every month is black history month

Greetings, Poetry Friday friends.  We all make a fuss, don't we, when people act like April is the only month we should pay attention to poetry--but maybe we also fall into that fallacious trap, forgetting that Black history is important every month, women's history is important all year, indigenous and Latin American history is important every day.

You might say, "Well, I'M important every day of the year, but I'm good with celebrating just once, on my birthday."  And yes, practically speaking, there's only so much we can celebrate on any given day.  (I personally gave up long ago even acknowledging Groundhog Day in school--omg, there are a thousand more important things to do than make a fuss over a nonscientific and possibly animal-abusive event, although I do rate the movie as making an important contribution to the culture.)

But, in the same way that we now acknowledge the power of asserting that Black Lives Matter, I don't want to let February pass without saying Black History especially Matters, reparatively Matters, every month, because we have got some catching up to do, people.  So I'm grateful to Poetry.org for reminding me regularly to attend to Black voices, and to Afaa Michael Weaver for this poem of recent history, current events, today's rehearsal of historical pain and glory, the gift of Black history every month.

You may have received this too, but even so let's read it again, out loud.

Midnight Air in Louisville

Afaa Michael Weaver

^{for Breonna Taylor}

Dear Breonna,
How many times, I ask,
           how many times
have I chased the thought
                      of writing to you,
of catching the poem where
                      it cannot leave,
of knocking open the door to a grief
           we all hold, our hearts
full of questions.
           We leave our houses to work,
to look for what we need to live,
                      or what we need
           to make the pain go away,
and your voice rises:
           “Oh hell to the no,
no he didn’t,
           Satan get behind me,
whatever, whatever
           the hell you think you are.”

I imagine that in leaving 
all of us you said:
           “I am done
I am let out into the world,
           breath I took in from it
breath that I give back in love.”

May I see you in flight
filling the space
           beyond clouds and stars
where there is no need
           of sun or moon, where
a grand city lives
           in prophecies beaten
by the wheels of history
where you are not invisible
           to ancestors who saw
these long roads down through time
to this one night in Louisville.

                      Bright Angel,
Luminescence, Woman Who Saved Lives
in Emergency Rooms,
                      Invocation of Heaven’s Law,
Living Song Riding
                                 the Eternal Dawn.

These titles I summon from license
given by Eternal Mysteries to hold you.
Fly now, in the woven air of the saints.

***********************

Enough said, or do I need to speak it again?  I do. 

"Fly now, in the woven air of the saints."

 

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect rounds us up today with some (oh dear) Exquisite Corpse play with the Poetry Sisters.

 

all we can save: truth, courage and solutions

 

Greetings, Poetry Friday audience! It's the 3rd Friday of the month, when you'll find me considering our response to the climate crisis. Now, I am no expert in much that's related to global warming--not the exact science of its causes, not the relative power of various solutions, not the numbers that quantify the damage--but I am an expert in CARING about it (and lots of other things. In general, when I see something, I say something--and my Outbox is full of Strongly Worded Letters to prove it).  And I've learned that it's of basic importance to climate action to CARE about the Earth and its beings.  

I'm pretty sure we are all past that basic level here; poets in general are poets because they've fallen hard for the wonders of nature, the miracles of life.  Much harder is to sustain attention to the truth about what's happening the climate and connect that to courageous actions that solve it. Anyone who can help us with that, we want to know them!

Today I want to introduce us all to a book I bought last summer and didn't get around to cracking open until this week, and girl am I sorry about that!  I thought I knew what was in it--essays--and what they were about--climate stuff--and I bought it mainly to support Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, whose podcast I have loved and written about before.

But friends, this book turns out to be a book of POETRY.  Yes, there are essays, and yes, it's about climate stuff, but when Ayana and her coeditor Katharine K. Wilkinson say ALL WE CAN SAVE: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, they are saying that in order to get to the solutions, we need the kind of truth and courage we get from POETRY.

And so this book--which "illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the US," features poems by names I know (Ellen Bass, Marge Piercy, Joy Harjo, Ada Limon, Patricia Smith, Jane Hirshfield, Damille T. Dungy, Sharon Olds, Alice Walker and Mary Oliver), and names that are new to me (Lynna Odel, Ann Haven McDonnel, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Ailish Hopper, Catherine Pierce, Naima Penniman).

Would anyone like to read it WITH me?  For all kinds of reasons, I know I'll jump in and stay in if others are expecting me to. It's 375 pages and 8 sections, with most essays  7-8 pages long, some shorter, some a few pages longer.  I know there are folks here who read several books per week, but I'm slow enough with everything else to propose reading (and digesting) maybe one section a week, and meeting to discuss once a month.  If you're interested, let me know in the comments or email me--a group of 4 would be a good minimum.

And now, to offer you both truth and courage, here's one poem from the book, also found at Poets.org:

Dead Stars | Ada Limon

 

From The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) by Ada Limón. Copyright © 2018

Thanks to our host for today, Laura  Purdie Salas, who has perhaps wisely decided not to write the whole entire world for kids but to offer us "Small Reads for Brighter Days." Either way, it's always lovely over there!

love at all times, of all kinds

 

Greetings, Poetry Friday venturers! It's getting on for Valentine's Day--an annual celebration which, despite being weighed down with roses & chocolates & sappy Hallmark cards, is among my favorites.  What's not to love about love? Philial, erotic, agape, pragmatic, playful--I find I had some things to learn about the 8 kinds of love identified by the Greeks (yes, I'm directing you to lifehack.org!), and here's one for us all to know:  

PHILAUTIA, self-love...the good kind, the kind where we are compassionate and affectionate to ourselves, which then allows us to truly love others.

On my shelf is a wee British book called 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life: An Anthology of Emotional First Aid (ed. Daisy Goodwin).  Look at that cover and you'll see why I thought of it this morning!  And inside, one of the best poems of philautia I know--maybe you do too.

 

Love After Love | Derek Walcott

 

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Let us go forth, whatever our relationship status, whatever the state of our routines, our ambitions, our creaky, crooked, creative, colorful bodies, and greet ourselves with love. Linda, the lovely one of TeacherDance, hosts our Poetry Friday lovefest today.

 ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

P.S.  If I am slow to comment on your PF posts this weekend, it's because I'm attending the SCBWI Winter Conference online.  Some parts of it are free and open to the public.  See below for a couple of sessions you can attend virtually this evening.

1 pm-2 pm Pacific/4-5 pm Eastern

Orientation for Newcomers with Jolie Stekly

Free and Open to the Public!

https://scbwi.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aVSpCGpjTQiBPZ0cg4z5CQ

2:30 pm-3:15 pm Pacific/5:30 pm-6:15 pm Eastern

Everything Changes, Nothing Ends:

Telling Stories with Brian Selznick

Free and Open to the Public!

https://scbwi.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_b54teYAeRVyFNGE0_204nQ

no, no, nonet

Greetings, Poetry Friday friends, and happy February!  Many in this community are participating with others outside it in Laura Shovan's 10th Annual February Poetry Project.  The theme this year is TIME--which is apropos, in that this week I suddenly found myself with very much less time than I did in January, when the combination of weather and Omicron led to quite a few unexpected free hours.  All the February dailies of regular school and AFPP prompts have led me to a LaMiPoFri situation with the monthly challenge of the Inklings (which I remembered at 10:30pm last night. *sigh*).

This month, Catherine Flynn set us a worthy and welcome challenge:

Write a mathematical poem, such as a fib, pi poem, nonet, etc. Find inspiration here: https://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com/ or here: https://www.acornnaturalists.com/blog/stem-poetry/ or here: http://mathematicalpoetry.blogspot.com/2010/06/4-types-of-mathematical-poems.html  Feel free to interpret this challenge in any way that feels right for you. Have fun!

 

I'm saying yes, yes to the nonet, a (probably deceptively) simple-syllable count form you can read about with Billy Collins here: 9 lines, counting down from 9 syllables in the first line to 1 in the last--or, as amply demonstrated in Nine: A Book of Nonet Poems by our friend Irene Latham, the reverse. That allows for a total of 45 syllables either way....

 

Et voilà my naughty late nonet! One can always find something to say about the weather.

 

 

 

Wishing all our friends safe and cozy snow'n'ice days where that applies, thanking Catherine and the rest of the Inklings (see below) for the camaraderie of the challenge, and appreciating Elisabeth at Unexpected Intersections for hosting us today! 

-Catherine at Reading to the Core

-Linda at A Word Edgewise  -Margaret at Reflections on the Teche

-Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading  -Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone

dive deep

 

Greetings, All.  It's the 3rd Friday of the month, the one where Poetry Friday meets Fridays for Future and we focus on climate issues. Let's take a look at the Climate Clock.

As we contemplate how little time we have left to limit global warming to 1.5*C, let's also consider this enormous news: I drove through McDonald's today (why and whether that's a good use of my climate activist economic pressure is a topic for another time) and realized that my new reusable straw was not in my bag.  It's hard to drink in the car (a birthright of the American consumer) without a straw, so reluctantly I popped open the wrapper on the McD's straw AND DISCOVERED IT WAS PAPER, 100% PAPER!!!  That, my friends, is progress, and SOMEONE (someone you know?) has been badgering McDonald's to make that happen. Cheers to the straw activists!

Here's another cause for celebration: "Deep in the ocean off the coast of Tahiti, scientists made an incredible discovery in November: acres of giant, pristine, rose-shaped corals blossoming from the sea floor in what's known as the ocean's "twilight zone.""

 

The research mission, led by UNESCO, found the reef stretches for nearly two miles and exists at depths down to 70 meters, or 230 feet. This is around the ocean's "twilight zone," where there's just enough light to sustain life, and below which the ocean transitions into a dark abyss."For once, it's a positive story about coral reefs in the news, which is quite rare these days," Julian Barbiere, head of marine policy at UNESCO, told CNN.

Indeed, this news has got me bobbing about and feeling pink and positive somehow, like "WEHAVEN'TDESTROYEDEVERYTHINGYET!"  And, if we didn't know this reef was even there, maybe that means there's so much else we don't know, that we can discover, that might save us.

Now, to connect the straw to the reef, I want to make sure you all know about this book, THE LAST STRAW: KIDS VS. PLASTIC, an NCTE Notable Book for 2021, by Susan Hood.

From Kids Book a Day: "Following an introduction by 9-year-old Milo Cress, founder of Be Straw Free, this poetry collection looks at different aspects of plastic, from its undeniable usefulness in many areas to the damage it is wreaking on the environment (especially the oceans) to different ways kids and teens are figuring out to recycle and find alternatives to plastic.  

The poetry is just the beginning in this book that is jam-packed with information and inspiring stories about kids working to make a difference in the world by recycling or eliminating plastics.  The colorful illustrators add a lot to the poems, and the 13 pages of back matter... make this an excellent resource for older kids."

Here's one poem from that book to enjoy with the younger readers you know, and one from the Poetry Foundation for you.

illustrations by Christiane Engel

 

 A Sea Change | Susan Hood

 

Listen to the seagulls cry,

    watching whales

        who used to thrive

            in seas of cobalt blue.

    Those might mammals ruled the waves--

        a most majestic crew!

 

Listen to the seagulls cry,

    watching whales 

        who breach and dive

            in seas of plastic stew.

    Whales eat their fill of bags and cups

        and other human spew.

 

Listen to the seagulls cry

    watching whales

        who can't survive

            sink slowly out of view.

    O wisest of the mammals, please!

        Sea change is up to you.

Pot of Gold |  Ingrid Wendt

For Elizabeth Bishop, 1911–1979, with gratitude

We talk, you and  I, of  mindfulness, here in the world above

          water, but what’s below is watchfulness,

                     pure and simple: creatures trying not to be eaten,

          creatures relentlessly prowling or simply waiting for meals to

 

cruise on by. Except maybe parrotfish.

          Ever industrious, ever in motion, it’s hard to find one not

                     chomping on Yucatán limestone reefs. What we see as

          dead, bleached coral or crusted limestone shelves, for them

is re-embodied Fish Delight. Which means I find them by

          eavesdropping. Ah, those castanet choruses clicking, clacking,

                     a coven of  promises leading me on until there:

          below my mask and snorkel, a dozen or more upside-down

Princesses sway as one, in their pink and blue checkerboard

          gowns, their long, long dorsal crowns

                     cobalt-striped, and turquoise, and fuchsia—useless—

          no Prince to be found, not even in fish identification books,

just me and my ardor. Bewitched, each day I hang, transfixed,

          above them in a slightly different

                     place in that once-pristine, once-undiscovered Yal-Ku lagoon,

          its cradling mix of salt and fresh water

letting me hold myself, and time, and the rest of the world

          stock still.         [read the rest here; the ending is worth the click]

 ****************

And now, before you go, click on over to  Oceana, a Charity Navigator 4-Star outfit, to learn more about one of the world's biggest plastic polluters (yeah, you guessed it--Amazon) and to take a little action.

Our Poetry Friday host today is Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference, where her puzzling reflections and poem fit nicely with the idea that we all have a part to play in changing the way humans live on our home, the Earth.

it takes practice

Greetings on this heavy-feeling Friday.  I have no spiffy feature today, no OLW or big ol' project to announce, just a really rough and possibly problematic draft that started with a thought I had waiting at the lights on my bike yesterday.  Apparently David Brooks was having the same kind of thoughts, but he clearly never participated in a Friday Night International Folk Dance Club like I did growing up. He offers no solutions.

 

 Here are the necessary audiovisuals:

Our host today is the colorful and prolific Mary Lee of A(nother) Year of Reading, who also kindly schedules our hosting duties every six months and is generally a human of the finest fabric.  I thank her for letting me use her stitching to illustrate this post about falling apart at the seams.

winter poem swap & the lost lagoon challenge

Greetings once again, Poetry Friday people. As promised I'm extending the pleasure of joining the Winter Poem Swap and getting to know Tanita better by sharing it with you today, well into January!  Below this you'll find January's Inklings poem challenge as well.

Tanita knows that my family starts our winter holiday with a celebration of the Shortest Day, the Longest Night, on the Winter Solstice. She also knows that I've often and recently used the acrostic to get a draft off the ground. Her poem is truly tailor-made for me, and incorporates all her gorgeous command of rhyme, rhythm and a slightly formal, archaic diction which fits the observance of the Solstice, a practice that reaches us from deep prehistory (and yet which happens right now too, every year!).

See how it's a little wrinkled?  I keep carrying it from room to room with me.

 Now if I could beg your indulgence:  please read this poem aloud while playing the following sound clip from the equally gorgeous handmade titanium wind chime that accompanied the poem.  You see it above in a photo which shows it hanging  before the sliding doors in my Library Lounge; it is both cozy inside and snowy outside at the same time!

<titanium-wind-chime-winter-rising>

I'm so delighted with every part of this gift--"Now wakes the wind.  It whisks the barren ground/Verdant beneath, as sprightly seedlings sleep"--which is always my greatest hope at this time of year. Sunlight is indeed unconquered, no matter what we may do to Earth; let 2022 be the year when each and all begin truly to conquer our misuse of her riches. Thank you, Tanita!

*************************

 It's the first Friday of the month, so we Inklings are again undertaking a challenge, this time set by me.  Despite my swoon over Tanita's gorgeously "old-fashioned" poetry it's not often I go for that, but every now & then something strikes my fancy, and this poem by Emily Pauline Johnson (who also published under her Mohawk name Tekahionwake and was born 1861 on the Six Nations Reserve, Canada West) captivated me.

 

The Lost Lagoon

It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon, 

And we two dreaming the dusk away, 

Beneath the drift of a twilight grey— 

Beneath the drowse of an ending day 

And the curve of a golden moon.

It is dark on the Lost Lagoon,
And gone are the depths of haunting blue,
The grouping gulls, and the old canoe,
The singing firs, and the dusk and—you,
And gone is the golden moon.

O lure of the Lost Lagoon—
I dream to-night that my paddle blurs
The purple shade where the seaweed stirs—
I hear the call of the singing firs
In the hush of the golden moon.

 

My challenge: "Use the form of this poem to build your own poem FOR CHILDREN about a treasured place that you return to again and again (geographical or metaphorical)." 

 

It seemed simple enough, but the form proved deceptive--and I counted wrong! I noted that the first four lines had 4 stressed beats each and that the last line of the stanza had 3...but in fact both L1 and L5 of each stanza have three beats. 

 

So my poem, like some of the others, departs from the form a bit, and doesn't quite have the same water-paddling rhythm--but there may be other pleasures lurking instead. See what you think.

 

 I bet I'm not the only one whose treasured place is the library, eh? I will say it worked better when I didn't have to keep an eye on the clock!

 

My school district has just announced a delayed opening tomorrow due to predicted snow that they have cancelled school***, so maybe by the time you read this, an 811 stanza will have been written! Here's where to find everyone else's treasured places.

 

-Catherine at Reading to the Core

-Linda at A Word Edgewise  -Margaret at Reflections on the Teche

-Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading  -Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone

 

 Thanks to Carol at Beyond Literacy Link who hosts us this week with a few One Little Words to get 2022 rolling, hopefully in a far more peaceful, prudent way.

 

***I am not one of my district's 10,000 students and staff currently infected with COVID. Woot. However, the closure today, while the district continues to say it's due to the max 2 inches of further snow, is really because they don't have enough staff to open the buildings. Here's a laugh:

 

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-note-of-reassurance-from-your-school-district-regarding-our-updated-omicron-policies?fbclid=IwAR3Bs0fQ9yTtPunCh12jvglUdrCm-njGrFxnvq5DrK7vMkuN-3IKrhZvZw0

 

  

 

 

Mordhorst Grant New Year's Letter 2021-22

 

Greetings!  

You've arrived here by following the Bitly link on our paper letter that Fiona, with great patience and respect for the traditions of British Christmas carding, has snail-mailed you.  Thanks for taking the trouble, and we hope you enjoy/learn something/get fired up by one or more of these posts.  Happy 2022!

 

 Heidi: 

https://myjuicylittleuniverse.blogspot.com/2019/03/poetry-friday-youthclimatestrike.html

 

Duncan: 

https://myjuicylittleuniverse.blogspot.com/2021/09/climate-friday-kids-are-alright.html  

 

Daisy: 

https://myjuicylittleuniverse.blogspot.com/2021/08/doing-math-for-climate-friday.html 

 

Fiona:

"Brown Gold"

https://myjuicylittleuniverse.blogspot.com/2021/12/climate-friday-mastering-methane.html   

 

Sending love from all of us!

xoxoxoxo 

 

 

with bells on

Santorini -photo by Yuri Lev

 

Greetings to all who land here as we ring out the old year and ring in the new.  The Seven+One Poetry Sisters aka Poetry Pals have invited us to feature bells today.  In the spirit of collabellation, here's my blitz:

 

 

if a clod be washed away by the sea

 

coral bells

coral reef

reef or island

reef or atoll

toll the bells

toll the road

road to ruin

road to nowhere

nowhere else

nowhere man

man no island

woman be

be the bell

be the ring

ring me up

ring a rosie

rosy glasses

rosy future

futures stocks

future shock

shocking data

shocking news

Alexander Graham Bell

calling on the Batphone

phone me up

phone it in

in a minute

just a second

second thoughts

second chances

chance encounter

chance of rain

rain of ashes

rain of fire

fire alarm

fire fall

all fall down

all wrung out

out of luck

just in time

time's a-wastin'

time’s a ship

a sinking ship

a sinking feeling

a feel for it

it takes a toll

atoll an island

rings it tolls

for

thee

draft ©HM 2021

Many will notice that I'm leaning heavily on John Donne here, his famous you-can-call-it-a-sonnet-but-really-I-wrote-it-just-the-way-I-wanted "No man is an island." Like John, I had a hard time following the rules of the blitz this time and finally I've just had to give in and ring this bell my own way. Thanks to the sisters, among them Tanita Davis, for the opening the challenge.

In other news, Tanita was my Winter Poem Swap partner, and in the spirit of pacing myself and making that holiday feeling last as long as possible, I'll be posting all about the lovely gifts she sent next time, when also the Inklings will be posting our first challenge of *gulp* 2022. I'm glad to leave 2021 behind, yes, but also not expecting too much better of 2022.  

Apparently that's a way to go, according to this deeply radical and honest blessing that passed to me on Facebook, by Nadia Bolz-Weber:

A blessing for the new year:

As you enter this new year, as you pack away the Christmas decorations and get out your stretchy pants

as you face the onslaught of false promises offered you through new disciplines and elimination diets

as you grasp for control of yourself and your life and this chaotic world

May you remember that there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love.

There is no resolution that, if kept, will make life less uncertain and allow you to control a pandemic and your children and the way other people act.  

So this year,

May you just skip the part where you resolve to be better do better and look better this time.

May you give yourself the gift of really, really low expectations.

May you expect so little of yourself that you can be super proud of the smallest of accomplishments.

May you expect so little of the people in your life that you actually notice and cherish every small lovely thing about them.

May you expect so little of the supply chain and the service industry that you notice more of what you do get and less of what you don't and then just tip really well anyhow.

May you expect to get so little out of 2022 that you can celebrate every single thing it offers you, however small.

Because you deserve joy and not disappointment

So, I wish you a Happy as possible New Year.

As do I, and especially to our host today, Carol at Carol's Corner, who is gamely rounding us up with the antidote, which is always poetry, to the sudden fiery devastation of very nearby territory in Boulder, CO.  May you all feel just a little bit safer by being here.