˚ ༘ ೀ⋆.˚HaPpy NaTioNaL POeTry MoNtH!˚ ༘ ೀ⋆.˚

Greetings, April; greetings, Poetry Month; greetings, visitors! That all sounds much more upbeat than I feel, frankly. I feel a little like I'M the one who stood up and speechified for 25 gravity-amplifying hours on the floor of the Senate trying not to wet my pants--but then I have been fighting off a few annoying health issues for weeks, and I do live rather close to Implosion Central, and raise your hand if you also are struggling to go with the flow of elder care? In any case, it has been WORK lately to remember, DAILY WORK, that our daily work of witnessing the world through poetry has real power, remains worth doing, is a legitimate response to the terrorism of this "administration."

My friends, I know that you are doing all you can to place your body into the company of the millions of others turning out tomorrow to do the first, most basic response in this moral moment--to upend business as usual, the appearance of normalcy. But here's a lil help just in case.

Click the map to find your protest. 

An overlapping group of us from Poetry Friday and Laura Shovan's Fab Poetry Project (yes, fab; also Feb), met up joyfully at the MLK Library in DC on Wednesday night for a talk with Maggie Smith promoting her new book DEAR WRITER.  She's the one famous for her poem "Good Bones," which she says now feels like it's not quite hers anymore like her other work, but belongs to the public domain.  She read it (and has not memorized it, nor any of her poems--that made me feel better about how I can't seem to memorize my poems). I'm dropping it here, because it does have a remarkable ability to do its job, which is to salvage something from the shithole and make it worth the effort.

Good Bones | Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

So here we are, trying to make this place beautiful, and welcoming and spacious and comforting, with our words. The Inklings are doing so this week with a simple challenge to write a shadorma, thanks to Margaret Simon (whose new book, WERE YOU THERE?, has dropped and which you. do. not. want. to. miss!). The shadorma, according to the shadowy information available on the interwebs, is a 6-line poem of Spanish origin with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5.  There are those who think the shadorma is not a "real" form at all but a thing somebody made up, which is Spanish like chicken tikka masala (invented in Birmingham, England) is Indian.

Whatever its origins, the shadorma is fun to write.  Here's an early try from some years ago:

Shawarma Shadorma

Sleep sizzles

aromatically

on the spit

of night. Carve

juicy slices onto white

sheets of pita bed.

And here's today's effort, an InstadraftTM .

more bones for the reluctant buyer

in a pool

pulled bare of ivy

flowering 

quince blazes 

briefly, camouflaging thorns--

then cools to spiked hedge

Check out what the other Inklings have shadormed below, if life allowed them the opportunity, and thanks to our first PoFri host of the month, Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme, where rainbows are being appropriately and thoroughly celebrated!

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

seven-minute workout for the soul

Greetings, friends, and do you see this? "THE  ONLY 7-MINUTE WORKOUT YOU NEED"? 

 It took the pandemic for me to finally understand that body, mind and soul are one. I was brought up to believe that I was 85% brain and that God was in charge of the spiritual rest. (Many aspects of this hypothesis have been reconsidered if not totally debunked.) Lately I've been doing my best to regain the exercise habits I had in those strange days--walking, biking, stretching, and this 7-minute whirlwind (being creative with #11 because lord have mercy). 

I've learned, however, in THESE strange days, that every day is a workout for the soul. We know that to keep standing up for Liberty and Justice for All As Advertised, we have to be tough and persistent, strident when necessary, but also generous and forgiving, compassionate, but also mighty and clever and steadfast and resilient. And I don't know about you, but my resilience muscle is a little weary. Many times a day, I'm ticking along with my strong joyful resilientheart, and then I catch wind of the next outrageous headline, and I'm knocked back, flattened by the senseless cruelty that 30% of us chose. It's like this, right?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Caitlin Murray (@bigtimeadulting)

So today I'm just going to share seven little things that I've been using as "featherweight barbells for the soul," which work as sturdy handgrips, footholds and boost-ups for when I have to haul my heart off the floor AGAIN and keep swimming, unsunk by poisonous thoughts. If these things just seem like good news to you, that works--enjoy and move on. But do think about the 7 things keeping your soul spunky and righteous, the delights that are keeping you fit for this challenge. Lie there for a minute to catch your breath, but don't lie there too long. I need you.

#1. Casual group singing.  I'm doing some and I'm watching some. Shouting "HEY HO X MUST GO" at protests is wearing a little thin for me, true as it may be. Check out DC Singalong (comes with kazoos, could be more colorful), Gaia Music Collective (my daughter sang in this one), and Pub Choir, now selling tickets for an American tour.

#2. You could give away ALLLL your money to all the good causes, so we're more planful these days and one of my regular recipients is Our Children's Trust, which supports legal challenges by youth on climate policy. This week they had a big win in Utah!

We’ve just received an opinion from the Utah Supreme Court in Natalie v. State of Utah. There are three big takeaways from the opinion:

First, the Court delivered a major win in interpreting the state’s energy policy. The ruling confirms that Utah’s energy laws do not require the state to continue to rubber stamp fossil fuel projects. The government agencies in charge of regulating fossil fuel development have full authority to deny permits and phase out fossil fuel development because of climate change to protect the health of Utah’s citizens.

Second, in the wake of our lawsuit, Utah’s legislature amended Utah’s energy policy statute in 2024 to remove the mandate for the government to promote fossil fuels. This means the case has already led to significant policy reform, with the Court ruling that the amendments mean the State can stop permitting fossil fuel development and start making energy decisions that protect the air and climate youth depend upon.

And third, the decision leaves the door open for the youth to continue their case by reworking it to challenge specific state fossil fuel activities. The Court ruled that the lower court was wrong to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” and that the Natalie plaintiffs can amend their complaint.

 

#3.  Spring keeps on springing, dammit, and everything is not white nor male nor wealthy, nor even green! Here's a quote from Nia Eshu Robinson that I found in the great book EMERGENT STRATEGY by Adrienne Maree Brown.

"If Mama Nature teaches us nothing else, she teaches us that diversity is absolutely necessary for survival. Now, she doesn’t mean some surface diversity, but a system where every single being is doing their part, pulling their weight. A homogenous, ‘gentrified’ eco-system would quickly die. If we are committed to organizing sustainable and liberating social movements, they must be diverse, pulling especially from those who are the most impacted instead of suppressing their voices or using them as props." — Nia Eshu Robinson

 

#4. strawberries; grace & forgiveness

#5. Children. I know some of you think you're not early childhood people; I know some adults think they are not children people at all. But think about how spending all your time with other knowing adults carrying all kinds of weight on their shoulders just amplifies yours. Now think how it might feel to collect and arrange some pretty nature objects with a 5-year-old who knows NONE OF THIS is going on, and then collaborate play your way to describing that arrangement as a "walnut pyramid/pinecone experiment/wonderful mandala masterpiece"! It aches when you take a step back, but while you're leaning in close, the feathers of joy are flapping wildly and you can't see or hear the devastation for a minute--and also you remember why you have to pick yourself up.

#6. Genius+patience.

#7. (you knew it was going to be) Poetry. I'm writing a poem a day for the Stafford Challenge and focusing on short forms of 1-6 lines* this month, and it turns out there is a one-line, 17-syllable form that Allen Ginsberg adapted from haiku. He called it the "American Sentence." As you can see, the one I wrote on March 7 is a lie and also the truth.

Thank you to Rose Capelli at Imagine the Possibilities, who is welcoming spring for us today with some classics for the season, for hosting. Let's go get sweaty.

*American Sentence

Walt Whitman's Couplet

haiku

monotetra

elfchen

cherita

a house for hermit crab + a bonus "if"

Greetings from a rather howling March evening! (Lion first, crab second.) It's the First Friday of the month and thus the Inklings  are busying ourselves again (again so soon) with a challenge from Molly Hogan:

Write a hermit crab poem–a poem that takes the structure of an existing text like a recipe, job application, multiple choice quiz, script, or whatever! Here's an explanation of the form and a wide variety of ideas and examples. Have fun! 

 https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/2022/10/18/its-an-experiment-hybrid-how-tos-with-arden-hunter-hermit-crabs-part-1-of-2/ 

I briefly considered attempting to write a poem using the directions from my colonoscopy prep kit, but you'll be happy to know I found something better. Each of us probably knows a federal employee who received (and may still be receiving) the now infamous DOGE-generated "What did you do last week?" email; where I live in Silver Spring, MD, we know numerous families where BOTH adults are feds and fed up. Me too.

In the spirit of resistance and gumming up the works, perhaps you'd like (federal employee or not) to share in approx. 5 bullets what YOU did last week. If* so, try this handy online generator; I like "Salty Mode".  I put in Teacher as my Occupation and it spat out 5 satisfyingly snide comments.

Thanks to our own Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche for hosting today; don't forget sign up for the April Progressive Poem party and to read the hermit crab poems of the other Inklings below!

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading 

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core, if it's our lucky day

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise

Also sending congratulations to so many of our Poetry Friday family on new anthologies recently or imminently published! One is A UNIVERSE OF RAINBOWS selected by Matt Forrest Esenwine and the other is IF I COULD CHOOSE A BEST DAY, selected by Irene Latham & Charles Waters.  I'll take this opportunity to share a poem that NEARLY made it into this If* anthology, and then didn't. I'm still proud of it, and it will be published elsewhere soon...

And now, finally, your crab, having a bright idea:

Smithsonian Magazine

and the density of history:

Flower Power by Bernie Boston, 1967

sounds in a basement

Greetings, Poetry Friends! No, this post is not about my likely peptic ulcer, which came with a 2-week headache and has now thankfully calmed down, UNLIKE just about everything in my immediate environs here in Maryland, just 7 miles from the White House. 

No, this post might also be titled "Why I Do the Work I Do" and I hope you'll never get tired of me sharing raw poetry by kids in the wild, uncut gems shaken loose by 30 minutes of reading, playing and writing in a WHISPERshout Workshop.

This residency is with 2nd graders and is focused on Valentine's Day-adjacent themes of friendship, inclusion and social-emotional learning, with a hefty dose of figurative language to move us past "I like Allison. She is my best friend. We play together," if possible. (For a few 2nd graders, writing these 3 sentences is what's possible. No shade.)  So we read poems that use straightforward examples of this, like "A Purple Place" from my book SQUEEZE, and we play with describing emotions using this little guide:

Then off they go to write, and some kids need a reminder to pick up their pencil, and some kids need to show me their 60 words about chocolate chip cookies after three minutes ("I'm done!") and some kids don't say boo, and then I get home and find a poem by Zeke titled "sounds in a basement." If you know 2nd grade boys, you'll understand my "oh geez here it comes jump scare horror movie poem"--and then I read this:

sounds in a basement

are clicks and dings for games,

people talking on tv,

people talking in real life,

people doing workouts.

there are lots of sounds 

in a basement. but there 

is one that is the best,

love moving from person

to person.

Go on, shut down all the medical research, fire all the scientists at the NIH.* I know the cure for peptic ulcers, for plenty of other ailments: Take one poem--one raw, uncut gem of a 2nd grade poem--and be healed.

******

Thanks to Laura Purdie Salas and her beautiful new board books for hosting us today! And now that you're feeling, I hope, a bit restored and determined, here are a couple of ways to act on that, because *no, don't!

5Calls app: easily contact your reps with prepared scripts on your choice of issues

iPhone

Android   

INDIVISIBLE'S Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink

and next Friday...

 

full moon rabbit's laundry advice

Greetings, Poetry Patriots--here we are pledging allegiance to the power of poetry to get us through tough times, one way or another. LFG!

Today I'm "sowing two seeds with one throw," which is of course the woke version of killing two birds, with an Instadraft™ for both the Inklings' monthly challenge and today's prompt from Laura Shovan's February Poetry Project, which has as its theme this year SPACE.

Mary Lee asked us Inklings to  Type a color into the search bar of public domain image archive and choose an image to write from. Hoo boy, I had not known what riches I was missing! I explored quite a bit (although frustrated that when I typed in my favorite the best color, turquoise, NOTHING came up) and then cheated, in the sense that I knew that the other prompt I was trying to meet would best be served by the color white. That prompt was

How do astronauts do laundry? Hint- they don't. NASA is working on it but maybe you can think of a way to help NASA, or what sparks your most memorable laundry day?https://www.mentalfloss.com/do-astronauts-do-laundry-in...  

So here you go, a 2-for-1 at the low, low price of my writing hour this morning!

Thanks to all who take the trouble to provide thoughtful, whimsical, wide-open, gently demanding impeti (I'm sure that's the plural of impetus) for writing, and to all who meet our responses with generosity. Can you tell that I'm leaning into community this week, as an antidote to the rank selfishness that's ordering and executing cruelty and uncertainty across the globe? Thanks for letting me lean on you.

Don't forget to see what the other Inklings have come up with, below, and thanks to Carol at Beyond Literacy Link for collecting and protecting our tender heartnotes today.

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading 

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core, who also has a moon poem!

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

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