Greetings to all poets, wayfarers and friends. We are bidding farewell to January and nearing the month of February which is the border between winter and spring. And for those of you who are interested it's almost time for ... wait for it... Super Bowl Sunday! It will be the 52nd Super Bowl and the 48th modern-era National Football League championship game! Oh gosh this is so exciting!
I came across this wonderful assortment of poetry read by Benedict Cumberbatch and just couldn't resist sharing it with you guys. Poems such as "The Seven Ages Of Man" and "Kubla Khan" tend to send one deep into thought and gives much to ruminate about. Moreover, the dulcet and velvet tone of the reader is an added bonus.
If you have any thoughts to share, ideas you wish to release into the
wild or a world view to express, then you have come to the right place.
Please share a poem of your choice and enjoy the company of your fellow
scribes. We look forward to reading you and hope you have a wonderful
day ahead.
Writing and reading poetry and stories do things for me that no other activity
(or person) could ever do. I can lose my Self… and find her again in the right
tale. A poem is a kiss and a hug and a secret and… a gentle smack on the back of
the head that reminds me that no one can be without thinking and doing (I enjoy being). A story
is, well… a story is everything (to me).
I love words in the same way a
mad soul adores her obsession. I keep the sweetest and darkest verbs close to
my heart, value hurt-filled nouns, respect the danger that burns in adjectives
that jump out of enraged tongues to do nothing but break (and unbreak) speaker
and subject alike.
I’m convinced that creating and
sharing poetry and certain stories (and other arts) can be a way towards
healing. Yes, my dear Toads, I am that
crazy writer lady, the one always saying, “Write it out. Trust me. Words will help.” I believe so many things about
the art of shaping feelings and living into words, so many things…
For today’s prompt,
I invite you to write a new poem that
explores one or three (even thirteen) things you believe words can do for you and
others.
feel free to repost my blackout bit
Feed the direct link to your new poem to Mr. Linky.
January resolutions may be fading, but it
is still the month of new beginnings. Coincidentally, today is my husband's
birthday. So over at our house we'll enjoy the cake of choice from his boyhood
--yellow cake with peanut butter icing and a grape jelly filling. A glass of
milk is required to wash it down. Yum!
For today's prompt I'll provide the word
list ingredients for your poem referring to either new beginnings or a birthday (happy or sad or in-between). I'm not
looking for an ingredient poem about baking a cake! I'll be full-up on dessert
anyway. I want to feast on the words you insert into your new creation on
newness itself, or on a special
celebration you are looking forward to, or a milestone memory you recall about
a loved one.
Mudslide, landslide, red velvet, carrot....
there are so many ways to mix goodness into your poem. Choose all four words from ONE of these word lists to build your new poem:
solacetracepauseover
inwardnesssweatreflectbeginning
needforgivenessunfoldingback
thanksweightyearsahead
I
look forward to reading and savouring your respective slices of life. Also
enjoy this musical inspiration from Stevie Nicks.
Greetings, my dearest Toads… today is National Handwriting
Day. I adore holidays with writing in them, so I’m all happy cackles and
delighted giggles. Let’s celebrate the art of hand-inking our thoughts and
feels into words, by sharing a poem—new, old, short, long(ish)… your choice. And
if the handwriting mood strikes your muse, I’m sure I would not be the only one
who would love to see some of your handwritten yum. Mayhap, some of the rough
draft for today’s poem, or part of the poem, or the entire poem… like I said,
the choice is yours. If you choose to share a picture of your entire poem,
please include a typed version as well.
Please
add a direct link to your poem to Mr. Linky. Visit other Toads (their
word-ponds grow the yummiest things). Have a happy Tuesday and an even happier
National Handwriting Day.
"Tinturn Abbey And The River," Edward Dayes (c. 1794)
One of the
most profound upwellings of poetry occurred for me in the five years after
I first sobered up in 1987. After a decade of sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll, I
parked that nightly mayhem for days of recovery, marriage, and professional
life.
As part of
that new routine, I began getting up early to read and write, opening doors within.
I burrowed down into mythology and psychology with Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung
and James Hillman as my lamps. I also began reading poetry with a passion,
plundering the public library for voices which I felt a shouting welcome—Robert
Bly, Steven Dobyns, Wendell Berry, Richard Wilbur, Mary Oliver.
Back then, I
lived in downtown Orlando, so I could walk to my job at the daily newspaper.
And so I carried a briefcase in one hand and a book of poetry in the other,
reading out loud as I walked. Surely the bluebirds were amused.
For five
years I walked ten blocks of Central Florida dailiness reading Keats and
Wordsworth, Eliot and Stevens, Bishop and Lowell. (Swinburne’s Decadent seahorsey-versiness
fit my walking gait perfectly). I read Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Milton’s Paradise
Lost, Keats’ Endymion. I read the
Spanish poets in translation—Lorca and Machado, Jimenez and Paz and Neruda.
Morning readings had
a different vibe than afternoons, the one cultural, the other revolutionary.
The seasons revolved through their dominant and subdominant themes. The inward world grew massive, cathedral.
With those
rhythms in my ear and reflections of so many mythic tales and motifs forming in
my mind, I began to write daily verse in a journal—doggerel mostly, indulgent
overripe juvenilia marked by hamhanded theft. How else does one learn to write?
As Saul Bellow once said, a writer is a reader moved to emulation. Reading and
writing became for me the hero’s journey: Go in, read the treasures, write them
down in your own hand, come back.
I went back
to college through night classes paid for by my job (as professional training),
and over eight years I completed my BA in English. One of my writing profs was
big on reader-response theory, which has it that writers engage and magnify
literature through their responses to it.Critics of the theory say there isn’t enough appreciation of the thing
itself – the literary work —and that’s where for me I have settled on a sharing
agreement with the ages: I come to your
library to read, and you come visit my singing
hut to add resonance and heft to the stone.
So that’s
the idea with today’s challenge: Go play tennis with a ghost. Take a poem by
another poet you respond deeply to and write something by way of response.
Maybe it’s the theme and cogitation which stirred you, or the rhyme scheme or
alliteration. Write your poem as a letter to the original, offering something between wild applause and Bronx cheer. Make a myth your own; tell something of your history as it were
written by Mysteries. (And know that despite what your ego is telling you, it's always good for the art to play tennis with someone far better than you.)
Your source
of inspiration could be known to all or be a pet voice in a remote register.
Maybe its one of our own. Whatever the case, read and respond—and then come back
here to share what you found. (It would be helpful if you include the original, or link to it.) In a tenth century Icelandic saga, ten ghosts of men just drowned while fishing appeared in communal rooms, still dripping wet and reaching out their spectral hands to warm themselves at the fire. They found their way into the literature, the same way pagan Iceland was then transitioning to Christian times. I think literature endures like that, with one generation getting spooked by shadows of the past and then singing them forward. Who will you partner up with for your game of ghost tennis?
There is a women's movement rising all over the world. Guided by Clare Dubois and her Board of Directors, in the U.K., Tree Sisters: Seeding for Change, aim to plant a billion trees world-wide this year, and they are well on their way.
58% of the world's animals are gone. We are seeing climate change impacting people, animals and landscapes world-wide. Joanna Macy tells us, "Do not numb your grief. Feel it, and know you are alive. We are here to save the soul of the earth. We are meant to be a restorer, not a destroyer, species. We women will love the world back into healing. Our earth is alive and she is powerful." Given some assistance, she can heal.
I believe in the rise of woman-power, in response to where the male-driven model has gotten us. Women nurture life. We get down to the basics of planting trees and food, feeding children, and keeping those children safe. If money that funds the military-industrial complex were used in the cause of social justice, to meet peoples' basic needs, we'd have a good toe-hold on peace.
Let's plant some poetic trees: love in response to hate, compassion in response to suffering, hope in response to desolation. Tell us how you feel about trees, or perhaps one special tree you love. Or write about Mother Nature, and the effects of climate change. But let's do it with hope, with determination, with the spirit of the women all over the world who are planting those billion trees, who are loving our world back into healing.
Mahatma Gandhi said, "You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing, there will be no result."
Use any form you wish, with as many or few words as you choose. I look forward to reading what you come up with.
Greetings
to all poets, wayfarers and friends. We are midway through January and
the weather here in Malaysia has taken quite an interesting turn. Due to the constant rain in surrounding areas the temperature has managed to
drop to 18 degrees celsius (approximately 66 degrees
Fahrenheit) and I couldn't be happier! It's a welcome change from
the usual weather which is both dry and humid.
I
came across this wonderful reading of "The Love Song Of J. Alfred
Prufrock,"read by Anthony Hopkins and couldn't resist sharing it with
you guys. There is a dare running through this poem; and the power of
his tone and rhythm is as though a beating drum that sounds both
haunting and melodious in my head.
If you have any thoughts to share, ideas you wish to release into the
wild or a world view to express, then you have come to the right place.
Please share a poem of your choice and enjoy the company of your fellow
scribes. We look forward to reading you and hope you have a wonderful
day ahead.
Hello, dear Friends and happy weekend to
you! It is time for a form challenge. Today we will revisit a form introduced
in the Garden by Joy a few years ago and enjoyed by many: CHAINED RHYME.
I don’t really think this form counts as
fussy or little. But let’s do it anyway. The basic premise is that the last
syllable or word of each line is followed by a rhyme on the first word or
syllable of the next line. LIKE A CHAIN, get it? Hah.
It’s not really fussy or little because the
poem can be anything you want--long lines or short, many lines or just a few,
strict meter or no meter, whatever you like. Just those rhymes and the end and
start of your lines.
Joy’s earlier prompt is so amazing that I
am being lazy (and not redundant!) by linking to her description here, check it
out:
