Welcome to Poetry Friday! Thank you, Susan Bruck, for hosting here at Soul Blossom Living.
I’ve kept busy this week revising work. I’ve also been reading Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Fin. I’ve never read them cover to cover. Twain writes characters with heart breaking humanity. For instance, Twain Huck is unable to be “good” and turn in Jim, an escaped slave, to authorities. He knows if he were a well bred boy and had good character, he would. Twain shows us through character, how slavery corrupted American society. Through his work, we can gain insight into how we became the America we are today.
For an adventure, I baked this week. I have always wanted to make pita bread, and I was surprisingly successful. I read the directions carefully and found it wasn’t that hard. They were crisp and tasty and I surprised my neighbor from Lebanon with some. I used the recipe in my old Fanny Farmer Baking Book, but there are many good recipes on line. Here’s one.
Here are the pita before their plunge into a 500 degree oven . . .
Welcome to Poetry Friday, the coming of Spring edition. Heidi Mordhorst, at My Juicy Little Universe, is hosting HERE. Be sure to stop by to see what poems she is sharing this week.
Spring is coming to Central New York and everything seems imbued with new hope. They are lowering the age for vaccines and people are lining up. I don’t think it’s too wishful to believe that as time goes on more and more people everwhere will agree to take it.
Today, I waited for a LaMiPoFri to come to me as I stared out my living room window at the early spring colors, mostly brown, but some green. I noticed my husband left a ladder by the porch.
THE BOTTICELLIAN TREES, by William Carlos Williams, provides images of trees changing in spring. Trees/ alphabet metaphor to me was unusual. It’s a lovely poem. Below is the beginning, and the rest HERE
THE BOTTICELLIAN TREES
The Alphabet of
the trees
is fading in the
song of the leaves
the crossing
bars of the thin
letters that spelled
winter
and the cold
have been illuminated
with
pointed green
by the rain and sun--
I hope everyone is well and enjoying the first days of spring, at least they are the first days in Central New York.
It’s Poetry Friday and my thanks to Sylvia Vardell for hosting at POETRY FOR CHILDREN. There you will find a wonderful and useful sneak preview of 2021 poetry books for kids.
It’s been a long few days. But I was thrilled to receive some lovely New Year postcards, a yearly event on Poetry Friday. Thank you Jone Rush Macculloch for organizing this. The result is that I received some gorgeous photos adorned with joyful poetry .
The following card and haiku by Mary Lee Hahn filled me with hope, perfect for New Years.
My thoughts have been with the thousands of people who have been dying everyday with the Coronavirus. It breaks my heart. So much unnecessary suffering. God bless them and their families.
Today is Poetry Friday and Robyn Hood Black is hosting at Life on the Deckle Edge. Be sure to stop by to see what she has in store for us. Thank you, Robyn, for hosting! I hope everyone is healthy and safe.
When I feel agitated, as I have been this week by yet more over-the-top political chaos, it helps to go outside and find peace in nature. Yesterday my husband and I went to a favorite place called Green Lake, a “meromictic” lake that is always a deep blue-green. It is protected by trees and so is usually calm, with trees and sky reflected photographically in its surface. The lake is 195 feet deep, created by a glacier long ago in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
What is a meromictic lake?
Briefly, it is a lake of three layers that never mix. Compared to the top surface layer, the bottom layer has a low oxygen content, a high salt content, and little light. A middle layer separates the two extremes. Depending on the oxygen, light and salt content, different organisms survive in the the three layers.
Most lakes, the great majority, are “holomictic” meaning that its surface and deep waters mix at least once a year. Meromictic lakes don’t mix because they are deep, have steep sides, and because the bottom waters are heavier, with salt. The Black Sea is the largest meromictic lake in the world.
I was there on a perfect fall day. The brighter leaves have fallen from trees around the lake, replaced by brown and rust colors. Beautiful changes. Here’s a haiku I wrote to share today.
Meromictic lake--
like neighbors in a highrise
its waters find peace.
Our hike around the lake was peaceful as I hope our country will be, at least relative to recent times, soon.
Have a wonderful day and weekend. I hope you all find peace wherever you go.
Thank you, Linda Baie, for hosting Poetry Friday. Don’t forget to stop by TeacherDance and see what’s on Linda’s mind this week.
It’s the anxious time. States are trying to vote safely and struggling with the virus. I am trying to come up with small and more distant ways to acknowledge loved ones this holiday season. It’s just the way it is. We have to accept it.
For this post, I dusted off three bird haiku. This first one was chosen as one of the poems to be paired with an artist for the SYRACUSE POSTER PROJECT in 2013. Artist Carolyn Glavin, a student at Syracuse University at the time, illustrated it, which I thought was perfect. The photo doesn’t do the artist justice, but it’s a charming painting that I cherish.
cardinal, feathered
masked bandit on a snowy
limb--all can see you
Here are two more haiku featuring birds:
the black white and red
woodpecker pecks a metal
pipe--he doesn't know.
a sudden robin
among the forsythia--
orange in yellow light
Thinking about birds this morning has taken my mind off the election for a short time. Out my window I see bright orange and yellow leaves which brightens an otherwise cloudy damp day.
To close, Happy Halloween 2020! I just read Lee Bennett Hopkin’s 1993 anthology RAGGED SHADOWS to celebrate. Inside these covers, as many teachers probably already know, are wonderfully eerie Halloween poems by legendary poets such as Karla Kuskin and Eileen Fisher and Valerie Worth.
Enjoy the weekend and be sure to stop by TeacherDance for more Poetry Friday inspiration with Linda Baie.
It’s Poetry Friday, this week hosted by the talented Carol Valsalona on her blog, Beyond Literacy. Make sure you stop by and check out what she has in store this week. Thank you, Carol.
Two weeks ago, Carol made a request:
Poetry Friday Friends:
If so inclined, please share a new image poem on the topic, Summer 2020 in the Midst of Quarantine Life, at your blog for the September 4, 2020 Poetry Friday that I am hosting. It will be a way to showcase the beauty of nature during trying times.
I have been celebrating the beauty of summer this week in my kitchen. With all the sun and rain in Syracuse, my generous neighbor’s garden has exploded with vegetables, especially tomatoes. It’s been a bright spot during the pandemic at my house.
I think this qualifies as an image that celebrates the beauty of nature, don’t you? I was indeed inundated, as the tomatoes were ripe and many could not wait to be cooked. Spaghetti and meat balls anyone?
Of course summer seems sweet partly because, at least where I live, it ends. I’ve been feeling nostalgic. A week of chilly weather, it seems as if summer never happened. This idea inspired this:
Enjoy your weekend. I haven’t mentioned here all the disturbing things that are going on in America, but my thoughts and prayers are with Black Lives Matter, with those who are ill, with the scientists who are working to defeat Covid, and with the Joe Biden campaign.
Be sure to visit Carol’s blog, Beyond Literacy!
If you want to know more about Poetry Friday, it’s here.
It’s Poetry Friday, today hosted by the amazing Laura Purdie Salas. Let’s see what she has in store for us this week. I hope everyone is well as we get through each new week which fly by. My thoughts are with all the teachers and students trying to get back to their important work.
Just for fun and interest I entered the 2020 Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Contest, not that I thought I would ever win or place and did not. The winners were recently announced here, chosen from over 2,000 haiku entries. It was the eight annual contest run by The Heron’s Nest, an on-line haiku quarterly journal that welcomes submissions. In the above link, the editors shared the winning haiku and honorable mentions and described in detail why they are chosen. It’s well worth reading if you have an interest in haiku and it made me think about this popular form.
Though I write them on occasional I still know too little about haiku as an art form. I did know that classically, haiku is a three line poem originating in Japan with a 5-7-5 syllabic count, though some haiku poets veer from this. The number of syllables varies. I found the syllabic limitations useful and fun when I set out several years ago to create snapshots of historical figures, such as John Q. Addams, the first president to ever be photographed:
We could use someone interesting and innovative today, like you, JQ!
Classically, within the 17 syllable format, the haiku was often divided into two parts, that contrast in tone. An example given was this, written by Issa:
Look at the warbler-
he's wiping his muddy feet
all over the plum blossoms.
I think the shift in tone here is between the lovely image conjured by the warbler contrasting with his muddy feet on the plum blossoms.
Beside contrast in tone within the poem, the other classic haiku characteristic is the “kigo”, or seasonal word, which gives the reader a sense of, or course, the season. In the above haiku I see plum blossoms, a warbler, and mud . . . I guess spring.
According to Lowenstein, optimistic SPRING is often implied by “cherry blossoms and certain birds.
The bright exhausting SUMMER is implied by “flower and tree words.”
AUTUMN is “melancholy” and expressed images such as a “full moon, wind and dying leaves.”
Words like “snow” might signify a cold and difficult WINTER.
On The Heron’s Nest’s website submission page they post a list of qualities these contemporary editors look for when evaluating haiku. These do seem to take their cue from classic haiku.
Present moment magnified (immediacy of emotion)
Interpenetrating the source of inspiration (no space between observer and observed)
Simple, uncomplicated images
Common language
Finding the extraordinary in “ordinary” things
Implication through objective presentation, not explanation: appeal to intuition, not intellect
Human presence is fine if presented as an archetypical, harmonious part of nature (human nature should blend in with the rest of nature rather than dominate the forefront)
Humor is fine, if in keeping with “karumi” (lightness) – nothing overly clever, cynical, comic, or raucous
Musical sensitivity to language (effective use of rhythm and lyricism)
Feeling of a particular place within the cycle of seasons
So much to think about in writing such a brief poem. Haiku can feel to me to be inscrutable, though fascinating and worth the effort. Here are a few from the Japanese masters:
On a withered branch
a crow has settled.
Nightfall in autumn.
Bashō (1644-94)
Wandering through a stream
in summer, carrying my sandals.
How delightful!
Buson (1715-83)
Is that crow tilling
the field or just
walking around there?
Issa (1762-1826)
After I'm dead, tell people
I was a persimmon eater
who also loved haiku.
Shiki (1867-1902)
I hope you liked these. Have a great day and take time off from our troubled world, perhaps, and write a few haiku. Maybe it will provide a small respite.
Poetry Friday is hosted today by Elizabeth Steinglass. Make sure you stop by and read her amazing poem about the word “and.” It’s truly brilliant!
It’s getting closer to Christmas. I’ve been knitting rather furiously.
However, this gives me an excuse to watch the impeachment hearings and ignore all else. Though everyone says that most citizens are bored, I have found it fascinating.
I’ve especially enjoyed hearing the many very smart, reasonable, women representatives doing their duty.
So I listen and knit and use the mute button if there is too much yelling.
When I was a student at Vermont College I began to experiment with writing poetry on non-fiction topics. One project was to write a haiku about each American president. I wanted to find a “snapshot” of each life, something about them that interested me. Some snapshots were about small things, like John Quincy Adams’ skinny dipping. Other facts were about momentous things. Each haiku would be accompanied with a few factoids. What I ended up with was a mini-American history, of sorts, in snapshots, in haiku.
I will share the one I wrote about Andrew Johnson, the 17th president (1865-1869), who was the first President to be impeached.
Andrew Johnson
As a nation mourned
A proud tailor took the oath--
cranking back the clock.
Andrew Johnson, who was Abraham Lincoln’s Vice President, would lead the reconstruction, or rebuilding of the South. He was a tailor. Unfortunately, he was Lincoln’s opposite. As if looking backward from the man he followed, Johnson called slaves “savages” and believed they should not be citizens. The House drafted eleven articles of impeachment against him, based on differences he had with the Congress, but he was acquitted by the Senate.
I loved this project. I read about each president, watched videos about them, found a focus and wrote a haiku. Degregorio’s The Complete Book of the U.S. Presidents informed me. The presidents from the distant past were much easier to write haikus about than the ones I knew in real time.
I might as well finish this post with two others :
Richard Nixon
He strove to befriend
Mao Tse Tung--but his real foes
dwelled inside his head.
William Clinton
An embarrassing
public debate--we explored
our lesser angels.
Both men were better known to us than Andrew Johnson. Here’s to the holidays and our all too human presidents.
