• In total there are 3 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 3 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 736 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 2:38 am

National Poetry Month: April 2019

A platform to express and share your enthusiasm and passion for poetry. What are your treasured poems and poets? Don't hesitate to showcase the poems you've penned yourself!
Forum rules
Do not promote books in this forum. Instead, promote your books in either Authors: Tell us about your FICTION book! or Authors: Tell us about your NON-FICTION book!.

All other Community Rules apply in this and all other forums.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

I have been participating in a poetry workshop online. The instructions the first day told participants to download a packet of poems that would not have the poets names with the poems. A very refreshing idea! No cues to tell us if the poem was "good" or not. Here is one of the poems from that packet and in order to give credit, I looked up the name of the poet (we are done with that part of the packet). Her name is Nicole Sealey.

Unfurnished /

Something was said and she felt /
a certain way about said something. /
—————————————–Certain only /
because there was no mistaking the feeling /
she felt—the sound empty makes inside /
———–a vacant house.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

I missed a day and yesterday was a day to miss. Here we go, a new favorite of mine. I really like the opening lines.

Instructions on Not Giving Up
Ada Limón, 1976

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

For anyone not familiar, myself included, Tanka is:
a Japanese poem consisting of five lines, the first and third of which have five syllables and the other seven, making 31 syllables in all and giving a complete picture of an event or mood.

I like the first one best. How about you?

Tanka
Sadakichi Hartmann
I.

Winter? Spring? Who knows?
White buds from the plumtrees wing
And mingle with the snows.
No blue skies these flowers bring,
Yet their fragrance augurs Spring.

II.

Oh, were the white waves,
Far on the glimmering sea
That the moonshine laves,
Dream flowers drifting to me,—
I would cull them, love, for thee.

III.

Moon, somnolent, white,
Mirrored in a waveless sea,
What fickle mood of night
Urged thee from heaven to flee
And live in the dawnlit sea?

IV.

Like mist on the leas,
Fall gently, oh rain of Spring
On the orange trees
That to Ume’s casement cling—
Perchance, she’ll hear the love-bird sing.

V.

Though love has grown cold
The woods are bright with flowers,
Why not as of old
Go to the wildwood bowers
And dream of--bygone hours!

VI.

Tell, what name beseems
These vain and wandering days!
Like the bark of dreams
That from souls at daybreak strays
They are lost on trackless ways.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

A belated Earth Day Poem

Planet
Catherine Pierce

This morning this planet is covered by winds and blue.
This morning this planet glows with dustless perfect light,
enough that I can see one million sharp leaves
from where I stand. I walk on this planet, its hard-packed

dirt and prickling grass, and I don’t fall off. I come down
soft if I choose, hard if I choose. I never float away.
Sometimes I want to be weightless on this planet, and so

I wade into a brown river or dive through a wave
and for a while feel nothing under my feet. Sometimes
I want to hear what it was like before the air, and so I duck
under the water and listen to the muted hums. I’m ashamed

to say that most days I forget this planet. That most days
I think about dentist appointments and plagiarists
and the various ways I can try to protect my body from itself.

Last weekend I saw Jupiter through a giant telescope,
its storm stripes, four of its sixty-seven moons, and was filled
with fierce longing, bitter that instead of Ganymede or Europa,
I had only one moon floating in my sky, the moon

called Moon, its face familiar and stale. But this morning
I stepped outside and the wind nearly knocked me down.
This morning I stepped outside and the blue nearly

crushed me. This morning this planet is so loud with itself—
its winds, its insects, its grackles and mourning doves—
that I can hardly hear my own lamentations. This planet.
All its grooved bark, all its sand of quartz and bones

and volcanic glass, all its creeping thistle lacing the yards
with spiny purple. I’m trying to come down soft today.
I’m trying to see this place even as I’m walking through it.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

Saffron wrote:For anyone not familiar, myself included, Tanka is:
a Japanese poem consisting of five lines, the first and third of which have five syllables and the other seven, making 31 syllables in all and giving a complete picture of an event or mood.

I like the first one best. How about you?
I like 'em all about equally. A little more satisfying for me than haiku. I wonder if the rhyme is in the Japanese original. I'm still apt to like a rhyming poem more than free-verse. I like the artifice of it.
Last edited by DWill on Tue Apr 23, 2019 10:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

DWill: I always wonder about what happens to the rhythms, alliteration and other intentionally created sound patterns in translated poems.

Almost to the end of April. Just a few more poems to post for National Poetry Month. I am posting this poem because I like the idea expressed. I definitely have days when I'd rather stay dreaming in bed. However, I am lost by the last line. I need help. Please, if you can shed a little light, share your insight or thoughts.

Another Day
Craig Morgan Teicher

It should be difficult,
always difficult, rising
from bed each morning,
against gravity, against

dreams, which weigh
like the forgotten names
of remembered faces.
But some days it’s

easy, nothing, to rise,
to feed, to work, to
commit the small graces
that add up to love,

to family, to memory,
finally to life, or
what one would choose
to remember of it, not

those other leaden
mornings when sleep
is so far preferable
to pulling over one’s

head the wet shirt
of one’s identity again,
the self one had been
honing or fleeing

all these years,
one’s fine, blessed
self, one’s only,
which another day fills.



Me again: what an image -

to pulling over one’s

head the wet shirt
of one’s identity again,


-can't you just feel that wet shirt?!
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

I am not sure if the formatting will be correct when this post goes live. Stay with me and I will try to fix it if it is not. I like this little poem. It has a bit of Dr. Seus and Abbott & Costello (Who's on first).

Analysis of Baseball
BY MAY SWENSON

It’s about ______ Ball fits
the ball,________mitt, but
the bat,________ not all
and the mitt._____the time.
Ball hits_________Sometimes
bat, or it________ball gets hit
hits mitt.________(pow) when bat
Bat doesn’t_______meets it,
hit ball,__________and sails
bat meets it.______to a place
Ball bounces______where mitt
off bat, flies_______has to quit
air, or thuds_______in disgrace.
ground (dud)______That’s about
or it______________the bases
fits mitt.___________loaded,
_________________about 40,000
Bat waits__________fans exploded.
for ball
to mate.___________It’s about
Ball hates__________the ball,
to take bat’s________the bat,
bait. Ball___________the mitt,
flirts, bat’s__________the bases
late, don’t__________and the fans.
keep the date._______It’s done
Ball goes in__________on a diamond,
(thwack) to mitt,____and for fun.
and goes out_______It’s about
(thwack) back______home, and it’s
to mitt.______________about run.

Ok, best I can do for now. The underline is not the way this poem is supposed to appear. It is two columns of words. How to read? Up to you: down the columns or across and or both :)

May Swenson, “Analysis of Baseball” from New and Selected Things Taking Place (Boston: Atlantic/Little Brown, 1978). Copyright © 1978 by May Swenson. Reprinted with the permission of The Literary Estate of May Swenson.
Source: New and Selected Things Taking Place (Little Brown and Company, 1978)
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

April 27th, only 3 more days after today to post for National Poetry Month. I will post one of my favorites, The Pasture by Robert Frost. It is an easy poem to overlook or underestimate, so forthright and small. The poem opens Forst's collection North of Boston, 1915. It is an invitation to the reader to come along on a little poetry walk. In just a few lines Fost notices me, the reader and extends a hand in companionship - which is amusing to me in that he has the reputation of being a bit of a grumpy guy. I will take that hand any day.

The Pasture
Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

I know nothing of this poem or poet, just saw it posted on Poets.org and like it. I like the last line :)

An Adieu
Florence Earle Coates, 1850 - 1927

Sorrow, quit me for a while!
Wintry days are over;
Hope again, with April smile,
Violets sows and clover.

Pleasure follows in her path,
Love itself flies after,
And the brook a music hath
Sweet as childhood’s laughter.

Not a bird upon the bough
Can repress its rapture,
Not a bud that blossoms now
But doth beauty capture.

Sorrow, thou art Winter’s mate,
Spring cannot regret thee;
Yet, ah, yet—my friend of late—
I shall not forget thee!
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: National Poetry Month: April 2019

Unread post

Thanks to NPR for putting together an interesting and diverse list of poets as a last hurrah to National Poetry Month, check it out!

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch ... xG4TJaOq-s
Post Reply

Return to “A Passion for Poetry”