Thursday, March 28, 2024
we weather it
Friday, March 22, 2024
color like sound - an animal pantoum
Greetings from the land of cherry blossoms! No, I'm not in Japan, but here in the DC area, this time of year is cherry blossom time, and in many neighborhoods nearer than the Jefferson Memorial Boat Basin downtown, swathes of ornamental cherries are doing their thing.
Twenty-five years ago we took our brand new little April Fool, baby Daisy, on her first outing--to the Kenwood neighborhood in Bethesda, MD, where the very grand houses stand on streets lined with some very "ancient" cherry trees. I've checked, and as I remember the weather was pleasantly warm that Easter week, rising to 85* on April 8. (I note also with great surprise that the clocks changed on April 4 that year, and not 3 weeks earlier on March 9 as this year. Who decided that, and when?!) The photo of this event that I carry in my mind is not easily available, but an annual family outing to Kenwood became tradition.
Yesterday evening Fiona and I squeezed in this year's outing, just the two empty-nexters of us, in unsuitably dark clothing, because after a gorgeous, too-early week of warm spring last week, the temps yesterday were in the blustery 40's, although sunny. Yes, the cherry blossoms peaked a full 3 weeks earlier this year than 25 years ago. It seems my children's lifespans coincide with the peak of the Anthropocene, and this is the evidence.
What does any of this have to do with the Poetry Sisters' pantoum challenge for today? [uploads Tanita's graphic]OH LOOK I AM A WEEK AHEAD.
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Friends, if ever there was evidence that I'm now fully into a new era of life, this is it. I am AHEAD of a schedule, instead of coming right up against a deadline in a planfully last-minute kind of way, which is how I have organized my time and many activities for the last approximately 40 years.
Please raise a glass with me, because change is good. You will have to wait for my cardinal pantoum until next week (bad news for you; good news for me bc I don't feel like it was quite ready!), and settle today for these: the Kenwood cherry blossom poem and video from PUMPKIN BUTTERFLY.
Friday, March 15, 2024
reintroducing *WHISPERshout Poetry Magazine*
I really thought it was a vast untapped opportunity for teachers, librarians, homeschoolers and freelancers like me to guide their young poets towards--kids love to see their work "published" in some form, just like we do! But I've been surprised that it has been so hard to get submissions; I thought the word would spread more easily. Still, I've been able to publish at least one issue per month, since there's no shortage of interesting poetry coming out of my own workshops with kids. (Thanks here to Margaret Simon, who has frequently shared poems written by her students.) Maybe I don't know how to use social media well enough to make it work!
In Jan/Feb, I ran two "Weather Words" workshops in which we mixed drama and poetry, acting out BARTHOLOMEW AND THE OOBLECK and writing weather poetry (although of course You Are the Boss of Your Poem and I would never insist that you write only weather poems!). March's first issue of WHISPERshout Poetry Magazine features seven of the poems written during these workshops.
With thanks to our host Tanita (fellow March bday celebrator) and a request to all of you to share the magazine far and wide, below I introduce you to a sample of the next generation of poets and their storm of weather poems. Go read! Comment! Help a young poet submit!
Thursday, February 29, 2024
persona-ble
Angel to God
Oh Lord—
Every day, seven days a week
(no rest for me on the seventh day),
I put on my wings
and leave the house.
It’s like any other job–
there are days you look forward to,
and days you’d rather be elsewhere,
doing something else entirely,
doing nothing.
That’s my aim, my angle–
to earn a sabbath, just one day
of angel’s rest
now and then,
a day when I can
lie barebacked in a hammock made of angel hair (it really is
feather-light), saving no one,
doing nothing.
draft ©HM 2024
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche
Mary Lee @ (A)nother Year of Reading
Friday, February 16, 2024
yet here we are
Friday, February 2, 2024
pssssstt...wanna know a secret?
And oh, wait--it's occuring to me that THIS may be the real story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and possibly the point of God, to read your mind when your fellow humans can't! Is it cynical to suggest that God is the original Elf on the Shelf? (Surely that's only one edge of the double-edged sword of the Lord, even so.)
But I digress. Catherine offered us this challenge which she found in a series of prompts from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center in Modesto, CA.Prompt # 6 (for December 20): Our Lips are Sealed…Or Not
Write a poem about secrets——family, community/societal, governmental, personal, etc. This could be a narrative (how the secret(s) started, where it or they led, the along-the-way and final (if any) consequences. For inspiration or starting blocks for your poem, here’s this poem, “Family Secret” by Nancy Kuhl.
I received this brilliant poem in my inbox through Poem-A-Day, so I was thrilled to go in this direction, and did so writing after another Poem-A-Day offering I was taken with: "The Lord's Corner" by Tyree Daye. Here's mine.
I also got excited about Nancy Kuhl's commentary on her "Family Secret" poem and used it for a blackout poem:
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche
Friday, January 19, 2024
50 ways to cure the climate
So I have two bon mots for you today (and I'm not using that expression in the Francophone way meaning "clever remarks"; I'm using it the way my dad used to, meaning "little treats.") The first is a poem from DEAR HUMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME: POEMS ON CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE UNITED STATES (Paloma Press 2023). I'm still getting to know all the poems and poets included in this anthology, where my poem "Prompt: Write a Climate Crisis Poem" appears. This one I'm sharing is not by me!
Sonnet for the Seasons: New England | Kate Cell
And what if we could stop it, after all,
could stop the change too swift for us to grasp,
listening instead to the maple's sweet dusk
drip in the metal bucket? The whipp-poor-will
may never summer here again. Recall
to us Lock's Pond, ice thick enough to rasp
through to snatch the drowsy trout, the chilled clasp
of hands raw in glazed wool gloves. How small,
how petty our accounting of the world
in all its flames. We have no means to measure
the beauties we have lost, burnt, broken--
our love shies away from our grief, we lie curled
in shame. How should we learn now what we treasure?
Wait. Only wait, for the windflower to open.
So who is this decidedly not petty Kate Cell, the poet? "Kate Cell is the Senior Climate Campaign Manager for the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In her role, she manages the UCS Climate Campaign, leading a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, policy analysts, legislative affairs staff, and outreach and communication experts working to achieve policies that can reduce global warming emissions and increase resilience to climate change impacts. ... She holds a BA in English and psychology from Macalester College and studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop."
I don't know about you, but all my hope is in the people, as Adrienne Rich wrote, "those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." So my second treat for you on this third Friday of the month, Climate Friday here at mjlu, is a link and an excerpt from The Grist 50, annual list of climate and justice leaders to watch, published by Grist Magazine. Just look at who they are and what they're doing!!! We are not alone. Here's just one group of folks working hard on solutions in the Business & Technology arena.
Evette Ellis
Long Beach, CA
Cody Finke
Oakland, CA
Aaron Fitzgerald
Houston, TX
Rob Lawson-Shanks
Chantilly, VA
Sandeep Nijhawan
Boulder, CO
Sanjana Paul
Cambridge, MA
Joanne Rodriguez
Bolingbrook, IL
Uyen Tran
New York, NY
Franziska Trautmann
New Orleans, LA
Seriously, friends, go meet all 50 of these "Fixers." You will get inspired. Is "enspaired" a word, like the opposite of "despaired"? That's what I mean.
I'm pretty sure we will all find enspairation too at the round-up today, served up today in a steaming cup by Robyn Hood Black. See you there!
Friday, January 5, 2024
the elfchen celebrate
It's the first Friday of January and so the Inklings are tackling a challenge set by yours truly. I gave my fellow Inklings, said a person at a craft night who spent her time there ordering gifts on the internet, "the gift of HOMEWORK?!" It was on the order of an Advent calendar, with little doors to open, but instead of chocolates or stickers or Legos or big words (I made that for my kids one year), it had POETRY PROMPTS.
And not just any poetry prompts. Since I am no longer Christian (though I grew up as the PK of a Lutheran minister) but a pagan-flavored UU, at my house we celebrate what you might call a portmanteau winter holiday called Yuletide. There's a special candle tree and, of course, ritual words to say each night as we light one more candle celebrating a gift of the human spirit, starting on the Winter Solstice, December 21 and lasting 12 days until January 1st. Here's a slightly abridged version of the words, which my kids (24 and 21) of course know by heart.Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche
Friday, December 29, 2023
elfchen
Greeting, poetry players! I'm joining with the Poetry Sisters today in their hijinks with the German poetry form which you *could* call an "elevenie," but why would you when you could call it an "elfchen"?
The form (German Elf "eleven" and -chen as a diminutive suffix to indicate diminutive size and endearment) is a short poem with a given pattern.
coffee
steams darkly
in Mom’s cup:
nose intrigued but tongue
revolts
lobe
hangin' out,
a blank slate
just waiting for adornment:
purpose!
match
lies lightly–
feisty little hothead
craving our casual strike–
ignites
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Kelly @ Kelly Ramsdell
Friday, December 15, 2023
COPout28
Busy time here, just as by you, I'm sure--so I just have time to offer a couple of links so you can, if you choose, get a perspective on what went down at the largest climate negotiation ever, COP28.
I trust scientist & communicator Katharine Hayhoe to tell it like it is, with enduring positivity:
https://www.talkingclimate.ca/p/science-vs-greed-at-cop28
I trust Grist to keep its journalistic focus:
I trust Earth Justice, because the Earth needs a good lawyer:
And now, a poem, not by me but admired by me:
Playing with Bees |RK Fauth
So the world turned
its one good eye
to watch the bees
take most of metaphor
with them.
Swarms—
in all their airborne
pointillism—
shifted on the breeze
for the last time. Of course,
the absence of bees
left behind significant holes
in ecology. Less
obvious
were the indelible holes
in poems, which would come
later:
Our vast psychic habitat
shrunk. Nothing was
like nectar
for the gods
Nobody was warned by
a deep black dahlia, and nobody
grew like a weed.
Nobody felt spry as
a daisy, or blue
and princely
as a hyacinth; was lucid as
a moon flower. Nobody came home
and yelled honey! up the stairs,
And nothing in particular
by any other name would smell as sweet as—
Consider:
the verbal dearth
that is always a main ripple of extinction.
The lexicon of wilds goes on nixing its descriptions.
Slimming its index of references
for what is
super as a rhubarb, and juicy
as a peach,
or sunken as a
comb and ancient as an alder tree, or
conifer, or beech, what is royal
as jelly, dark as a wintering
hive, toxic as the jessamine vine
who weeps the way a willow does,
silently as wax
burned in the land of milk and
all the strong words in poems,
they were once
smeared on the mandible of a bee.
Keep bees on your mind even in this dead of winter, and thanks to Janice for hosting
us today at Salt City Verse!