Weekend Creativity + One Last Poem

Happy Monday morning! Lots of photos today, sharing some of what I was up to this weekend. First off, my younger son and I went to the Hera Gallery's Postcard Fundraiser, to which I donated two pieces. He's a good companion for these sorts of things. Together, we looked at all the art for sale; I decided we could each pick out one. We discussed and deliberated and came home with these.

My son picked out the one on the left, which is by Susan Hayward, an artist with the gallery. I chose the one on the right, a print by Mary Kudlak.

Also this weekend, my kids and I, inspired by William Steig's Rotten Island, drew some monsters of our own. Do you know the book? It's a fun read, with vivid pictures and description of the island and its inhabitants. I drew several monsters, but this one makes me laugh.

On Sunday, I took a found hour and made the most of it, bouncing between a couple of projects:

Ready to begin carving

Carving complete

Still not finished with this.

Yes, I seem to be a bit stuck on trees lately, even with the knitting:

This is a Branching Out mitt from Coastal Knits, using Cascade 220. It calls for a thinner yarn than that, but it'll work just fine. I knit a complete mitt (minus thumb) in some sport weight I've had lying around since last spring, but I don't. like. that. yarn. At all. I'm going to use it for felting, since it just wants to stick to itself anyway. (That's what I get for being kindly disposed to unknown yarn--it was bought at the silent auction at my kids' school.)

And finally, I'll leave you with some happy baby pigs (trust me, they're small; I don't have a mama in this photo for scale) that we saw when we visited a local farm this weekend. I could do a post just of animal pictures--sheep and lambs and chickens and the chickens' guard dog. It was very spring-y there.

But truly, the baby pigs? Were adorable. This picture doesn't do them justice. And for the month's final poem, I decided upon straightforward. Poetry Month makes me happy.

Happiness
by A.A. Milne

John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Mackintosh--
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.

From When We Were Very Young.

Poem In Your Pocket Day + Give-away

**Thank you for playing along! Naomi, commenter #9, came up on random. org. Congrats, Naomi! Check your inbox for an email.**









Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day! But first, a little offering from me to you, to mark one year of blogging in this space: a 5x7" embroidery piece.

My first thought was to sneaky-like enter everyone who's commented this month and then just announce who won, but then I thought, Probably not everybody would want this, especially considering the blue shape looks more like a dagger or an icicle because I did it first, before I got better at keeping my diagonals going in the right direction (harder than you'd think, against that fabric). So instead, if you would like a piece of original embroidery, by me, just leave a comment on this post and let me know. It's wrapped around a piece of bookbinding board; here's a back view.

I think you could probably slip it into a frame without glass, or just prop it up on a shelf--if the blue icicle doesn't bother you, that is. (I should just be quiet and say I meant to do it that way, maybe?) Since it's Poem in Your Pocket day, if you'd like to mention a favorite poem in  your comment, or link to a post with a poem, or tell me what you're doing to celebrate, I'd love to hear it. But you don't have to. You can just leave a regular old "hope you pick me" comment. I'll use random.org to pick someone, you need to make sure there's a way to contact you (ie, leave your email address in your comment if it's not going to show up in the profile), and I will mail to anywhere in the whole wide world. Leave your comment by 8 pm EST on Thursday, May 3, which is a week from today. I think I covered everything?

Today, I'll be passing out copies of my favorite e.e. cummings poem as I go about my day. (I love the beach, you know.)

maggie and milly and molly and may
by e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Copyright © 1956, 1984, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust from The Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, Edited by George J. Firmage.

...linking up with the folks at our creative spaces...

Guest Poetry Post: Michelle

Michelle is another of my close, long-term blog-friends. Emails fly back and forth between Rhode Island and Louisiana; she's an integral part of my support system, even though we've never met in person. (Why is that? We need to work on that.)  I love that the poem she chose to share so perfectly reflects our shared habit of worrying a bit too much.

We all know of Ralph Waldo Emerson the Transcendentalist lecturer and essayist (of whom I'm a fan, most days), but Emerson the poet is less well known. I must admit, I can see why. But there is one little gem that I am always drawn to. It's a simple quatrain (four line stanza with a rhyming pattern), which appeals to my short attention span. Any time I'm feeling particularly anxious (particularly on...days that end in -y ?), I can read this poem and, while I feel I should be so darn angry at it for mocking me...I smile anyway. I think I might have to place this one on the cover of my planner or frame it above my desk.


Borrowing: From the French
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some of the hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived!

***
Don't forget that tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket Day! And I'll be hosting a modest little give-away to celebrate one year of blogging in this particular space.

Yes, This

The red maple trees are in bloom. 

The towhees are back, right on schedule. This morning I stood still in the early morning quiet, full bird feeder in my hand, and watched a towhee in the tree hop and adjust himself. I waited and watched and hoped he would--yes--the joy and rightness of being alive in Spring bubbled over and out of him for both of us. His song was tentative at first--just the last two notes, your tea!, as if he were trying it on for size. Two, three times, then he flew away deeper into the scrubby. Before too long he was shouting out his full song, Drink your tea! And, not having the towhee's gift of song, all I could do was spin around, arms outstretched, happy with thankfulness.

A List of Praises
by Anne Porter

Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.

Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far away
With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle
As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in the morning,
Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the pinewoods,
At night give praise with starry silences.

Give praise with the skirling of seagulls
And the rattle and flap of sails
And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor.
Give praise with the humpback whales,
Huge in the ocean they sing to one another.

Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and cicadas,
Give praise with hum of bees,
Give praise with the little peepers who live near water.
When they fill the marsh with a shimmer of bell-like cries
We know that the winter is over.

Give praise with mockingbirds, day's nightingales.
Hour by hour they sing in the crepe myrtle
And glossy tulip trees
On quiet side streets in southern towns.

Give praise with the rippling speech
Of the eider-duck and her ducklings
As they paddle their way downstream
In the red-gold morning
On Restiguche, their cold river,
Salmon river,
Wilderness river.

Give praise with the whitethroat sparrow.
Far, far from the cities,
Far even from the towns,
With piercing innocence
He sings in the spruce-tree tops,
Always four notes
And four notes only.

Give praise with water,
With storms of rain and thunder
And the small rains that sparkle as they dry,
And the faint floating ocean roar
That fills the seaside villages,
And the clear brooks that travel down the mountains

And with this poem, a leaf on the vast flood,
And with the angels in that other country.

***
Don't forget, Poem in Your Pocket day is coming up on Thursday. And I think I'll be ready with a give-away by then, too.

Guest Poetry Post: Bells

Bells is one of my oldest, closest blog-friends. I believe the first post of hers that I read contained photos of lovely growing things in her Australian garden, just as we were entering winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. I was hooked. Her photos have continued to delight, and she knits and sews and writes beautifully, too. I'm so glad she agreed to share a favorite poem here this month.

Judith Wright is a beloved Australian poet. She was a thinker and an activist - most notably for the environment and for Indigenous people. She began to go deaf as a young woman and was completely deaf by 1992. The last years of her life were spent living in the small town, Braidwood, just outside Canberra, where I live. She died in 2000.

I chose this poem a couple of weeks ago for Amy, but I realised as I re-read it that it tied in nicely with the the Mary Oliver poem that she posted a few days ago, highlighting the line, "Tell me, what it is you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?"

In the autumn of their lives, these sisters are looking back on their own wild and precious lives and treasuring the richness of what is behind them.

The Sisters
by Judith Wright

In the vine-shadows on the veranda;
under the yellow leaves, in the cooling sun,
sit two sisters. Their slow voices run
like little winter creeks, dwindled by frost and wind,
and the square of sunlight moves on the veranda.

They remember the gay young men on their tall horses
who came courting; the dancing and the smells of leather
and wine, the girls whispering by the fire together;
even their dolls and ponies, all they have left behind
moves in the yellow shadows on the veranda.

Thinking of their lives apart and the men they married
thinking of the marriage-bed and the birth of their first
child,
they look down smiling. “My life was wide and wild,
and who can know my heart? There in that golden jungle
I walk alone,” say the old sisters on the veranda.

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

If you'd never been to New England before and wanted to get a sense of it, Robert Frost's poetry wouldn't be a bad place to start. It's a certain New England, of course, not all-encompassing, but I do connect him thoroughly with this region of the world. That's not why I picked this poem to share, however. It's because the final words--miles to go before I sleep--very often run through my head in the evening. As much as I try to keep the evenings for myself, it doesn't always work out that way. The other night, after two of three children were in bed, I sat on the couch for a moment and thought, I have miles to go before I sleep. Laundry, lunches for tomorrow, patches to sew on knees, the final wake-up call for my daughter so she gets through the night dry... and it's even worse when my husband is traveling. And this is the poem that gives us this phrase.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Felt Flower Garland {+ Poem Link}

Our slider was desperately in need of some spring freshening; it was well past time for the Valentine banner to go. Somehow, I missed March entirely...which works out well, because these flowers are so seasonal!

This garland idea was inspired by the craft in the last Waldorf parent-child group that my daughter and I attend. The leader had materials to make spring crowns for the kids. Everybody's ended up looking different, of course, but the basic idea was to finger knit the base and then sew on felt flowers (whatever sort of flowers we wanted).

This crown has three flowers, but my daughter was wearing it jauntily, to one side. At any rate, I thought some green crocheted chains with sewn-on felt flowers would be just perfect for our window.

I wasn't going for perfection here. The flowers were traced around a cut-out paper guide, but they're cockeyed and lopsided in places. This came together very quickly; I'm not interested in trying to dress up this window in any manner that will lead to stress. It's fun, it's quick, and it's cheery. We have a little vine of flowers trailing atop the window molding, and I love it.

***
For today's poem, I turned to Mary Oliver. I am betting many of you have read or heard her quote, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?" Knowing she's a poet, I was curious about the rest of the poem--I was sure I hadn't read it before. It's called "The Summer Day," and you can read it here. This quote is always used in an inspirational way, in a sort of "Get up and find your true self and passion and get going" sort of way, and I was pleased to discover that the speaker of the poem has spent the day being "idle and blessed," paying attention while she strolled and rolled through the fields. It's good to know the context, isn't it?

I spent today climbing big, rocky-shore rocks with my children; picnicking and playing at the playground; loading up on even more armloads of books at the library (we currently have a total of 51 books out between us, with ever-revolving due dates); and playing outside at home. They have the week off from school, and the weather is cooperating nicely so far. A fine way to spend a day of my wild and precious life.

Another Quick Poetry Post

White Apples
by Donald Hall

when my father had been dead a week
I woke
with his voice in my ear
I sat up in bed
and held my breath
and stared at the pale closed door

white apples and the taste of stone

if he called again
I would put on my coat and galoshes

From White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Copyright © 2006 by Donald Hall.

Poetry Forms for Kids + Other Curious Folk

One of the library branches we frequent had a nice display of poetry books in the children's room. Of course I grabbed several of them, including A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms by Paul B. Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka. We all pretty much learn about sonnets and maybe odes in high school, and haiku and limericks in elementary school, and acrostic poems are pretty popular in the lower grades, too. But there are so many more! In between college degrees, I took some writing classes at a local adult learning center, where I had a fabulous instructor who taught me more about poetry than I'd learned in all of my schooling thus far. I learned about villanelles and pantoums in addition to sonnets and odes...and every form we encountered, we had to write one of our own.

I very much appreciated this thorough grounding in poetry types when I began my English degree. I also like the discipline required to try to write a poem with a strict form. Were my attempts great poetry? Um, no, I'm sure they were not. But attempting to take a thought, idea, or image, and fit it into a pre-set form...it's good practice. It requires really thinking and distilling and I think that's valuable, even if the result is never shared (as I won't be sharing that pantoum I wrote circa 1996).

This book is a good introduction to poetic forms for kids and adults, too. Each form includes at least one example, a fun illustration, and a short, to-the-point definition at the bottom of the page. At the end of the book, you'll find longer explanations of each form. Some of them were new to me, such as the triolet, which has a specific rhyme scheme (abaaabab) and repeating lines: 1, 4, and 7 are the same, and 2 and 8 are the same. The poem I'm sharing today, which is from A Kick in the Head, is a triolet.

The Cow's Complaint
by Alice Schertle

How unkind to keep me here
When, over there, the grass is greener.
Tender blades--so far, so near--
How unkind to keep me here!
Through this fence they make me peer
At sweeter stems; what could be meaner?
How unkind to keep me here
When, over there, the grass is greener.

For the Love of Prufrock

I do, I do. I love The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I've never analyzed it (either the poem or my love for it). I've never written a paper on it. I don't particularly care about the layers of hidden meaning or the allusions to other works of literature. I just like the way the words sound, the way it makes me feel, the certain phrases (I have measured out my life in coffee spoons). This is the source of the poetry I embroidered on my jeans (I have heard the mermaids singing).

I think I love it so because I came to it at around the same age Eliot wrote it. The voice in the poem seems that of an older man, and I was surprised to learn recently that Eliot was in his early 20s when he wrote it, but when I thought about it, it made sense to me. For some reason, some reason that seems irrational and illogical and probably dramatic from my nearly-40 vantage point, the early 20s are so tiring. Maybe it's just the way I did it, and the way most of my friends did it, working mind-numbing jobs none of us needed our college degrees for, because that's all we could find, going along paycheck to paycheck, wondering when would life start and had it started already and could we be doing more or was this all it was? When we were sober enough to think, that is. Inside, I probably felt like middle-aged Prufrock (I do not think that they will sing to me). At about the same time in my life, I was listening to Dave Matthews singing: Twenty-three and so tired of life...could I have been anyone other than me? (Dancing Nancies)

What is it about the early 20s?

So there you go, for the first time, I've partially analyzed my love for Prufrock. It's too long, I think, to post in its entirety here, so I've included a snippet. Follow the links to read it all for yourself.

From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
By T. S. Eliot

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

***
Do I dare? Do I? Do you?

Oh, Edna!

I really like the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I'll be back this week with creative-minded posts, I promise, but today, another (very different) poem about spring. Yes, sometimes April is just a wench.

Spring
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Happy Easter

This being Easter and all, I thought I'd share a poem for spring. When I hear Gerard Manley Hopkins's name, I think language. According to his biography on poets.org (click the link on his name for the full bio), "In addition to developing new rhythmic effects, Hopkins was also very interested in ways of rejuvenating poetic language. He regularly placed familiar words into new and surprising contexts. He also often employed compound and unusual word combinations." So that must be why I connect him with interesting language.

I hope you are enjoying spring, if it is spring where you are, spring with "all this juice and all this joy." Isn't that a wonderful phrase?

Spring
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
    When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
    Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
    The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
    The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
    A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
    Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
    Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Quickly...

I've missed a couple days of poetry posting. I'm having a mostly offline weekend, but I'm here briefly to share this poem, chosen for no other reason than it leaped out at me today.

Not Waving but Drowning
by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

From Collected Poems of Stevie Smith by Stevie Smith, published by New Directions Publishing Corp. Copyright © 1972 by Stevie Smith.

How To Read a Poem {and some links}

Donna Lee is also posting and talking about poetry this month (yay!). I came across this poem today and, thinking about something she wrote about this morning, wanted to share it. And before I do, a few more links to share:

Michelle just told me about bentlily, where Samantha Reynolds is writing and posting a daily poem.

Teabird posted about villanelles yesterday and included two. I was planning on talking about villanelles one day this month and including two examples. But she's already done it, so go read her post instead.

Here is my post from last April on Kidoinfo, sharing some of our favorite kids' poetry books.

And here is the link to the poem, for Donna Lee and all of you:

How to Read a Poem: Beginner's Manual
by Pamela Spiro Wagner

Day Two: Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich died last week at the age of 82.

(It's hard to write something to follow that sentence.)

A couple years out of college, I decided to go back and get a BA in English. I had no real plan with what to do with it; I just wanted to. Because I had so recently graduated, all my gen ed classes transferred, which meant I took nothing but English and art classes (I quickly added in an art minor) for two years (summers too). This was bliss. For my Contemporary American Poetry class, I immersed myself in Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck" for one of my papers, and this is the poem I'm sharing with you today. It's not an easy poem, but let the words wash over you. See what resonates. Think about what it means to carry "a book of myths/in which/our names do not appear."

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

From Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright 1973 by Adrienne Rich.

Welcome to April

April is National Poetry Month here in the United States, and poetry, people, makes my heart sing. I'm really going to try to share a poem a day here, and some may be repeats of poems I've shared before, on other blogs, so may be familiar to some of you. But this is my little way of advocating for poetry; I hope you find something to enjoy here this month.

If you have a favorite poem and would like to write a guest post this month sharing it and why you like it, please leave a comment with a way to contact you, or email me at SalamanderDreams21 at gmail dot com. A couple other special April events:

* April marks a year since I began this particular blog. I'm really going to try to celebrate that somehow, which means I'm pondering a giveaway. My first post was published on April 9, but I'm giving myself the whole month to figure this out.

* Poem In Your Pocket Day is on Thursday, April 26, this year. Just, you know, letting you know.

On to today's poem--chosen because the right poem can make me feel like I, too, am about to break into blossom.

A Blessing, by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Copyright © 2005 James Wright. From Selected Poems.