pocket Day is coming!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you on April 17. You could also add a poem to your email footer, post a poem on your blog or page, or text a poem to friends.

Poem In Your Pocket Day has been celebrated each April in New York City since 2002. Each year, city parks, bookstores, workplaces, and other venues burst with open readings of poems from pockets. Even the Mayor gets in on the festivities, reading a poem on the radio. For more information on New York City’s celebration, visit here.

And here's an excerpt from Happiness by Jane Kenyon. She creates wonderful, surprising images.

...happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon...

Friday, February 29, 2008

A poem about the immortality of art by Robert Louis Stevenson, who, in addition to writing poetry, also authored Treasure Island (1882) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886):

Bright Is the Ring...
by Robert Louis Stevenson

From Songs of Travel

Bright is the ring of words
When the right man rings them,
Fair the fall of songs
When the singer sings them.
Still they are carolled and said --
On wings they are carried --
After the singer is dead
And the maker buried.

Low as the singer lies
In the field of heather,
Songs of his fashion bring
The swains together.
And when the west is red
With the sunset embers,
The lover lingers and sings
And the maid remembers.

Poetry Out Loud is coming! If you live in the D.C. area, pencil this in:

THE 2008 NATIONAL FINALS: APRIL 29, WASHINGTON, DC
The 2008 National Finals will be held at the George Washington University Lisner Auditorium in Washington, DC. Semifinal rounds will take place all-day on Monday, April 28 and the Finals will be held in the evening on Tuesday, April 29. Admission is free and open to the public.

If you live elsewhere, you can still attend your state's finals.

When the Poetry Out Loud participants recite a poem, they own it -- once you've memorized a poem, it's yours.

Here's a short one ... very easy to memorize!

Friday, February 15, 2008

Two flower-inspired poems, just because...

an excerpt from somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
by e.e. cummings

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

THE CROCUSES
by Frances E.W. Harper, 1825-1911.

Though a tremor of the winter
Did shivering through them run;
Yet they lifted up their foreheads
To greet the vernal sun.

And the sunbeams gave them welcome.
As did the morning air
And scattered o'er their simple robes
Rich tints of beauty rare.

Soon a host of lovely flowers
From vales and woodland burst;
But in all that fair procession
The crocuses were first.

First to weave for Earth a chaplet
To crown her dear old head;
And to beautify the pathway
Where winter still did tread.

And their loved and white haired mother
Smiled sweetly 'neath the touch,
When she knew her faithful children
Were loving her so much.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, born to free parents in Baltimore, Maryland, was an African American abolitionist and poet.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Willow Song
by He Zhizhang (659-744, Tang dynasty)

Friday, February 1, 2008

Have you heard of HBO's show Def Poetry Jam?

Here's 18-year-old Sarah Kay performing "Hands."

A bonus...

Invitation
by Shel Silverstein

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in! Come in!

from Where the Sidewalk Ends

Friday, January 25, 2008

It's basketball, basketball, basketball at our house during the winter. So I had to include this poem written by Rachael Kerney when she was in middle school:

Basketball
Rachael Kerney

Why be shopping at the mall,
When you could be playing basketball?
Why be standing still,
When you could be doing basketball drills?
Why be lying in a cot,
When you could be shooting a foul shot?
Why be a cheerleader rooting,
When you could be a basketball player shooting?
Why be sitting in the sun,
When you could be playing one on one?
Why be talking to your sibling,
When you could be in a gym dribbling?
Why be on the couch being lazy,
Because if you don't play basketball, you are crazy!

Friday, January 18, 2008

In honor of the upcoming birthday of a great thinker & brave man, this week's poem is actually from a song, James Taylor's Shed a Little Light:

Let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women
Living on the earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood
That we are bound together
In our desire to see the world become
A place in which our children
Can grow free and strong
We are bound together
By the task that stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound and we are bound

"Everybody can be great because everybody can serve."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

National Poetry Month is April. Teachers, librarians, and booksellers can request a free copy of the 2008 poster here. Posters from past years can be purchased for $5 by the general public here.

Friday, January 11, 2008

It seems as if everyone is familiar with haiku, but fewer people have heard of tanka. Tanka was developed in the late 700s in Japan and consists of five lines -- traditionally the first and third have five syllables, the second, fourth, and fifth have seven.

A haiga is artwork that is accompanied by haiku, but tanka writers have started making "taigas," like this one by Michael McClintock (poem) and Karen McClintock (art).

Some additional information from artist Karen McClintock:

The new movement in modern English tanka over the last 20 or so years has strayed away from the formal syllable counting of the past, with many prominent poets dropping it entirely. Poem lines are still short, and three or five lines, but haiku and tanka is being written in our language with an ear to content, flow, lyric, and expression of idea rather than adhering to a strict pattern of syllables which many poets find too confining. My husband (Michael McClintock) pioneered this movement 40 years ago and thinks it is the future direction of the whole genre in the west.

A bonus...

A haiku by pre-modern Japanese poet Raizan

You rice-field maidens!
The only things not muddy
Are the songs you sing.

It's a double bonus day...I am loving all this wonderful imagery!

Prairie Fires
by Hamlin Garland, 1860-1940

A curving, leaping line of light,
A crackling roar from hot, red lungs,
A wild flush on the skies of night,
A force that gnaws with hot red tongues,
That leaves a blackened smoking sod
A fiery furnace where the cattle trod.

Friday, January 4, 2008

Spellbound
by Emily Brontë,1818-1848

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing dear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Friday, December 28, 2007

A Room Can Say Only So Much
by Cody, 8th grade

The messy room says neatness and order are not important
And the closed blinds say light is not welcome
The autographed footballs say he's a fan
And the jet fighter model on his desk say he's creative

His picture para-sailing shows his bravery
The camouflaged wall color says he has things to hide
The big closet says he's stylish
And the baseball hats say his hair is always 'bad'

The radio shows he has a love for music
The fireman's helmet says he's supportive
The mini-bank shows he is protective
But, he has another room, too

The big bed shows he loves to sleep
The captain's badge says he's a leader
And trophies in his room say he's an athlete
But the room does not make the man.

A bonus...
Rap versions of Chaucer's poetry?
Yes, it's true! But check out Babasword and hear for yourself.

Friday, December 21, 2007

From New Year's by Dana Gioia

The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.

You can read the rest of New Year's here

By JR Sinclair

Friday, December 14, 2007

Oranges by Gary Soto is a great poem about young love.

From Oranges

I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

Read the rest of it here.

A bonus...

Poetry HowTos from About.com

How To Memorize a poem
You memorize because you have to, the poem was written for you & you must make it your own, step-by-step you learn it by heart...

How To Unblock! Write first time, every time!
A list of suggestions to get you writing poems again when you're blocked. About Poetry Guide Bob Holman has lots of ways to unblock, tap your poetic springs, get the poems flowing, write first time, every time.

How To Get started submitting your poems for print publication
A simple step-by-step outline to help you manage the process of submitting your poems for publication.

How To Locate the text of a poem
A simple step-by-step outline of how to find the text of a poem on the Net when you can only remember one line.

Poetry
by Alphonse Mucha, a Czech artist who lived from 1860-1939.

Friday, December 7, 2007

A Winter Solstice poem by Susan Cooper, the author of The Dark is Rising.

The Shortest Day
By Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Friday, November 30, 2007

Snow-Flakes
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Out of the bosom of the Air
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

Even though I don't think of snow as sad at all, I enjoy this poem. Longfellow creates a beautiful image!

Friday, November 23, 2007

Epitaph of John Jack
By Daniel Bliss (1740-1806)

God wills us free; man wills us slaves.
I will as God wills; God's will be done.

Here lies the body of
JOHN JACK
A native of Africa who died
March 1773, aged about 60 years.

Tho' born in a land of slavery,
He was born free.

Tho' he lived in a land of liberty,
He lived as a slave.

Till by his honest, tho' stolen, labors,
He acquired the source of slavery,
Which gave him his freedom;

Tho' not long before
Death, the grand tyrant,
Gave him his final emancipation,
And set him on a footing with kings.

Tho' a slave to vice,
He practised those virtues
Without which kings are but slaves.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Kristine O'Connell George has a great web site with information about her books, poems you can listen to, teacher tips and ideas, and more. Her page about the Amazing Middle School Poetry Quest has this wonderful poem and many others.

Runaway
by Meghan, 5th grade

Orange is the color of the drinking gourd signal,
Grey the pepper that I sprinkle.

Green is the woods that hide me,
Black is the time of day I flee.

Silver is the color of the North Star I follow,
Yellow is the flame in the cabin hollow.

To read the rest, go here.

Friday, November 9, 2007

The Journey of a Leaf
By Ariana, age 12

A golden ship emerges,
from its safe, green home.

Its deck is quiet, vacant
while the wind mans the sails.

The rocking of the ship is slow,
drifting down,
down,
down.

Then the ship comes to a stop,
its long journey is over.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Three Ghostesses
by Author Unknown

Three Little Ghostesses,
Sitting on postesses,
Eating buttered toastessess,
Greasing their fistessess,
Up to their wristessess,
Oh, what beastessess,
To make such feastessess.

from a t-shirt

Friday, October 26, 2007

excerpts from TO A SKYLARK
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

HAIL to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
...

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then -- as I am listening now.

Poetry Friday Bonus

I am fascinated by new poetic forms that people create. So I thought I would include a few links here so you can explore them for yourself:

Author Helen Frost wrote her award-winning novel, The Braid, in a new poetic form which was inspired by Celtic Knotwork. Wow!

About.com: Poetry covers a number of poetic forms, like Fibonacci poems, based on the Fibonacci number sequence. Cool! Gregory K also introduces the "Fib."

Another mathematical form, the Tetractyses

Invent Your Own Poetry Form on Education World

The Rothko

If you know of another new form or if you come up with one yourself, send me information about it.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Another poem by Lilian Moore. I haven't seen an illustrated version of "I Left My Head," but it seems like you could have fun with it.

I Left My Head
by Lilian Moore

I left my head
somewhere
today.

Put it down for
just
a minute.

Under the
table?
On a chair?

Wish I were
able
to say
where.

Everything I need
is
in it.

~~~~~

Did you know?
Back in 1957, Ms. Moore became the first editor of the brand-new Scholastic Arrow Club!

Friday, October 12, 2007

Another water-based poem...

NIGHT
By Dong-Myung Kim

Night is
A lake shrouded in blue fog.
I am a fisherman
On sleep's sailboat,
Fishing dreams.

Friday, October 5, 2007

I love this. It's especially nice read aloud.

Seal Lullaby
by Rudyard Kipling

OH! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

Friday, September 28, 2007

THE GREAT TABLECLOTH
By Pablo Neruda, from "Extravagaria," translated by Alastair Reid

Let us sit down soon to eat
with all those who haven't eaten,
let us spread great tablecloths,
put salt in the lakes of the world,
set up planetary bakeries,
tables with strawberries in snow,
and a plate like the moon itself
from which we will all eat.
For now I ask no more
than the justice of eating.

Friday, September 21, 2007

There Is No Frigate Like A Book
by Emily Dickinson.

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Friday, September 14, 2007

from The Seed Shop
By Muriel Stuart

...Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells a million roses leap;
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

Baby Orang-utan
by Helen Dunmore

Bold flare of orange -
a struck match
against his mother’s breast

he listens to her heartbeat
going yes yes yes

Friday, September 7, 2007

Mulga Bill's Bicycle
by Andrew Barton Paterson

'TWAS Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze;
He turned away the good old horse that served him many days;
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, resplendant to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine;
And as he wheeled it through the door, with air of lordly pride,
The grinning shop assistant said, "Excuse me, can you ride?"
"See here, young man," said Mulga Bill, "from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh, there's none can ride like me.
I'm good all round at everything, as everybody knows,
Although I'm not the one to talk - I hate a man that blows.

"But riding is my special gift, my chiefest, sole delight;
Just ask a wild duck can it swim, a wild cat can it fight.
There's nothing clothed in hair or hide, or built of flesh or steel,
There's nothing walks or jumps, or runs, on axle, hoof or wheel,
But what I'll sit, while hide will hold and girths and straps are tight;
I'll ride this here two-wheeled concern right straight away at sight."

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that sought his own abode,
That perched above the Dead Man's Creek, beside the mountain road.
He turned the cycle down the hill and mounted for the fray,
But ere he'd gone a dozen yards it bolted clean away.
It left the track, and through the trees, just like a silver streak,
It whistled down the awful slope towards the Dead Man's Creek.

It shaved a stump by half an inch, it dodged a big white-box:
The very wallaroos in fright went scrambling up the rocks,
The wombats hiding in their caves dug deeper underground,
But Mulga Bill, as white as chalk, clung tight to every bound.
It struck a stone and gave a spring that cleared a fallen tree,
It raced beside a precipice as close as close could be;
And then, as Mulga Bill let out one last despairing shriek,
It made a leap of twenty feet into the Dead Man's Creek.

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that slowly swam ashore:
He said, "I've had some narrer shaves and lively rides before;
I've rode a wild bull round a yard to win a five-pound bet,
But that was sure the derndest ride that I've encountered yet.
I'll give that two-wheeled outlaw best; it's shaken all my nerve
To feel it whistle through the air and plunge and buck and swerve.
It's safe at rest in Dead Man's Creek - we'll leave it lying still;
A horse's back is good enough henceforth for Mulga Bill."

Australian poet "Banjo" Paterson also wrote "Waltzing Matilda."

Friday, August 30, 2007

The Kraken
by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Friday, August 24, 2007

THOUGHTS ON GETTING OUT OF A NICE WARM BED IN AN ICE-COLD HOUSE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM AT THREE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING
by Judith Viorst

Maybe life was better
When I used to be a wetter.

Friday, August 17, 2007

excerpt of Five Cantos from the Prayer Book of Aphrodite
by Sandra Kasturi

...Love is a chambered nautilus shell
thrown into startled hands
by a devilish sea.

Friday, August 10, 2007

an excerpt from When We Come Home, Blake Calls for Fire
by Nancy Willard

From A Visit to William Blake's Inn

Fire, you handsome creature, shine.
Let the hearth where I confine
your hissing tongues that rise and fall
be the home that warms us all.

I love this entire poem, but I couldn't find a place to link to the rest of it.

A Visit to William Blake's Inn won the Newbery Award in 1982 and it also won a Caldecott Honor Award the same year. It's the only book to win both.

And here's a link about William Blake

Friday, August 3, 2007

Knitted Things
by Karla Kuskin

There was a witch who knitted things:
Elephants and playground swings.
She knitted rain,
She knitted night,
But nothing really came out right.

The rest is located here.

Friday, July 28, 2007

At first, I tried to find a photo or painting to go with this poem. But then I decided that I'd rather just stay with the image the poem gives me than replace it with something else.

Silver
by Walter de la Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

An interesting piece of trivia about this poem is that it was set to music and sung!

Friday, July 20, 2007

Two rather different poems...

To Any Reader
Robert Louis Stevenson

As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

And secondly...

W
by James Reeves

The King sent for his Wise Men all
To find a rhyme for W;
When they had thought a good long time
But could not think of a single rhyme,
"I'm sorry," said he, "to trouble you."

What do you see?

A lily or

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,
The humble sheep a threat'ning horn:
While the Lily white shall in love delight,
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.

The Lily by William Blake

Friday, July 13, 2007

Today we'll take a look at poetry by Eve Merriam (July 19, 1916 - April 11, 1992).

Why I Did Not Reign
by Eve Merriam

I longed to win the spelling bee
And remembered the rule
I had learned in school:

"I before E,
Except after C."

Friend, believe me,
No one was going to deceive me.

Fiercely I practiced, the scepter I'd wield,
All others their shields in the field would yield!

Alas, before my very eyes
A weird neighbor in a beige veil
Feigning great height and weighty size
Seized the reins and ran off with the prize.

Now I no longer deign to remember that rule.
Neither
Any other either.

From It Doesn't Always Have To Rhyme

You can check out Merriam's short and lovely End of Winter at Baseball Almanac.com.

Eve Merriam's How to Eat a Poem

Friday, July 6, 2007

If all the griefs I am to have (1726)
by Emily Dickinson

If all the griefs I am to have
Would only come today,
I am so happy I believe
They'd laugh and run away.

If all the joys I am to have
Would only come today,
They could not be so big as this
That happens to me now.

Friday, June 29, 2007

These Haiku Fortune Cookies sound like a great idea to me. I will have to try this recipe.

I'm not sure where I will come up with the haiku to put in them, but the link above lists some great haiku books. I could also make my own or turn it into a fun family project.

Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku by Paul B. Janeczko and J. Patrick Lewis, illustrated by Tricia Tusa, lives up to its name with haiku like this one:

On Ferris Wheel
I regret French fries, milk shake --
those below agree

Friday, June 22, 2007

Sometimes you can get more out of a poem when you hear it than when you read it. You can wander around these internet sites and have a listen:
Poetry Archive
Internet Archive
I haven't looked into it, but I think anyone can add a poem to the Internet Archive, so you could pick a poem and record it yourself!

And now, for this week's poem:

Isn't it strange some people make
You feel so tired inside,
Your thoughts begin to shrivel up
Like leaves all brown and dried!

But when you're with some other ones,
It's stranger still to find
Your thoughts as thick as fireflies
All shiny in your mind!

What do you see?

A waterfall or

Sunlight streams on the river stones.
From high above, the river steadily plunges—
three thousand feet of sparkling water—
the Milky Way pouring down from heaven.

The Waterfall at Lu-Shan by Li-Po

Friday, June 15, 2007

My senses all are backwards
and it really makes me wonder
if on the day that I was born
somebody made a blunder.

For, strange but true, my senses
all got totally reversed.
Now everything I like the best
is what you'd call the worst.

I only like the smell of things
that frighten other noses.
I love the odor of a skunk.
I hate the smell of roses.

I only like the taste of foods
that cause most folks to shiver.
I hate the taste of chocolate.
I'm crazy over liver.

I'm not too fond of music
but there's simply no denying
I like the sound of honking horns
and little babies crying.

I hate the feel of silky, velvet
softness on my skin.
I much prefer the way it feels
when sitting on a pin.

I hate the look of anything
that's really cute and snuggly.
The things I think are pretty
are what most consider ugly.

So let me tell you one more thing
before I have to go:
I think YOU are the most attractive
person that I know.

Friday, June 8, 2007

Roald Dahl is well-known for writing beloved books, but he also wrote poetry. I like this description from The Poetry Archive of the spot where Mr. Dahl did his writing:

Roald did all his writing in a little hut at the bottom of his garden. It was rather shabby, with an old armchair and photos stuck to the walls, but he liked the peace and retreated there for four hours every day. Roald used a particular brand of pencil and wrote on special yellow (his favourite colour) paper which he ordered from America. He carried on writing right up until he died in 1990 and you can still see the last notes he made in his wastepaper basket if you visit his hut which is now part of the Roald Dahl Museum.

The following poem is one that was never published. Mr. Dahl sent it the year before his death to a a class of students in England in response to their letters.

"My teacher wasn't half as nice as yours seems to be.
His name was Mister Unsworth and he taught us history.
And when you didn't know a date he'd get you by the ear
And start to twist while you sat there quite paralysed with fear.
He'd twist and twist and twist your ear and twist it more and more.
Until at last the ear came off and landed on the floor.
Our class was full of one-eared boys. I'm certain there were eight.
Who'd had them twisted off because they didn't know a date.
So let us now praise teachers who today are all so fine
And yours in particular is totally divine."

One more poem for this week. This poem is from A Child's Anthology of Poetry, Elizabeth Hauge Sword, ed.

Swift things are beautiful:
Swallows and deer,
And Lightning that falls
Bright-veined and clear,
Rivers and meteors,
Wind in the wheat,
The strong-withered horse,
The runner's sure feet.

And slow things are beautiful:
The closing of day,
The pause of the wave
That curves downward to spray,
The ember that crumbles,
The opening flower,
And the ox that moves on
In the quiet of power.

Isn't "in the quiet of power" an excellent ending?

Friday, June 1, 2007

Here's a great idea -- Norwood, a private school in Maryland, has a Poetry Day in May. They say, "On the morning of May 25th, poetry could be heard throughout Norwood’s halls. Sixth graders, many equipped with props and costumes, were dispersed throughout the public areas of the School. As other members of the Norwood community passed by, they activated the performers with a push of a sticker “button.” As always, Poetry Day was delightful for both the audience and the performers." I'll bet it was!

Today's poem comes from the Sung Dynasty:

Take a lump of clay,
Wet it, pat it,
Make a statue of you
And a statue of me.
Then shatter them, clatter them,
Add some water,
And break them and mold them
Into a statue of you
And a statue of me.
Then, in mine, there are bits of you
And in you there are bits of me.
Nothing shall ever keep us apart.

Friday, May 25, 2007

The Entrance Place of Wonders: Poems of the Harlem Renaissance, selected by Daphne Muse, has a great combination of memorable poems and bold, colorful illustrations. I had a hard time picking just one poem to share. I love "Your World" by Georgia Douglas Johnson, "To You" by Langston Hughes, and "The Gift to Sing" by James Weldon Johnson. But for this week, I settled on "Rhapsody" by William Stanley Braithwaite.

I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.

I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.

Friday, May 18, 2007

This is cool! A Harry Potter poetry contest sponsored by Abebooks. Write a Harry Potter-themed poem of any kind by July 6, 2007 and enter to win a one-of-a-kind bookshelf made of HP books! Check it out here.

And now, a poem of mine. I kept thinking about things I hoped would happen, and that got me started about wishes...

A wish,
like a kiss
you blow
and watch swirl away.

It might
spin around the world
and land back
on your cheek.

So light,
you might not
even notice.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Two poems by Gregory K. for your reading pleasure.

DIARY OF A BAD WEEK
by
Gregory K.

Monday: Failed to pay attention...
After school I had detention.

Tuesday: Said things I lamented...
Apologized but was detented.

Wednesday: Won school stairway race!
After school, the same old place.

Thursday: Pulled a classic trick...
Faked an illness; stayed home sick.

Friday: Food fight! Man, what fun!
From the school watched setting sun.

Weekend: This just makes me cry...
I’ve been grounded. Don’t know why.

A poem a day
Keeps the doctor away?
Well, no... but it still doesn’t hurt.

A poem a day
Is quite good anyway,
But it’s still not as good as dessert.

In Mother's Shadow
By Janet S. Wong

I walk behind Mother
through the woods
careful
not to touch the poison oak
she points to with her stick.

You can read the rest of the poem, and even hear the poet read it herself, here

– from The Rainbow Hand: Poems about Mothers and Children

UNTIL I SAW THE SEA
by Lilian Moore (1909-2004)

Until I saw the sea
I did not know
that wind
could wrinkle water so.

I never knew
that sun
could splinter a whole sea of blue.

Nor
did I know before,
a sea breathes in and out
upon a shore.

Friday, April 6, 2007

This old favorite of mine is from Sara Teasdale's The Crystal Gazer:

I shall gather myself into myself again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

With One White Wing by Elizabeth Spires is out of print,
but you can find it in your library or find used copies on A1 Books .

Do you know the answer to the poem-riddle above?
It's a shadow!

Have you ever read/heard Charles R. Smith, Jr.'s sports poems yet?

I've had his "Allow Me to Introduce Myself" go through my head all day before!

If you go to his website and scroll down a bit, you can hear him perform it himself

And then it can go through your head all day, too...

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