Happy Poetry Friday! Linda hosts the Roundup at A Word Edgewise.
from "Little Gidding," The Four Quartets
by T. S. Eliot
W shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heart, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
The spare moments of late have indeed been spare. And when they come, I tend to indulge myself with doing mostly nothing within them. Yesterday was almost a full day all to myself. No doctor's appointments or errands to run for my in-laws who have not been well the last month. So I made coffee and settled in with my journal, went for a walk, did an online yoga class, listened to an audio book, and played with my grandson at the creek. Toward the end of the day, I walked barefoot to the mailbox and found a brown envelope addressed to me. Inside was a book of poetry and a note from Linda Baie, who knows the demands of caregiving.
I have not seen it before, Linda. It was a perfect end to a lovely day. Thank you for your sweet thoughtfulness.
I had been thinking earlier that I would like to get back to posting on my blog (though I may still be spotty), but didn't feel particularly inspired. As I paged through the book, I found many poems that spoke to me, but thought I would share just this one.
Eka Pada Rajakapotasana
One-Legged King Pigeon
by Leza Lowitz
William Carlos Williams
wrote poems
on a notebook small enough to fit
in his breast pocket
on his medical rounds.
Yasunari Kawabata
wrote stories
small enough to fit
in the palm of the hand.
The body writes stories small enough to fit
in the tiniest cell.
Every centimeter
has a different beginning
and end.
Day by day
the gap between beginning and end
thigh and floor
heel and head
closes up,
the narrative writ large
on each small movement.
Start small and the world expands
as Goethe said, but start anyway.
In beginnings
there is the magic
of yes.
As much as I like this poem, I don't teach this pose in my classes for a number of reasons. I agree with Jenni Rawlings of Jenni Rawlings Yoga and Movement, who recommends modifications for working to strengthen the hips in the pose rather than overstretch those ligaments, over arch the low back or stress the knee joint!
Margaret hosts the round up today at Reflections on the Teche. Wishing you a morning filled with espresso, soothing music, and steaming green grass. Morning by Billy Collins
I'm traveling today and will be enjoying some rest time and some work time over the next two weeks. While my journeys will keep me in the Deep South, I enjoyed this poem from the Southwest. Wherever your feet take you this week, I hope you find joy. Jama has the round up today at Jama's Alphabet Soup.
Before I start today's post, I'm looking for Jen Hdez who won a copy of Here We Go from Janet and Sylvia. Jen, please contact me so I can get the book to you. JoAnn Early Macken hosts the roundup today at Teaching Authors. And now on to my friend Abby!
I am very pleased to introduce you today to Abigail Carroll. I have to admit that Abby is a virtual friend I discovered about this time last year when I shared one of her poems called "Spring Forward."
Abby's new book, A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim, is a collection of forty personal letters to Francis. The book is described as "part devotion, part historical biography, part contemporary engagement, and part inspiration—reveal her curiosity and wonder about Francis. She also uses Francis as a sounding board for larger questions about the world—and, through her own experience, explores how brokenness makes experiencing redemption possible."
Her prose has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and Boston Globe, and her first book, Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal, was a finalist for the Zocalo Public Square Book Prize.
Abby lives in the Burlington area of Vermont, where she serves as pastor of arts and spiritual formation at Church at the Well. She enjoys discovering new swimming holes and photographing nature.
You can find Abby on Twitter @ACarrollPoet or explore her website here.
Dori: You first became interested in St. Francis as a girl of ten during a trip with your family to Assisi. Was poetry a part of your life at this age? Was there a specific poetic voice that appealed to you?
Abby: I wrote my first poem at a young age—probably around the age of 6 or 7—and I remember my grandfather submitting it to the local newspaper, which published it probably for its cuteness factor rather than any literary value. I discovered Edna St. Vincent Millet at age 9 and thought her poem “Afternoon on a Hill” was exquisite: I wanted to step into it and “be the gladdest thing under the sun,” to “touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.” My sixth-grade English teacher required us to memorize a poem each month—a fairly old-fashioned assignment these days, but one for which I am immensely grateful—and several of those poems have remained with me over the years like longtime companions.
The voice of the poems in A Gathering of Larks reflects the influence of Canadian poet Susan McCaslin, whose chapbook of letters to William Blake planted the idea to write a series of letters to someone in history. As I was thinking about who, I remembered my deep sense of intrigue as a ten-year-old in Assisi, walking the streets Francesco Bernardone walked, visiting his tomb, and seeing the sites associated with his life. Writing these letters was like revisiting Assisi—a return to my childhood sense of wonder.
Dori: You describe Francis as a troubadour, a poet, and a hopeless romantic. Do you have a favorite from Francis’ songs?
Abby: “The Canticle of the Sun” stands out. Francis’s sense of affinity with the earth was not just remarkable, but truly radical and unique for his time. He not only held deep respect for creation, but saw himself as part of its song—a larger song of praise articulated continuously by the elements and creatures. A troubadour was a traveling composer of songs, mostly songs of courtly love. “Canticle of the Sun” is a praise song to the Creator, but also a love song to creation.
Dori: Tell us about your perspective of letters as a literary form. Are you a letter writer in everyday life?
Abby: As a literary form, I believe letters travel the intersection of poetry and narrative. A correspondence (even just one side of a correspondence) tells a story, but it does so with many holes. The story emerges not just from the content of the letters, but from the spaces between the content. A letter is an intimate form of communication: a first-person address usually to a single reader and not meant for a wider audience. So when letters become literature (or literature takes the form of letters), the letter invites the reader into a person or character’s spiritual landscape quite compellingly.
Sadly, I am not much of a letter writer. I think I would have been a dedicated letter writer had I lived in an earlier era, but electronic communication has managed to undermine my inclinations to pen correspondence by hand. Writing these letters to Saint Francis gave me a glimpse of what it might have been like to live in a letter-writing era. Letters are a particularly satisfying genre to write in. They are like a conversation in slow motion with a bit of contemplation added to the mix.
Dori: I am intrigued by your salutations and closings. These seem to function much as titles and themes for the poems. Did you think of them this way as you were writing or was it something you came back to in revisions?
Abby: I embarked on each letter by writing a salutation as a way to remind myself that I was writing letters first and poetry second. Francis’s personality had many facets, so addressing him in different ways (Dear Francesco, Dear Lover of Lady Poverty, Dear Advocate for Wonder) helped me to hone in on the theme or aspect of his life I wanted to engage in a given letter. Writing the salutations and valedictions was one of the most fun and gratifying aspects of the penning these letters. Salutations helped me set the tone and direction of a letter right from the start, and valedictions offered an opportunity to confirm that tone or, by contrast, introduce an unexpected twist at the end, lightening up a serious poem or adding gravity to a whimsical poem. The valedictions also became a way of exploring my own identity in light of my relationship with Francis.
Dori: You said, “A poet is always asking her poem what it can do without.” This is a lovely way of describing the process of writing poetry. Does the culling happen instinctively for you or in revision or both. Can you tell us more?
Abby: Revision starts off quite organically for me. As I write a line, I work and rework it until it feels strong enough to become the springboard for the rest of the poem. And then I find myself working and reworking the second line until it feels strong enough to support the following line. I’ve noticed that lines give birth to lines, so a line is often only as strong as the one it issues from.
I revise as I write, but I also revise again after stepping away from for a time. The more distance I’ve gained, the more freedom I feel to play with the poem’s arrangement. I’ll often ask myself whether the poem should start with a different line, perhaps the second line or the last line. In terms of culling, I find that the rougher my draft, the more extraneous words it contains. To a point, the more words I remove, the stronger the poem becomes.
Dori: One writer I know says that dialog calls us into being. Did you have a sense of discovering things about yourself as you conversed with Francis?
Abby: Absolutely! Writing these letters brought Francis into being for me in a way I could not have predicted. I related to him, not just learned about him. And when I finished the letters, I felt a certain sadness, as though a dear friend had moved away. Penning the letters started out as a literary project but became a spiritual exercise. And, as in any spiritual exercise, I ended up learning a great deal about myself.
Francis became a mirror in which I saw my life and experiences in new ways. His irrepressible delight in nature invited me to cultivate my own delight in the tiny natural treasures of my backyard, where I spent most of the summer I wrote book, with my broken foot up in a cast. His audacity to follow his convictions in unconventional ways, giving up his wealth and status to care for lepers and rebuild dilapidated churches, planted a seed of desire in me to devote myself to the callings and convictions of my heart rather than to the agenda that the world has for me. One of those callings was to the write the letters that form this book.
Dori: Do you have a favorite letter from the book for us to close the interview?
Abby: One of my favorite letters is the second, a reflection on planting my garden. I always plant seeds too close, unable to imagine that each will actually become the full-sized plant pictured on the package. Planting, here, becomes a metaphor for faith, but the poem is also about the mysterious purposes of a life, which I liken to a seed that must die before it can bear fruit, and which will never actually see the full picture of the life it produces. In a similar way, Francis never saw the full picture of his influence, which continues to bear fruit across the globe today. Likewise, we are only afforded a small glimpse of the fruit born from the love, faithfulness, and good works in our lives.
A Gift of Air, part of the Solomon & George Chapbook Series,is the sixth poetry publication by Peter Huggins. The Series pairs a visual artist with a literary artist and features twelve works by each. Placed on facing pages, handmade paper pieces by visual artist Allyson Comstock accompany poems by Peter Huggins.
I'm delighted to introduce you today to Peter Huggins. Peter was part of my first critique group and his voice always brought clarity, whether we were working on poems, picture books or novels. He and his wife live in Auburn, Alabama, where he is retired from teaching in the English Department at Auburn University after thirty-one years. Peter has written six books of poems, as well as publishing poems in journals and magazines.
He's also published in the children's book industry--In the Company of Owls, a middle grade novel (NewSouth/Junebug Books, 2008) and a picture book, Trosclair and the Alligator (Star Bright Books, 2006), which has appeared on the PBS show Between the Lions.
If you haven't seen Trosclair and the Alligator, you really should check out a copy. It's a delightful Cajun retelling of the Brer Rabbit in the briar patch story.
And now on to the poetry Peter is sharing with us today. Enjoy! A Gift of Air
Virgil said honey came
From heaven, a gift of air.
Aristotle thought that bees
Did not make honey but gathered it
As it fell from the sky.
Samson scooped honey
From the carcass of a lion,
Then ate it as he went along.
When I put honey in my tea
I taste the meadow
The bees drank from.
I feel the wind, the rising warmth.
I smell the flowers,
Their sweetness, and I am refreshed.
Madison: Well, I guess the last question I’d like to ask you is there any advice you’d like to give emerging poets and writers?
Peter: Yeah, and I think I can do that in one word: read. Really, I mean, that’s it. Read. I think you have to just read, read, read. And, if you’re a poet, not just poems. Any poet can learn a lot from reading well-written prose. You can learn a lot about pacing, about story arc. I mean, obviously in poems, you do it in a much more compressed fashion, but you can learn a lot about how to do that, particularly how to pace, and how to elaborate on things that need elaborating or things that need cutting. So reading, and not just whatever genre you’re writing in.
Audubon’s Engraver
At the end Audubon didn’t know his name.
He couldn’t remember birds.
So many of them. My favorite prints:
Louisiana Tanager and Scarlet Tanager,
Blue Jay, Indigo Bird, Summer
Red Bird, Yellow-throated Vireo,
Rose-breasted Grosbeak. I could
Come up with a new list tomorrow.
He killed them, you know. So many
Songbirds, waterfowl, birds of prey
Gone. I know he killed them,
His specimens, he said, to render
Them more precisely, to make the
Come alive. Havell, he said,
You are tender-hearted and do not
Understand the process. You have not
Walked the woods or slogged through swamps
For days on end to see what I’ve seen.
He was probably right and I
Didn’t hesitate to admire or profit
From what he produced.
I gave him the fame he wanted,
Yet I wonder, as the dementia that
Took his life tightened its grip on him,
Did he dream of hawks or songbirds,
Of waterfowl in the long V of winter?
Did he return those birds to the wild?
Did he remember sky?
If you'd like to hear Peter read, click here for "Interview with a City."
A native of Mississippi who grew up in New Orleans, Peter has an intimate knowledge of the South, especially New Orleans and Alabama, and his love for the area is evident in his poetry.
South
I returned to smell the dark.
That other country had
No scent I recognized as home.
The French and English street names
Were not unfamiliar.
I had grown up with Chartres,
Napoleon, and the muses
Clio and Polyhymnia.
On the Mississippi River,
I smelled the world,
Coffee and bananas,
Cars, silk, wheat, and wine.
The St. Lawrence
I admired from a distance.
The Mississippi was mine.
It flowed through me as I danced.
The twilight on the rivers
Running on the levee;
The long evening on Lake Pontchartrain,
Drinking the salt air;
These brought me to myself,
The cracked and broken ice
A cold dream to remember
When the heat became intolerable.
Exiled Jefferson Davis
Lived for a time
In Montreal as I did.
I fled my past to study
The past and escaped, I thought,
The legacy I was born to.
I theorized the class struggle
In eighteenth century France
And nineteenth century Britain.
I edged my way to the
Twentieth century disasters,
The lights all going out.
I refused the easy charm
Of exile, I rubbed
My fingers in the green grass,
I smelled the dark.
Awash in diesel, the tugs
Pushed barges upriver.
The lions in the Audubon Zoo growled.
History ran on.
She said, Trust me.
Lie still.
Listen. Music
Will tell you what you want to know.
Janet and Sylvia have been using their talent and seemingly inexhaustible energy to make bringing poetry into the classroom more accessible for both teachers and students.
Here We Go is a book about four friends whose circumstances are bigger than they are.
Jack's dad lost his job. Life is tough at his house.
Ameera is Muslim and kids often say bad things about her.
Jenna's single-parent mom works long hard hours.
David is a border kid, born in the U.S., but often traveling to Mexico. Life is uncertain.
It's a book about families.
It's a book about poetry.
It's a book about activism.
But most of all, it's a book about finding the courage to be the person you're meant to be and acting from that center.
Let's take a look! I thought the best way would be to dive into a powerpack and participate.
This is the opening page for Powerpack 4. I personally love the creative imagery of these opening pages. The designs and patterns by Franzi Paetzold capture the theme of each powerpack.
The next spread is a powerplay activity designed by Sylvia that gives students the chance to play with words and word choices.
Here's my wordplay. I began with rhyme, then moved to some slant rhyme.
Next is the anchor poem, a previously published poem from an outside source that reflects the theme of the powerpack. The response poem (written by Janet) is from the point of view of one of the four friends and expands on the theme.
The mentor poem, again written by Janet in the voice of one of the four friends, gives students an example to study as they begin working on their own poem.
And finally, there's a writing prompt, created by Sylvia, that challenge students to write using specific techniques encountered in the preceding poems of the powerpack.
I chose to work with internal rhyme and slant rhyme.
One day while working on the poem, I received an invitation to participate in a sort of mock poetry slam. Ten rounds of poems (which are read, not recited) matched to a theme given at the beginning of each round. I was suddenly thrown back to an unsettling memory, a loss of memory in fact, in front of a crowd. Here's my poem.
Invitation to a Poetry Slam
And suddenly
you’re seventeen
onstage in the school auditorium
after weeks of practice Mrs. Higgins
glasses slipping down her sharp nose
pronounces you ready
oak boards creak beneath your patent leather pumps
orange letters sprawl across royal blue
drapes shout Blue Devils
students slouch in worn wooden seats
you step to the microphone
don’t look at the crowd don’t allow
your gaze to find a face
focus on the doors
the hallway back to homeroom
open your mouth
sentences come out
somehow you relax
think you’ve found your voice
until a pause
long enough for shuffling feet to still
for stoners in the corner to rouse
to check what caused the lack of sound
long enough to vow never again
a loud whisper from stage right
Mrs. Higgins with your speech in her hand
life line for a drowning man
And each powerpack unit is loaded with the same kind of learning power.
I appreciate this comment from Ed Spicer, educator and literacy expert. “This book will allow all sorts of emotions and thoughts to bubble forth, including difficult and painful ones . . . and that will be a source of healing.”
Isn't that what we love most about poetry?
In a recent article in The Dragon Lode, the journal of Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group, Janet calls the method "poetry fanfiction," encouraging students to use a mix of published poems and new poems as structure for their own expression.
More than ever, tweens and teens are looking to invent new ways to express themselves, to document their lives and insert themselves meaningfully into the world. Poetry fan fiction can teach language arts skills in a brand new way that honors their desires to create.
This is a book for teachers. Sylvia and Janet have done the pre-write planning for you.
It's a book for students with compelling characters and a good story.
It's a book about using words to help students find their own perspective.
What's not to love?
Leave your Poetry Friday below.
Leave a comment to be entered into the drawing for one of five copies of the book.
now that you are here
amid crag and gleam
mist-rise and vapor
dark jade frothing
into white lace
here where the rains
come to gargle
spit jets of spray
see herons creep
smokestacks peer
through high windows
spirits sleep
spool and spindle
shaft and shackle
tie-snake and eagle
sit still
as an old powerhouse
and mind your moorings
the river roaring
On Fridays in April to celebrate National Poetry Month, I will be introducing you to some of my "real life" poetry friends that you might enjoy knowing.
Today you will meet Nick Norwood. He is a professor of creative writing at Columbus State University. When I returned to school back in 2000 as a non-traditional student (old, in other words! I was 50 when I graduated), Nick was my creative writing professor. He is much of the reason I am writing poetry today.
Nick is also the director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians in Columbus, Georgia, and Nyack, New York. His poems have appeared many literary journals, including The Paris Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and The Oxford American. He has been featured at the PBS NewsHour site Art Beat, U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated column American Life in Poetry, and on NPR’s Writer’s Almanacwith Garrison Keillor.
The poem above, "powerhouse," was a commissioned collaboration between Nick and CSU art professor, Michael McFalls. The sculpture scrolls across the top of the retaining wall along Columbus' downtown Riverwalk exactly opposite the old Eagle and Phenix Mill house. Click here for a reading of the poem and comments by the poet, sculptor, and sponsors of the work.
And now enjoy these poems that Nick is sharing with us.
Shetland
Shorty, lone ornament of the south pasture;
brawny, bristle-maned chestnut stuffed with clover.
A savage saddled: ornery, headstrong, mean.
But once, in a snit, I banged through the screen
and found him idle by the barbwire fence
just staring—calm, inert—toward the house
and got a wild hair, thought, I’ll stroke his muzzle.
Sidling up, age nine, my palm met his skull—
an anvil, a fieldpiece shrink-wrapped in hide—
and the news traveled up my arm. This cloud
of sweat and flies and moist, long-rifled breathing,
this piss-hot leathery stink, had being.
He was a beast, all right, but so was I.
At last we two were meeting eye to eye
and my brain forged for us an island north,
hardships braved, friendships kept, galloping forth.
We stood long in Texas while the June sun
slowly moved, mid-morning; a calf went on
bawling for its mother. I remember
hearing my grandmother’s radio stir,
crackle, and settle on the local weather
as we were disappearing into the heather.
What is your philosophy of failure?
Writing poems is like cold-calling. I’ve heard that among salesman it’s considered success to have one out of 20 cold calls result in a sale. That means 19 of those calls were failures. Only 5% of the work succeeded. That seems about right. William Stafford defined a poet as a person who, in a lifetime of standing out of doors during thunderstorms, manages to get himself or herself struck by lightning two or three times. And Stafford’s own career is proof of that. Though he wrote many fine poems, anthologizing mostly reduced him to two or three, and really he’s known to most people by only one—his brilliant, beautiful, and sad “Traveling Through the Dark.” All of his other poems are, in a sense, failures of varying degree.
Ronnie’s
Dad dead, Mom—back in the bank, tellering—
started dressing in cute skirts and pants suits
she sewed herself from onionskin patterns
and bright-colored knits picked up at Cloth World.
Got her dark brunette hair cut in a shag.
And she and her single girlfriends from work
on a weekday night would leave me to “Love
American Style” or Mary Tyler Moore
and step out to hear the country house band
or now-and-then headliners like Ray Price
and Merle Haggard. Mom’s blue Buick Wildcat
shoulder to shoulder with the other Detroit
behemoths in the dim lot around back.
Wind skittering trash along the street. Bass
notes thumping through the sheet-metal walls
and the full swinging sound suddenly blaring
when a couple came in or out the door.
I know because I’m there, now, in the lot,
crouched behind the fender of a Skylark
or Riviera, in the weird green glow
of the rooftop Ronnie’s sign, not keeping tabs
on Mom, not watching out, just keeping time
with the band and sipping a Slurpee
while she dances through this two-year window
before getting re-hitched, settling back down.
Just twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old,
looking pretty, and having the time of her life.
I hope you enjoyed meeting my friend. Irene Latham hosts the roundup today at Live Your Poem. Be sure to stop by. There are so many wonderful ways to celebrate National Poetry Month in the Kidslitosphere. And if you haven't been following Irene's progressive poem, be sure to check out the links below and catch up.
I recently purchased a collection of poems from Paraclete Press, called Astonishments by Polish poet, Anna Kamienska. Thumbing through it this week, I found this delightful poem. I don't know much about the poet or the translator or the playwright whose work sparked this poem, but I relate to the message. I'll bet you will, too. (The book is out of print, but Paraclete Press has put the entire work in pdf format online.)
Alter Ego
by Anna Kamienska
One day I decided to invent a poet
who would write instead of me
and would also instead of me agonize over not writing
somewhat pathetic
somewhat ordinary he wouldn't feel ashamed
of apostrophes exclamations points
he could at the same time look at the world
through my eyes and eyes not mine
for they make us rigid fix us
in what should be changeable
full of surprises like time
I wished to leave myself
without ceasing to be me
Did anyone ever manage it
I laughed like the bride in The Wedding
Enter oh ghost
A certain homeless ghost did accept the invitation
incarnated within my darkness
and making himself comfortable declared
I'm great at silence
**The Wedding is a poetic play by Stanislaw Wypianski (1869-1907) built around the image of th wedding feast, a Walpurgian-like dance with ghosts.
And of course, April is National Poetry Month. I have a project that has been sitting in the wings for some time. I've set aside April for my alter ego to work consistently on it. I might post an update on my progress, but I'm not ready to make it public. So I'll be working quietly this month.
I will be participating in the Kidslitosphere Progressive Poem. And I will post on Poetry Fridays, sharing some of my favorite adult poet friends that you might like to know.
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