Poetry Friday: "Servants" by Faith Shearin

This poem has layers. I'm curious about what reactions it inspires in you — thoughts? I have so many! Let's chat. 

Servants
by Faith Shearin

In college I read about Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton
and I thought of their great minds and their long dresses
and their gilded friendships which involved tea

in the library or on the lawn. I thought of the places
they traveled and the weight of their trunks
and all the ways their marriages did or did not
please them. I thought of the dogs that followed
at their heels and the rooms and gardens they
decorated and the beaches where they

carried umbrellas. But I never once thought of
their servants. I didn’t think of the cook who

....

(Read the rest here.)

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by the lovely Sarah Grace Tuttle. 

Photo thanks to Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: October 10 by Wendell Berry

Here's a short, perfect (and perfectly-timed) autumn poem by Wendell Berry. Serendipitous. 

(Did you know Berry has a new novel out? My copy is winging its way to my house as I type. Thanks, Bookshop.org!) 

October 10

by Wendell Berry

Now constantly there is the sound,

quieter than rain,

of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright

gold, the sycamore limbs

....

(read the rest here.) 

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by 

the marvelous Mrs. B. — Linda at TeacherDance. 

(Photo thanks to Pixabay.)

Poetry Friday: Writing tritinas

Tanita Davis* shared the latest Poetry Peeps challenge: 

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of September! Here’s the scoop: We’re going to take up the challenge of tritina. Invented by poet Marie Ponsot, this less restrictive younger sibling of the sestina uses three repeated words to end three tercets. The order of word-endings for the tercets are 123, 312, 231, with a final line acting as the envoi, featuring all three words in the 1-2-3 order used in the first stanza. Additionally, we’re continuing with our theme of poetry in conversation, in whatever way that is individually defined. Sound a little tricky? Maybe? Are you still in? 

I'm in! 

I'd never written a tritina, and had no idea what I wanted to focus on. I sat down with my notes (123, 312, 231...) and thought, "But what kind of conversation?" 

An image of a young student and teacher came to mind, so I rolled with the idea of a literal conversation about poetry. Here's the draft I came up with this week: 

Making Room 

“I do not like this stuff — poetry!” said
the boy in the back of the room.
“It’s stupid, so I don’t read it.”

The teacher nodded. “But if you never read it,
how do you… know?” she said. 
Reticence in the room.

Then shifting. Glancing. A crackling room.
“I read a poem once, okay? And I hated it.
But, I could, I guess…try again?” he said.

“I mean, maybe,” he said softly, “there’s room for it.”

I played around with a variety of line-ending words and tinkered for a while with room/nodded/know, but I couldn't stick the landing on that draft. (Why am I using a gymnastics metaphor? I was never even good at somersaults.) I liked where that draft was going, but there's still something too wispy about it. I'll get back to you if I stick the landing on it, or nail the dismount, or figure out where these metaphors are coming from. 

In the meantime, the Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by the marvelous and inspiring Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm. 

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* Tanita's newest book, Berry Parker Doesn't Catch Crushes, just landed in the world! (And it's sitting on my nightstand, right now, waiting for me to start reading it tonight. Huzzah!) It's the latest in a long line of middle grade and YA goodness from Tanita, and I can't wait to dive in. 

Photo thanks to Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: "The Patience of Ordinary Things"

The world is an extraordinary dumpster fire right now and it leaves me longing for something ordinary. Ordinary time, ordinary things, ordinary annoyances, ordinary pleasures. Ordinary, calm, boring, moments. 

Pat Schneider understands. Take an ordinary moment to sink into the dose of sanity she offers. 

The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience

....

(Read the last few lines here.)   

The round-up this week is being hosted by the ever-wonderful Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: I’m Hosting, and we're having conversations with poems (or in my case, with a poet)

I was out of town last week and missed Poetry Friday but I wouldn't dare duck out today — I'm your host!

Last month, the inimitable Tanita Davis shared the August challenge:

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of August! Here’s the scoop: If poetry is a love letter to readers, this month, we’re writing back. Using Nikki Giovanni’s “Talk to Me, Poem, I Think I Got The Blues” as a mentor verse, we’re writing poetry directly in conversation with a poem. Whether you talk back directly to Ms. Giovanni’s work, or choose another poems to pass notes to is up to you, as is length and form. Are you in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on August 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope all of you will join the fun!

I cheated a little and broadened the rubric: I'm in conversation with a poet (and a smattering of her poems) rather than addressing my plea to a single selection. I couldn't wait to talk to Emily Dickinson and ask her to reveal her secrets. Even though I'm nobody, I knew she would indulge me. She hasn't written me back, but I'm a patient correspondent. 

(The lines in italics are either taken directly from Dickinson's poems, or are a rearrangement of her words.) 

Talk to Me, Emily D.  

(with thanks to Nikki Giovanni) 

"In this short life that only lasts an hour

How much—how little—is within our power."

            ~ Emily Dickinson 

I have a few questions, Miss Dickinson. 

(May I call you Emily? I’m nobody, but 

I feel like we’re friends.) 

I have questions, Emily. 

The first is the easiest 

and also impossible. 

How do you do it? 

How much—how little—do you do?

Do you dream a poem? 

Does it waft in, fully formed, 

gorgeous in its shape and complexity? Or, 

does it hover tantalizingly near you, 

a shape-shifting cloud 

informing image and imagination? 

 

Or is it baking that inspires 

the rising of precise words? 

While your hands are kneading, 

is your inscrutable mind churning? 

Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves—

Is the secret, instead, 

in the scent of gingerbread? 

You dwell in possibility but in 

the impossibility of this world too, 

its planks of reason broken. 

Still. 

Still, you conjure 

that Stop-sensation on my Soul, 

and Thunder in the Room. 

Talk to me, Emily D.

How much—how little— do you do, 

do you know? 

Dazzle me gradually with your truth. 

~ Karen Edmisten 

References: 

• "How much—how little—" (from "In this short Life that only lasts an hour," 1292)
• "I’m Nobody" (from "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" 260) 
• "I dwell in Possibility" (466)
• "planks of reason broken" (adapted from “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain," 340: "And then a Plank in Reason, broke,")
• "that Stop-sensation on my soul and thunder in the room" (from “I got so I could take his name,” 293) 
• "Dazzle me, gradually, with your truth" (adapted from “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” (1263): "The Truth must dazzle gradually/Or every man be blind—")

Mr. Linky awaits your dazzling contributions this week. Thanks for sharing in the conversation. 

Photo courtesy of Pexels. 

Poetry Friday: "Tonight I Am In Love" by Dorianne Laux

Happy Poetry Friday! 

This lovely love poem to poetry and poets sings for itself: 

Tonight I Am In Love
by Dorianne Laux

Tonight, I am in love with poetry,
with the good words that saved me,
with the men and women who
uncapped their pens and laid the ink
on the blank canvas of the page.

I am shameless in my love; their faces
rising on the smoke and dust at the end
of day, their sullen eyes and crusty hearts,
the murky serum now turned to chalk
along the gone cords of their spines.

I’m reciting the first anonymous lines
that broke night’s thin shell: sonne under wode.

....

(Read the rest here.) 

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The Poetry Friday round-up is hosted this week by Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

Poetry Friday: "Reading to My Kids" by Kevin Carey

Reading aloud to my daughters is a part of their childhood that I remember with deep and iridescent affection. And since we homeschooled, we read aloud almost every day, almost every evening, almost all the time. I loved it, they loved it. Certainly, on days when my voice gave out, or I was tired or crabby, it wasn't perfect, but it was always there: part of our rhythm, our breath. Our bookish hearts craved it, and thanks to those days and that practice, we share a galaxy of sparkling memories. 

So, this poem by Kevin Carey not only spoke to me, it jumped up and down, waved its arms, and said, "Listen! Yes! I get it." ❤️

Reading to My Kids
by Kevin Carey

When they were little I read
to them at night until my tongue
got tired. They would poke me
when I started to nod off after twenty pages
of Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket.
I read (to them) to get them to love reading
but I was never sure if it was working
or if it was just what I was supposed to do.
But one day, my daughter (fifteen then)
was finishing Of Mice and Men in the car
on our way to basketball.
She was at the end when I heard her say,
No, in a familiar frightened voice
and I knew right away where she was.

....

(Read the rest of this short jewel here, at The Writer's Almanac.) 

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Head to Molly Hogan's place, Nix the Comfort Zone, for this week's poetry round-up. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: "Four Directions to the Zoo" by Lizbeth, age 10

We hit the zoo yesterday. If you've never been to the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, you must — youmustyoumustyoumust — go if you're ever anywhere near Omaha. It is consistently ranked best, best, best. Their conservation efforts are admirable, and the zoo foundation's mission is to preserve and protect wildlife all over the world. I love our zoo. 

I went looking for a zoo poem and from Poets.org comes this delightful little piece:

Four Directions to the Zoo 

by Lizbeth, 10

826 NYC 

1. Take a big train

2. Stop at a smelly subway station

3. Take the stairs to the big zoo

4. Open the smelly door and see lots of animals 

Written in Response to "Five Directions to My House" by Juan Felipe Herrara 

~~~~~~~~~~

I hope Lizbeth had a marvelous day at the zoo. I love the idea of using "Five Directions to My House" as a prompt (need to file that idea and play with it) and love Lizbeth's take on it here. 

I didn't have to take a big train to get to the zoo, but one thing is universal: it's all happening at the zoo. 

P.S. 

I must disagree with my beloved Simon and Garfunkel. I've never met an insincere giraffe and elephants are kindly, but they are not dumb. Please, boys. 

Be sure to head over to Jane Whittingham's for the Poetry Friday round-up today. 

Poetry Friday: "Great Things Have Happened" by Alden Nowlan

Do you need to take a beat? Are you longing to sink back in time to a snapshot — both tiny and enormous — of your past? 

Then I give you this lovely poem by Alden Nowlan. 

May you have a Friday of Great Things. 

Great Things Have Happened
by Alden Nowlan

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived

who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

....

(Read the rest here, at The Writer's Almanac.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

Marcie Flinchum Atkins has the Poetry Friday round-up this week.  

Photo thanks to Pixabay.

Poetry Friday: "Fireflies" by Frank Ormsby

Do you call them lightning bugs or fireflies? 

Glow worms? 

Something else? 

Whatever you call them, they've probably provided you with a little wonder and a lot of enchantment. I've always been charmed and intrigued by these tiny summer lanterns. As poet Frank Ormsby asks, "What should we make of fireflies, their quick flare/of promise and disappointment, their throwaway style?" 

And just in case you want to know more than you ever thought you'd be able to learn about lightning bugs, I'll point you (just follow the glowing lights) to one of my favorite podcasts, Alie Ward's Ologies. This episode is all about lampyridology. As always happens when I listen to Ologies, I had no idea that I wanted to know this much about the subject at hand. I'm always completely sucked in by each episode and end up sharing fascinating factoids over dinner. ("You will not believe how disgusting baby lightning bugs are! They basically hunt in packs!"*)

* See page 7 of the transcript for the horrifying, funny, interesting conversation about these predatory babies. 

And now, back to something not disgusting and not horrifying: this week's poem. 

Fireflies
by Frank Ormsby

The lights come on and stay on under the trees.
Visibly a whole neighborhood inhabits the dusk,
so punctual and in place it seems to deny
dark its dominion. Nothing will go astray,
the porch lamps promise. Sudden, as though a match
failed to ignite at the foot of the garden, the first squibs
trouble the eye. Impossible not to share
that sportive, abortive, clumsy, where-are-we-now
dalliance with night, such soothing relentlessness.
What should we make of fireflies, their quick flare
of promise and disappointment, their throwaway style?
....
(Read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.)

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The Poetry Friday round-up can be found this week at Bookseed Studio. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: “Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant” by Billy Collins (and other thoughts on aging)

Last week, Tabatha, who happens to be the host of today’s Poetry Friday round-up, mentioned the poem she once wrote for me during a Summer Poem Swap. She touched and delighted me with “Imaginary Billy and I Discuss the Founding Documents.” And since I’m always delighted by the charming Mr. Collins, and since I’m working my way through one of his books for my morning poetry reading, it's only fitting that I share another bit of Billy for this week’s post. 

This one makes me think about how much we get wrong about “old people.” The older I get, the more I see (and experience for myself) the way we lump people of a certain age into a supposedly homogenous group. Elderly. Aged. Retired. Senior citizen. 

From my own experience of getting older, I know that “old people” are just people. People who have been on the planet for a particular amount of time. People who are funny, interesting, boring, grumpy, effervescent, insightful, ignorant, and all manner of wide-ranging personalities. They are people whose bodies keep surprising and betraying them, and believe me, they don’t like it anymore than anyone else does. (Not that I’d know this from personal experience, except, yes, I know this from personal experience.) In August of 2022, when we adopted our kitty, Maisy, the young woman at the animal shelter said, “And since you are over 60, you get the ‘elderly discount’ on the adoption fee.” This is me in 2022: 

And this was my expression when she told me I was elderly: 

I hadn’t felt that old since 2008, when Ramona was five years old and I shared this blog post: 

Anyway. 

I’ll grant you that my hair has gotten grayer in the last three years (what is with that hair at our temples?!) since that visit to the animal shelter, though I still don’t dye it as I’ve always thought coloring it would be too much trouble. But I still don’t feel elderly. I’m like the old man in the Chinese restaurant that Charming Billy introduces us to in this poem. For the most part, I’m livin’ my best life. 

Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant
by Billy Collins 

I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world
and with only a book for a companion.
He'll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour
soup is here at Chang's this afternoon
and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

….

(Read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.)

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Visit Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference for the full round-up of poetic goodness this week. 

Poetry Friday: "There are No Kings in America" by Aileen Cassinetto

This week, Mary Lee Hahn, at A(nother) Year of Reading, is hosting an "Independence Day Roundup of Protest and Praise for This Complicated Country We Call Home." Mary Lee shares a powerful original piece entitled "America."

I didn't get any new writing done this week, but I'm sharing a powerful and timely poem from Aileen Cassinetto, "There are no kings in America," which was first published in 2020.* I've included some excerpts here but be sure to read the whole thing. (Link below.) 

There are no kings in America
by Aileen Cassinetto

we are not that kind of country.
We are sanctuary for the hungry,
the homeless, the huddled,
held together by an idea
our immigrant fathers believed in.

....

To be an American is to
recognize the sacrifice
of the widow and the orphan;
it is to understand the weft of tent
cities expecting caravans,
and the heft of a child in a camp
not meant for children, or sitting
before a judge awaiting judgement.
What do we say to the native
whose lands we now inhabit?
What do we say to our immigrant
fathers who held certain truths
to be self-evident?

.... 

(Read the whole poem here, at Poets.org.) 

* ETA: On Cassinetto's website, she notes that she first presented this poem publicly on July 9, 2019. She writes:

On July 9, 1776, General George Washington ordered the Declaration of Independence to be read aloud to members of the Continental Army in New York. This poem, written in 2019, is a commentary on immigration, and how our actions compare with the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress.

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Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: The Poetry Peeps are writing Raccontinos! (And so am I!)

The challenge: 

Last month, Tanita (who also happens to be this week's Poetry Friday host) said: 

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of June! Here’s the scoop: We’ll going to write a couple of couplets and make a Raccontino. Never heard of the form? No worries. If you can count to two, you can play with this delightful form. Of course, we’re turning our faces to the winds of ‘conversation,’ as always. Are you in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on June 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope you’ll join the fun!

I haven't joined in on a poetry challenge for a while. (Was it last October? Really?!) When I sat down today, waffling over what to post for Poetry Friday, I remembered the month-end challenges. 

"Didn't Tanita say something about couplets last month?" I said. 

"The Raccontino sounds so easy!" I said. 

"It'll be fun!" I said. 

(It was not easy.)

But it is always — in its twisted way — fun to write, even when writing is torture. (As Thomas Mann said, "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.") 

So, the Raccontino. The poem must:

• be composed of any number of couplets 
• have even-numbered lines sharing the same end rhyme
• have the title and final words of odd-numbered lines telling a story

Because the Poetry Peeps are exploring the theme of being "in conversation," I chose conversations within marriage. The story I came up with was: 

"In Marriage, conversation is sometimes lively, sometimes sweetly silent." 

I started with that, and then had to work on the rhyming lines. Not easy, but pretty satisfyingly fun in the end. 

In Marriage

We're having another conversation
and this is how it goes. 

He, angry at the state of the world, is 

enumerating his (and my—he knows me so well) woes. 

We stop, we sigh, we know sometimes

that this is how it goes. 

We'll share the angst, trade lively 

plans for how to conquer foes. 

But other times, sometimes, 

(oftentimes, many) far more on the nose 

is the deftly perceived shared glance, the sweetly

invisible current that flows 

from him to me, me to him. Silent, 

more electric than life. This is how it goes. 

~ Karen Edmisten 

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Visit Tanita for the Poetry Friday round-up, including links to all the Poetry Peeps 

who joined in the challenge. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: "The Summer You Read Proust" by Philip Terman

Should this be the summer I finally read Proust? 

I must confess that this theater major-turned-English major (oh, and I threw a philosophy minor in there my senior year, just before I dropped out in existential misery, with no job prospects in sight) has — yikes! — never read Proust. I did, however, end up with several jobs through the years that admirably put my acting/writing/philosophical skills to work. So. There's that. Nothing is ever wasted, kids.

I can't remember when or how I stumbled across this short and as-perfect-as-a-well-baked-Madeleine poem by Philip Termin. I found it this week in my "Poetry Friday Possibilities" file and it really, really makes me want to read Proust. (Or maybe I just can't get Madeleines and/or Proust off my mind since reading Jama's last Poetry Friday post.) 

The trouble, of course, is that I also really, really want to get through my never-ending, already-teetering TBR stack. But the other trouble is that I read a piece in Lit Hub called "Six Reasons Why You Must Read Proust" and now I want to read Proust. (One of Lit Hub's reasons: "If you are or are considered a human, you must and you can read Proust." Well, then. I'm generally considered to be a human, so apparently Proust is going on my TBR list, if not yet on the literal, teetering stack.) 

But another trouble is that I'm such a mood reader! If I start Proust and I'm not in the mood for Proust all summer long, well, then what kind of catastrophe will befall me and my reading life? (Can you tell I was a theater major? I have to inject drama into everything. Imagine my painfully contorted face as I strive to convey the urgency of this dilemma to you, dear reader!) 

Are there any other problems? Honestly, it's probably nothing a Madeleine can't cure. I can tell you (with no drama) that there is not a single problem with this short and lovely poem. Read it, savor it as you would a buttery Madeleine, and then ponder with me your relationship with Proust. And please, please, please let me know what you've done about Marcel, or what you plan to do, won't you? 

The Summer You Read Proust
by Philip Terman

Remember the summer you read Proust?
In the hammock tied to the apple trees
your daughters climbed, their shadows
merging with the shadows of the leaves
spilling onto those long arduous sentences,
all afternoon and into the evening—robins,
jays, the distant dog, the occasional swaying,

....

(Read the rest here at The Writer's Almanac.) 

P.S. Atticus found our copy of Swann's Way for me, so I guess it is going on the literal, teetering stack. :) 

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is at The Apples in My Orchard. 

Photo thanks to Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: Hayden Carruth, "I Could Take"

Last week I mentioned Wendell Berry's poetic tribute to Hayden Carruth, so this week I'm sharing some Carruth poetics. This one's for Atticus, because we are indeed "two imperfections that match." 

I Could Take
by Hayden Carruth

I could take
two leaves
    and give you one.
Would that not be
a kind of perfection?

But I prefer
one leaf
    torn to give you half
            showing

(after these years, simply)

....

(Read the last few lines here.) 

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by 

Buffy Silverman. 

Photo thanks to Nika Akin, Pixabay.