Poem in Your Pocket?
Yes!
Pick a poem
from the offered bouquet
carry the fragrance
of words which refresh
and delight
Place a poem in your pocket
and travel
to new lands
make new friends
discover old memories
enliven the senses
and then
share it
Pam Webb
a writer's journey as a reader
Archive for the tag “Poetry”
Poet Appreciation #7: William Cullen Bryant
Are you a New Yorker? If so, then you know that William Bryant helped establish Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and that Bryant Park is named for him. He was also long time editor of the New York Evening Post. Of course you knew . More importantly, Bryant was part of the Romantics. While the Brits reveled in Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley, America had its own Romanticist in the form of William Cullen Bryant.
William Cullen Bryant: November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878 (Wikipedia image)
November
by William Cullen Bryant
Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o’er the frozen earth, the loud winds ran,
Or snows are sifted o’er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue Gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skim the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
I do like fall. Each month has its own cadence. September has its drowsy warm days drifting into chilly nights, and then there is October with its brisk mornings rewarded with a gift of sun before rescinding into frost-quickened nights. Bryant has captured November with its bright, lingering colors mixed into the descending browns, graced with slights of snowfall. November is truly a mixture of seasons with its bits of summer mingling with the foreshadowing of winter. I added “gentian” to my imagery entries. Lovely word. Wonderful poem of images.
Get Your Poems and Pockets Ready…
Get your poems and pocket ready. April 24th is National Poem in Your Pocket Day!
From Poets.org:
On Poem in Your Pocket Day, people throughout the United States select a poem, carry it with them, and share it with others throughout the day.
You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.
Poems from pockets are unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.
Create your own Poem in Your Pocket Day event using ideas below or share your creative ideas with us by emailing npm@poets.org.
Last year I downloaded the poems selected especially for PYPD and printed them out on colored paper and rolled them up and handed them out to students from a special canister. They unrolled them and smiled and shared them. Yes, some ended up on the floor, but mostly my freshmen and AP seniors thought it pretty cool to have their own poem to carry around for the day. I enjoyed watching them excitedly ask one another, “Which one did you get?”
So–you’ve got the website link, now get on it! Get those poems ready for those pockets!
Poet Appreciation #6: Eliza Lee Follen
While it’s grand to dig away at meaning, symbolism, and theme, it can refreshing to simply enjoy a poem for its bouncy rhythm and rhyme and wit. This is the case for Eliza Lee Follen’s “Lines on Nonsense.”
Edward Lear renders an appropriate complement for today’s poem.
Lines on Nonsense
Yes, nonsense is a treasure!
I love it from my heart;
The only earthly pleasure
That never will depart.
But, as for stupid reason,
That stalking, ten-foot rule,
She’s always out of season,
A tedious, testy fool.
She’s like a walking steeple,
With a clock for face and eyes,
Still bawling to all people,
Time bids us to be wise.
While nonsense on the spire
A weathercock you’ll find,
Than reason soaring higher,
And changing with the wind.
The clock too oft deceives,
Says what it cannot prove;
While every one believes
The vane that turns above.
Reason oft speaks unbidden,
And chides us to our face;
For which she should be chidden,
And taught to know her place.
While nonsense smiles and chatters,
And says such charming things,
Like youthful hope she flatters;
And like a syren sings.
Her charm’s from fancy borrowed,
For she is fancy’s pet;
Her name is on her forehead,
In rainbow colors set.
Then, nonsense let us cherish,
Far, far from reason’s light;
Lest in her light she perish,
And vanish from our sight.
Eliza Lee Follen (1787-1860), was ten in a family of thirteen children. Born into an affluent Boston family she became a poet, children’s author, editor, and abolitionist. Her children’s verse offerings posed light and nonsensical images in contrast to the more serious ones of her time. She and her husband, Charles Follen had one son.
Poet Appreciation: #4 George Santayana
Quick–what teacher did Conrad Aiken, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Wallace Stevens have in common? *Jeopardy muzak plays softly* If you answered George Santayana you either are a verse warrior or you clued in on the post title.
Santayana, a Spanish-born American, was a philosopher, essayist, novelist, teacher, and poet. Receiving his PhD from Harvard he joined the faculty in 1889. In 1912 he moved to Europe and must have liked it because he never returned to the states. Santayana, thought to be an important influences of critical realism, became part of what is known as the Classical American Philosophy. He died in 1952.
There may be chaos still around the world
by George Santayana
by George Santayana
There may be chaos still around the world,
This little world that in my thinking lies;
For mine own bosom is the paradise
Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled.
Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,
Unmindful of the changing outer skies,
Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,
Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
I heed them not; or if the subtle night
Haunt me with deities I never saw,
I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw
To hide their myriad faces from my sight.
They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe
A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.
Unless I am way off base, I think this is the complex version of Bobby McFerrin’s hit ditty “Don’t Worry. Be Happy.” I hear in this poem how the world can be swirling and whirling about us, yet we can cocoon within ourselves and remain blissfully at peace. I prefer the happy llama mode: humming along in life.
Poet Appreciation #3: Robert Penn Warren
Better known as a novelist, and perhaps as a scholar, Robert Penn Warren did provide some formidable poetry to ponder. You might be more familiar with his All the King’s Men, which garnered him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947, then his Pulitzer Prize collection Now and Then: Poems, 1976-1978. In all, he was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, two being for poetry. His southern background influenced his writing, particularly leaning towards the agrarian appreciation of the land. Receiving accolades and honors throughout his career, Warren left a rich legacy of both prose and poetry.
Image of U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Vision
by Robert Penn Warren
I shall build me a house shall build me a house where the larkspur blooms
In a narrow glade in an alder wood,
Where the sunset shadows make violet glooms,
And a whip-poor-will calls in eerie mood.
I shall lie on a bed of river sedge,
And listen to the glassy dark,
With a guttered light on my window ledge,
While an owl stares in at me white and stark.
I shall burn my house with the rising dawn,
And leave but the ashes and smoke behind,
And again give the glade to the owl and the fawn,
When the grey wood smoke drifts away with the wind.
Like Cather’s poetry about the prairie, Warren provides a strong connection to nature. His diction is amazing the way it influences the imagery: “violet glooms,” “guttered light,” “glassy dark”. I don’t even notice the rhyme, it’s so fluid. Whether they poem is taken for its metaphorical meaning or literal, it doesn’t matter to me–I simply want to savor it, rather than analyze it. Good writing is like a good sunset in that words aren’t always sufficient to explain why the beauty is so moving.
Related articles
- Vision, by Robert Penn Warren (loiselden.com)
- Evening Hawk, poem by Robert Penn Warren (silverbirchpress.wordpress.com)
Poet Appreciation #2: Edwin Arlington Robinson
Portrait of Edwin Arlington Robinson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I vaguely recall reading one or two of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poetry as I dug through my AP selections. Needless to say, he is not a poet that I am familiar with; however, this gem dropped in my box as a my daily poem offering and it immediately reverberated within me: don’t we all wonder about that abandoned house?
Robinson took his poetry seriously, despite being unable to make a living from it, he persevered. Twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize he still remains relatively unknown, at least I can’t place him in the category of tip-of-the-tongue knowns, like Frost, Dickinson, and Whitman. Have you heard of him or am I showing my poetry illiteracy once again?
The House on the Hill
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray
Around that sunken sill?
They are all gone away.
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.
For a broader perspective of the poem follow this link
I personally am always curious about abandoned houses, or those that seem empty. Yet, there isn’t a true emptiness, is there as long as houses remain standing, so do the memories. I like how Robinson intimates that though there may be memories, without the people inhabiting the house, there can be no conversations. An empty house is a voiceless house and a house without words is indeed empty.
abandoned house (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Related articles
- ~Edwin Arlington Robinson~ (makayla00123.wordpress.com)
- Robinson and the Democracy of Form (lewisturco.typepad.com)
Poetry Workshop: Getting in Shape with Concrete Poetry
First the grammar lesson, and then the poetry workshop lesson.
Nouns
A common noun is a noun referring to a person, place, or thing in a general sense. There are many types of nouns: common, proper, possessive, singular, abstract and concrete.
Concrete Nouns
A concrete noun names animate and inanimate things that can be perceived through the five senses: touch, sight, taste, hearing, or smell. Examples are: cats, doors, waffles, teachers. A concrete noun is the opposite of an abstract noun such as concepts like: love, liberty, courage.
With the basic noun lesson understood, let’s move on to the Poetry Workshop: Concrete Poetry.
Concrete Poetry: aka Shape Poetry aka Visual Poetry
Poetry in which the overall effect is influenced through visual means by forming or arranging the words in a pattern that reflects the subject or meaning.
The concrete aspect comes from basing the poem on tangible nouns, ones in which employ the senses, as opposed to abstract nouns. For instance, I can write about how cats see us, but are often invisible as they hide in plain view or I can emphasize the cat aspect by shaping the words around this concrete noun:
image: laurelgarver.BlogSpot.com
Sometimes the poem and its shape is humorous:
image: gardendigest.com
And sometimes it is more art than actual words:
image: prn.bc.ca
Other times there is a message within the message that turns out to be abstract after all:
For the most part, concrete poetry is a visual blending of text and shape. It’s an interactive expression, a melding and mixing of art, thought, feeling. Get into poetry by getting into shape.
Explore more with forming!
Poet Appreciate #1: Willa Cather
Nebraska-Kansas prairie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Most recognize Willa Cather as a writer of prairie prose; however, before O Pioneers! came out in 1913, she had published a book of poems entitled April Twilights in 1903. The following poem from that book of poetry served as the prologue to O Pioneers!
Prairie Spring
by Willa Cather
Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.
Cather announces the coming of spring through abounding sensory imagery and metaphors. This poem encapsulates her mastery of description and exemplifies her love of the prairie. Where she found poetry in a land, many only found hardship and heartaches as they tried to subdue tangled, tawny grasses under their plow.
Portrait of Willa Cather (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Related articles
- Essays on WILLA CATHER WROTE WHAT SHE LIVED (onlinefreeservice.wordpress.com)
- [Alternative Muses] Coming and Going: Willa Cather/Thornton Wilder Mashup (onetrackmuse.com)
- WILLA CATHER – A Strong Woman (birthofanovel.wordpress.com)
- Titular Epiphanies (cricketmuse.wordpress.com)
Pam Webb aka Cricket Muse
A writer's journey as a reader
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