16th bloggiversary: holding steady, looking forward

Greetings, Poetry People!  I'm joining you here on the 3rd Friday of the month with a little boost for thriving-not-surviving through the climate crisis, and also what is now the official bloggiversary poem of my juicy little universe.  I originally posted it on Friday, October 14, 2016, when mjlu was in its middle childhood, aged 8.  I've posted it in the same form since then, but this year, being a sensitive and cantankerous teenager, the poem demanded a later curfew a few adjustments--a fair request.

So raise your glass/mug/cup/fist and let us celebrate longevity, tradition and novelty, and the feeling of still having something to say!

 (Y'all will let me know if ever that's not true, right?)

Bloggiversary Poem, Twice as Old

All threads and trains, 

no rules, restraints;

No due dates, deadlines, or demands.

I get to choose. It's in my hands:

       voice, vocabulary,

       venom or valentine--

Each and every muse is mine.

Dive in deep or reach out wide;

noisy soapbox, soft aside;

Sampling the past or hewing the new,

I talk to myself, I write to you.

      Revels, relations, 

      revelations live here

Year after year after year.

draft HM 2016; redraft 2024

And now for the climate portion of our program: you may recall my deep dive in April 2022 into ALL WE CAN SAVE, a collection of essays and poetry edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson.   Dr. Ayana has a new book out that I'm just starting to dip into, but all you need to know right now (okay, all *I* needed to know) is that this book comes with an Anti-Apocalypse Mixtape playlist. People, we are going to be Dancing for the Planet together (but that's a project for another post).

Check this out:

"Getting it right is all about collective wisdom.

This book is an anthology of sorts, a mosaic — 20 interviews, 5 poems, 3 co-authored chapters, 2 artists’ new works, a note from my dad, and a quote from my mom.

It includes visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, producers and policy wonks. Mega brains. All stars.




On possibility and transformation with:

Abigail Dillen • Adam McKay • Archibald Frederick Johnson • Ayisha Siddiqa • Bill McKibben • Bren Smith • Brian Donahue • Bryan C. Lee Jr. • Colette Pichon Battle • Erica Deeman • Franklin Leonard • Jacqueline Woodson • Jade Begay • Jean Flemma • Jigar Shah • Judith D. Schwartz • K. Corley Kenna • Kate Marvel • Kate Orff • Kelly Sims Gallagher • Kendra Pierre-Louis • Leah Penniman • Marge Piercy • Mustafa Suleyman • Oana Stănescu • Olalekan Jeyifous • Paola Antonelli • Régine Clément • Rhiana Gunn-Wright • Samantha Montano • Steve Connell • Wendell Berry • Xiye Bastida

I'm girding myself with joy for the coming challenging months, friends. 

Thanks to Matt over at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme for hosting us today, and let's imagine that that little tractor runs on solar power as well as hoedown music!

math hurts

Howdy. Briefly, it's the First Friday and time for an Inklings Challenge...

From Margret, via Laura Shovan, invented by new-to-me author Shari Green--A Pythagorean Poem!

Here's the math background: Pythagoras's theorem is a2 + b2 = c2.
One possible set of numbers is 3, 4, 5:
3x3 + 4x4 = 5x5
9 + 16 = 25

Using this triple, the poem will be

1st stanza: 3 lines of 3 words each
2nd stanza: 4 lines of 4 words each
3rd stanza: 5 lines of 5 words each*

KICKER! The third stanza must be composed of all the words found in stanzas one and two (in any order; variations okay). The third stanza should be a progression of sorts, a product of the first two in thought or theme or meaning.

Lordy.

Here goes, from a magnetic poem I made yesterday:


helene | a pythagorean poem


above early fall
a hot blossom
of rain opens,

tears morning– field– road–
shivers house– harvest– bark–
melts roof– night– our
very breath– to water

rain-opened road. roof blossom.
house fall. our tears shiver
above hot barks of breath.
fields harvested too early. night
waters morning. verily, a melting.


© HM 2024






Check out the rest of the Pythagorean Poems by

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

and thanks to Tabatha for hosting today!

so many reasons to [help others] vote

Greetings, all! I'm coming in heavy today from the throes of planning the local version of a UU Climate Revival event taking place at 350 congregations nationwide on Saturday, Sept. 28th. The aim is to help our folks, who are traditionally very active in all kinds of social justice activism, see that climate justice overarches all the "justices"--both in that if we don't have a livable planet, reproductive rights don't matter much, for example, and also that economic, racial and immigration justice are all deeply connected to climate change.

What applies to every one of us is the hour of advocacy action we'll take as part of Sunday's service: a nonpartisan Get Out the Vote effort. Why does it matter? Because we can support those affected "first and worst" by climate change to raise their voices through their votes.

Wanna hear something surprising? Loads of people who identify as environmentalists don't vote regularly! (I don't know; are they out kayaking on Election Day?) The Environmental Voter Project aims to change that.

"We estimate that over 8 million environmentalists did not vote in the 2020 presidential election and over 13 million skipped the 2022 midterms. We are a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on a simple, high-leverage solution to this problem: with an 8-year track record of success, we are accurately identifying these non-voting environmentalists and efficiently converting them into a critical mass of consistent voters that will soon be too big for politicians to ignore.

13,000,000
Environmentalists who don’t vote in federal elections

1,824,260
Non-voting and seldom-voting environmentalists whom EVP has helped turn into consistent super-voters"

You can help! Look at all these opportunities to contact the kayakers and get them to the polls! (Unfortunately, my favorite way is to write, and those opportunities are already filled.) https://www.environmentalvoter.org/get-involved

And if you need to know which candidates in your area are the ones to vote for, try these resources:

• National Environmental Scorecard by the League of Conservation Voters, 501(c)(4), is a great topline review of members in Congress.
• The National Climate Scorecard by the Climate Cabinet, 501(c)(4), may be the first tool that tracks and scores all state legislators across the U.S. by their votes on climate and environmental justice legislation.
• Do you have a "Climate Mayor?" Check HERE to see if your Mayor is one of the 750 Climate Mayors or Climate County Executives. 
• Do you have a climate Governor who is contributing to a state-wide climate action plan? Check HERE.
• Have your community’s leaders already declared a Climate Emergency? Check HERE to see the more than 190 communities that have.

And now for the poetry...the only poetry book I know on democracy and elections is this one by Janet Wong from 2012--but it does the trick!

Go sow your own seeds, of course, and help others sow theirs. Thanks to Linda Baie at TeacherDance for hosting us today and celebrating maximum tilt!

ready for our close-up: poetry friday is here!

Greetings, Poetry Friday People!  May the special energy of a Friday the 13th animate you (some call it bad luck but I am a triskaidekaphile)!

I've spent this week kicking off a new round of WHISPERshout Writing Workshop afterschool classes. Our theme is TINY ENORMOUS. Drawing from the really wonderful materials and tools of The Private Eye Project, we are examining nature objects using jeweler's loupes with 5x magnification, thinking metaphorically, and writing poetry from our observations and imaginations.

Here are some photos from the first classes and a collaborative poem about the subject of our first loupe-study and drawing:

 

Fingerprint | The WHISPERshout Writers

 

My fingertip

bumps and twirls

like the feathers 

of a bird

like waves on the

water

It arches like a

rainbow, opens like a

cave

it swoops and spirals

stripes on a zebra

My fingerprint swirls

like soft-serve ice cream

Now let's see/hear/examine what you've been up to!  Add your links below, and thanks for being here.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

always a next time

Greetings, All!  My summer hiatus has come to a close and I'm happy to return to your company this week and particularly next week, when I'll have the honor of hosting Poetry Friday again. 

Not too much has changed since May, although an awful lot is different this year, both personally and professionally. I've dropped in over the summer because the Inklings monthly challenge has continued apace, and it's easy for me to rise to that kind of prompt. (Turns out it's much harder to rise to my own intentions, which have none of the force of someone else's expectation! A treatise on this subject sometime soon...)

And once again this week we've been offered a Good One--this time simply and straightforwardly by Mary Lee:

       Use Next Time, by Joyce Sutphen, as a mentor poem for your own Next Time poem.

I do love the way this poem is disorganized, not in a visual or syntactic way but in a conceptual way, so that the first time you read it, it seems quite sensible, but as you re-read, you realize the whole poem is built on an idea that not everyone accepts--that we get a next time, a do-over, another chance to be our-selves. And not only that, the poem goes here and there from the kitchen to a London coffee shop to Istanbul, from awake to dreaming, from knowledge of factoids to lasting connection, and it all happens subtly. I also found myself morphing from a trope about the hair & body I've always envied to, well, some-thing bigger.

I enjoyed doing the thing where I put the mentor poem in one column on the left and write my poem in the column on the right. Do you ever do it that way? 

Join me next week when the new school year will be in full swing for lots of you all, while I'm trying all over again to be a member of the Working Retired (which is nothing at all like the Walking Dead, nuh-uh).

Until then, let's thank Buffy Silverman for hosting us today, and let's be sure to visit the other Inklings to see what they'll be like Next Time.

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

you *are* here

Happy August to All!  When this time of year rolls around, I always think of one of the great openings of children's literature, the Prologue to TUCK EVERLASTING by Natalie Babbitt:

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after."

I'm dropping in again during this, my Summer of Submission, to participate in the Inklings monthly challenge, which piggybacks on my "wish you were here" postcard poem challenge from July.  Catherine wrote to us from the Library of Congress website:

Ada Limón’s project as Poet Laureate is “You Are Here.” “This project is for everyone, and I hope people of all ages—poets and nonpoets—will feel moved to write their own response to the “You Are Here” prompt. It’s simple: What would you write in response to the landscape around you? You can share your response if you choose using the hashtag #youareherepoetry. Here is a link to the website: https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/you-are-here/

Very very cool, with the National Parks connection!  I copped out a little but I'm pleased with my effort, which surprised me.

I'm excited to see what others have come up with--sometimes we're able to share and critique each other's efforts ahead of posting, but not really this time. I can make a better effort to get around and comment this weekend too!

Check out the other #youareherepoetry offerings here, and thanks to Laura Purdie Salas, new book birth mom, for rounding us up here at the top of the Ferris wheel! (I hope you don't have Covid, Laura.)

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

wish you were here

We interrupt this hiatus to participate in the First Friday Inklings Challenge, a short and sweet one set by me during this time of travel and tasks, rest and recharge:

Write a short postcard poem with choice details of your vacation/holiday/ getaway/escape location and activities. Conclude with "Wish you were here" or some variation! Inspiration: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159256/from-postcards
From "Postcards" by Bert Meyers

And who knew this existed?
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/poetrypostcards/
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/how-to-write-a-postcard-poem/

 

Mine's a little home-sweet-home message:

Thanks to Jan at BookSeedStudio (who is bringing us WATERMELON SUGAR--so special to me) for hosting us this holiday weekend.  Let's see where else we're receiving postcards from...

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

hayhoe, hayhoe, hasta luego

Greetings, all, on this 3rd Friday of May!  It's Climate Friday at my juicy little universe, and I'm here briefly to mention that I'm taking a little sabbatical from Poetry Friday through September 13, when I'll return as host.  I have some (like 934) writing projects that require my undivided attention.

I'm also here to recommend a weekly read that makes a big difference in my life as a
climate communicator--it's the work of another, much more educated climate communicator, Katharine Hayhoe. She has a YouTube channel and writes a Substack that I subscribe to, TALKING CLIMATE WITH KATHARINE HAYHOE, a pithy three-point bulletin with sections titled "Good News," "Not-So-Good News" and "Inspiration/What You Can Do."  It's straight talk and very empowering, and full of links if you want to know more. She also specializes in talking climate action with Christian communities.  

You can find this week's piece and subscribe yourself here. (The photo depicts people using the Local and online "climate cafés" popping up that....facilitate open, frank discussions about the climate crisis and the emotions that living in this particular moment brings up, reports Katharine. They also help like-minded people connect, collaborate, and build community so we know we’re not alone.)

Batteries made of sand?! by Katharine Hayhoe

Sand batteries, extreme Asian heat wave, and Climate Cafés

Read on Substack

I'll leave you with a poem and this quote from today's Poem-A-Day author: 

As poets, we can practice holding delicate moments, human and inhumane nuances, and consider the possible beauty in all of it. - Kay Ulanday Barrett

Thanks to Patricia for hosting us today at Reverie, and I'll see you probably not until September...Be well, all, and enjoy the summer!

a miracle exchange

May starts off with an exchange-and-respond challenge from Linda Mitchell: each of us sent off a poem to another Inkling and received a poem from another Inkling. Then, we were tasked to “Fiddle with, play with, tinker, tear-apart, be inspired or stumped by the poem.” By chance, Mary Lee and I sent poems to each other.

She sent hers first--a golden shovel with a striking line from Jane Hirschfield's “‘It is night. It is very dark.’ " I sent her a golden shovel in return, with a Mary Oliver striking line. Mary Lee's poem left me speechless and kind of reeling with the feeling that I'd witnessed a miracle.

To begin every day with questions

is like leaving the house without an umbrella and

choosing to ignore the dark clouds. Answers

might speckle our glasses and plaster our hair, but are

not usually delivered by lightning, not

any more dangerous than the

bone-chilling business

of walking around the park, our hands free of

holding, free of grasping, simply open to the rain.

I got to thinking about how similarly the two of us do poetry, how helpful we are to each other with critique, how our tastes overlap and enrich each other's work (and that's before considering how alike we are as teachers, despite preferring opposite ends of the elementary age range). I thought about how suprising it is that two people who, without the internet and Poetry Friday would never have met, could end up so connected. I decided to combine our two striking lines and see what would happen. Here's the outcome.

Yep, a very fun challenge! Thanks, Linda, and thank you to my friend Mary Lee.

Here’s how the other Inklings met the exchange challenge:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Mary Lee @A(nother) Year of Reading
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche


Thanks to Buffy Silverman for rounding us up this week!

more April #elfchen

Greetings, all, and power to you as April draws to a close and many of us are beginning to feel a little poetryed out! Let's give ourselves grace--I want to post on this Friday but I know I'll need to limit my commenting if not my reading.  My goal is 11 eleven-word comments; what balance of creation/participation/rest do you need this week?

Here are my 🌎rescue🌍elfchen, intended for kids, for the last couple of weeks.  You can see them all on Instagram, but here they are all gathered for ease of enjoyment, and I hope you do.

brought to you by Wm Shakespeare, King Richard II:

in honor of BuyNothing groups organized on Facebook:

This last one received a lot of support but not much in the way of ideas, because like me, other Instagramming poets are running dry too! But never fear: I left my writing sofa and rode to school on my bike, and as someone I follow says, #natureneverdisappoints.  So here's today's elfchen, fresh off the saddle:

one

lawn unmowed,

untidies the block:

multitude of buttercups! thanks,

neighbor.

Thanks to our lovely host today, Ruth at There is no such thing as a Godforsaken town, who comes to us from Kampala and keeps us mindful of other life experiences--rather like our Progressive Poem is doing this year. Visit Ruth and also Karin Fisher-Golton, who is progressing the journey of two young migrants today. May we all be well and safe, and may we all help someone be weller and safer today.