Even though I have been a poll attendant and majored in political science, I am no longer among the voting populace.
I cannot keep voting for Republicans who claim they represent Christian values-yet value War and unfiltered Capitalism.
I cannot vote for Democrats (though I remained registered as one) because their openness to the value of life begins only once birth has taken place.
If I do anything political in my life, it will be to urge fellow Democrats (people who want to avoid war and who believe that helping your neighbor is the way of Christ) to write their Congressmen and request that they value pro-life measures.
If you are a Democrat-write your Congressmen and ask them to support pro-life measures. If you have to-tell them that you will vote Republican if they refuse to vote for pro-life measures-or-if you prefer to not vote at all-tell them so.
Silently not voting gets nothing done.
Good luck!
1 comment November 10, 2009
I’m writing a book and will be offline for a few weeks.
Sorry I haven’t been posting.
Thanks for reading!
Add comment November 10, 2009
Lately, I’ve been thinking of my life and the people in it as gifts. I love this poem because it shows that a poet never extinguishes her pen-not even in death:
An Exchange of Gifts
As long as you read this poem
I will be writing it.
I am writing it here and now
before your eyes,
although you can’t see me.
Perhaps you’ll dismiss this
as a verbal trick
the joke is you’re wrong;
the real trick
is your pretending
this is something
fixed and solid,
external to us both.
I tell you better:
I will keep on
writing this poem for you
even after I’m dead.
by Alden Nowlan
8 comments November 2, 2009
On All Souls Day, we remember those whom we have loved. This poem-even its title indicating a beloved person who committed suicide-reminds me of my loved ones who have departed the earth. My father and mother are still alive, but I always thought of my grandparents as parents because their values were the ones strong enough to pull me back to a good life- even after a youth of straying:
Father, Mother, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al
I’ve sensed ghosts more than once,
their presence
a kind of plucking from the memorious air.
Always they reveal themselves as lost,
surviving
on what’s loose in me, some last words
I never said, some I did. I’ve heard
they can’t live
if fully embraced, if taken fully in,
yet I do nothing but listen to their
wingless hovering,
the everything they never say.
If only I could give them what they need,
no, if only
I could convince myself these things
must die as naturally as apples
on the apple tree…
but that’s in Nature, which is never
wrong, just thoughtless and without shame.
by Stephen Dunn
Add comment November 1, 2009
For All the Saints
For all the saints, who from their labours rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!For the Apostles’ glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.
Alleluia, Alleluia!For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.
Alleluia, Alleluia!And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!Hymn by William Walsham How. I hope everyone has a blessed All Saints Day.
I loved this post so I took it from the blog, Per Christum Catholic Blog. You can visit it by clicking on For All The Saints.
Add comment November 1, 2009
Cemetery Nights
Sweet dreams, sweet memories, sweet taste of earth:
here’s how the dead pretend they’re still alive-
one drags up a chair, a lamp, unwraps
the newspaper from somebody’s garbage,
then sits holding the paper up to his face.
No matter if the lamp is busted and his eyes
have fallen out. Or some of the others
group together in front of the TV, chuckling
and slapping what’s left of their knees.
No matter if the screen is dark. Four more
sit at a table with glasses and plates,
lift forks to their mouths and chew. No matter
if their plates are empty and they chew only air.
Two of the dead roll on the ground,
banging and rubbing their bodies together as if in love or frenzy. No matter if their
skin breaks off, that their genitals are just a memory.
The head cemetery rat calls in all the city rats,
who pay him what rats find valuable-
the wing of a pigeon or ear of a dog.
The rats perch on tombstones and the cheap statues of angels, and, oh they hold their bellies
and laugh, laugh until their guts half break;
while the stars give off the same cold light
that all these dead once planned their lives by,
and in someone’s yard a dog barks and barks
just to see if some animal as dumb as he is
will wake from sleep and perhaps bark back.
by Stephen Dobyns
BOO!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
1 comment October 31, 2009
The imagery of the dead walking backwards reminds me of something my husband told me:
When he was a little boy in Nepal ,one evening, he saw a man walking-but the man’s legs were actually backwards. He was terrified and thought it was a ghost. Spoooooooky, huh?
On Walking Backwards
My mother forbade us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.
by Anne Carson
Add comment October 30, 2009
This poem was nestled among several vulgar poems with Christian themes, but in a way-I think it describes my feelings:
Sanctity
To be a poet and not know the trade,
To be a lover and repel all women (men);
Twin ironies by which great saints are made,
The agonizing pincer-jaws of Heaven.
by Patrick Kavanagh
Add comment October 29, 2009
If you scroll down-you will see my post on being an extra in the movie, The Dead Can’t Dance-you can also view the trailer from a link in the post.
Here I am-well–what I looked like as a Zombie Extra: (The tan stuff had to dry on my forehead before blood could be added.)
**I’ve been having trouble with my photo uploads–I uploaded this again so it would be a decent size.
Add comment October 28, 2009
“Resurrection” is powerful to me in that it depicts a man who is torn between two worlds. On one hand Holan wants to be with G-d, but on the other-he is still very much tied to this world and the people he loves in it-for instance, his mother. I also like how he chooses to live eternity as a child needing his mother’s care and attention–as it shows he values innocence.
Resurrection
Is it true that after this life of ours we shall one day be awakened by a terrifying clamour of trumpets?
Forgive me, God, but I console myself
that the beginning and resurrection of all of us dead
will simply be announced by the crowing of the cock.
After that we’ll remain lying down a while…
The first to get up
will be Mother…We’ll hear her
quietly laying the fire,
quietly putting the kettle on the stove
and cosily taking the teapot out of the cupboard.
We’ll be home once more.
by Vladmir Holan
translated from the Czech by George Theiner
Add comment October 28, 2009
Note: Some poems for the Halloween and All Souls Season will be posted starting today.
It is snowing here in CO. Not a fan of snow. I did all my shopping yesterday and food was still plentiful on the shelves. This is a strange phenomenon. I don’t do snow (driving, going outside…)–but it does look nice on trees:
Of course, I could have gotten a better shot, but I was in house shoes at the time 
3 comments October 28, 2009
My friend, Chelsea Lee, dragged me to a movie audition in Wichita, Kansas for The Dead Can’t Dance. I had so much fun! I landed an extra zombie role, and Chelsea lucked out with a cool teacher zombie part.
The movie will be out soon–but here is the trailer: I’m in the second school hall scene–the brief flash of zombie with red forehead blood and limp wrists!
5 comments October 27, 2009
I wrote this poem when I was a teenager working on the Marina at Wind Creek State Park in Alexander City, Alabama. I love being near water. I love to fish. Lakes, after a rainfall, are always mystical to me because they look different after being dimpled by rain droplets. This poem depicts my love of the Lake-and all the evening strolls I would take after my work day had ended.
After-Shower Wander
Misty humid
Is the day
Colors smeared
Into tonal magnificent array
Lake of rain droplets dimpled design
Finds me strolling the banks with linen rolled knee-high
Mud of red that does bleed
From the southern ground-of mysterious intrigue
Into heart’s lull
I do escape
And find G-d’s breath
Stroking the down of my sensitive soul
In pool-eyed ecstasy
Do I wander
No irritation may drive asunder
The cohesive illumine of child-like wander.
I didn’t really believe in G-d at this point in my life. I considered myself an Atheist, but I attended church youth group meetings in the evenings because I really loved the pastor and his wife-they are awesome people. I mainly separated myself from G-d at this point because of things that were happening to me in my life. However, nature was one area in which I could feel the presence of G-d in the Universe–and enjoying the beauty of the world-I guess was G-d’s way of coaxing me back to Him…or at least–getting me to acknowledge that He might actually exist.
by Carolina Maine Copyright 1995 Unauthorized Use is Prohibited
4 comments October 27, 2009
I’m trying to do a fast. I don’t know how well it will go. I am making a journal of my experience-you can find it listed as a tab at the top of my blog.
Join me-if you like
Add comment October 26, 2009
I know I previously made my repository blog public, but since it covers information I plan to use in later works-I decided to set it to private.
If you are close to me and want access-give me your username and I will grant you access to my notes.
And if you aren’t a “regular” here on Poet Verse and are asking:
Why Metaphysics?
Metaphysics, the nature of reality, is something I am “good” at discerning given my predicaments in life and natural intellectual inclination to pursue it.
I also love Metaphysical Poetry.
1 comment October 26, 2009
Seriously don’t mix. I love scrawberries, and the only way I will drink milk is if chocolate or strawberry powder is mixed in with it. The only problem? Aside from the lactose intolerance issue–
It seems to make my throat clog up. I was clearing my throat like a weird lady so I decided to just post my poem here–it was a short one anyway.
Background:
My grandmother told me that her little brother, Marx Wayne, died from inhaling a peanut; it caused pneumonia. She said she had to tend to his body during the wake and that coins were used to keep the eyes closed–but that one could also use flower petals-so that inspired this poem:
**My cousin, Robyn Bianchi, just commented and told me that Marx’s middle name was actually Swain and that she and her mother, Lynn, had been saying it wrong-like I have been. We’re southern-I guess we just spell like we hear. Thanks, Robyn!!
DEATH
Where does death happen?
Does it happen in the skin-across which no more wind blows
Or does it happen in the soul-a crawl of internal to down below
Does it happen with petals stinging the eyes?
Or does it happen with internal salts causing them to cry?
DEATH
Why make it for more
It is what makes us lie down for prayer in adore.
–by Carolina Maine Copyright 2008 Unauthorized Use Is Prohibited
5 comments October 26, 2009
I have atrocious penmanship. On a good day, it is legible. With many hours of practice, it can be beautiful-but that beauty is limited only to a small project-such as a short poem. After I met my would-be husband, Kal, I thought of this poem and wrote it down on a flowery stationery note. I kept it until our 10th year of marriage, but sadly, I don’t remember if I threw it out or if it was mixed in with some items that I gave to someone (the circumstances were not usual).
*I suppose it was Kal’s awkward syntax that first drew me to consider this poem as descriptive of my feelings toward him.
This poem is for my husband–as it fits my love and appreciation for him:
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady (fella) i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
by e. e. cummings
11 comments October 25, 2009
New art is posted on my daughter’s blog. Meena is very much into art. You can also visit her blog by selecting the Meenart tab at the top of my blog.
1 comment October 25, 2009
I spent two days offline as a fast. I do that whenever I think I have been online too much. Please excuse me for not approving your comments earlier.
All is well–and I am now back online!
** The video of “Dawn” irritates me because I pushed my hair over to one side…I keep thinking–I wish I could push it back over. I didn’t get another take because my kiddies couldn’t stand being quiet for another five minutes–they were wild that night!
Tomorrow, I will post another YouTube poem.
Add comment October 24, 2009
One Star
Is better far
Than many Precious Stones:
One Sun, which is abov in Glory seen,
Is worth ten thousand Golden Thrones:
A juicy Herb, or Spire of Grass,
In useful Virtu, native Green,
An Em’rald doth surpass;
Hath in’t more Valu, tho less seen.
No Wars,
Nor mortal Jars,
Nor bloody Feuds, nor Coin,
Nor Griefs which they occasion, saw I then;
Nor wicked Thievs which this purloin:
I had no Thoughts that were impure;
Esteeming both Women and Men
God’s Work, I was secure,
And reckon’d Peace my choicest Gem.
As Eve
I did believ
My self in Eden set,
Affecting neither Gold, nor Ermin’d Crowns,
No ought els that I need forget;
No Mud did foul my limpid Streams,
No Mist eclypst my Sun with frowns;
Set off with hev’nly Beams,
My joys were Meadows, Fields, and Towns.
Those things
Which Cherubins
Did not at first behold
Among God’s Works, which Adam did not see;
As Robes, and Stones enchas’d in Gold,
Rich Cabinets, and such like fine
Inventions could not ravish me:
I thought not of Bowls of Wine
Needful for my Felicity.
All Bliss
Consists in this,
To do as Adam did;
And not to know those superficial Joys
Which were from him in Eden hid:
Those little new-invented Things,
Fine Lace and Silks, such as Childish Toys
As Ribbans are and Rings
Or worldly Pelf that Us destroys.
For God
Both Great and Good,
The seeds of Melancholy
Created not: but only foolish Men
Grown mad with customary Folly
Which doth increase their Wants, so dote
As when they elder grow they then
Such Baubles chiefly note;
More Fools at Twenty Years than Ten.
But I,
I knew not why,
Did learn among them too
At length; and when I once with blemisht Eys
Began their Pence and Toys to view,
Drown’d in their Customs, I became
A Stranger to the Shining Skies,
Lost as a dying Flame;
And Hobby-horses brought to prize.
The Sun
And Moon forgon,
As if unmade, appear
No more to me; to God and Heven dead
I was, as tho they never were:
Upon some useless gaudy Book,
When I knew of God was fled,
The Child being taught to look,
His Soul was quickly murthered.
O fine!
O most divine!
O brave! they cry’d; and shew’d
Som Tinsel thing whose Glittering did amaze,
And to their Cries its beauty ow’d;
Thus I on Riches, by degrees,
Of a new Stamp did learn to gaze;
While all the World for these
I lost; my joy turn’d to a Blaze.
by Thomas Traherne 1637-1674
The spellings in this poem are correct given their time period–even when it appears that I just left off a letter.
Reaction to “The Apostacy”:
1. What message do you think Traherne was trying to send/convey?
2. How do you feel about Traherne’s message and why?
4 comments October 16, 2009
If you enjoy humor, you will love Doraz’s blog, Believe in Yourself
For daily Biblical inspiration visit Kin at Good News To-Go
For fun artistic musings check out KSeverny
These are great blogs-head their way!
Ha! I forgot I could copy and paste this, L. Doraz–where is my brain!?
4 comments October 15, 2009
I realized, after writing the post on Sadness, that perhaps I haven’t been as patient as I could be with other people. I evolve each day in the “understanding” department-and I like to think others do as well. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I try not to focus on them since they are an insignificant portion of the population. I could be more patient with others; it reduces the stress of dealing with the meanness of some people
Just some quick thoughts for the day.
Thanks for the notes of encouragement-both on Poet Verse and by personal message.
3 comments October 15, 2009
I’ve been offline from my blog because I have been sad lately. I’m not exactly sure what is bothering me. I know I feel conflicting emotions because I am intelligent yet mentally challenged. I feel frustrated with people who say they believe in one thing and demonstrate that they believe the opposite. I am tired of people being hateful and mean to those who have the misfortune of not being completely sound in mind. I feel a responsibility to advocate for the aforementioned people who are less fortunate than me, but I feel trapped by my own now-reduced standing in society.
I know this makes no sense to those of you who are not close to me, but for those who are–you understand.
I haven’t felt like myself for the past few days,and I’m tired.
I know it will pass-it always does. It just stinks in the meantime.
Thanks,
Carolina Maine
**I will catch up to comments and posts tomorrow morning.
4 comments October 14, 2009
You may have noticed some new additions to my blogroll lately. I have been having fun on the blogs I am awarding today! Each of them brings a smile to my face and warmth to my heart. If you have time, please go for a visit. Each of them have new insights into life. Well worth the visit to my new blogging friends at:
ALL WORDS,ARTWORK. and IMAGES are by NAMASTE
JAYMIE THORNE”S PERSONAL MUSINGS
POET VERSE…CAROLINA
Congrats. Well deserved ! Now you can have fun and pass the award out to 3 of your blogging friends that you feel should be honored. Be sure to post your awards on your blog and give a link back to me. Thanks!
Believe in Yourself;
Thanks, Doraz!
1 comment October 10, 2009
Today, I am re-reading an old childhood favorite story (play) titled The Tragicall Historie of Doctor Faustus (1604-1616) by Marlowe and edited by W.W. Greg.
I have felt like Dr. Faustus at certain points in my life and I always went back to my early childhood understanding of him so I decided-now that I am all “grown up” I will revisit the text to see how I respond and what I think regarding his view of the world and how that can pertain to science.
Metaphysical poetry has always been my favorite, and today, I was struck by the devil’s name, Mephostophilis, as well as the line, “These Metaphisicks of Magitians.” (Line 76 of the B-1616 play text). (Line 79 of Text A-1604).
The most curious thing is that I already know the play and was more interested in the explanations of the play’s meanings at various scenes; however, the book is damaged. Curiously, the text has double type that looks like botany and chemistry placed directly on top of the original text rendering the original text illegible. Pages 33-48 cannot be read.
Odd.
These are just thoughts–ramblings based on today’s reading venture.
2 comments October 8, 2009
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
—James Joyce, Ulysses
2 comments October 7, 2009
It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can’t
Tell or remember even what they were.
The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don’t want madhouse and the whole thing there.
by Sir William Empson
I love this-reminds me of me and my life!
1 comment October 7, 2009
What though the rosebuds from my cheek
Have faded all! which once so sleek
Spoke youth, and joy, and careless thought.
By guilt, or fear, or shame uncaught,
My soul, uninjured, still hath youth,
Its lively sense attests the truth!
Oh! I can wander yet, and taste
The beauties of the flowery waste,
The nightingale’s deep swell can feel
Till to the eye a tear doth steal;
Rapt! gaze upon the gem-decked night,
Or mark the clear moon’s gradual flight,
Whilst the bright river’s rippled wave
Repeats the quivering beams she gave.
Nor yet does Painting strive in vain
To waken from its canvas plain
the lofty passions of the mind,
Or hint the sentiment refined:
The the sweet magic yet I bow,
As when youth decked my polished brow.
The chisel’s lightest touch to trace
Through the pure form, or softened grace,
Is lent me still; I still admire,
And kindle at the Poet’s fire–
Why Time! since these are left me still,
Of lesser thefts e’en taken they fill.
Yes, take all lustre from my eye,
And let the blithe carnation fly,
My tresses sprinkle o’er with snow,
That boasted once their auburn glow,
Break the slim form that was adored
By him so loved, my wedded lord;
But leave me, whilst all these you steal,
The mind to taste, the nerve to feel!
by Hannah Parkhouse Cowley
Add comment October 7, 2009
While I am writing my book manuscript, I am also preparing to review material that will inspire my up-coming (next year), Metaphysics, collection.
Let’s hope I stay on task and not venture off into madness…LOL! Euripides, here I come!
Background reading:
Doubt: a history The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dicksinson by Jennifer Michael Hecht
Skeptical Philosophy for Everyone by Richard H. Popkin and Avrum Stroll
The Philosophical Journey by William F. Lawhead
Metaphysics by Peter Van Inwagen
Oh, and it wouldn’t be complete without:
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus 1604-1616 Parallel Texts Edited by W.W. Greg
4 comments October 7, 2009
It never ceases to amaze me how people react to the word, liberal, in only political terms. Yes, liberal does pertain to politics, but as we all learned in elementary school–CONTEXT IS KEY.
If one uses the word liberal in a sentence or paragraph that does not contain political topics, one must assume that the context is of another slant:
Behold:
The non-political definitions of the word
LIBERAL
7. free from prejudice or bigotry (In my case, I married someone outside my family’s Christian tradition and someone outside my race-which is the context I was using when someone asked why I was bringing up politics…LOL!)
8. open-minded or tolerant (Evident in the fact that I respect other people’s use of free will to determine what they believe.)
9. characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts: a liberal donor (If I had money-I would support plenty of projects to help people of all backgrounds.)
10. given freely or abundantly; a liberal donation.
11. not strict or rigorous; free
12. of, pertaining to, or based on liberal arts
13. of, pertaining to, or befitting a free man (Yes, my favorite-I changed my name to Carolina and one of the definitions is Latin from Carolus meaning free man.)
14. a person of liberal principles or views, esp in politics or religion (One might find some awkwardness here in that I am Catholic. Perhaps at one time Catholic was traditional–but now–it is very much a liberal choice to depart from what is now traditional…I don’t live according to archaic notions of modern/traditional–I live right now in the 21st Century.
Now–you have your Word of the Day!
Definition taken from Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary Of The English Language
6 comments October 6, 2009
Symbolism can enhance poetry in a way that adds texture and depth. In order to do it correctly, one needs to understand the ancient and modern definitions of symbols and practice weaving them into works without creating cliche images.
There are several symbolism dictionaries on the market, but the one I am using is pretty good and it isn’t very expensive.
Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and The Meanings Behind Them
By Hans Biedermann
Translated by James Hulbert
ISBN 0-452-01118-3
4 comments October 5, 2009
The collection of poetry that I was working on last year and while at the Vermont Studio Center was a flop. I didn’t even finish it. I had been warned that it would not work out, but I decided to try it a little longer anyway. I don’t know what possessed me to fuse politics and poetry together, but the result was a “hot mess”. Oh well. It happens.
I think I’m back to my old style and way of being. It took a little time off to realize that I should stick to what I do best (mostly rhyme/ballad with some prose) and to topics that I enjoy such as Metaphysics.
So-being the creative collection cataloguer I am–I have settled on a Metaphysical collection and will begin writing shortly.
I am still working on my book manuscript-mainly in my brain and not working with the actual document. I am writing about something painful and it is hard to decide if being personal is a good idea or not.
I’ll figure things out.
Have a great writing day!
4 comments October 5, 2009
Hail, fair morning
That as flame falls on the ground
Hail to Him that sends her
Morning many-virtued ever new!
O fair Morning so full of pride
O sister of the brilliant Sun
Hail to thee, lovely Morning,
That lightest my little book for me!
Thou seest the guest in every dwelling
Shinest on every tribe and kin
Hail O thou white-necked, beautiful,
Here with us now, O golden-fair and wonderful!
My little book with chequered page
Tells me my life hath not been right;
Maelcroin–’tis he whom I do well to fear:
He it is that comes to smite me at the last.
O scallcrow, scallcrow,
Grey-coated, sharp-beaked, paltry fowl!
The intent of thy desire is apparent to me,
No friend art though to Cellach.
O raven, thou makest croaking!
If hungry thou be now, O bird!
From this same rath deart not
Until thou have a serfeit of my flesh.
Fiercely the kite of Cluain-eo’s, yew tree
Will take part in the scramble;
His horn hued talons full he’ll carry off,
He will not part from me in kindness.
To the blow that fells me the fox
That’s in the darkling wood will make response at speed
He too in cold and trackless confines
Shall devour a portion of my flesh and blood.
The wolf that’s in the rath
Upon the easter side of Druim mic Dair:
He on a passing visit comes to me,
that he may rank as chieftain of the meaner pack.
On Wednesday’s night last past I saw a dream:
As one the wild dogs dragged me
Eastwards and westwards
Through the russet ferns.
I saw a dream:
That into a green glen men took me;
Four they were that bore me thither,
But ne’er brought me back again.
I saw a dream:
That to their house my co-disciples led me;
For me they poured out a drink,
A draught too they quaffed off to me.
O tiny wren most scant of tail!
Dolefully thou has piped prophetic lay;
Surely thou art come to betray me,
And to curtail my gift of life. . .
(Seven stanzas follow)
The saint is then set upon by the young men and killed. Later Cellach’s brother, Muiredach, finds the body of the Saint “part eaten by the creatures.” He laments:
By Saint Cellach of Killala
This ballad reminds me of a poem I wrote about being in a glen and having my soul taken from me–I foresee a future You Tube reading–check back here soon.
Add comment October 5, 2009
I found this in the mix of poems by young poets that PBS selected to highlight, and I am impressed. It was my favorite poem out of those published:
| In Sight of Land
A dove awing, a bird of flight, The dove in flight knows but one dream, Yet with his dream so close at hand, Even till death, the dove kept sight of land, Never settle for less than you can give,
A heart’s greatest crime is to live and not try, To never care or dance or cry or question why, To live a life afraid to die is just the same as a life afraid to live. Submitted by Kyle, Victoria, TX
|
7 comments October 3, 2009
PBS supports poetry well and has plenty of good links to explore. I think children 13 and younger can still submit poetry under the submit poetry button, but I am not sure.
Check it out:
Add comment October 3, 2009
Same Team – Good News for September 27
27 09 2009
Mark 9:38-41
At that time, John said to Jesus, ”Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.
This is why I do not discriminate against people of other denominations-along with the fact that my family has a varied Protestant background.
Kin’s blog is full of positive affirmations for daily living. You won’t find anything vulgar, anything hateful–only kindness. Thank you, Kin, for visiting Poet Verse.
Add comment October 3, 2009
I don’t want freedom gram by gram, grain by grain.
I have to break this steel chain with my teeth!
I don’t want freedom as a drug, as a medicine,
I want it as the sun, as the earth, as the heavens!
Step, step aside, you invader!
I am the loud voice of this land!
I don’t need a puny spring!
I am thirsting for oceans!
By Khalil Reza Uluturk
Translated from the Azeri by Aynur H. Imecer
Add comment October 3, 2009
Whoever seeks peace and the good of the community with a pure conscience, and keeps alive the desire for the transcendent, will be saved even if he lacks biblical faith.— Pope Benedict XVI.
1 comment October 3, 2009
Les Grenades
Hard pomegranates sundered
By excess of your seeds,
You make me think of mighty brows
Aburst with their discoveries!
If the suns you underwent,
O pomegranates severed,
Wrought your essence with the pride
To rend your ruby segments,
And if the dry gold of your shell
At instance of power
Cracks in the crimson gems of juice,
This luminous eruption
Sets a soul to dream upon
Its secret architecture.
By Paul Valery
Translated from the French by Kate Flores
Editor’s Note: I chose this poem because it reminded me of the first time I saw a pomegranate’s interior. I was thoroughly disgusted. I have a weird issue about really intricate designs. I love pomegranates–opening them up–not so much. I even had nightmares about them….
Add comment October 2, 2009
Long Autumn rain;
White mists which choke the vale, and blot the sides
Of the bewildered hills; in all the plain
No field aglean where the gold pageant was,
And silent o’er a tangle of drenched grass
The blackbird glides.
In the heart, –fire
Fire and clear air and cries of water-springs,
And large, pure winds; all April’s quick desire,
All June’s possession; a most fearless Earth
Drinking great ardours; and the rapturous birth
Of winged things.
By Edward Dowden (1843-1913) Ireland
2 comments October 2, 2009
Words are useless, stubborn, twisted
like screws that won’t go in straight.
And they tire me. But they are all I have.
The playthings of a poor boy.
They lie gutted all around me.
All their magic spills out of their open bowels.
Their inner workings long ago stopped being
intriguing or attractive.
There’s no challenge. There’s no spark. There’s no color.
The world is as gray as my disgust.
Words are the columns of my fatigue.
But they are–I have said it, I repeat–all I have.
By Roger Wolfe
Translated from the Spanish by Gary Hawkins.
Add comment October 2, 2009
I beat my old record for busiest day! Today, I had 206 hits. Thanks for reading Poet Verse
5 comments October 2, 2009
I’m almost tied with my busiest blog day:
Total views: 20,122
Busiest day: 193 — Thursday, September 25, 2008
Views today: 181
Thanks for reading Poet Verse
1 comment October 1, 2009
The Pretty Redhead
Here I am before all a man of sense
Knowing life and death as much as a human being can know
Having experienced the pangs and the joys of love
Having known at times how to impose his ideals
Acquainted with several languages
Having traveled not a little
Having seen war in the Artillery and the Infantry
Wounded in the head trepanned under chloroform
Having lost his best friends in the frightful struggle
I know of the old and the new as much as one man can
know of the two
And without being disturbed today by this war
Between us and for us my friends
I judge this long quarrel about tradition and invention
About order and Adventure
You whose mouth is made in the image of God’s
Mouth which is order itself
Be indulgent when you compare us
With those who were the perfection of order
We who seek adventure everywhere
We are not your enemies
We strive to give you vast and strange domains
Where mystery flowers for all who would gather it
There are new fires of colors there never seen before
A thousand imponderable phantasms
To which reality must be given
We strive to explore kindness enormous country where all is still
There is also time which can be banished or recaptured
Pity us who struggle ever on the frontiers
Of the limitless and the future
Pity us our errors pity us our sins
Here now comes summer the violent season
And my youth as well as the spring is dead
O Sun this is the time of ardent Reason
And I expect
To follow ever the sweet and noble form
Which she takes that I may love only her
She comes and draws me as a magnet iron
She has the charming aspect
Of an adorable redhead
Her hair is of gold one might say
A lovely flash of lightning that endures
Or those flames which flaunt
In tea roses that wither
But laugh at me
Men everywhere especially people here
For there are so many things that I do not dare tell you
So many things that you would not permit me to say
Have pity on me.
By Guillame Apollinaire
Translated from the French by Kate Flores
Add comment October 1, 2009
Be not too hard for life is short
And nothing is given to man;
Be not too hard when he is sold and bought
For he must manage as best he can;
Be not too hard when he gladly dies
Defending things he does not own;
Be not too hard when he tells lies
And if his heart is sometimes like a stone
Be not too hard-for he soon dies,
Often no wiser than be began;
Be not too hard for life is short
And nothing is given to man.
By Christopher Logue
Add comment October 1, 2009
I removed my earlier post because this is my happy place, and it should stay that way-I might express an opinion and remove it later-once the thought has passed.
But I have to say-I’d rather spend my time online trying to make the world better and more beautiful instead of telling people that folks who read the KJV of the Bible are going to Hell because a symbol of Satan is inside of it, that G-d is an alpha male who forces us to believe in Him or He sends us to eternal damnation, or that our country became capitalist feminists because the Rockefellers funded a special program to change American life forever.
I mean, really, I might have had my brain’s neurons rapidly firing in chaos for a brief period in my life, but at least they haven’t gelled into a chaotic mess.
Why do these blogs exist? I’m also curious….do people feel like they are really helping the world find the “truth” as some have put it–because all I see is hate and bitterness.
That is the reason why I posted earlier-if you read it.
11 comments September 30, 2009
The Library here has a pretty decent collection of poetry. It could be better, but with the volumes
highlighted below-I would say that it is a pretty good selection.
You may also see more of the books I am reading/have read at: Carolina Maine at Goodreads
1000 Years of Irish Poetry: The Gaelic and Anglo Irish Poets from Pagan Times to the Present
by Kathleen Hoagland
Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond
by Nathalie Handal, Ravi Shankar, Tina Chang
Language for a New Century celebrates the artistic and cultural forces flourishing today in the East, bringing together an unprecedented selection of works by South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian poets as well as poets living in the Diaspora. Some poets, such as Bei Dao and Mahmoud Darwish, are acclaimed worldwide, but many more will be new to the reader. The collection includes 400 unique voices—political and apolitical, monastic and erotic—that represent a wider artistic movement that challenges thousand-year-old traditions, broadening our notion of contemporary literature.
Each section of the anthology—organized by theme rather than by national affiliation—is preceded by a personal essay from the editors that introduces the poetry and exhorts readers to examine their own identities in light of these powerful poems. In an age of violence and terrorism, often predicated by cultural ignorance, this anthology is a bold declaration of shared humanity and devotion to the transformative power of art.
Add comment September 29, 2009
Let’s kiss water,
the root of civilization,
a word for freedom.
I’m in love with water,
with roaring and restless rivers
that are not seduced by trees
nor captured by jungles.
They flow day and night,
carry on forever.
Let’s praise rivers that lust for flowing,
for searching, for a heart of temptation
that know what message water delivers to stone,
the question water asks from quiet coasts.
Passerby, for a long time
the river has been constrained in an old robe
on our street and thrown into a well.
Water wars with the well,
water in the mind of a tree,
water in the solitude of a cup,
water in the memory of flowerpot,
inconsolable.
I had a wonderful dream on Friday night.
I dreamed the river ran free,
that on its roaring horse,
it rode over stones,
past the border of farms.
By Latif Nazemi
Translated from the Persian/Dari by Bashir Sakhawarz
1 comment September 29, 2009
I tried Twitter out last year, but I didn’t really care for it. I am trying it again. If you would like to follow me on Twitter:
My Twitter posts are visible on the bottom right corner of my widgets now-Enjoy!
Add comment September 28, 2009
I’m enjoying discovering all the beautiful nooks and crannies of Colorado. My favorite parts of nature are water and rocks so I always enjoy hopping into streams to capture their beauty intimately. Perhaps, once I am able to financially swing it, I will buy a nice camera. Right now-I only have a Sony Cybershot in pink-but it gets the job done.
Email me for use of these photos. Someone has searched them repeatedly without asking for use permission.
Images removed-available upon request. carolinamaine at gmail dot com
Add comment September 28, 2009
I hate being in front of cameras. I don’t know why. Maybe it is because I don’t like to see my face move. Who knows? Anyway, since I had an unused You Tube account, I decided to give reading my poems online a try.
I hope you like the poem I shared today, How To Love.
Thanks for reading/watching Poet Verse and have a great writing day!
Add comment September 25, 2009
Mon Dieu m’a dit…
God said: “My son you must love me. You see
My pierced side, my heart radiant with blood,
And my injured feet bathed by Magdalene’s tears,
My arms that ache under the weight of your
Sins, my hands too! You see the cross,
You see nails, gall, sponge, and all teach you
To love in this bitter world of flesh
Only my Flesh and Blood, my word and voice.
Oh, have I not loved you even unto the death,
Brother in my Father, son in the Holy Ghost,
Have I not suffered for you as it was written?
Have I not sobbed for you in your great agony,
Have I not sweated the sweat of your dark nights,
Oh pitiful friend, who seeks me when I am here?”
–By Paul Verlaine
Translated from the French by Muriel Kittel
Add comment September 25, 2009
I didn’t write today. I re-read what I have been working on and made some changes, but that is all.
Today hasn’t been a fantastic day. I’m sure tomorrow will be better.
I think I am just feeling stress because I moved here and haven’t replaced my job yet. I would like to get out of the house for something constructive and soon.
I have thought about getting serious about editing and starting a small service, but I am waiting on some things first.
I joined a parish here and volunteered for several positions, but it has been several weeks and no one has contacted me-despite my follow-up email.
I have an old Volvo station wagon that I am trying to donate, but that hasn’t worked out either. My husband wants me to sell it, but it is in bad shape, and I don’t really want to sell it. I guess I am still clinging to Red Roger; I love him-sniff sniff.
How do I pass the time on adumbral days?
I read.
Today-it was poetry.
So-if you would like,
Sound off on who your favorite poets are!
Here’s hoping that tomorrow is a brighter day!
1 comment September 25, 2009
A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.
I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.
By Fleur Adcock
This reminded me of my girls so much.
2 comments September 23, 2009
Quotation marks.
I hate them.
I never know where the punctuation goes.
Someone tells me and my brain dumps it as useless garbage.
How do I turn that switch off?!
Yeah,
I hate quotation marks.
So what.
Haha….
So–what’s your writing weakness?
6 comments September 23, 2009
I’m 6, 486 words in!
Hooray!
The changes that I made truly helped my writing, and I am satisfied that I took the time to re-work what had already been written.
Revision is a process of discovery-embrace it.
Have a great writing day!
Add comment September 23, 2009
The man who has everything figured out is probably a fool. College examinations notwithstanding,
it takes a very smart fella to say
”I don’t know the answer!”
–Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit The Wind
Add comment September 23, 2009
It is too bad that I can’t sing or play an instrument because I only write to rhythms. Even my college papers had rhythm; I never let style be separate from academic topics. Trust me, it is quite a feat to make emergency management and public administration rhythmical. Oh, Weber, Oh Weber….Ha! Smiling yet?
Anyway, today I realized that my conversational tone (purposely chosen) for my manuscript is fine as it lends to the intimacy I want to extend–but it is too see spot run. Today, I wrote about a very difficult life event and employed some imagery that could fit into a rhythm.
I actually learned to read at an early age because of rhythm.
It is too bad really–that I have no other form of expression than words on a page.
I wish I could be a painter like Georgia O’Keefe. I noticed some similarities in my life to hers-not absolutes-similarities and that was comforting. I don’t know why.
If I could choose the talents I would like to have been born with I would choose:
Painting
Singing
Instrumental
Writing
I am over 5,000 words into my book and today I re-worked just about everything I had written. I listened with my internal ear-so I expect it to be even more perfect once an editor gets his or her hands on it.
Take care, and good writing!
5 comments September 23, 2009
Re-reading my manuscript this morning, I am appalled by the awkward voice that is apparent in many important areas. I have gone through and struck out many sentences and have changed sentence/verb structure to allow for more accuracy.
I also noticed that I was using a passive voice in some areas; I changed those areas to an active voice.
When you write about an emotional subject, it is common to have your basic skeleton thoughts fall onto the paper before you perfect the actual passages.
When I was younger, I could write about anything and did not need revision to the degree that I need it now. I attribute this to old age and writing about painful subject matter.
I’m satisfied that I took a break from writing for a day. It is good to write and keep up the pace, but sometimes a break can reveal errors and awkwardness that you might otherwise miss if you allowed yourself to press on without taking time to decompress.
So–take your time. Revision is important-it is the detail in your writing’s form.
Have a good writing day!
Add comment September 22, 2009
after Hafez
However large earth’s garden, mine’s enough.
One rose and the shade of a vine’s enough.
I don’t want more wealth, I don’t need more dross.
The grape has its bloom and it shines enough.
What can Paradise offer us beggars
and fools? What ecstasy, when wine’s enough?
Come and sit by the stream. Rivers run dry
but to carry their song, a chime’s enough.
Like the sun in bazaars, streaming in shafts,
any slant on the grand design’s enough.
When you’re here, my love, what more could I want?
Just mentioning love in a line’s enough.
Heaven can wait. To have found, heaven knows,
a bed and a roof so divine’s enough.
I’ve no grounds for complaint. As Hafez says,
isn’t a ghazal that he signs enough?
–By Mimi Khalvati
Add comment September 22, 2009
This morning, I changed my book manuscript font to Latha because it is compact and it resembles a typewriter. Yes, I took typing way back in the day (7th grade) and used an electronic typewriter.
I’m rambling.
Latha font looks much cleaner and it appears to have corrected the font irregularity problem I experienced earlier. I will probably make a docx file and convert to PDF later on. PDF is my favorite!
Anyway, because I feel like chatting and don’t have my friends here:
I couldn’t sleep last night, but when my hubby came home (around midnight), we put in the movie The Boat That Rocked. It was a little wild for my taste, but I didn’t know that is was based on the pirate radio boats in the 1960s that challenged UK authorities to play rock n roll–so I found that interesting.
I fell asleep naturally at 2:30 so I am super happy about that!
Today, hubby (since he is off) put in Away We Go. It is a pretty good movie–hubby must be bored as he dozed off. It is 9:12 am, Little Man, wake up!
I’m working on my manuscript and playing with my youngest. She journeys to her room only a few steps away and emerges with various tiny objects that are imagined food items-so I am served breakfast of various kinds–oh–and I love on babies-her many baby dolls.
It’s a good morning.
If it isn’t too cold-I will ride my bike.
I truly hate cold weather so I am not looking forward to the winter here.
I imagine myself on a beach-somewhere south–somewhere humid.
Enjoy your day!
Add comment September 22, 2009
I didn’t really write anything today. I found some missing words late tonight and added them–and changed the wording in some awkward areas. That is about it.
I have never saved anything in RTF before. I did it because it is supposed to be more compatible with other systems. But today, when I printed the manuscript out at the business office in my complex–the font was all messed up. It looked horrible. Does anyone have experience with RTF files? My documents save in docx, and I have had complaints that my files can’t be read. If I try to save to doc–it won’t save.
Oh well.
I only have 4,146 words right now. I will start working on it again tomorrow.
I’m tired and am turning in early-mainly to listen to relaxation music and think before I fall into sleepy land.
Have a good night.
Add comment September 22, 2009
You caught me in a rare moment of wanting to share a poem from my bound Confession collection. I didn’t have a specific poem in mind; I just opened the book and picked the one I landed on.
When sadness comes
It drives away passions
Life becomes perfunctory
Restless no more–is my heart
Listless–it barely beats
Never stirs–for more impassioned feats
When melodies operatic do sound
Slight inner wakes do compound
But heart laden–broken
Isn’t worth torturing–for token
Gestures given only in haste
When time and love
Forever remain chaste
Carolina Maine © 2006 Unauthorized Use Is Prohibited
2 comments September 21, 2009
This is taken from Mehta’s How to Write Poetry page 38 in its entirety.
Accuracy Take a look a these three lines:
The wine-dark sea
crashes onto the beach
like bottles of broken Cabernet.
It’s a pretty awful image: the writer has gone over-board in using figurative language. Just because wine-dark is a metaphor for the color of the sea doesn’t mean the writer has to follow up by extending the metaphor to broken bottles of wine. Thing about it logically: waves don’t physically crash down onto beaches the way bottles break, and the sounds don’t match up. Waves are softer and appear over and over again; bottles shatter with a single loud sound, in a one-time event. The word crashes doesn’t seem exactly right. For figurative language to be effective, every word needs to be carefully chosen. Take a look at this revision:
The wine-dark sea
slides into the beach
like spilled soda.
That’s still not brilliant poetry, especially since the poet has mixed “wine” with “soda” in the same metaphor, but it works a bit better because the images make more sense; the sea fizzes and sputters just liked spilled soda, as it reaches the beach. That’s more accurate than crashing and broken bottles. Remember: figurative language doesn’t have to be grand; it just has to be accurate.
Alright–all that you just read was written by Mehta.
That is the most unfortunate verse describing the ocean that I have ever read.
I wonder if Mehta has had much experience observing the ocean during different times of the year?
If she had more experience then maybe she would have realized that crashing and the sounds in the first version sound much better than her wine/soda metaphor.
I think the first version is better because it is loud, palpable; I can hear the waves crashing into a jagged beach–one with massive, ocean- beaten rocks. Many times, one large wave creates a crashing sound followed by small waves that do not crash-so a one-time crashing event is possible.
Spilled soda reminds me of a mess….just like her revision. Soda doesn’t ripple rhythmically so if we want to go all out on being logical–you have it–poetry is not a math equation. Soda does sputter and fizzle like the ocean though.
I would write the revision as:
The wine-dark sea (this indicates it is winter as the sea is darker in the winter)
crashes into frigid, jugular rocks
like bottles of broken Cabernet
coagulating a violent beach vein.–Carolina Maine
The reason why I chose crashing is because I think Mehta originally set out to show the intensity of the ocean and she ended up changing her mind with the revised version. In other words, she was not originally clear about what she wanted to describe.
I used frigid to show the essence of winter time as it matches the color of the ocean water depicted…I kept the bottles and added jugular because I am showing how the water moves up into the life channels of the beach and still makes noise as it moves through beach matter (rocks which are jagged like shards of bottles). Violent=intensity and elevates the sound of the word crashes. Coagulates was used to depict the lingering water that seeps back down into the ocean from the rocks and it also shows that some water remains in still puddles between the rocks–just as was when one throws a wine bottle–wine will be found between and beneath the shards.
I detect that Mehta is of Indian descent or background. She didn’t give a source for these two poem excerpts so I am assuming she manufactured them herself. My husband also shares a problem that I noticed Mehta has–using words like onto incorrectly. Onto was not accurate given the natural perspective of the observer and should have been into.
I am sure Diane Mehta has enjoyed admirable success, but you–as a writer–must feel confident in what you are trying to say–don’t rely heavily on “succesful” poets to be “perfect” and to have wisdom far beyond your own. Trust in yourself. Know your work.
So now you know why I titled this Yeah, Whatever….we read…we learn…we toss aside what is not useful…and we move to something better.
4 comments September 21, 2009
Inure•
Verb
To cause someone or something to become accustomed to the situation.
Becoming a mother and realizing that toys will never stay in place inured me to the discomforts of not having a perfectly tidy home.
Add comment September 21, 2009
I’m up to 4,105 words for my book manuscript.
Have a great writing day!
Add comment September 20, 2009
The Ballad Of Father Gilligan
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day;
For half his flock were in their beds,
Or under green sods lay.
Once, while he nodded on a chair,
At the moth-hour of eve,
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.
“I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
For people die and die”;
And after he cried, “God forgive!
My body spake, not I!”
He knelt, and leaning on the chair
He prayed and fell asleep;
And the moth-hour went from the fields,
And stars began to peep.
They slowly into millions grew,
And leaves shook in the wind;
And God covered the world with shade,
And whispered to mankind.
Upon the time of sparrow chirp
When moths came once more,
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Stood upright on the floor.
“Mavrone, mavrone! the man has died (mavrone means grief)
While I slept on the chair”;
He roused his horse out of its sleep,
And rode with little care.
He rode now as he never rode,
By rocky lane and fen; (fen means swampy marsh)
The sick man’s wife opened the door:
“Father! you come again!”
“And is the poor man dead?” he cried.
“He died an hour ago.”
The old priest Peter Gilligan
In grief swayed to and fro.
“When you were gone, he turned and died
As merry as a bird.”
The old priest Peter Gilligan
He knelt him at that word.
“He Who hath made the night of stars
For souls who tire and bleed,
Sent one of His great angels down
To help me in my need.
“He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care,
Had pity on the least of things,
Asleep upon a chair.”
By William Butler Yeats
1000 Years of Irish Poetry Edited by Kathleen Hoagland
Add comment September 20, 2009
I am 3,050 words into my manuscript and have done some editing on the 1,000 words I wrote last night. I do need to go in and change some names or figure out how to structure things a little better–but I am pleased with the progress so far.
I’ve written several test drafts before committing to this manuscript. In the past, my hurt and anger clouded my ability to write so I hope that stays at bay for the duration it takes me to write this life event story.
Have a ritual for writing. For me, I reward myself. I took myself on a brisk morning walk this morning to further celebrate my commitment to this manuscript. Last night, I indulged in a late night bath by candlelight. Soothing nature music flowed from my Ipod into my ears. A Jasmine Vanilla oil bath delighted my olfactory bulb. It was a perfect ending to a very stressful writing session.
Sometimes writing is a pleasure. Other times it is painful. Writing is cathartic but it can wreak havoc on a writer when the subject matter is sensitive. The best way, I have found, to reward myself is to find soothing activities that help clear my mind and relax my tense muscles.
If I am writing at night, I like to say my Saint Michael prayer and light his candle; it is soothing to have his flicker against my laptop’s dreary artificial light.
Have a great writing day!
7 comments September 20, 2009
I saw the daughter of the sun; she stood
Under the north rise of the copse, where now
The shade-hoar faded, where began to show
Pale primrose-heads, fresh as her own pale hood
Of straight hair, groups of early mercury
No greener than her own plain sheeny gown-
Long had I wandered in the winter-town
Of smoke-grey fog, of stone-grey field and tree.
Nor girl she seemed, nor goddess; her grave face,
Soft as a child’s yet wise, brighter than spring,
More warm than summer, had strange shadowing,
Than mundane lustre held both more and less;
No mirth was there, no glee, no eagerness,
No love, save love for every living thing.
By Elizabeth Daryush
Editor’s Note: I will highlight my favorite passages in many poems.
-Carolina Maine
Add comment September 19, 2009
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
By William Carlos Williams
Add comment September 19, 2009
I’m working on my book manuscript right now. Yeah-I know I don’t have to announce it to the world–but I find it helps keep me motivated.
Keep Writing
And
Thanks for reading Poet Verse!
5 comments September 19, 2009
are pauses in lines of poetry.
Caesuras add music to lines of poetry.
Use them to make your work powerful, rhythmic, supsenseful, and musical.
What indicates a caesura?
A pause , pauses indicated by commas, semi-colons, colons-or periods.
Caesuras appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a line-or not at all.
Where is the caesura in this line?
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
-Percy Bysshe Shelley “Ode to the West Wind”
The caesuras are at the beginning, middle, and end of the line.
A line of poetry cannot be said to contain full sentences at all times (there are exceptions). Rather, a great deal of poetry lines contain multiple thoughts that are punctuated for emphasis–so think outside of traditional sentence structure when placing punctuation marks.
Caesuras are also a great choice for presenting contradicting ideas.
“Epistle II” by Alexander Pope
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all
The midpoint of each line shows how the half of the line contradicts the other half.
Caesuras also draw attention to important lines in a poem.
from Mehta How to Write Poetry
3 comments September 18, 2009
I’m not a poet
is there really such a thing as a living poet
I’m a school teacher
I teach math
computer science
as well as ethics and the psychology of family life
on top of this I return home each day
to my wife
as a romantically inclined pilot once said
love is not when two people look at one another
but when they both look in the same direction
this is about us
for ten years now my wife and I
have been looking in the same direction
at the television
for eight years now our son looks that way too
I’m not a poet
is there a hole in the watertight round-the-clock alibi
set forth above
the combination of misunderstanding and happenstance
that leads now and then to the appearance of my poems
in the periodical press
compels me to confess
I write poetry when it becomes unavoidable
while I monitor in-class exams
in spite of all the public school reforms
individual pupils continue to cheat
to prevent this
I’m forced to sit with my neck craned
wide-eyed and vigilant
unblinking gaze fastened on a space just above the floor
this pose leads inevitably
to the composition of verse
anyone who’s interested can verify this
my poems are short
because in-class exams rarely last longer than 45 minutes
I’m not a poet
and perhaps
that’s why I’m interesting
–By Evgenii Bunimovich
Translated from the Russian by Patrick Henry
Evgenii won my heart with the highlighted passages!
3 comments September 18, 2009
Vies
I
Oh the enormous avenues of the holy land, the terraces of the temple! What has become of the Brahmin who once taught me Proverbs? Now, further down, I can still see even old women! I recall the silver hours, and sun by the rivers, and my girl’s hand on my shoulders, and our caresses as we stood in the peppered heath. A flight of scarlet pigeons thundered in my brain. –Exiled here, I had a stage on which I performed the masterpieces of literature the world over. I might point out to you incredible riches. I have been following up the history of treasures you might find–and I know what is next! My wisdom is rejected as chaos. What is my void when compared to the surprise awaiting you?
II
I am an inventor far more deserving of attention than all those who have preceded me; a musician who has more-over discovered something like the key of love. Now a country squire from a lean land with a tranquil sky, I endeavor to throw off lethargy by remembering my mendicant childhood, my years of apprenticeship or my arrival in wooden shoes, my polemics, my five or six windowings, and a few carousalswhen my level head kept me from emulating om comrades’ folly. I do not miss my former share of divine gaeity. The quietude of this harsh countryside feeds my dreadful skepticism rather bountifully. But since this skepticism can no longer be put to use, and since, furthermore, I have devoted myself to a new anxiety, I believe I shall end up a very dangerous madman.
III
In an attic where I was locked up when I was twelve I got to know the world-I illustrated the human comedy. In a gin mill I learned history. At some night revel, in a northern city, I met all the women of the Old Masters. In an old Paris arcade I was taught the classical science. In a magnificent mansion, reeking with oriental luxury, I completed my exhaustive tasks and spend my luxurious retreat. I have burned up my blood. My duty has been remitted to me. But that need no longer even concern us. I am really from beyond the grave, and accept no new commitments.
–By Arthur Rimbaud
Translated from the French by Angel Flores
Editor’s Note:
I chose to highlight and link words that I thought might be stumbling blocks to readers. Take a moment to check out the definitions if you are unsure of the meanings–or to learn more about the poem. Learning never ends…so don’t feel bad if you don’t understand how a word is used in a piece.
–Carolina Maine
Add comment September 17, 2009
My daughter, Meena, has started her own blog for family and friends.
You can find it here Meenart or as a page at the top of Poet Verse.
Thanks for reading!
Add comment September 17, 2009
Trenchant•
ADJ
Effective, Articulate, Clear-cut
The trenchant directions that allowed me to assemble the bicycle in thirty minutes were greatly appreciated as I did not have much time until my grandson’s birthday party began.
Add comment September 17, 2009
A new page tab will be coming soon to Poet Verse.
Check back Thursday, September 17, 2009, for the unveiling.
You’re gonna love it!
Add comment September 16, 2009
[L]ife is made of ever so many partings welded together….
Divisions among such must come, and must be
met as they come.
–Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Add comment September 16, 2009
I want.
I want to.
I want to smoke.
I want to smoke them.
I want to smoke them all.
I want to smoke them all in Scrabble
–By Carolyn Burica
Carolyn Burica is married and the mother of two children. She teaches middle school language arts in Columbus, Ohio.
© 2009, Unauthorized Use Is Prohibited
• Editor’s Note
This nestled poem reminded me of the hours I spent playing Scrabble with my grandmother and the fierce competitor it often aroused in me. Thank you, Carolyn, for your submission to Poet Verse, and thank you for your work with young writers.
Add comment September 16, 2009
I will be off-line on Poet Verse for a week to wander around in my writing world and to practice painting/drawing with my children. Poet Verse will still be updated as I am entering in the drafts today that will be published on schedule each day.
Sometimes writing leads us to wandering and that wandering is how we develop as writers.
Have a great writing week!
I look forward to meeting you back here at Poet Verse. If you leave a comment-I will respond at the end of the 7 day period.
Thanks,
Carolina Maine
Add comment September 16, 2009
Places we love exist only through us,
Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time,
Places we love we can never leave,
Places we love together, together, together,
And is this room really a room, or an embrace,
And what is beneath the window: a street or years?
And the window is only the imprint left by
The first rain we understood, returning endlessly,
And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the night
Your son began to move in your sleeping blood,
A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors,
The night you were frightened by your own light,
And this door leads into any afternoon
Which outlives it, forever peopled
With your casual movements, as you stepped,
Like fire into copper, into my only memory;
When you go, space closes over like water behind you,
Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,
Space is only time visible in a different way,
Places we love we can never leave.
By Ivan V. Lalic
Translated from the Serbo-Croat by Francis R. Jones
Add comment September 16, 2009
A friend of mine got me started in this back in December 2008, but I didn’t really have time to keep up with it. Now that I have plenty of free time, I would like to keep it up–and meet new people.
Join me at Good Reads
Add comment September 15, 2009
Why? A southern girl has to find her place in the world!
Had an awesome and relaxing bike ride today.
I woke up exhausted and had a headache.
Traded it in for some cool Colorado air and sky.
Feel much better now!
4 comments September 15, 2009
I went to bed early and woke up by midnight…oh well.
The book I am working on is intense. When I look at my writing-I feel like ripping out every page of it.
When I am writing-my mind is put in the past-in a place where hope and faith were out of reach.
I don’t like going there.
But I will.
It is the right thing to do.
Have a good night:)
2 comments September 15, 2009
Chelsea Lee, copyright 2009. This poem may not be reprinted or used without authorization.
the proximity of your flesh is enough to
layer the underbelly of guilt
a song you are all too familiar with
a soft brush of pulsing breath
audibly has hairs performing stunts
while i sink basking in denial.
it could have been an unscathed
encounter if only you had held your tongue a moment longer
and not dared linger so close to comfort.
what left with the expiration floated
indefinitely above the both of us
until wind wavered by-
and like flame to candle it was extinguished.
all was dark and silent
while you were carried away.
–Chelsea Lee is a Guest Contributor to Poet Verse
Add comment September 15, 2009
Yeah…so I’ve been told.
Maybe there is some truth in it.
When I was young, I was angry with the world for all that had happened to me and for what I didn’t have. I told the priest and the Bishop where I lived that I hated G-d because if there was a G-d there would be no suffering, death, abuse, broken families, and other tragedies in the world.
I guess that turned out to be fine since it would be many years later before I would be baptized…leaving the old “me” in the past.
What I discovered…from my pain, from my suffering, through my anguish….is that I love being alive.
I love my family, and most importantly,
I love G-d for allowing us breath and for believing in humanity despite how we individually and collectively use the gift of free will to commit atrocities against those we love, those we do not know, and those of other cultures.
So yeah–I’m Catholic.
I’m proud of the journey that led me to conversion.
If you don’t want to be Catholic–that is your free will choice.
We all have free will.
I always pray for the suffering, the lost, and those who need deep spiritual comfort.
So–even if you don’t believe–I still pray for you and there is nothing you can really do about it as it is my free will choice to do so.
It is a gift.
Give it back.
Give it to someone else.
Your choice.
On writing:
I put poetry up here by people of other faiths.
I have highlighted a poem that shows a gay man’s love and is a well-written account of his human story–many priests
struggle with homo-erotic feelings…and Gerard Manley Hopkins was possibly one of them.
I have poems on here from various countries and from various schools of thought.
So if I am guilty of anything–it is highlighting the strength of the human spirit over the adversities in life.
I think G-d wants us all to be happy–and living in pain–it isn’t the fullest way to live in Christ–who suffered for us.
Whether you believe Christ suffered or not–you must agree that living a happier life is better than wallowing in the pain of things we have experienced.
If you aren’t religious–you can volunteer to help others with things you have struggled with–you can do this if you are religious too–to accompany your prayers.
Life is what you make it–and your heart is as open and merciful as you allow it to be.
Find your beliefs. Find your inspiration in daily living. Find your voice.
And most importantly:
WRITE!
8 comments September 14, 2009
For my loving husband, Kal.
The eyeless labourer in the night,
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day–
silent and swift and deep from sight
foresees the unimagined light.
There is no child with a child’s face;
this has no name to name it by:
yet you and I have known it well.
This is our hunter and our chase,
the third who lay in our embrace.
This is the strength that your arm knows,
the arc of flesh that is my breast,
the precise crystals of our eyes.
This is the blood’s wild tree that grows
the intricate and folded rose.
This is the maker and the made;
this is the question and reply;
the blind head butting at the dark,
the blaze of light along the blade.
Oh hold me, for I am afraid.
By Judith Wright
Celebration of the best hunts and chases of our lives.
Add comment September 14, 2009
Have you ever visited an angry, depressing blog and wondered why someone would choose to spend hours a day in such a dark pit of the blog universe? I have. In fact, I have visited quite a few angry, depressing blogs by accident. You somehow usually get sucked in by a nice avatar and find yourself reading what should be saved for a psychoanalyst sprawled in puckered lines and labeled poetry.
As a person who has had the misfortune of experiencing the kind of depression that destroys a human being and as a person who writes poetry that is not infantile in its anger/focus, I find the amount of angry, depressing poetry blogs on wordpress.com to be unnerving.
Do I suggest that would-be poets write about rainbows an sunsets? Heck no.
But here–if you are going to delve into the depths of pain and despair…let me tell you how to stylize it in such a way that its anger and darkness is not all that is communicated. Is anger and darkness really what you want to portray? Or rather, is it your feelings about such anger and darkness and how it has affected your life and the world around you–is that truly what you are trying to convey? Don’t you find the latter to be more accurate?
Tips to avoid writing infantile angry, depressing poetry:
1. Don’t whine with line breaks-that “aint” poetry.
2. Don’t use the word suicide-tell us what suicide looks and feels like–remember–poetry is symbolic in its essence.
3. Don’t show your anger in your poem–it shows that you cannot master handling a basic human emotion..therefore…you cannot construct a well written line of verse…
Rather–let your anger be shown in the construct of the poem–include other feelings that accompany anger as it shows how the anger has evoked other painful emotions within you and show how you have overcome it–or show how you live with it.
I could write more…but truly…I think examples are in order.
Below are two poems that illustrate how to write about dark subjects without overpowering your reader with depression and anger.
Balance Copyright 2002, This poem may not be used or reprinted without authorization.
To Balance
Is to sway most frantic
No stillness in its maintenance
Only static and chaotic notions-mechanic
To balance
Is to sway
To grapple
Bend
Yield
Make way
To balance
Is to master
the composition–of chaos
And its illusory dominance.
By Carolina Maine
What is “Balance” alluding to?
Depression and Suicide
Fortunate Starvation Copyright, 2004 This poem may not be used or reprinted without authorization.
Fortunate starvation
This heart has lived
Despite droughts with no bounty to yield
Though fortunate in spirit
This frame does maintain
An excellent source of mercy
and passion that no fulfilled heart could sustain
Lingering ache
No starvation could imitate
A hunger beyond mortal need
A desire flaming with divine-intimacy’s seed
How may I cease
When my body shall be rendered beneath
The heaping earth
That is no match for my heart’s austere mirth
Had I known that in childhood’s girth
That I would grow into a passionate being–hurt
I would have killed
The heart that would in the future strain against fury to live
Though I’ve been brutally thrown
From innocent understanding’s belong
I am alive none-the-less
Despite death’s savage and beastly attempts at theft
For, my heart is forever conformed
To that of G-d’s–violent and strong
It will prevail
Despite soil and metered hail
As a reminder
To those who would fail
The brutality of life
Is a most nurturing
And refreshing
Ever–deepening–well.
By Carolina Maine
What is “Fortunate Starvation” about?
The poem is about suffering sexual abuse, maturing into a young woman, being in love, being a mistress, finding my faith in G-d and in myself, recognizing life can be brutal and destructive–but that it can also transform a weak woman into a strong woman of faith–a woman who will not fail at life by ending it all by her own hands in a moment of despair.
Maybe I have discovered right now why writing my book is so difficult. I am writing without symbolism and feel vulnerable.
I have put my poems on Poet Verse in the past and have never offered a meaning….so this is pretty vulnerable of me.
I did this for other poets on wordpress–wallowing in pain–in infantile form–it doesn’t show the beauty of the human spirit and how it can overcome life’s brutalities. All it does is force your reader into a dark place–if mass depression and anger is what you want to propogate–keep at it…but I for one…will not be reading your blog posts.
Enjoy the beauty of this day–and look for the strength within you–to make melodic–and inspiring–what is painful.
You may wonder why I chose a word like violent to describe G-d and my heart. It is important to know ALL the definitions of a word to appreciate nuances–
Violent definition #3–Intense in force/effect…I chose this word because it is a mirror and reflects back to the violence of the world–where humans commit violent acts against one another–but a heart stong in G-d will be intense in force/effect to combat against such earthly violence.
–Carolina Maine
2 comments September 14, 2009
I have a lot of European translated poetry on Poet Verse so when I found a blogger named George Messo who chronicles translated poetry events and who is also a poet and translator, I became giddy-some would say excited.
Check out George Messo.
Thanks for reading Poet Verse.
2 comments September 13, 2009
I got 4 pages done. My youngest who is 4 wants my attention so I need to give it to her. It feels good to have abandoned my fear and to have written. I feel confident in keeping up the pace.
Keep writing!
Add comment September 11, 2009
Carolina Maine is writing from 11:50 am until 1:50 pm. I will delve into that book topic I mentioned earlier. No excuses. No fears of failure. Just writing!
Get to it!
Have a Happy Writing Day!
Thanks for reading Poet Verse
Add comment September 11, 2009
If you like rhyme and meter in poetry and pretty much detest “modern snobs” because they discount its value in today’s world, check out this article: Poetry Guardians Reject Modern Verse. While I don’t reject modern verse–it is not my favorite and publishers should not thumb their noses at well written rhyming verse.
While I was at Vermont Studio (VSC), I met Kevin Young. He said my poetry was sing-song-ey and that I should write prose poetry instead. I told him that I grew up with ballads and beautiful poetry that rhymed so that is my preferred method of expression. Mr. Young said my rhymes were obvious; however, I highly doubt that as I have always used creative and abstract methods. I would suggest that VSC match incoming artists to appropriate writers as I really didn’t benefit from the workshop with him. I think that is why I felt disappointed in my writing abilities-you don’t go to workshops or take residency time to work with people who do not share your aesthetic. Oh well–I did meet wonderful poets in residence so that made the trip worthwhile. I think Mr. Young said my poetry rhymes were obvious to goad me into writing prose poetry. I did write one prose poem and performed it during the poetry reading at VSC; I think he was satisfied with that effort. Mr. Young is a polite person, but we don’t share the same taste in poetry. I have written more prose poetry since meeting Mr. Young, but I don’t enjoy it as much as when I employ more rhythm.
3 comments September 11, 2009
On Becoming a Writer…was written by a friend, Philip Osgood, whom I met at the Vermont Studio Center (VSC). If you read my blog often, you know that I have not written very much since returning from VSC. I want to write about a life experience that I have had, but I am hesitant given the subject matter. I think of what I will write over 50 times per day and dream about it….the fact that I am not writing is making me extremely grouchy. Part of me is afraid I cannot write it satisfactorily. I hope I can get over this soon. Philip’s suggestions and encouragement (indirectly through his experience in the post) is helping me to understand I need to write–even if it is junk–before revision.
Thanks Philip!!
Add comment September 11, 2009
Moments are curious things. Lying stagnate among
desperate indecision or streaking by in delirium. We
can create, observe, capture or choose to forget them.
Each one has the ability to lend itself to growth.
Each one is an occasion whether we accept it or not.
Moments blend together to form or destroy lives.
Biding time creates a moment. Distress, excitement,
creativity- molds a moment. Embracing time as a flow
of movement and movement only as opposed to
restricting contracts on a life can be the only
positive outlook. Or is it? Create to excel. Refuse
to and idleness may contaminate. Limitation may only
stifle and extinguish existence.
“ To undertake is to achieve”– Emily Dickinson.
Occasions mark themselves with tears, laughter or
outbursts. Condemning ourselves to limited moments
quelches the desire to better excel at our own being.
We delve deep into our past to receive future events
but are only left with the odor of failure. Trying to
reconstruct what has abandoned us in the past shows us
that the future may be limited if we rely on past
moments for security and foundation. Past
outbursts were created in an undeserving time,
immature and before fruitation. Solemn and naive. We
value our childhood but hardly take responsibility.
–By Chelsea Lee, Guest Contributor for Poet Verse
Add comment September 11, 2009
I met John Olivares Espinoza while I was in residency at the Vermont Studio Center last November. Today, he sent me a comment about his up-coming reading. If you are in the Kansas City area, hearing John’s poetry would be a fabulous way to spend an evening.
The Latino Writers Collective presents The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry ON TOUR with editor Francisco Aragon, author of Puerta del Sol and director of the Institute of Latino Studies at Notre Dame University, with contributors Brenda Cardenas, author of Boomerang, and John Olivares Espinoza, author of Date Fruit Elegies. The Wind Shifts is the winner of the International Latino Book Award in Poetry. Reception and book signing to follow.
What: Latino Writers Collective Reading Series
When: September 23, 2009, 7:00
Where: Plaza Library, 4801 Main Street, Kansas City, MO
Add comment September 10, 2009
I had trouble with the last theme as whenever I would try to post, it would give me a failure error.
I hope you like the new look of Poet Verse. To learn more about the photo-check out the Photo Header Page to your right.
Penitent • ADJ • regretful, remorseful
Had the man appeared penitent for his inappropriate behavior, his friends may have been more forgiving.
1 comment September 10, 2009
Y yo, mientras, hijo
tuyo, con mas secas
hojas en las venas
–Juan Ramon Jimenez
Among the almond trees
whiteness more than winter’s,
speech where no name is,
flowers broken from sleep;
and you their litany,
a breath upon this fervor,
you their reason, Lady,
seem as a name, meanwhile,
for an immortal season,
who stand in such whiteness
with those green leaves in your hands.
There is no breath of days
in that time where I was,
in that place, through the trees;
no winds nor satellites,
seasons nor bodies rise;
are no descent of rivers,
wavering of fishes,
indecision of tides,
languor before pause,
nor any dance to please,
nor prayers, pleasure of knees,
coupling, smile of increase,
swaying of fruit and seas,
genesis, exodus,
tremor of arteries,
decay by calendars,
hum of carrion flies;
and no shadow-plays,
trepidation of fingers,
ruse of limbs or faces,
ghosts nor histories
shift before the eyes,
but that vain country lies
in savorless repose.
Among the name of these,
yet as they eyes remove
now from the politics
of these disstated things,
I their artifice,
a breath among such languor,
I their name, Lady,
seem as one nameless, leaning
through such stillness meanwhile
with these dry leaves in my hands.
–By W.S. Merwin
Add comment September 10, 2009
Endemic• peculiar to a particular region• native, characteristic of a population• confined to a particular place• an endemic disease
Add comment September 8, 2009
I have decided to review sentence construction in order to polish my poetry and composition skills. I bought the book, The Art of Styling Sentences, by Longknife and Sullivan to serve as a primer.
I may share some of the information on Poet Verse as I think it could benefit readers in their writing endeavors.
I hope you had an awesome Labor Day weekend. Have a great writing day!
Add comment September 8, 2009
Sounds add texture to poetry and evoke emotional responses from the reader. Think of poems you like, what kind of sounds do those poems employ? How do those sounds make you feel?
How does one create sounds within poetry?
By using these methods:
Assonance (Repeating Vowels)
The repetition of a vowel sound; green/weave, boat/remote, tray/sway, sickle/fickle. Assonance gives poetry a playful or witty vibe and can also be used to suggest meanings between to words: gowns/hand-me-downs. Assonance makes poetry more musical.
How to experiment with assonance:
Avoid end rhymes
Use assonance within the line
Use assonance and rhyme
• There are no rules and limitations so let your imagination soar
Example:
The flutter of wings precedes a shadow
fleeing over bright leaves, greenly lit
with late afternoon. Sporadic breezes ruffle
the hedge below the orange tree.
from “Late Afternoon at the Alhambra” by Diane Mehta
The ee sound is repeated six times: precedes, fleeing, leaves, greenly, breezes, and trees. It propels the poem forward while tying it together through the repeated ee sound.–Mehta
Alliteration (Repeat Consonants)
Consonant sounds are repeated at the beginning of words-examples: crook, craggy, creek
**Too much alliteration can result in a tongue twister effect.
Consonance
The repetition of consonant sounds at the end of words-examples: more/mirror, luck/rake
Consonance words do not always rhyme.
Try not to overdo it with anyone one thing when you’re writing. Real mastery is in being subtle, not hitting your reader over the head with your style. –Mehta
Onomatopoeia (Living Words)
Creates drama
purr, hiss, buzz, clunk,
Use instead of explaining what is happening.
Example:
Low gear: the engine purred
Silly Sounds (Make sure your sounds are appropriate)
Words that begin with the letters B, D, P, G and F can be ridiculous when used multiple times because they are stops and break up flow.
Examples: Hickory Dickory Dock
Rough Sounds
Explosive sounds that combine to create jarring, ugly words: perverse, jerk
Sexy Sounds
Sexy and mellifluous:
Examples: sleek, meaner, glide, groove, surf, winding
If your words physically, audibly mimic what you’re trying to say, they actually back up what you are trying to convey. –Mehta
How To Write Poetry by Diane Mehta
Add comment September 8, 2009
Today, I celebrate it!
October
O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; To-morrow's wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; To-morrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow, Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know; Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away; Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes' sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost- For the grapes' sake along the wall. By Robert Frost
4 comments September 7, 2009
Ingenious
ADJ
Clever•Resourceful
His ingenious use of almonds, rather than the cashews called for by the recipe, was lauded by members of his supper club, who found the dish to be elegant.
Add comment September 7, 2009
But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Add comment September 7, 2009
Just because you buy a book, it doesn’t mean that the author knows everything there is about a subject. Feel free to disagree with authors. In school, I noticed many of my classmates lapping up teachers’ opinions and the opinions of authors. Perhaps I was and remain a trouble maker…or perhaps….I like to decide things for myself. Whatever the reason–my message is–respectfully disagreeing is what builds character and catapults the advancement of human thought.
Mehta, on page 5 of her book, How To Write Poetry, writes
There’s no right or wrong interpretation of a poem.
This is an extreme position that assumes poets do not fully understand what they create and that others cannot fully identify (common consensus) what the poet is trying to convey.
When I write, I am often surprised what bleeds through the process. I learn things about myself that perhaps I would not have learned had I not taken the time to explore my thoughts and feelings in a concise composition. This does not mean that I write without a definite meaning and that any reader can decide for him or her self what the message of the poem is. I write with a message. All good writing conveys a message.
Poems without messages are fancy word florals that disintegrate into the crevices of readers’ minds where they lay dormant after the first initial impression of beauty has passed.
Keep that in mind (your mind) when reading a poem.
If the poem doesn’t have a message-it doesn’t grab your heart and soul-thus no loftiness or exaltation may occur.
Carolina Maine
1 comment September 5, 2009
Got a poem you want to share?
Submit it to Poet Verse:
carolinamaine at gmail dot com
Put Subject Line: Poetry Submission
Thanks for reading Poet Verse!
Happy Labor Day Weekend!
Add comment September 5, 2009
Just as there are styles of art-there are styles of poetry. Learning them gives you more ideas on how to create new canvases for your imagery and lofty thoughts.
Lyrical Poetry
Most new writers use this form. Lyrical poetry is short and emotional.
Allegory
A poem in which characters represent ideas such as Death, Courage, or Innocence.
An example would be The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser.
Apostrophe
An address to an absent person or idea, such as Shakespeare’s “O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts!”
Confessional Poetry
Poetry whose subject is intimate or private. Much of contemporary poetry is extremely confessional.
Dramatic Monologue
A poem in which the speaker delivers a speech, as though it’s a one-sided conversation. Often, the speaker reveals key facts and telling details as he or she continues speaking.
Eclogue
A poem about a pastoral theme, such as farming, crops, the countryside, or the idealized world of shepherds. Usually an eclogue takes the form of a dialogue. In some cases a deeper meaning is hinted at such as our place in the universe or the human condition. Eclogues are also referred to as bucolics.
Elegy
A mournful lament, usually written in honor of someone who has died.
Epic
A long, narrative style of poem that involves heroic subjects or characters, such as Homer’s The Odyssey or The Illiad.
Epigram
A short, witty poem that often makes a satiric observation. It can be any length or style, as long as it’s brief-the key is that the tone is sharp-tongued.
Epistle
A poem written as though it’s a letter from one person to another.
Narrative Poetry
Poetry that tends to be long and involves a story, with characters and a plot.
Ode
A lyric form used for poems recited during public events. An ode is dedicated to someone or in honor of something- a military victory, a safe return, a funeral, a birthday-or serves a praise to a friend or a god (or G-d).
Literal and Adapted version of Mehta’s How to Write Poetry
Add comment September 5, 2009
What does every writer need? An expansive vocabulary.
Check Poet Verse daily for a Word of the Day!
Today’s word:
Trepidation • N • fear, apprehension
With great trepidation, I embarked on a journey into hostile lands-lands filled with war and bloodshed.
Add comment September 5, 2009
Poetry
po •e •try
noun
writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm
Mehta, Diane How To Write Poetry Definition Taken From* Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
Poetry
(pō’i trē)
noun
1. the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts. 2. literary work in metrical form; verse. 3. prose with poetic qualities. 4. poetic qualities however manifested; the poetry of simple act and things. 5. poetic spirit or feeling; The pianist played the prelude with poetry. 6. something suggestive of or likened to poetry: the poetry of a beautiful view on a clear day.
Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary Of The English Language
Which definition appeals to you? Why?
Add comment September 5, 2009
The main hits for my blog are those that pertain to poetry instruction so I decided to post basic lessons inspired or taken from the book, How to Write Poetry, by Diane Mehta. Mehta acknowledges Robert Pinsky and Derek Walcott as “terrific teachers” who taught her “…how to think about poetry.”
The book is basic, but I think it would make a great material contribution to Poet Verse and its readers. So check back here often for tips on improving your poetry.
Have a great poetry writing day!
Add comment September 4, 2009
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
J.R.R. Tolkein, The Fellowship Of The Rings
5 comments September 4, 2009
I received an email from Vermont Studio Center about its full fellowships that are available in art/writing.
If you are interested, then please open the PDF.
Add comment September 2, 2009
I’ve been reading Donald Hall’s collection of poems titled, White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Hall was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2006-2007. I enjoy his writing ability and the way his poems are arranged. I do not, however, care for the amount of sensual poetry in this collection. I understand that sensual poetry has its place in the world, but I don’t care for it particularly. I think it is because most of it deals with illicit sex and that is destructive to lives and families. I don’t think illicit sex is the most enjoyable form of sensuality or even the most desirable. However, there are plenty who disagree with me–as made obvious by the popularity of such poetry.
This poem, The Hard Man, is well written and indicates the type of poetry that I enjoy by Donald Hall. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have:
The Hard Man
My father wept easily,
laughed loudly when his friends teased him.
and blustered like a basso-
but his father was “a hard man.”
H.F. was strict, handsome,
silent, and severe. When his stallion
Skylark ran away
with my young uncle and threw him, H.F.
galloped to a stop
beside his son’s body, bellowing, “Are
you trying to kill
the horse?” I remember the time we called
on H.F. after church
to find him sitting upright, staring
straight ahead without
expression, as my uncle cut his boot
away with the carving
knife that sliced white and dark at Christmas;
I remember the leather
curling like a black rose petal.
That morning Skylark
slipped on clear ice that H.F. neglected
to notice, and the horse,
falling, rolled on his leg. Jagged pink
bone was sticking out
through H.F.’s paper-white leg skin as he
sat stiff, resolute,
without complaint or excuse for error.
Add comment September 2, 2009
I’m not sure about my new home state. Beautiful it may be, but it is also curiously liberal. I find the poetry scene to be a bit “earthy” for my aesthetic. It is not that I mind nature poetry, it is that it seems to dominate this state like the Rockies dominate the skyline.
I’ve been researching the poetry groups here, and I haven’t found one that I am sure I would “fit into” which is somewhat of a disappointment.
I have thought about starting my own group. I’ll have to think about it.
I don’t know anyone here so that might pose a challenge–though–I do have a sense of where to begin.
So keep reading….the poetry here is ecletic.
Here is a poem from Colorado poet, Luis Lopez :
Images of San Luis
Often of late
And far from this poor
Tin-roofed-made-to-look-like adobe church
I have seen a votive candle burn in a red glass
Sole illumination in this dark corner
Of a chipped plaster image
Of San Luis de Gonzaga
Church patron
Standing two feet high
Yellowing surplice over faded black cassock
Eyes downcast, seeking heaven
This is where my father stood to make his peace
When times were difficult to
Ask forgiveness of stubborn sin through his namesake
And where I now stand
Drawn from afar to make my difficult peace
With the memory
Of his tobacco and whiskey breath
Luis Lopez is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and teaches in the English Department at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado.
This poem appeals to me on various levels. I love the way Lopez uses sparse descriptions to advance a profound and vivid memory/period in time. I dislike heavily laden poetry that destroys the beauty of poetry’s dense brevity.
2 comments September 1, 2009
This morning as I sipped my grande chai latte (the only thing I drink at Starbucks), I also flipped through this morning’s Denver Post. Evidently, they have some sort of Haiku contest. This week’s winner, David K. Cowles,debuted a Haiku poem about football. Really? Seriously?
Being southern, I am a bit surprised by a football poem. Most fellas back home who are football fans/players don’t really dig poetry.
Throwing my snootiness aside, I will post his Haiku poem here if you are interested. Leave your thoughts if so inclined.
Precision passes
Jarring tackles, victory
measured in inches.
So what do you think about football Haiku? Yay or Nay?
If you live in CO, you may submit your Haiku poems to: lifestyle at denverpost dot com
To read more www.denverpost.com/haiku (Link Button would not work with address…sorry for inconvenience)
This week’s topic: Chile Peppers
So if you are interested in submitting–get to thinking and writing!
I’ve never written Haiku so….I’m probably not entering.
Good luck and Good writing:)
Editor’s Critique of Cowle’s Haiku:
While it is certainly vivid, I think jarring tackles and victory should not be on the same line…thinking something like:
Precision Passes (denotes intelligent strategy of the game)
Defying tackles, victory (denotes a plan-either side tries to evade being tackled)
measured in inches (more intelligent strategy)
I think the word jarring was ruining it for me. But that is just my opinion:) Feel free to leave yours…
Add comment September 1, 2009
Women’s Month is celebrated during August in South Africa, as it marks the anniversary of the great Women’s March of 1956, where about 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the carrying of pass books (a document to prove that they were allowed to enter a ‘white area’), which was legislation aimed at tightening the apartheid government’s control over the movement of black women in urban areas. This march was on 9 August 1956, now an annual public holiday. Last year I was invited to do a reading in Parliament. It was truly an honour to be able to celebrate our women leaders in such a place of power.
I am truly in awe of Bomi’s talent. Her poetry is powerful, spiritual, intimate, and celebratory of the human condition.
This quote was taken from her blog and followed the poem: Their Souls Ignited. If you haven’t read it yet-you haven’t experienced the beauty and power that is Bomi’s poetry and elegance!
Thanks, Bomi, for all your inspirational and educational posts:)
1 comment August 31, 2009
This is a cool blog by an artist in Michigan named, Deborah Larson King. Her posts are funny and vibrant. Check her site out here: Indigo Jones Studio
Yeah, Yeah, I know it is not a poetry site or a fiction site-but it is fun nonetheless. You will also find it in my linkroll.
Enjoy!
If you would like to submit poetry to Poet Verse for a Guest Highlight, please email me at:
carolinamaine at gmail dot com
Thanks for reading Poet Verse!!
Add comment August 31, 2009
I noticed this as I have perused several shrinking poetry sections in bookstores in various U.S. cities and states.
Give this article a quick read and leave your thoughts here if you wish:
2 comments August 29, 2009
Baghdad
Everyone had this strange compulsion
to stand still a moment in the street
and listen
because they were convinced
that the tautness could not go on
indefinitely
that some day something had to happen
that much was certain but what form
the release
might take could only be guessed at
and lying out on the roof at night
under the stars
he would strain his ears trying to imagine
he could hear perhaps in the direction
of Arbataash
the faint sound of voices calling
but it was always the presence
of silence
broken now and then by a sleepy rooster
crowing on some distant housetop
or a cat
wailing in the street below or a truck
far out on Mosul Road
backfiring
bang bang as it coasted
down the long hill toward the Tigris
fertile old giver of life.
By Ray Sharp
Unauthorized Use Is Prohibited
Ray Sharp works in public health, writes poems, bikes and skis in Michigan’s rural, rugged and remote western Upper Peninsula region. Sharp studied Spanish-language poetry in college, and has been writing poetry in his native English for some 15 years. For more of Ray’s poems, visit www.raysharp.wordpress.com
Editor’s Note: I was not able to link to Ray Sharp’s site using the link application so I put his web address here instead. There must be a WP glitch today as I have never encountered this problem before. Thanks.
2 comments August 29, 2009
Silence
Like the one before the world was created
Fog slides over the river
Tangles in bushes on shore
Dew trembles on a branch
A bud bursts open
A fledgling moves in a nest
Silence
Like the one before the first word was spoken
Church bells like their lips
By Ronalds Briedis Translated from the Latvian by Margita Gailitis and J.C. Todd
Add comment August 24, 2009
Night falls, soothing to lascivious old men
My cat, Murr, hunched like some heraldic sphinx,
Uneasily surveys, from his fantastic eyeball,
The gradual ascent of the chlorotic moon.
The hour of children’s prayers, when whoring Paris
Hurls on to the pavement of every boulevard
Her cold-breasted girls, who wander with searching
Animal eyes under the pale street lights.
With my cat, Murr, I meditate at my window,
I think of the newborn everywhere;
I think of the dead who were buried today.
I imagine myself within the cemetary,
Entering the tombs, going in place
Of those who will spend their first night there.
by Jules LaForge Translated by the French by William Jay Smith
1 comment August 23, 2009
I would like to thank everyone who commented on my earlier post as it helped me to put things into perspective. I am the kind of person who puts 100% into an activity. When I feel like I can no longer put in that amount of work, I abandon the project. I have had to realize that perhaps 100% could be divided up over multiple days–allowing me to post less frequently-but post nonetheless.
Moving has been a little difficult for me as I have not had any time to think, meditate, and write. My husband has been away training for many longs weeks now. Being in a new area is isolating and it tends to wear on me as I am a very social person. I think my despondency about blogging grew out of the feelings of loneliness that I have currently experienced.
My trip to Vermont last December taught me that perhaps I have been taking the wrong route with my writing. I enjoyed meeting wonderful people in Vermont, but I felt out of place there and began to question my abilities as a writer.
Perhaps this is too personal for a blog, but I am sure other writers reach a point in their lives where they re-evaluate their progress and chosen path and wonder if they are progressing or if another path will lead to greater spiritual happiness through the exercise of writing.
I think I have decided to focus on my progress in spiritual development and work on encouraging others to take time to focus on their chosen spiritual progress as well.
Thank you for your support and suggestions.
Carolina Maine
1 comment August 22, 2009
I am considering shutting down Poet Verse. I haven’t had the time to put as much effort into it as I once did. I miss all my old comments as well.
I will post before deciding whether or not to pull the plug.
Thanks for reading.
4 comments August 19, 2009
I have been offline because I have just arrived in a new state that we are planning on living in long-term. I do not have Internet access yet so my postings have been sparse if non-existent. I look forward to contributing more to Poet Verse around the end of August and early September. If you would like to be considered for having your poem published on Poet Verse please send me an email to carolinamaine at gmail dot com. Please also include a short bio.
Thank you for reading Poet Verse!
1 comment August 3, 2009
Chelsea Lee Copyright 2009 Unauthorized Use prohibited
This piece was written the summer I moved in with an ethnomusicologist and spent a lot of time listening to avante-garde jazz and seeing shows at The Tonic. Only years later did I learn tonic was something other than to mix my vodka or gin with. So, Cheers to Brooklyn, and Cheers to Shane for making that summer worthwhile.
It has been an unconscious attempt of self that I have fallen into, about, and around you. In my own actual self realization, it has not been that I exist as a being, but rather an inanimate object of your affection. It is through this vessel I become closer, (a part), to you. We sit listen, confide, appreciate, and become as modulation of music tonality. It is when i confer with my self in this essence of music that I become you. There is a piece, a work of art actually, that you and I side by side indulge. It is within this moment when you reach for an instrument, a piece, a plectron, any sort of accompaniment, This is when I am transformed. I become any bediam between your fingers and the instrument. And when it is my song you play- I lapse all the more into an enlightented stage of being; love. I am what you have picked up and determined as the vessel. I am held in a lapse of reality only to find myself trapped within you. To me, to me, this is love. This is my soul released in to you.
3 comments July 10, 2009
Chelsea Lee will be contributing occasionally to Poet Verse. I hope you enjoy.
–Carolina Maine
Add comment July 10, 2009
Matin
Yet now I think I have finished the tale of my inferno.
And inferno it was; the old one, whose gates the Son of Man flung open.
From the same desert, on the same night, my eyes still awake to the silvery star, still, as the Kings of life, the Three Magi, heart, soul, and mind sleep untroubled. When shall we go beyond shores and mountains, to greet the birth of new labors, the new wisdom, the putting to flight of tyrants and demons, the end of superstition, and worship–the very first!–Noel on earth.
The song of the skies, the march of peoples! Slaves, let us not curse life.
–by Arthur Rimbaud
Translated from the French by William M. Davis
Add comment July 10, 2009
What strikes me about this poem is the last line, “His open mouth a zero.” The prophet journeys back to deliver a message but freezes upon seeing his open mouth in the well–
I have realized that life’s epiphanies and perhaps even prophecies are more intimate and powerful if never spoken…they tend to bind the person to G-d. We all have them–little moments where we gain insight into our lives–moments that rush our bloodstreams with the passion to announce our findings to the world. We prepare to announce and share—oftentimes we realize that the gift is better kept private and shown through a change in our behavior and attitude toward life and the people in our lives–rather than an announcement from an open and void mouth.
Before Addressing the People
Before addressing the people
The prophet on return from the desert
Bends over the well
To quench his thirst
But freezes
When he sees his reflection–
His open mouth a zero
–by Ronalds Briedis (Latvia)
Translated from the Latvian by Margita Gailitis and J.C. Todd
Add comment July 10, 2009
If you would like to be featured as a guest writer on Poet Verse, please submit your work after visiting the Submissions page.
Thanks,
Carolina Maine
Add comment July 5, 2009
It is a definite possibility that more of William Jay Smith’s poetry will be featured on Poet Verse. His style is exciting and I love the intricate yet unusual images he weaves into his works. I chose this poem since I will be moving out further west–again. I once lived in Las Vegas and hated the evenings because, unlike southern evenings, the air remained dry. Evenings out west lack the dewy wetness of a southern evening. In the south, evenings are a reward for braving the sweltering heat. Out west–the landscape as well as the air is intolerant of human life, or rather, the life of amphibious humans.
Enjoy:
A HOT STAGNANT EVENING
Apres-diner torride et stagnante
One’s feet are baking, one can feel the arteries throbbing in one’s ankles, under one’s chin, in the heart, the wrists;one raises up hands that are already swollen and wet, the least little meal weighs one down, one must undo one’s necktie, one breathes so deeply that the cigarette stuck to the corner of one’s mouth is consumed in twelve puffs, one’s skin is wringing wet…How unhappy I would be if I had breasts and were a nurse! Or if I were one of those military musicians laced tight in a uniform, and had to blow into a trombone in some bandstand. Ah, to be a fly on the wet tile floor of some provincial kitchen! Or rather a passive sponge, a branch of coral encrusted at the bottom of the sea, watching the parade of submarine nature, or a blue cornflower on a piece of deft china perched above a pile of stoles, in the cool, dark back room of an antique shop on the banks of the Sequana! Or a flower in the chintz of the bare prim parlor of an old maid in Quimper. . . or a heron. . .
–William Jay Smith
My favorite passage is highlighted.
Add comment July 5, 2009
THIS IS A TIME SENSITVE POST AND WILL BE REMOVED IN 48 HOURS. THANKS:)
I wrote this a while ago, but I was too shy to share it. I know you have wanted some of my poetry online–so here it is.
I hope it is satisfactory:) Blush:)
“My Aging Body” by Carolina Maine Copyright 2009 Unauthorized use of this poem is prohibited.
–Carolina Maine
5 comments July 3, 2009
I will be moving soon, but I plan to post frequently.
So-keep checking.
And thanks for all the encouraging messages to keep blogging!
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY WEEKEND!!
Add comment July 3, 2009
Fin de journee en province
Passed the end of a day in the provinces.
A gray sort of town, carefully paved, peaceful.
The hotel window looks onto the main square. I watched
a stupid moon rise over there, lighting up this town especially
as though to assure me that this town really existed,
in its insignificance.
A lamplighter carrying a baby in his arms followed by a dog who seemed to be used to everything, and who sniffed at the pavements as though they were very old friends.
The lamp did not want to light.
Immediately, two, five, six people came along and discussed it; the lamp lights, the people see that it is lit and go away slowly. Only one remains. He looks at the lamp for a moment and then he goes away.
Oh! to live in one of these mollusc beds!
To die!….to die.
And the moon is the same here as in Paris, as over the Mississippi, as in Bombay.
Translated from French by Margaret Crosland
2 comments May 24, 2009
Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century by Carolinne White.
A History of Christian-Latin Poetry From the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages by F.J.E. Raby
Grace is Where I Live The Landscape of Faith and Writing by John Leax
Sacred Doorways A Beginner’s Guide to Icons by Linette Martin
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
One Hundered Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Anchor Anthology of French Poetry From Nerval to Valery in English Translation Edited by Angel Flores
I have begun reading nearly all of these books and love them so far!
1 comment May 23, 2009
At the window ledge concealing
The ancient sandalwood gold-flaking
Of her viol dimly twinkling
Long ago with flute or mandore,
Stands the pallid Saint displaying
The ancient missal page unfolding
At the Magnificat outpouring
Long ago for vesper and compline:
At that monstrance glazing lightly
Brushed now by a harp the Angel
Fashioned in his evening flight
Just for the delicate finger
Tip which, lacking the ancient missal
Or ancient sandalwood, she poises
On the instrumental plumage,
Musician of silences
Translated from the French by Hubert Creekmore
Add comment May 23, 2009
I have, in the past, highlighed poems on other blogs that I have found to be outstanding. “Holden” by Bryan Borland. Check it out when you have the opportunity.
1 comment May 17, 2009
I slept through all the carnival, delirious.
I couldn’t bear the drums, pipes, burning puppets.
Today, the carnival’s over,
postmodernism begins.
I fiddle with the radio. This archetypal
scan of the wavelength can be performed
ad infinitum. Inside me
I have a little God, I tend
this scrap,
scab.
Translated from the Polish by Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese
2 comments May 16, 2009
First, I would like to thank Tova Gardner, a fellow poet whom I met at Vermont Studio, for sharing her new literary journal link with me. Tova is a talented poet, and I was going to write an introduction for her, but hers is so much better:
Tova Gardner is a young Israeli poet. She has twice received Artist Grants from Vermont Studio Center where she studied with poet Kevin Young and will study with poet and Poetry Editor of Lilith Magazine, Marge Piercy. Her poems have appeared in Global Tapestry, Obsessed With Pipework, Dislocate Literary Journal, California Quarterly and Poeticamagazine. She is currently working on her first collection of poems.
If you have work in the areas of fiction, poetry, visual art, and fact, please send your submissions to the Arava Review.
Add comment May 16, 2009
Sorry, I haven’t blogged in a while. I am adjusting to being employed and being a mother at the same time. I look forward to posting more often. Here is the email I received about the PBS’ Poetry Everywhere special:
As someone who blogs about poetry and may write poetry yourself, I thought this special feature may be of interest to you and your readers. I hope that you will pass this information along.
I am writing to let you know that PBS Engage is featuring Poetry Everywhere’s Executive Producer Brigid Sullivan, as part of the ongoing PBS Engage series called “Five Good Questions.” The series features a PBS celebrity or insider and asks visitors to send in questions to be answered the following week. The blog series has been very successful and we are thrilled to have Ms. Sullivan as our feature this week.
This is a chance for you to ask any questions you may have about PBS’s Poetry Everywhere site, WGBH, or whatever else is on your mind. We’ll pick five questions for Brigit to answer and post her responses next week on the Engage blog.
Please visit the link and post your comments and questions here: http://www.pbs.org/engage/blog/ask-%E2%80%9Cpoetry-everywhere%E2%80%9D-executive-producer-brigid-sullivan-your-questions
You can also visit PBS Engage at www.pbs.org/engage and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pbsengage
Thank you!
Amy R. Baroch
Sr. Project Manager
PBS Engage
Twitter: amyPBS
3 comments April 17, 2009
I have always written Confession types of poems so I am trying to do things that are more narrative. I’m not sure that I am doing very well at it. I mainly read about events and try to imagine that I am there and experiencing those events when I am writing.
I didn’t really get a response from the last poem I posted and it really was odd since I normally get comments on my work. I am guessing that it was a flop and you are all too nice to tell me.
That is okay. Everyone has a flop at some point.
Now–for the personal “stuff”:
I went to eat with my family at Cracker Barrel–my favorite place to go now that I am a displaced southerner. I saw a man at the table right next to ours who looked like he could be the twin of a man I once knew and loved dearly. It was unsettling-the resemblance–even down to his profile and nose. His hair was even cut in the same way.
I had the urge to walk up to him and apologize for staring at him–I wanted to tell him that he looked like someone I once knew. But I didn’t.
Ever so often, I see someone who looks like one of my late grandparents or someone I have loved dearly in my life. I always want to tell the person how much they look like my loved one, but I never do.
I don’t know…..I just thought I would share.
It is a reflective night.
Enjoy your writing!
3 comments February 24, 2009
I love this poem. It is by a poet named Semezdin Mehmedinovic from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
War
and nothing is going on–
I go into town to beg for cigarettes
I’ve always known your scent
but you’ve never been closer–
sometimes when it’s cold in the morning you
put my underwear on by mistake
in ten years we haven’t been together as much
as we have these five months–
now you’ve got my sweater on all day
your joy
at the packets of humanitarian aid
makes me happy and sad at the same time
and I ask myself: where on earth do
you find us coffee every night?
There isn’t a single pane of glass left in our windows
and there’s just no way to get rid
of the lagging flies
translated from the Bosnian by Ammiel Alcalay.
1 comment February 8, 2009
John Olivares Espinoza is a friend of mine, and he sent me his new book, The Date Fruit Elegies. Today, I read “Left Eye Losing Sight”, and I truly admired his writing gifts and talents. It inspired me to get back online. I have been offline due to illness.
I love this poem, and I hope that you enoy it as much as I do:
As the sight in my left eye
Worsens each year,
The other gets sharper.
My right eye
Tells the other,
Do not fret
I’ll watch over you
Like a little brother
***
When I shut my right eye
The world loses all detail:
People become traces
Of themselves, souls of what
Once fitted flesh;
Ghosts whose
World I have entered
Without earning my death
***
I had an uncle
Who had gone
Completely blind
By the time he was fifty.
The first and only
Time I met him
I was eleven
And asked,
What do you see
When you’re blind?
Nothing, he answered back
Do you see black?
He said, Not even that.
***
My grandfather slept with a revolver
Under his pillow.
Once, he unloaded it,
Held the rounds like a set of teeth.
He handed the pistol to my young brother
And he inspected
Each curve
As if it were a woman’s sleeping body
Before my brother handed me the gun
The barrel glared right at me–
I stared into its one black eye
And flinched.
***
Shut one eye as you read
Or hear this.
What do you see out of the sealed eye?
Now imagine it in both eyes.
Now do you understand my uncle?
–John Olivares Espinoza Pages 40-41 from The Date Fruit Elegies
10 comments January 12, 2009
-Formulated about 1912 by Ezra Pound
-American and English poets
-Aim=clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images
-Succinct verse of dry clarity and hard outline
-Exact visual image made a total poetic statement
-Imagism sought analogy with sculpture unlike French Symbolism Movement (affinity with music)
-1914 Pound moved to Vorticism
-From Imagist Manifesto:
-the use of language of common speech-no decorative words
-free verse epxresses individuality-a new cadence means a new idea
-absolute freedom in subject choice
-to present an image
-poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities
-oppose the cosmic poet who shirks the real difficulties of his art
-produce poetry that is hard and clear-never blurred or indefinite
-concentration=essence of poetry
Imagist Poets
Ezra Pound
Amy Lowell
Hilda Doolittle
Richard Aldington
F.S. Flint
Inspired by the critical views of T.E. Hulme who revolted against the careless thinking and Romantic optimism he saw prevailing.
5 comments December 14, 2008
Period that describes the events in Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901)
-increased use of sonnet form-influenced modern poets
-Poets in the Victorian Period were influenced by the Romantic Poets
-The Victorian Period saw the emergence of many important female poets.
-Victorian poetry provided the link between the Romantic and the Modern Poets
Victorian Poets:
Matthew Arnold
Charlotte Bronte
Emily Bronte
Elizabeth Browning
Robert Browning
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Rudyard Kipling
Christina Rossetti
Dante Gabriella Rossetti
Alfred Tennyson
Oscar Wilde
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 comments December 13, 2008
Ekphrastic poetry is created when a poet interprets a work of visual art and then creates a narrative in verse form that represents his or her reaction to that painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic tradition.
2 comments December 13, 2008
The rain brings me back
the dispersed pieces
of my friends, it presses down
flights too high, it slows down escapes and closes
on the side of the windows, finally,
time.
translated from the Italian by Judith Baumel
1 comment December 13, 2008
You can learn more about the book at:
http://john-olivares-espinoza.com/blog/
The order form can be found at:
http://john-olivares-espinoza.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/datefruitflyer2.pdf
Add comment December 6, 2008
In the waking night
The forests have stopped growing
The shells are listening
The shadows in the pools turn grey
The pearls dissolve in the shadow
And I return to you
Your face is marked upon the clockface
My hands are beneath your hair
And if the time you mark sets free the birds
And if they fly away towards the forest
The hour will no longer be ours
Ours in the ornate birdcage
The brimming cup of water
The preface to the book
And all the clocks are ticking
All the dark rooms are moving
All the air’s nerves are bare
Once flown
The feathered hour will not return
And I shall have gone away.
by David Gascoyne
1 comment December 5, 2008
I tried to convert my PDF notes on Surrealist Poetry to Word, but it was rife with errors and symbols.
Hope you don’t mind the PDF version. Also listed in the notes are Surrealist-inspired and Surrealist Poets.
1 comment December 5, 2008
Poetry
Poetry is useless, it serves only
to behead a king
or seduce a young woman.
Perhaps it serves also,
if water is death
to part the water with a dream
And if time grants us its unique matter,
it serves possible as a blade,
because a clean cut is better
when we open memory’s skin.
With broken glass
desire
leaves ragged wounds.
You are poetry
a clean cut,
a part in the water
-if water is teh reason for existence-,
the woman who submits to seduction
in order to behead a king.
Luis Garcia Montero Translated from Spanish by Katie King.
Miller, Wayne & Prufer, Kevin. 2008. New European Poets. Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, P. 13.
1 comment December 3, 2008
I haven’t been blogging that much because I have been writing research papers and preparing for the end of this semester.
Since I only have a final examination remaining–I have picked up a few books to read over the holidays.
They are:
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks (I think the title was too long to make the entire title a link.)
&
How To Write The Story Of Your Life by Frank P. Thomas (memoir guide)
Add comment December 3, 2008
My daughter says she hates homework. She has excellent grades and seems to like school so I would have never guessed her to feel this way. I gave her a book of poetry, A Child’s Anthology of Poetry edited by Elizabeth Hauge Sword.
My daughter’s favorite poem is on page 221, “Homework! Oh, Homework!” by Jack Prelutsky.
I scanned a copy below. I just learned that I can save PDF to JPEG (wow!).
Saves time typing.
I COULD NOT GET THE JPEG IMAGE SMALL ENOUGH TO POST SO I WILL HAVE TO POST IN PDF.
Click on the link below to read the poem:
3 comments November 30, 2008
Short notes of only 1 page.
I have found that it is easier to scan my notebook than to take time typing my notes out into blog posts.
The file is in PDF.
2 comments November 24, 2008
This poem is in PDF format, and this post will stay fully active until tomorrow, Tuesday, morning.
Preview has been removed.
Thanks for reading!
4 comments November 24, 2008
I am reading
How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster.
I actually bought EM Forster’s book Aspects of the Novel along with Foster’s book, but I decided to take it back since I really didn’t have much time to enjoy Forster’s winding language.
If you want a book that is solid, to the point, and provides good examples then you should definitely pick up a copy of How to Read Novels Like a Professor.
If you want to write a novel that is highly literary then choose Forster’s Aspect of the Novel.
1 comment November 24, 2008
I made some notes about Modernist Poetry. I am starting to write in print in my notebook so that the scanned result is of better quality. This PDF is in cursive, but I think it is still legible. My cursive handwriting is generally pretty bad.
Please click the link below-file is in Adobe PDF.
Add comment November 23, 2008
Some of my friends do not have copies of the group photo so I am providing it on my blog. I can’t scan to anything but Adobe because my scanner is old.
The photograph was taken by Howard Romero.
Add comment November 23, 2008
I had a great time at Vermont Studio Center (VSC). I met poet, Kevin Young, during a craft talk. He is a nice person and down-to-earth. His new book is titled Dear Darkness. I bought a copy while I was in Vermont, but I gave it to a friend who was collecting all of his books. Otherwise, I would share a poem or two from his latest collection.
While at VSC I had a desk in a writing studio. The experience taught me that I need to make a place in my home-a place just for writing. Yesterday, I went out and purchased some tables and a chair to make up my writing space. I also bought my children a large table for their art. Our downstairs area has been turned into a family studio. It was a great idea. I’m settling in today-answering emails about my trip and posting to my blog.
I am sad that my poetry has been copied from this site and put on objectionable sites. I even clean up poems (by other poets) that I have posted on my blog from other such sites. I think it is a responsible thing to do as a blog owner. I post poems on here by other writers that are enjoyable and educational. If my poems were on such a site, I would not mind, but next to Viagra ads–that just steams me.
I do think Poet Verse can be an enjoyable blog still. I will keep sharing poems that are good examples of poetry, and I will post my notes about the various poetic movements.
Thanks for reading!
Add comment November 23, 2008
Canto I.
Rash Author, ’tis a vain presumptuous Crime
To undertake the Sacred Art of Rhyme ;
If at thy Birth the Stars that rul’d thy Sence
Shone not with a Poetic Influence :
In thy strait Genius thou wilt still be bound,
Find Phoebus deaf, and Pegasus unsound.
You then, that burn with the desire to try
The dangerous Course of charming Poetry ;
Forbear in fruitless Verse to lose your time,
Or take for Genius the desire of Rhyme :
Fear the allurements of a specious Bait,
And well consider your own Force and Weight.
Nature abounds in Wits of every kind,
And for each Author can a Talent find :
One may in Verse describe an Amorous Flame,
Another sharpen a short Epigram :
Excerpt from The Art of Poetry by Nicolas Boileau Despreaux 1636-1711
Add comment November 2, 2008
Please read Honey I Get It. I Really Do. on Maps From A Good Kingdom’s Blog.
It is wonderful!
2 comments October 2, 2008
I haven’t felt like writing poetry lately. I have been so worried about the economy, the next election, and our international status.
Then, today, when I thought nothing could be worse–I read about the 168 people who were killed during a stampede at a Hindu temple in India. One of the quotes depicted a child who lost his/her mother:
One child sat on the ground next to the body of a woman, rubbing her forehead and crying ‘mother, mother.’
I am deeply saddened for those people and their families. I will keep them in my prayers.
Lately, I have been so emotional. The news is so full of doom and gloom–children being abused and dying, economic systems crashing, bombings, stampedes, and other world powers are in a position that could hurt the United States now that we are vulnerable.
I’m scared I won’t be able to make more than $8 an hour (I have a lot of student loan debt, and I stayed home while my children were young-no recent work history). I’m sure our rent will go up.
Life can make you feel so helpless–helpless to help yourself and others.
I was thinking it was so cruel that all 168 of those people had to die–for no reason at all.
Here is the article if you want to read it: India Stampede
5 comments September 30, 2008
for Hank
The General’s men sit at the door. Her eyes
Are fat with belladonna. She’s naked
Except for the small painted turtles
That are drinking a flammable cloud
Of rum and milk from her navel.
The ships out in the harbor
Are loosely allied
Like casks floating in bilge.
The occasional light on a ship
Winks. In the empty room of the manuscript
Someone is grooming you
For the long entrance into the dark city.
They’ll hang the General.
Then with torches they’ll search for his children.
Men and women
Are seen jumping from the burning hotel.
Journalists, in no hurry,
Elect to take the elevator. They walk
Out of the building, stepping over corpses. . .
You are listening to loud bells.
The corpses get up and follow the journalists.
It’s unfair that while rehearsing
For death they actually succumbed to it.
But no one sobs.
Shirts and dresses billowing as they fall.
Something inhuman in you watched it all.
And whatever it is that watches,
It has kept you from loneliness like a mob.
Add comment September 24, 2008
I’m a huge Kwame Dawes fan. Check out my LiveHopeLove and Kwame Dawes links in my blogroll.
Add comment September 18, 2008
All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees, unmoved, God's daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses. --Hilda Doolittle
Add comment September 18, 2008
I have covered various poetry forms/structures on this blog such as:
Thanks for reading Poet Verse!
1 comment September 15, 2008
Villanelle
Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate
we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate
us further from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate
when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies’ separate
routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;
wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.
–Marilyn Hacker
2 comments September 15, 2008
“Tourist” by Paul Engle. I LOVE this poem, but…
You’ll have to read it on Poetry Foundation’s website because it is reprinted with permission from the Estate of Paul Engle.
I like the poem, but why did he have to use the word, Kleenex, in such a nice piece of work?
The last line was so good–but then he used Kleenex….
I would have done things differently-that’s for sure.
Wow, I must be in a mood today:)
Add comment September 12, 2008
I’m not a big fan of Kay Ryan’s , but this poem is a good narrative.
You can read her poem “Turtle” here.
For a quasi-interview article and more poetry, visit the San Francisco Chronicle
I respect her for saying this:
‘Poetry should leave you feeling freer and not more burdened,’ she said. ‘I like to think of all good poetry as providing more oxygen in the atmosphere. Poems just make it easier to breathe.’–Kay Ryan
Add comment September 12, 2008
Air and Angels by John Donne
TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love’s pinnace overfraught ;
Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love’s sphere ;
Just such disparity
As is ‘twixt air’s and angels’ purity,
‘Twixt women’s love, and men’s, will ever be.
–John Donne (My favorite poet)
1 comment September 12, 2008
I love her poem! It is powerful so I decided to highlight it for today. Click this link to read Bomi’s poem Massacre.
1 comment September 11, 2008
turned out pretty decent. I was unfamiliar with the subject of the poem, but it ended up being fine since I did a little research to help me along. I am working on a collection to submit for the Walt Whitman Award.
If I can finish the collection by November, I might enter it this year. If not, I will try for next year. Part of me wants to go ahead and get it done.
Good luck with your writing and thanks for reading.
2 comments September 6, 2008
THANKS FOR READING POET VERSE!!
1 comment September 6, 2008
I have covered various poetry forms/topics on this blog such as:
Thanks for reading Poet Verse!
Add comment September 6, 2008
However,
the breath
which is
from the second one
is a
holy
tabernacle
in the heart.
One ascends
with the Unique Name
to the sky
to depict with Unifications
the relationship
between everything that
is difficult
in this
science of pronunciation.
It alone is
life in the Name.
It is remembered and sealed
in the Book of Life
to make the individual live
with passion
which enlightens
constantly, when
every thought,
every soul
is concentrated on it.
–Rabbi Abraham Abulafia
Add comment August 29, 2008
a poem for my collection. I suppose I will have more time to work on it now that I have more time on my hands. I’m not posting any poems for my new collection on here, but I can’t wait to submit the finished product for the Walt Whitman Award–it gives me something to look forward to.
Good luck with your writing, and thanks for reading Poet Verse.
Add comment August 28, 2008
1 comment August 25, 2008
I’ve been scanning this site for typos today. I noticed I keep spelling ac words with acc like acchieve instead of achieve. I blame this on hearing Italian in my brain accendere!!
Darn studying other languages…darn them all!
Just teasing.
It is affecting my spelling though–and I have to say–in somewhat of a negative way.
1 comment August 19, 2008
I wrote a Petrarchan Sonnet today. I wouldn’t say that it is glamourous or a beautiful attempt. I think it had too much of a message to be lyrical. I’m not sure if it is a success or not.
On other topics:
I had orientation for my new part-time job today. It went well. It will give me something to do.
Today, I did my French lesson, ran loads of errands, went to orientation, and wrote a Petrarchan sonnet.
I’m not sure what to do next. I feel semi-vegetative at the moment–unable to decide–brain is tired.
I suppose I will do some more family chores, read some more, write some more, and go to bed late–my idea of a plan.
Until next time–
**By the way, you can look up sonnet structure by searching for it in my blog’s search field.
1 comment August 18, 2008
I have always enjoyed political poetry. This is an open form poem:
For twelve days,
I drilled through Moscow ice
to reach paradise,
that white tablecloth, set with a plate
that’s cracking bit by bit
like the glassy air, like me.
I know I’ll fly apart soon,
the pieces of me so light they float.
The Russians burned their crops,
rather than feed our army.
Now they strike against each other like dry rocks
and set us on fire with a hunger
nothing can feed.
Someone calls me and I look up.
It’s Hitler.
I imagine eating his terrible, luminous eyes.
Brother, he says.
I stand up, tie the rags tighter around my feet.
I hear my footsteps running after me,
but I am already gone.
–By AI
2 comments August 17, 2008
(Prose Poem)
The Colonel
What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with this eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
Carolyn Forche
**EXCELLENT IMAGERY WITH THIS POEM. NOTICE HOW EACH LINE ADVANCES WHAT SHE IS TRYING TO CONVEY.
Add comment August 16, 2008
Why? Because today was the perfect day to be called a HAG….
The Language of the Brag
I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw
I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms
and my straight posture and quick electric muscles
to achieve something at the center of a crowd,
the blade piercing the bark deep,
the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.
I have wanted some eipc use for my excellent body,
some heroism, some American achievement
beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,
magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot
and watched the boys play.
I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire
and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around
my belly big with cowardice and safety,
my stool black with iron pills,
my huge breasts oozing mucus,
my legs swelling, my hands swelling,
my face swelling and darkening, my hair
falling out, my inner sex
stabbed again and again with terrible pain like a knife.
I have lain down.
I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and feces and water and slowly alone in the center of a circle I have passed the new person out
and they have lifted the new person free of the act
and wiped the new person free of that
language of blood like praise all over the body.
I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsburg, I have done this thing,
I and other women this exceptional
act with exceptional heroic body,
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud AMERICAN boast
right here with the others.
–Sharon Olds
3 comments August 16, 2008
I have always shied away from reading poems that look like paragraphs. Perhaps it was my own snobbery–my own defintion of what a poem should look like. Ditching my normal averting glance, I decided to read such a poem called ” The Colonel” by Carolyn Forche. I loved it!
I have decided to experiment today with my open form to include a paragraph type of poem.
I am running late on time today as I have chores to catch up to so I will post “The Colonel” tomorrow morning when I have the time to type it.
Lesson for the day:
Turn down your own tendencies to dislike something and try reading something new.
Thanks for reading Poet Verse!
Add comment August 15, 2008
The Last Iraq by Fadhil al-Azzawi
Translated by Salaam Yousif
Every night I place this creature on my table
And pull its ears,
Till tears of joy come to its eyes.
Another cold winter, penetrated by airplanes
And soldiers sitting on the edge of a hillock,
Waiting for history
To rise up from the darkness of the marshes
With a gun in its hand,
To shoot angels
Training for the revolution.
Every night I put my hand on this country,
It slips away from my fingers,
Like a soldier running from the front.
[1987]
***Fadhi al-Azzawi was born in Iraq’s northern city of Kirkuk. He was imprisoned in Baghdad. He lives now in Germany.
Add comment August 15, 2008
Your death will come to you, and never
You shall be, else, a slave of life,
Just waiting for a dawn’s favor,
From nights of poverty and strife.
She’ll build with you a common law,
One will of the Eternal Reign.
And you are not condemned to slow
And everlasting deadly pain.
Add comment August 14, 2008
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While at Barnes and Nobles, I read some of Jeffers’ works. I was most impressed with The Women at Point Sur (1925-26) Post Mortem Pelicans, but this is all I could find that would satiate my hunger for more of his poetry: Carmel Point |
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The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses- How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads- Now the spoiler has come: does it care? Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite, Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from. --Robinson Jeffers |
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4 comments August 12, 2008
My pantoum turned out better than I thought it would. With all the commotion going on last night regarding my blog, I was thinking it would be a disastrous effort. I was pleasantly surprised. If you haven’t given the Pantoum form a try then you should definitely check it out. If you enter Pantoum into the search button on my page, you should be able to find the instructions on how to write one.
Good luck and good writing!
Add comment August 12, 2008
When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide; "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait." --By John Milton
Add comment August 12, 2008
Earlier on my blog, I had written that my first sestina was a disaster. I really didn’t organize myself well so I figure that was part of the problem.
Well, today, I wrote a smashing sestina.
I wish I could share it, but it is part of a collection I am working on.
Good luck to anyone out there writing!!!
Thanks for reading.
–Carolina Maine
1 comment August 11, 2008
The Heart is the Capital of the Mind
The Mind is a single State–
The Heart and the Mind together make
A single Continent-
One-is the Population-
Numerous enough-
This ecstatic Nation
Seek-it is Yourself.
–Emily Dickinson
Add comment August 8, 2008
Robert Pinsky is a former, Poet Laureate of the U.S.
In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police
And Mrs. W. killed themselves together,
Sitting in a roadster. Ancient unshaken pilings
And underwater chunks of still-mortared brick
In shapes like bits of puzzle strew the bottom
Where the landing was for Price’s Hotel and Theater.
And here’s where boats blew two blasts for the keeper
To shunt the iron swing-bridge. He leaned on the gears
Like a skipper in the hut that housed the works
And the bridge moaned and turned on its middle pier
To let them through. In the middle of the summer
Two or three cars might wait for the iron trusswork
Winching aside, with maybe a child to notice
A name on the stern in black-and-gold on white,
Sandpiper, Patsy Ann, Do Not Disturb,
The Idler. If a boat was running whiskey,
The bridge clanged shut behind it as it passed
And opened up again for the Coast Guard cutter
Slowly as a sundial, and always jammed halfway.
The roadbed whole, but opened like a switch,
The river pulling and coursing between the piers.
Never the same phrase twice, the catbird filling
The humid August evening near the inlet
With borrowed music that he melds and changes.
Dragonflies and sandflies, frogs in the rushes, two bodies
Not moving in the open car among the pines,
A sliver of story. The tenor at Price’s Hotel,
In clown costume, unfurls the sorrow gathered
In ruffles at his throat and cuffs, high quavers
That hold like splashes of light on the dark water,
The aria’s closing phrases, changed and fading.
And after a gap of quiet, cheers and applause
Audible in the houses across the river,
Some in the audience weeping as if they had melted
Inside the music. Never the same. In Berlin
The daughter of an English lord, in love
With Adolf Hitler, whom she has met. She is taking
Possession of the apartment of a couple,
Elderly well-off Jews. They survive the war
To settle here in the Bay, the old lady
Teaches piano, but the whole world swivels
And gapes at their feet as the girl and a high-up Nazi
Examine the furniture, the glass, the pictures,
The elegant story that was theirs and now
Is part of hers. A few months later the English
Enter the war and she shoots herself in a park,
An addled, upper-class girl, her life that passes
Into the lives of others or into a place.
The taking of lives–the Chief and Mrs. W.
Took theirs to stay together, as local ghosts.
Last flurries of kisses, the revolver’s barrel,
Shivers of a story that a child might hear
And half remember, voices in the rushes,
A singing in the willows. From across the river,
Faint quavers of music, the same phrase twice and again,
Ranging and building. Over the high new bridge
The flashing of traffic homeward from the racetrack,
With one boat chugging under the arches, outward
Unnoticed through Pleasure Bay to the open sea.
Here’s where the people stood to watch the theater
Burn on the water. All that night the fireboats
Kept playing their spouts of water into the blaze.
In the morning, smoking pilasters and beams.
Black smell of char for weeks, the ruin already
Soaking back into the river. After you die
You hover near the ceiling above your body
And watch the mourners awhile. A few days more
You float above the heads of the ones you knew
And watch them through a twilight. As it grows darker
You wander off and find your way to the river
And wade across. On the other side, night air,
Willows, the smell of the river, and a mass
Of sleeping bodies all along the bank,
A kind of singing from among the rushes
Calling you further forward in the dark.
You lie down and embrace one body, the limbs
Heavy with sleep reach eagerly up around you
And you make love until your soul brims up
And burns free out of you and shifts and spills
Down over into that other body, and you
Forget the life you had and begin again
On the same crossing–maybe as a child who passes
Through the same place. But never the same way twice.
Here in the daylight, the catbird in the willows,
The new café, with a terrace and a landing,
Frogs in the cattails where the swing-bridge was–
Here’s where you might have slipped across the water
When you were only a presence, at Pleasure Bay.
Robert Pinsky
Add comment August 5, 2008
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