Poetry Friday: "Advice to Writers" by Billy Collins

Recently, when I should have been writing, I did some cleaning instead. (Oh, you know this tired tale, don't you, Other Writers? I know you do.)

In this episode of "Writers Love to Procrastinate and Claim it's a Valid Step in the Process," I ditched mops, feather dusters, and closet organization for some intense digital clean-up. I tidied my blog and my website.

(They needed it. Really. This wasn't entirely procrastination. Ahem.) I created a new banner, spiffed up the sidebar info, changed my profile picture. (If I look particularly happy in the new one, it's because I was seeing Wicked with one of my daughters—again—on this past 4th of July. We had a fabulous day. And what an apt day it was for Wicked, that tale of injustice, discrimination, the power of friendship, and the necessity of fighting an oppressive, authoritarian regime. Happy 4th! But I digress.) I started thinking about Billy Collins's poem, "Advice to Writers." I always laugh at, "Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way./Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration." 

Would that it were so, O Poetry Gods! 

Advice to Writers

by Billy Collins 

Even if it keeps you up all night,
wash down the walls and scrub the floor
of your study before composing a syllable.

Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.
Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.

The more you clean, the more brilliant
your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take
to the open fields to scour the undersides

....

(Read the rest here, at The Marginalian.)

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by the lovely Linda Baie at TeacherDance. 

Photo courtesy of Michal Jarmoluk at Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: Wendell Berry, Rest in Peace

                                                           

first published in the May, 1970 issue of Poetry magazine

"Having worked/I would sleep..." 

Having worked — so hard, for so long, for so many — may he sleep with and in the deepest peace, knowing that he brought so much beauty to the world. 

Wendell Berry (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026), in addition to his many poems and powerful essays, wrote some of the most beautiful novels I've ever encountered. Here's what I said, ten years back, about Hannah Coulter: 

I finished Wendell Berry's Hannah Coulter last week and discovered for myself why my friends, when the title comes up, gasp and seem to rise from the planet for a moment as they relive their own experiences of reading it. When they circle back down to earth and are able to speak again, they always mention underlining, highlighting, and the lyrical beauty of the writing. 

They are right. And I have joined their ranks. 

Title character Hannah Coulter, now in her 70s, is looking back over the years of her life. Hannah shares her history with us in prose that is both simple and reflective. I don't think it's a spoiler to share this passage, which comes very early in the book:  

When you are old you can look back and see yourself when you were young. It is almost like looking down from Heaven. And you see yourself as a young woman, just a big girl really, half awake to the world. You see yourself happy, holding in your arms a good, decent, gentle, beloved young man with the blood keen in his veins, who before long is going to disappear, just disappear, into a storm of hate and flying metal and fire. And you don't know it.

My copy, with its creased but lovely cover, is full of such underlinings. I read with pencil in hand, marking passage after passage, ripe plums that I wanted to preserve and remember forever. I read Hannah quickly and slowly: flying through the pages, but savoring the words of a world that has passed into memory.

 

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being 

hosted by the incomparable Patricia Franz at Reverie. 

Poetry Friday: We're doing haiku sonnets!

 Last month, Tanita Davis shared the details: 

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to join our August poetry challenge!

Here’s the scoop: this month, we’re doing haiku…sonnets. If your response is a baffled “What?” no worries. Basically four 3-line haiku plus a couplet of either 5 or 7 syllables equals the traditional 14 lines you’ll find in a sonnet. If you haven’t written a sonnet, or “little song” in a minute, Folger has a Shakespearean guide, while the Poetry Foundation has the deets on other forms. Are you in? Good! Start today so you can be ready to share August 28th in a blog post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. See you then!

__________________________________________________________________________

So, as usual, I got to work right away. 

Oh, wait, no. 

I didn't. 

I checked my planner yesterday and found the note I'd made: "Tanita's August Poetry Challenge — post on Aug. 28th." 

Ummm ... okay. So, this morning I got to work. 

I don't know if this is haiku, or if it's a haiku sonnet, or if I should've tried to nail down some iambic pentameter (I guess not? Because ... haiku?) Anyway, I just started in on something I've been thinking about a lot lately — the way that, when your kids grow up, they begin drifting in and out of your house in varying patterns. (College, staying with friends, traveling to see the long-distance boyfriend, moving to a new town after getting married, coming home and sleeping under your roof again for a holiday gathering...) As a mom, I have never stopped waking up and asking myself, "Where are my daughters today?" 

Here's the haiku sonnet I came up with. 

Counting heads

Karen Edmisten 

Being a mother, 

someone said, is counting heads.

Where is everyone? 

Easy when they’re five.

They are all at home, of course.

Yard, kitchen, their room. 

Adult kids, new phase. 

I wake up, reorient 

to each day’s difference. 

Who’s under my roof?

Is anyone traveling?

Is everyone safe? 

Counting their heads never ends. 

I count each head in my heart. 

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Marvelous Mona Voelkel has the Poetry Friday round-up today. 

Poetry Friday: "End of Summer"

Do you mind a rerun? (It's been that kind of week, and this little poem is appropriate for the moment.) 

While out walking yesterday, I was positively pelted by small, leaping demons. Some might call them "grasshoppers" but this week — when they're in the middle of their annual August hysteria — I'm calling them "the things that torture me on my walk and make me startle a greater number of times than I did when I watched The Shining." 

I don't like flicking them off my face. 

(Thankfully, they only hit the face target once.) 

Happy August! 

Summer's End
by Karen Edmisten

August, morning walk.
The grasshoppers' pole vaulting, 
a season shifting.

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by the charming and wonderful Denise Krebs at Dare to Care. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: "Trying to Write a Dog Poem in a House with Two Cats" by Billy Collins

Four years ago this week, we adopted Maisy from the animal shelter. 

She was basically a pre-schooler: 

Tiny Maisy

Now, of course, she has matured and become a responsible adult: 

The work is never done

In honor of four years with this near-perfect tabby (and with a tip of the hat to her admirable work ethic), I'm dedicating this week's Poetry Friday post to her. 

To Maisy! {clink!} 

To Billy Collins! {clink!} 

To cat poetry! {clink, clink!} 

Trying to Write a Dog Poem in a House with Two Cats
by Billy Collins

From a couch
littered with throw pillows

they are staring at me
and my open notebook,

and even though their tails
are not twitching

and their secret inboard
motors are not audible,

I know they are assuming
in unison

that I am writing
yet another dog poem

....

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by marvelous Molly at Nix the comfort zone. 

Poetry Friday: "Days" by Philip Larkin

I've taken some days off from the blog (not that I spend that many days on the blog...) but I'm back. I've been busy with some writing — a couple of stories for little kiddos are out on submission, and I'm working on a picture book manuscript. (In some ways, writing my 30,000+ word non-fiction books for grown-ups was so much easier than writing a picture book. Not that I would have said so at the time, when I wrote them under deadlines, right?) 

The intricate maneuvering required for any kind of writing — placing precisely the right words into carefully allotted spaces — is a mad skill. One day you feel like you've mastered it. Two days later, you wonder why anyone ever trusted you with a pen or a keyboard. 

Philip Larkin nailed the skill when he wrote this ten-line poem. I wonder if two days later he thought it was all a dumpster fire? 

Days
by Philip Larkin

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.

....

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

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The rare and wonderful Ruth is hosting Poetry Friday at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

Poetry Friday: "On Days Like This" by Rudy Francisco

from Button Poetry 

My youngest daughter introduced me to Rudy Francisco.
And I ask you: What would we do without daughters? 
Without poets?
Without the beauty of the spoken word? 

"Being human is difficult. 

Being a good human is even harder. 

But it's still something I would like to accomplish." 

~ Rudy Francisco 

Here's Rudy Francisco, sharing "On Days Like This":   

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Jill Dailey has the Poetry Friday round-up today. 

Poetry Friday: "I love you. I'm glad I exist." (Wendy Cope's "The Orange")

The Orange
by Wendy Cope 

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange –
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave –
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do

....

(Read the last few lines and/or hear the poem read aloud here.) 

Wendy Cope talks (only a wee bit) about the origins of the poem here. 

and now I want the pin.

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

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. 

Poetry Friday: "A Dangerous Adventure" by James Tate

I was cleaning out files yesterday and found a typed copy of James Tate's poem, "A Dangerous Adventure." I had forgotten about this poem, and that's astonishing because who could forget a poem that begins:

The woman I love is typing in a nearby room.

Clippity clippity clippity clippity, then silence.

Today I went hunting for it online because now it had to be my Poetry Friday pick. (He had me at clippity.) It was a bit of a scavenger hunt, with my first search result landing on a page that told me this: 

Wait. Full Poem Text Available at ...  Jama's blog?! Perfect. I headed over there. 

The post from Jama, written in 2009, began like this: 

Ummm, if it hadn't already been obvious that I needed to share the Tate poem, this coincidence clinched it. I mean, really, friends. Marvel with me. I randomly stumble on a poem in my files, follow a bread crumb trail, am led to a Poetry Friday friend's post — FROM 2009  — that specifically refers back to a post of mine ... and to TODAY'S POETRY FRIDAY HOST, TRICIA (yes, I'm screaming) and I'm NOT gonna share about it? 

Well, of course I am. 

And at the same time, please marvel with me at the beauty and endurance of this Poetry Friday community. I've been on this ride with you all for nearly twenty years. We post, we read, we share, we comment, we forget who-posted-what-or-when and it's all good because it's all about poetry and friends. The people of Poetry Friday are typing in nearby rooms — clippity, clippity, clippity, clippity — and I love every single one of you. 

A Dangerous Adventure 

by James Tate 

The woman I love is typing in a nearby room.

Clippity clippity clippity clippity, then silence.

She’s thinking, like a jaguar, or a dagger.

Words but more than words. Currents, hairpin

turns. It’s scary but exciting. It’s like dancing

on a precipice or sleeping under a waterfall.

She doesn’t know the way home but she’s running

and leaping over chasms in the earth, and she’s singing too,

in a foreign language she’s never heard spoken.

But the melody is one I’ve known all my life.

....

(Read the rest here, at Jama's blog, and kindly applaud 

her husband Len for his forever-support of a wife 

who types in a nearby room.) 

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted (of course) by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

Poetry Friday: A.E. Stallings

This poem struck me because it touches on two things I've thought about high school: 

1. Those days so far removed from the person I am now that they may as well have occurred in the Mesozoic Era. 

2. There are white-hot memories I can call up in a matter of seconds. 

Life, it seems, is a series of eras, periods, and ages that are constantly shifting, rearranging, being integrated, and viewed anew. 

This is such a good poem, and the final line is a killer.  

Written on the eve of my 20th high school reunion, 

which I was not able to attend

by A.E. Stallings 

    For the Briarcliff High School class of 1986


Just what I needed,
Just when the dreams had almost totally receded,

The dreams of roles for which I learned no lines and knew no cues,
Dreams of pop quizzes with no pants on and no shoes,

Just when I understood I was no longer among
Those ephemeral immortals, the gauche and pitiable young,

Suddenly come phone calls, messages sift out of the air
To ask who will be there:

Names I haven't given a thought to in a score
(A score!) of years, and names I used to think about but don't much anymore,

And those I think of all the time and yet
Have lost somehow like keys to doors I've closed, and some I have tried to forget—

....

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

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The Poetry Friday round-up is hosted this week by Buffy Silverman.

Photo courtesy of elizabethaferry at Pixabay.