Poetry Friday: I'm Hosting!

This will perhaps be my last ode to autumn.

Or, perhaps not.

I may sing this song into November, as I'm reveling in the glorious golden days we've been having. When our weather is still gorgeous in late October, I think of it, as Helen Hunt Jackson does in this poem, as "one sweet, mad, last hour" and am thankful for days such as these — crisp, crackling, a gift.


October
Helen Hunt Jackson

Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.

(This poem is in the public domain.)

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I'm hosting today!

Leave your links with Mr. Linky, our ever-helpful Poetry Friday assistant. 

Poetry Friday: Mary Oliver's "Song for Autumn"

I can't get off this autumn poetry kick. But why would I want to? Autumn is truly, madly, deeply one of my favorite times of the year.

This poem, by Mary Oliver, has me thinking about what else the leaves might be dreaming of, the trees longing for, and what other whisperings are being exchanged, just out of earshot?

Click through to read "Song for Autumn."

And then be sure to check out all the Poetry Friday goodness at Jama's Alphabet Soup.

Happy Feast of the Inimitable St. Teresa of Avila

Some words from St. Teresa of Avila that I've returned to often:

"Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life ... If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing."

And, of course:

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

And, of course, of course, I love the story of Teresa questioning God's wisdom during a supremely annoying trial and reportedly receiving the reply, "You are my friend. This is how I treat all of my friends." To which Teresa replied, "If this is how you treat your friends, it is not surprising that you have so few of them!"

Poetry Friday: Sending you elsewhere

I've been swamped! Between teaching The Writer's Jungle Online over at Brave Writer, and several other freelance projects (things rise and converge, and always at the same time) I've had a full plate.

I didn't get to Poetry Friday yesterday, but loads of others did. Check out their postings at Reading to the Core.

Poetry Friday: G.M. Hopkins and (the usual suspect) a Gatsby quote

In my usual  melancholy, stop-the-party-I-want-to-get-off   happy-go-lucky way, I'm sharing a Gerard Manley Hopkins heartbreaker.

Aren't I fun in the fall?

But, just in case an existential crisis isn't your thing this morning, I have another beloved autumn offering, a quote I feel compelled to share nearly every, single year:

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

                                                ~~ The Great Gatsby 

I tend to bounce back and forth between mourning for Margaret and rejoicing in the crispness. How about you?

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For this week's round-up, get thee immediately to Library Matters. 

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Spring and Fall
to a young child

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.