April is Poetry Month: Day 25

 Today's poem is by one-time Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) He was 5 years old when Halley's Comet was visible from his birthplace, Worcester, MA. When he was nearly 90, the memory of that encounter. which had been simmering so long, finally emerged as a poem.

Halley's Comet

Miss Murphy in first grade

wrote its name in chalk

across the board and told us

it was roaring down the storm tracks

of the Milky Way at frightful speed

and it it wandered off its course

and smashed into the earth

there'd be no school tomorrow.

A red-bearded preacher from the hills

with a wild look in his eyes

stood in the public square

at the playground's edge

proclaiming he was sent by God

to save every one of us,

even the little children,

"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,

waving his hand-lettered sign.

At supper I felt sad to think

that it was probably

the last meal I'd share

with my mother and my sisters;

but I felt excited too

and scarcely touched my plate.

So mother scolded me

and sent me early to my room.

The whole family's asleep

except for me. They never heard me steal

into the stairwell hall and climb

the ladder to the fresh night air.

Look for me, Father, on the roof

of the red brick building

at the foot of Green Street--

that's where we live, you know, on the top floor

I'm the boy in the white flannel gown

sprawled on this coarse gravel bed

searching the starry sky,

waiting for the world to end.

From: Fooling With Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft, Bill Moyers, William Morrow & Co, 1999.

    For the Harry Potter fans among us, there are all sorts of wizarding items that would be so wonderful to possess; a magic wand, of course, Harry's "cloak of invisibility', various unique modes of travel, and one of my favorites, the Pensieve.  

    You would have to be admitted into Dumbledore's sanctuary, certainly, but once there, you could look into its shallow stone basin filled with a silvery cloud-like liquid/gas and see the memories that had been siphoned into it.

    In our non-magical muggle world, we do not have the Pensieve, but we do have poetry, which Kunitz's used for the same effect in "Halley's Comet".  Though miles and years separated him from that childhood experience and even more miles and years separate him from me--still his experience has now become mine.  I enrich it by pulling in my own experience; an encounter with my parents, a dark summer night and a UFO.  Perhaps I will write about that some time, maybe, it is even now on its way to becoming a poem.

    Looks like Fooling With Words will be added to my reading pile.  Bill Moyers is always engaging, insightful and very readable--or maybe I'll just watch the documentary--there are limits on high my pile can grow! 

April is Poetry Month: Day 24

 

Love Sonnet XCIV

If I die, survive me with such sheer force

that you waken the furies of the pallid and the cold

from south to south lift your indelible eyes,

from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.

I don't want your laughter or your steps to waver,

I don't want my heritage of joy to die.

Don't call up my person. I am absent.

Live in my absence as if in a house.

Absence is a house so vast

that inside you will pass through its walls

and hang pictures on the air

Absence is a house so transparent

that I, lifeless, will see you, living,

and if you suffer, my love, I will die again.

                            Pablo Neruda

From: ten poems to say goodbye, Roger Housden, Harmony Books, 2012.

    April 24 was when our family said goodbye to Amanda, beloved wife of Keith, mother of Hunter, Riley, Ella and Madi.  She was just 4 days shy of her 42nd birthday, taken from us by cancer.  Her funeral attracted hundreds and the memories shared were joyous and reflected the impact of her life, her courage and her love.  The family is strong, numerous and tight.  Her husband is determined to carry on, raising the children and running the farm that she loved so much. Now the living must deal with her absence and hang pictures in the air.  

    This book has so much to offer us through the poems selected.  We are always saying goodbye; to loved ones, to relationships, to our youth, our careers, our once healthy bodies...grief is a frequent companion and too often we do not know what to say, or how to cope.  In the quiet hours of the night, this is one place to turn.

April is Poetry Month: Day 23

https://www.greatbigcanvas.com/view/bald-eagle-perched-on-spruce
-branch-overlooking-the-chilkat-mountains-alaska,2116520/

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

                        Alfred Lord Tennyson

From: The Bird Book, Compiled and edited by Richard Shaw, Warne, 1974.

    Chances are this poem by Tennyson sounds familiar to you.  It is short, yet powerful, and has an identifiable poetic structure; making it ideal for classroom study.  

    Back in the days when memorizing poetry was "a thing" I would have been happy to be assigned this poem and not something by Longfellow (whose poems like the Song of Hiawatha, were indeed long fellows!) 

    It is a two STANZA poem, written in three line groups or TERCETS.  The rhyming pattern is a simple AAA BBB and the rhythm or METRICAL PATTERN is an IAMBIC TETRAMETER. This means that each line contains four sets of two beats, known as METRICAL FEET or IAMBS.  The first is unstressed and the second is stressed. It sounds something like da-DUM, da-DUM.

    Lest you think that I am geekier than you already do,  I found this information on the Poem Analysis website.  This is a fantastic site if you want to look beneath the surface of a poem, and let's face it...there is often a whole hidden universe to be found within a poem's economy of words but wealth of meaning.  

    The Eagle, for example is only 41 words long, including the title, but those few words create a world and an experience. Reading this analysis helped me see how Tennyson was able to accomplish this.  

    This website is a happy discovery for me and I will return to learn more about the poems that confounds me. 

 

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 It is really hard to be a consistent journalist, but I've already posted over 20 times this month and it feels good!  I hope to continue to post regularly.  Next month my focus will be on issues of information literacy...there is so much misinformation out there!  It's like a jungle out there and I want to be your machete to chop your way through and untangle the overgrowth.  Some of that misinformation is so compelling; we want to believe it.  

I still believe that truth is the best way forward.

I'd appreciate your comments and support.  What worries you?  What bugs you?  What confuses you?

There's nothing that I like more than an information challenge!

April is Poetry Month: Day 22

 I still have enough poetry books on my shelves to make it to the end of the month choosing a book and sharing a poem from it, but I'd like to change it up a bit and share a poem I wrote about April.

Morning Run in April, Interrupted by a Sudden Sound. . .

Three geese, 

photo image created on BeCasso
from an original by J. Doolittle

dipping tails into 

a pond of pigment,

rise,

and with broad strokes 

paint sky where there had been none.

More join the canvas

Adding clouds 

and trees--

budding and expectant.

I forget to watch my feet.

Two robins, 

Draw a solid stripe across my path

And settle on the grass,

Green, without a doubt,

Their shadows.

                                Jean Doolittle, 1995

I wrote this while I was in a poetry class and it benefited greatly from the critiques I received.  It began overly verbose and sentimental, but we found that the heartwood was good and pruned it to discover the proper form and shape.  I hope you can feel some of the magical transition that can happen only in spring; a transformation of the land, the life upon it, and ourselves, if we simply open ourselves to the experience.  

April is Poetry Month: Day 21

Florida, Jan 2019, J. Doolittle

What is Poetry? 

What is Poetry?  Who knows?

Not a rose, but the scent of the rose;

Not the sky, but the light in the sky;

Not the fly, but the gleam of the fly,

Not the sea, but the sound of the sea,

Not myself, but what makes me

See, hear, and feel something that prose

Cannot: and what it is, who knows?

                Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

From: Pass the Poetry, Please, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Harper, 1987.  

    This is a book that I used as a teacher and the title inspired me to develop a "poetry menu" as a theme for poetry presentations I made to teachers at retreats and conferences.  It has lots of good ideas for teachers to use in their classrooms.  Rhythm and rhyme, wordplay and imagery, will always have a place in classrooms, at least I hope so.  

    Maybe we can all fit in a little more poetry into our lives...if you look it's all around you...in advertising jingles, playground chants and songs on the radio, and maybe in some neglected books on your shelf.

     I'm attaching a video of Morning Has Broken, sung by Cat Stevens (born Steven Demetre Giorgiou, and now know as Yusuf Islam) The words to this song were written as a hymn by Eleanor Farjeon, the featured poet.  She also wrote a poem that I found myself voicing out loud just tonight as we observed our cat, JJ, sleeping on the window ledge, his head resting on several stones displayed there.

    Cats Sleep Anywhere

Cats sleep, anywhere,

Any table, any chair

Top of piano, window-ledge

In the middle, on the edge,

Open drawer, empty shoe,

Anybody's lap will do,

Fitted in a cardboard box,

In the cupboard, with your frocks--

Anywhere! They don't care!

Cats sleep anywhere.

Percy, exhausted after chasing the computer mouse

Kit Kat "plants" himself in terracotta

April is Poetry Month: Day 20

Bee!  I'm expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday 

To Somebody you know

That you were due--

The Frogs got Home last Week--

Are Settled and at work--

Birds, mostly back--

The Clover, warm and thick--

You'll get my Letter

By the seventeenth; Reply

Or better, be with me--

Yours, Fly

                Emily Dickinson

From: Writing Poetry: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them, David Kirby, The Writer, Inc, 1989.  David Kirby created a fun and accessible book on writing poetry, with lots of examples from noted poets and some of his students as well.  No doubt he's had lots of students in his 54 years at Florida State University and poetry and the teaching of it has given him lots of joy and insight.  

    I chose to feature another Emily Dickinson poem because it seemed so appropriate for our late spring which has been as anxiously awaited as Fly has anticipated Bee's return.  

    Today I introduced 20 little lettuce plants to the great outdoors to harden off for a few hours with hopes that I can put them into the garden this week and have some Black-seeded Simpson leaf lettuce to harvest in early May. (They'll be back outside again tomorrow for a little bit longer)  The winter-sowing  milk jug greenhouses that I set out in February and that spent many weeks buried under snow also have some tiny lettuce seedlings that will go into the garden in a few weeks.  Bee...I'm waiting for you too!