Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Marcie’s blog, Here. Thank you for hosting. Make sure to stop by to check out what she has for us this week.
Each morning, after I hear what is going on in the world, I try not to dwell on the news, for obvious reasons, and just try to be a good citizen.
I’ve been reading novels lately. ( I just read FAMILY LIFE, a 2014 novel by Akhil Sharma which was fabulous, about a young boy in an immigrant family from India and their life in the U.S. It’s a sad story but a page turner, the writing poetic.) I linked the New York Times Review.
So what can I share this week, poetry wise?
Sometimes in the evening I watch the British Baking Show, hosted by Paul Hollywood, of course. I imagine being a contestant. I am sure I would be sent home by the judges the first day of the ten day competition.
I wrote a triolet last week and described the form. So this week, for fun, I honed my craft further with another one.
BRITISH BAKING DREAMS
Today I watched the Baking Show-- the judges mostly kind. Who knew that salt makes yeast grow slow! Today I watched the Baking Show. What is it like to overproof the dough, then stand and feel maligned? I watched the British Baking Show, the judges mostly kind.
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Susan, on her blog Chicken Spaghetti. Thank you, Susan, for hosting!
What is Poetry Friday? Find out here. It’s a great way to get to know other poets and others who love poetry.
Yesterday I was walking and saw this very common winter sight:
A barren forsythia in winter.
A bare tree. But since it is January, I began to think about spring and how everything will change in a few months. It’s not too early to start to think ahead. After all, days are slowly getting longer and there is no going back.
So since yesterday I tried to capture this bare shrub in a poem, and chose a French form known as the triolet. Some examples can be found here, including examples by poets Laura Purdie Salas and Amy Ludwig Vanderwater. If you are not familiar with this eight line form, it’s described nicely here, at a Masterclass site.
Below are the characteristics of each line. The first two lines are repeated in the last two lines.
Writing a Triolet:
1. The first line (A)
2. The second line (B)
3. The third line rhymes with the first (a)
4. Repeat the first line (A)
5. The fifth line rhymes with the first (a)
6. The sixth line rhymes with the second line (b)
7. Repeat the first line (A)
8. Repeat the second line (B)
After a few tries, and several hours, after discarding “tree” and “bush” for for “shrub,” which seemed more interesting, I came up with this:
Here’s a picture of the direction we are headed. You get the idea. I don’t know what kind of flower this is. Does anyone know? I don’t believe it is forsythia.
Happy Winter to you all from cloudy Upstate New York!
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Catherine Flynn Here. Make sure you stop by and find out what she has up her sleeve for us this week. Thank you for being the first host of the year!
I’ve had a reset with the new year. I’ve have returned to a few manuscripts that have been dormant for a while, with new eyes. One is a manuscript of poetry about the non-fiction topic DIGESTION, of all things.
My plan was two years ago to write a poem about “Team Digestion” that is, all the organs involved in this important endeavor. I was thinking perhaps that kids about seven might like to know where their food goes and that I might have fun writing about it. Also, no matter where you live or who you are, what happens to your food is always the same.
It was fun.
Anyway, I wrote poems, in several different forms, some of them I really like, some not so much, along with non-fiction notes to go with each.
But with this new year, I decided a prose picture book story about digestion is more suited to the topic, not to mention, way more publishable. I’ve revised and written a manuscript that I am much more excited about, more fun to read, and it captures the teamwork involved in digestion.
You’ll have to take my word for it.
But I have poems that I can share. Below is an etheree about a very important part of the team. It’s the mastermind, the liver, that takes all the thoroughly digested nutrients from the busy small intestine, and puts them together to make all the proteins and other things the body needs to grow.
An etheree is a ten line poem that starts with one syllable and ends with ten syllables. Each line grows by one syllable.
Welcome to the last Poetry Friday of 2022, this week hosted by poet Patricia Franz Here. Thank you for hosting, Patricia! Make sure you check in and see what Patricia has for us this week!
Because of a car trip to our relatives, and idle time in a car, I have been knitting a pair of socks. Because it’s small, a sock project is easy to bring along. What does this have to do with poetry?
One down, one to go.
A year ago, I was thinking of possible writing projects and considered using pairs of words that rhymed. Socks and rocks were two of the words I thought of. What did they have in common? Was there a poem there?
Would these two rhyming words yield humor? I had no idea if anyone but me would see opportunity here. Anyway, about rocks and socks I came up with a poem. I revised my initial attempt and like it better. I hope we all find ideas to inspire us over this new year.
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by the lovely talented poet, Irene Latham HERE. Make sure you stop by to see what Irene has for us this week.
Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Get your questions answered HERE.
Because it’s the holidays and I recently traveled, I found myself looking at too many pictures of me and deleting many. I thought of being human and our personal relationship to the ever present and ever changing face we each carry around.
There I was, smiling in front of ancient buildings, at a Thanksgiving party with relatives, posing with my son in California. It’s surprised me how much I look like both my parents. It’s difficult to describe, but a variety of emotions welled up.
I discovered Carl Sandburg wrote a poem that resonated. It was in this book, and the poem was originally published in 1930:
Early Moon, by Carl Sandburg
PHIZZOG
by Carl Sandburg
This face you got,
This here phizzog you carry around,
You never picked it out for yourself, at all, at all--did
you?
This here phizzog--somebody handed it to you--am I
right?
Somebody said, "Here's yours, now go see what you can
do with it."
"No goods exchanged after
being taken away"--
This face you got.
This poem is sweet and funny. No goods exchanged, indeed!
Happy Holidays to everyone!! Hopefully the arctic weather doesn’t preclude my family from traveling four hours to see my husband’s sister for Christmas. We’ll all take our phizzogs with us for photos and celebrate Christmas and the end of 2022. We are lucky we have the freedom to do so. God bless the people of Ukraine.
Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Karen Edminsten HERE. Thank you Karen, for hosting! Drop by to what she is sharing this week.
Look HERE if you would you like to know more about Poetry Friday.
It is fun to get a mystery gift in the mail! So much fun, it really should happen more often! When I received my holiday swap gift from Linda Mitchell, I was busy and had forgotten, I think, that Christmas would be here soon. I’d forgotten swap time was near.
I puzzled over this bulging envelop that appeared in my mailbox for a moment before I opened it. What could this be?
Inside I found a so called “Junk journal” with all sorts of treasures spilling out from it, which made it hardly junk.
I found a package of cut out words to be used as “poem seeds,” various collage pictures, such as stars made of paper,
and, of course, poetry.
This acrostic poem by Linda came with it:
And another wonderful poem was also inside, entitled “Today’s Poem Offers”:
TODAY'S POEM OFFERS
A bumper crop of stars
fresh from the fields
of Falling Star Farms
Stars heaped up high
sparkly with dew
fresh-picked by me
ready for you
Fill a bag, fill a basket
your pockets too
with all these good wishes
my star harvest holds for you
by Linda Mitchell, 2022
My new little journal, put me in the holiday mood, so I wrote this in response:
Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Catherine Flynn HERE. Thank you for hosting, Catherine. I look forward to what she will be sharing this week. I saw her and Patricia Franz who is another Poetry Friday blogger, and other poetry friends last evening on line. We are attending the first week of a Georgia Heard workshops. The topic? Poetry collections!
My husband and I returned a week ago from a long planned, covid delayed, trip to Spain and Portugal, both countries beautiful,
The Duoro valley in Portugal, where they grow grapes for their famous Port wine.
with gorgeous cities and art such as the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. In his masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, still being built, have windows that make the inside spaces glow with extraordinary color, like it was, I swear, radioactive.
Here’s a selfie of me with the city of Toledo, built on a solid granite hill, a river on three sides and buildings full of Jewish, Arab, and Christian influences. Behind me, far below, is the river and the city rising above.
People were friendly everywhere we went.
This young man named João in a university town called Cuimbra, (pronounced queem-bra) was happy to discuss the famous Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, suggest a book, and chat about Portugal.
I bought the following book from Joao, and in it I sought to discover who Fernando Pessoa was. He baffled me. According to the editor Richard Zenith, Pessoa was known for writing from the personas of many people that he created, that were part of him.
“His point of view was eloquently expressed by his . . . self-multiplication, into dozens of literary personalities whose names signed a large part of his sprawling output.” Richard Zenith
FOREVER SOMEONE ELSE; Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa, edited by Richard Zenith
So in this book, you will find poems written by names Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Alvaro De Campos, poets all created by Pessoa. He was like a playwright writing characters who speak from their own separate selves.
Pessoa wrote about his created characters, “The Author . . . cannot affirm that all these different well-defined personalities who have incorporeally passed through his soul don’t exist, for he doesn’t know what it means to exist, nor whether Hamlet or whether Shakespeare is more real, or truly real”
So what small piece of the work can I share that might interest young people as well as adults to know more? Pessoa wrote the following accessible and beautiful poem through the poet, Ricardo Reis:
To be great, be whole: don't exaggerate
Or leave out any part of you.
Be complete in each thing. Put all you are
Into the least of your acts.
So too in each lake, with its lofty life,
The whole moon shines.
I love the image of a moon in a lake that make the poem come to life.
It would take a while to get to know the many sides of Fernando Pessoa.
Below is my husband, Bart, with a sweet 19-year old waiter in a small lunch place. It’s easy to tell who is who. Everyone we met seemed to love their families and country. This young man said he wouldn’t leave as he would miss Lisbon, his family and especially, it seemed, the food. The grilled octopus and Bachalhau (codfish) were delicious.
I hope everyone enjoys the holidays. Thank you, Catherine, for hosting.
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by artist and poet and champion of poetry, Jone Maculluch HERE. Thank you for hosting, Jone.
Thank you also, Bridget Magee, for sharing my poem today, THE FLOATING WATER STRIDER in her newsletter. It’s from her fabulous 10 * 10 POETRY ANTHOLOGY: Celebrating 10 in 10 Different Ways which is full of wonderful poems for kids by many talented poets.
Hope springs eternal that someday I will complete a series of poems, which I think of as a picture book in verse, about a day in the life of a kid who lives in a family restaurant, from morning to night. I’ve posted one poem previously Here about a noisy metal dishwasher, one of my favorites. Here’s another about our walk-in-cooler.
This is an old photo from the nineties of me and my two boys in front of the restaurant. Phil and Matt thought it was cool to visit Uncle Mike at work in the kitchen where they could find unlimited French fries.
I’ll be away from my blog for a few weeks out seeking adventure. I will be searching for more ideas and poems to share. Happy Halloween! I’m voting early this Saturday and can’t wait!!
Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by the clever Bridget Magee HERE. This week she has been posting a different poem by a different poet from her anthology: 10*10: Poetry Anthology Celebrating 10 in 10 Different Ways. It’s been great reading such wonderful poems for kids, many from Poetry Friday friends.
Halloween is on my mind. I particularly love that on this holiday, dreadful things that visit and scare the daylights out of you, simply disappear the next day. Like these scary dudes, who once on a Halloween night pretended to be my children.
Gone! Whoosh! They disappeared on November first.
What an emotionally satisfying holiday and I have never, ever, appreciated Halloween more than I do this year! Maybe others feel this, too.
And as usual in Central New York, the pumpkins are amazing. Who could resist smiling in the midst of such a frightful holiday when standing amongst hundreds of bright orange pumpkins?
So, next weekend I anticipate the knocks on my door and the trail of dreadful visitors, anticipating the relief I know I will feel on November 1st when they are gone.
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Matt Here. Thank you, Matt for hosting! Be sure to check out what he has for us this week.
Leaves outside my door this morning.
It’s starting to look a lot like Halloween, and I’ve begun thinking about an anticipating witches and brooms.. On my computer, I have several versions of a poem inspired by a hard-working porch broom that, in autumn, was especially busy what with everything “falling.” As you can tell, it is an epistolary poem.
