Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Thank you for hosting! I hope everyone is well.
Poet Elizabeth Steinglass recently wrote a post on her blog about a wonderful craft book, Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems by poet Marjorie Maddox. It can teach and guide young poets, inspire and inform all ages. In those pages this week I rediscovered a short poetic form called the Clerihew, which is “a four line biographical poem, usually in rhyming couplets.”
I had a famous person in mind for my Clerihew and this felt like the perfect form for a brief blog post. It came to me as I watched the Netflix special “Becoming” about Michelle Obama’s book tour. It’s a fabulous documentary and it plunged me into several hours of nostalgia and missing her. The book was remarkable and wonderful to read, but seeing video clips of her and the Obama family brought tears. I felt like thanking her.
First some photos:
THANK YOU
Michelle Obama there are few
first Ladies anything like you,
Your beauty, kindness, smarts, and grace
still makes this land a better place.
©Janice Scully 2020
Rummaging through my computer, I discovered several other clerihews I’d written in the past that mentioned first ladies that I had forgotten about. Here’s one.
THE MADISONS
John Madison was shy-
Small talk? Didn’t try.
So Dolley, his wife,
brought the White House to life.
©Janice Scully 2020
That’s it for today. Enjoy the summer and let’s hope for the best.