Poetry Project

Today, I found a link to this Poetry Project on Geeky Daddy's blog.  Needless to say, I saw the words poetry and project together, and got very excited.  It's a year-long project, designed to encourage reading and discussion about poetry.  From what I gather, you post once a month.  They have a guideline topic for each month, but it's not required that your post be about that, and there are no specific days that you have to post.  Sounds like my kind of challenge.  Here is the Intro Questionnaire for this month:


Why do you want to join for the Poetry Project?

I love poetry.  I'm happier when I read/hear it regularly, but find I often don't make time for it.  I figure this project will help me keep that part of my brain active, as well as expose me to some new poets and new thoughts on poetry.

Do you have a favourite poet?

This is a hard one.  Right off the top of my head I would say E.E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Robert Frost.

Hopefully this will go longer than a year. Do you have any suggestions for themes?

Perhaps poems from different countries, in translation?  Or a glimpse into a poet's life, followed by a few examples of his/her work

What are your experiences with poetry in the past? Have they been positive or negative?

I have had mainly positive experiences.  Most of the time, they've been better when I've been able to discuss them with others.

Tell us about a poem or poet that has had a profound effect on you. If you can't think of a poem, how about a song? Or a line from a story?

Another hard one for me. The first one I thought of was Robert Frost's "Mending Wall."  I reread it a year ago, and realized that there is a reason we study it in school

What frustrates you about poetry or the way we talk about poetry?

I think that the language used to discuss poetry needs to be more accessible.  I don't want it dumbed-down, but if the idea is to encourage the reading of poetry by people all over, you should be able to discuss a poem without the need of an English degree.

Tell us something about yourself that has nothing to do with poetry!

I'm expecting my third child in October, so that will be three kids under the age of five (I'm excited, but a little scared).  I love to make things and bake, especially pie!

Vera Pavlova

I love poetry, but seem to have trouble finding contemporary, living poets to read.  I suppose I have trouble finding current music, books, films, those things in general.  It's not that I think the present has nothing to offer us, that only classics offer substance and entertainment.  I think I'm just generally too unplugged.  When I was commuting to D.C. and listening to NPR to and from work, I had a little more exposure.  It takes more of an earnest effort effort now to seek things out.

I came across Vera Pavlova fairly recently.  She was born in Moscow, studied the history of music, and wrote her first poem when she was twenty years old, while she was still in the maternity ward after the birth of her daughter.  I know very little about her history, mostly what I read here.  I first became interested in her not through reading her poems, but some of her quotes about poetry.  Here are just a few from Heaven is Not Verbose: A Notebook published in Poetry Magazine.  You can find them all at the Poetry Foundation's website.


There are moments when I feel the universe expand.


Poetry should be written the way adultery is committed: on the run, on the sly, during time not accounted for. And then you come home; as if nothing ever happened.


Time is like a diatonic scale: it consists of major and minor seconds.


Went to bed with an unfinished poem in my mouth and could not kiss.


"The ovaries of a newborn girl contain up to 400,00 egg cells."  All my poems are already in me.


Madness is inspiration idling in neutral


The longer the poem, the weaker the impression that is has been dictated from above: Heaven is not verbose.  Besides, the more you talk, the more you lie.

Poetry, and Pastry

One of the things I've loved about this challenge thus far is reading so many original poems.  I love poetry (hence the name of my blog).  I used to write quite a bit, and when I started this blog I had every intention to start writing again.  I've written a few lines now and then, some sections that could be developed, but I don't think I have one complete poem.  Like all writing, poetry takes discipline.  At least enough to sit down and finish something.

 My husband and I once wrote a poem together, back when we were much younger.  I had just read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and we played around with the idea of adding a refrain to the poem.  Ed came up with that part, and it's all I really remember:

Through my window gently gleams
the salty sheen of your moonbeams

Anyway, it was my intent to post a poem about pie.  I didn't get around to writing it.  My husband came through for me though, and came up with this short poem fairly quickly.  He has a knack for words, although he doesn't care for them much (unless he's trying to make someone laugh).

Custard, cream,

or fruit-filled.

Lattice-top

Hot or chilled;

Whichever pie you undertake,

Whistle merry as you make,

A slumb’ring circle sweetly bakes,

‘Till golden-kissed, it awakes.

One thing’s for certain:

I need crust.

 --Edward Hull

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay is another of my favorite poets.  I was introduced to her only seven years ago, when my husband briefly studied her in college.  I was so impressed with the small selection that I read that I went out and purchased her biography, Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford.  I have had some trouble getting through biographies in the past, and I've found that those written about poets hold my attention best.

Millay has written sonnets, ballads, plays, propaganda, and much more.  Her first great success was Renascence, a poem about the omnipresence of God.  Each time I read this, I just feel bigger, more expansive than my physical self.  She finished this poem in 1912; she was 20 years old.

Still, she is perhaps better known for some of her other work.  Many people have heard this short quatrain before; The First Fig:

My candle burns at both ends;

   It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

   It gives a lovely light!

She felt the impermanence of life, and took a glib attitude towards love.  Here is her poem, Thursday:

And if I loved you Wednesday, 

   Well, what is that to you?

I do not love you Thursday --

   So much is true.

And why you come complaining

   Is more than I can see,

I loved you Wednesday, --yes--but what

   Is that to me?

Still, she was a woman of great feeling and passion.  Her poems in her later life were not all so flippant.  The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, dedicated to her mother, is sentimental in the best of ways.  She was a progressive, she fought for women's rights and justice for those who she felt wrongly persecuted.  She was a fascinating woman living in a fascinating time.

If you would like to learn more about Edna St. Vincent Millay, you can find information here and more of her poems here.

Jelly Beans

I figure some of you probably still have some hanging around after Easter.  Growing up, I was never fond of them.  They  tasted like someone had captured all of the excitement of pastels, and then put it in a chewy/crunchy candy.  Who was making them before Jelly Belly came around?  Probably the same people who made candy corn.  I just remembered that I tried to avoid all of them, but especially the black ones.  You didn't want to go near the black ones. While I'm still not a huge fan, there are some Jelly Belly flavors that I like, perhaps even go out of my way to get.

Here is a wonderful sentence from a short story by Harlan Ellison, called "Repent Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman.  It gives me a new appreciation for the confection.

Jelly beans!  Million and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of the Timkin workers, tinkling on the slidewalk and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and filling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness.  Jelly beans!

e.e. cummings

Today I want to write about e.e. cummings.  I've found that I've spent most of the time I put aside for writing just rereading his poetry.  Writing about poetry (or a poet) is hard, especially when it's poetry that really moves you.  Poems can be dissected, analyzed, probed for content and meaning.  That's difficult, but straightforward work.  To discuss what poetry means to you, what is does to you, that's something entirely different.

It seems that those who know of E.E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings either love him, hate him, or just don't get it.  Many people are bothered by his creative use, or lack thereof, of syntax and punctuation. I'll be honest, some of his concrete poetry is just too much for me.  All my effort goes into figuring out what words he is spelling, with no energy left over to think about why or what he means.  Those poems are fewer than at first seem.  Most of his verse speaks of innocence and optimism.   He embraced nature and love and sex and beauty and all aspects of life, even death.  He seems to have loved the world and humanity, even when he is pointing out its darker, petty sides. 

It is impossible for me to share my favorite poems of his.  There are just too many.  Many of his poems are known by their first line, so here is just a small sampling.  I've linked to various sites where you can read them.

who are you, little i

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

O sweet spontaneous

there are so many tictoc

dying is fine)but Death

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

i like my body when it is with your

and my list wouldn't be complete without

since feeling is first

  

If you would only check out one, please read the last one.  

"and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom"

April

I cannot decide if April is cruel or kind.

T.S. Eliot wrote that: 

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain. 

Maybe I understand this.  Perhaps April puts me “In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts / Bring sad thoughts to the mind.*” Color insinuates itself into the world once again and the air is sweet smelling and warm on our skin.  Yet while I enjoy all of the sensory pleasures of April, I also feel an oppressive sadness.  It’s during this time of year when I can most vividly remember what it is like to be a child.  Remember the wonder of things growing, the simple joy of dirt and dying eggs and short sleeves.  I can remember it, but I can’t exactly feel it.  Not like I did then.  I watch my own children now, living their joy fully, doing everything a child is supposed to do.  It makes me smile, but I’m also reminded that someday, this will all be a memory for them as well.

So maybe April is cruel.  But, it does bring tulips as well, and how could a tulip ever be construed as cruel?

*from "Lines Written in Early Spring" by William Wordsworth

Thinking about the Future

This poem came to mind today.  I'm unsure why.  It will be years before this is relevant in our lives.  We were painting the boys' room, and I was thinking of future reflecting on the past.  I hope the author does not mind me sharing.

To My Son's Girlfriend

by Michael Miburn

I'm tempted to ask
what you see in him.
Although you probably 
see the good that I see
I wonder if you realize
how much he is my handiwork,
or which of the qualities 
you daydream about in class
are the ones that I take pride in,
his cordiality, for example,
or love of silliness.

It's uncomfortable for me
to think of anyone else
loving him the way I do,
possessing him in a way
that only his mother and I 
have ever possessed him,
and I can't deny being jealous,
not so much reluctant
to share or relinquish him
as resolved to remind you
that he's been around
longer than your love,
under construction if you will,
and that each cute trait
or whatever occurs to you
when you hear his name
I feel proprietary about,
like a woodworker
who makes a table
intending to sell it
but prays that no buyer
will recognize its worth. 

In Preparation for Snow

Isn't it wonderful when literature insinuates itself in your everyday life.  A conversation I had on a walk in the woods with a friend brought this to mind.

We take daylight for granted.  But moonlight is another matter.  It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again.  Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight.  Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not.  Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament.  We need daylight and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need.  When it comes, it serves no necessity.  It transforms.  It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves for a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile.  Its long beams fading as the recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night.  In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse’s mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows.  The growth is so thick and matted that even the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it.  We do not take moonlight for granted.  It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning.  It does not reveal but changes what it covers.  And its low intensity – so much lower than that of daylight- makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again.

--Richard Adams, Watership Down

A pot poured out

A pot poured out

Fulfills its spout

            by Samuel Menashe

This poem comes to mind often.  Why does it give me the comfort it does? 

Happy Holidays

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.  We had a very happy Christmas.  Santa brought gifts for the boys, we spent time with friends and family, both near and far (thank you Skype!), and my sister and I spent a fabulous time in the kitchen cooking our Christmas Day feast.

I wanted to share this earlier in the season, but never got around to it.  It's an excerpt from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  I hope you were able to slow down and enjoy not just Christmas Eve and Day, but all the small, everyday things that the "hopeful promise of the day" makes special.

For the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball -- better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest -- laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The Grocers'. oh the Grocers'. nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses. It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.

But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the baker' shops. The sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was. God love it, so it was.

A hard day

Today was a hard day, and I know I made more than a few self destructive decisions today.  However, I do not consider this cocktail in my hand, sort of a grown-up chocolate milk, one of those decisions.  In fact, I think that between making myself a fattening, delicious, alcoholic drink, or smashing something with a hammer, the drink is a positive choice.

There was a stumble down the stairs today (me), several potty accidents (Max and the dogs), the throwing of food (Sam), and lots of screaming and crying (all of us).  After dinner tonight I had to get out of the house, and since I am trying to avoid spending money, I went to my local library.  That’s apparently how I blow off some steam.  It was a welcome respite.  I picked up a book by Willa Cather and one by Joshua Ferris.  On the way home I listened to NPR, and heard Huck Gutman’s commentary on poets as lifelong teachers.  Please check it out here.  Listening to that two minute segment on the radio has given me more of a buzz than this drink will, with much fewer calories. 

Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother’s Day.  It was my sister-in-law’s first Mother’s Day with her two-day-old son.  That first Mother’s Day; it’s more of a coronation than an annual holiday.  Congratulations, Spif.

I wanted to surprise my mother by sneaking over to her house, and laying out some scones for her to have with her morning tea.  I woke up early that morning and made Molly Wizenberg’s Scottish Scone’s with Lemon and Ginger, recipe found here.  They are simple to make, and incredibly delicious; after eating them you will never have the desire to purchase scones from any franchise coffee shop ever again. 

I was in the process of putting the scones out and getting two tea cups for my mother and father when I heard my mother coming down the stairs.  This was most unusual, since I think “morning person” would be one of the last ways anyone would describe her.  So my breakfast surprise was not exactly as I intended, but this way I got to spend a little of the morning with her.  We looked at the pictures I brought, and got a little teary over the poem I printed for her; Day Bath by Debra Spencer.

I spent a quiet Mother’s Day with my boys.  We are going to plant strawberries today in the planter they gave me.  All day yesterday I thought of the following quote from E.M. Forster from Where Angels Fear to Tread:

"For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and--by some sad, strange irony--it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy."

I don’t know if it is possible to answer our parents’ love with equal love.  I know that I selfishly hope it is.  

Faces called flowers

This morning I took a poetry break, which is something I think I need to do every morning.  My a.m. routine is one full of bustle.  After taking care of my sons' needs I am already a little ragged by 9:30.  Both of them are morning kids, and want to play and talk from the moment they wake up at 7:00.  This morning, as I drank my coffee, I read a selection of e.e. cummings' poems on Spring.  I was immediately calmer, and have been coming back to them in the hours since, trying to center myself.

This poem below especially grabbed me.  I have read it many times before and loved it for his voice and his imagery.  I have been thinking a lot about how to live a simpler life, more full of meaning for me and my family, and right now, this poems seems to sum it up.


by e.e. cummings

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)