Lois, I found a shorter one that is very lovely and probably written later in life...seems also like it would have been written in NC, but if you know differently, please, do tell...this is clearly not one of the political poems and has a much softer appearance but still, the depth of feeling.
Under the Harvest Moon
by Carl Sandburg
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
I Fell in Love with Carl Sandburg
Last night, I fell in love with Carl Sandburg. A little late, I know, and he did have the perfect helpmate with his wonderful wife. But still... I couldn't help it. Those eyes, that mind, that mission!
I saw the wonderful documentary, "The Day Carl Sandburg Died" at the Flatrock Cinema in Flatrock NC, just a few miles from Sandburg's mountain home. www.thedaycarlsandburgdied.com is where you can find out more and see events. It is not in wide distribution, but at this time in our country's history, it should be.
As a poet, I felt remiss in never having read his poems. I loved one of his own comments about how modern poetry was being written with the brain but with no blood. Passion and vision, both are in his poetry and no one could ever doubt his great love for 'the people'.
I'll be taking a notepad and heading to his Appalachian home, Connemara Farms, to see if his Spirit still walks the beautiful grounds and will inspire my pen.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
The Poet and Politics
Last night at Poetry Group, Roxanne shared a segment from an article that appeared in the New York Times Magazine on August 14. In it, the author suggests Congress might do well to read a little (or even write a little) poetry. Here are some highlights:
"I'm not suggesting that poetry will guide our legislators to wisdom any more than prayer has. Just that it might make them a little more human."
"The poet Shelley, in a rather highfalutin defense of poetry nearly two centuries ago, wrote, "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own." Shelley concludes that essay by calling poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world," because they bring imagination to the realm of "reasoners and mechanists."
"The relevance of poetry was declared more succinctly in five lines from the love poem "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," by William Carlos Williams:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
A response to the author from David Orr, poetry columnist for the NYT book review, on prescribing poems that if closely read and considered might be of value to our ossified Congress:
"If our respresentatives have spent the last few months huffily asserting, our poets have spent the past century hesitantly questioning -- and the latter approach seems far more useful to the country at the moment."
Several poems David Orr offered can be found at www.nytimes.com/magazine
Here is my own political 'Haiku' series:
Political Haiku (or, a contradiction in terms)
Election Day nears
Handsome candidates spinning
Myopic daydreams
TV timeshares climb
Force campaign funding higher
Backing their 'yes' man
Wake up world and know
In spending our dollars lies
The true power vote
I hope you'll write some political poems of your own...
"I'm not suggesting that poetry will guide our legislators to wisdom any more than prayer has. Just that it might make them a little more human."
"The poet Shelley, in a rather highfalutin defense of poetry nearly two centuries ago, wrote, "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own." Shelley concludes that essay by calling poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world," because they bring imagination to the realm of "reasoners and mechanists."
"The relevance of poetry was declared more succinctly in five lines from the love poem "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," by William Carlos Williams:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
A response to the author from David Orr, poetry columnist for the NYT book review, on prescribing poems that if closely read and considered might be of value to our ossified Congress:
"If our respresentatives have spent the last few months huffily asserting, our poets have spent the past century hesitantly questioning -- and the latter approach seems far more useful to the country at the moment."
Several poems David Orr offered can be found at www.nytimes.com/magazine
Here is my own political 'Haiku' series:
Political Haiku (or, a contradiction in terms)
Election Day nears
Handsome candidates spinning
Myopic daydreams
TV timeshares climb
Force campaign funding higher
Backing their 'yes' man
Wake up world and know
In spending our dollars lies
The true power vote
I hope you'll write some political poems of your own...
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Haiku
It's been a long time since I posted here. One of the things that has happened is I was guest blogger for Karen S. Elliott, a writer, editor, proofreader, who wanted a piece on poetic forms. Here's what I posted on
Exploring Poetry Groups...the poetic form
One of the unexpected benefits of moving from Florida to Greenville, SC, 6 years ago was meeting a published English professor who had formed an ongoing poetry group. After hearing me read my work at a local coffee house, he invited me to join them. Five years later, the group of 10 is going strong and many of us are published on our own and also as a collective with “Fruit of the Banyan Tree”(Orchard Park Press, 2009).
A great feature of being in a dedicated poetry group such as this one is the supportive feedback given to each member. Each month, we study a poet and get to read what we’ve come up with. Engaging in this way spurs the creative juices to flow faster and with more confidence. And you are always exposed to new resources and inspiring ideas.
Despite having been an English literature major at NYU and very familiar with writing in sonnet form, one of the poetry group members introduced me to many other interesting poetic forms. That this group member is an Engineer makes her interest in this type of writing stand to reason both literally and metaphorically. She brings the information to the table and challenges us to produce one of our own.
Many of these forms go back to old European styles. They each require a certain number of lines, some rhyming, some repeating, in a fixed sequence. www.poets.org is a good online resource for poetry forms and ‘how to’ write them.
The first one she suggested is called the Triolet. Seven lines, some repeat, a certain rhyme pattern. My own attempt missed the exact formula but I was very satisfied with the effect nonetheless. I felt the inspiration of the form caused the following poem to be born:
To Hafiz
A waiting hole in the god’s flute
Seeks thick lidded Krishna’s blue kiss.
He’s paused…wooden instrument mute.
She tastes the ripe offering fruit,
Will his music ever begin?
A waiting hole in the god’s flute
Seeks thick lidded Krishna’s blue kiss.
Another form I tried was the Tritina. This one does not ask for rhymes at all but a choice of three words that will end three stanzas of three lines in a certain order and be used in the final, sum it up, sentence. With a true form poem it is typical to announce the form before the title as:
Tritina:
The Birth of Drama
Had detachment attended the show that began
as a fevered fantasy, staged within his head,
the reviews might have shortened the actor’s reach,
the dialogue’s delivery not been heard to reach
levels that rose and swelled while memory began
increasing his spotlight’s focus beyond range of a cool head.
Nothing entered from stage right to stop the bullet to her head
that propelled her life story’s potential to reach
a conclusion far sooner than imagined when it began.
When his plot began to reach for revenge, drama came hurtling out, head first.
Poetry forms like the Elizabethan sonnet and the Japanese haiku are more commonly known. Regarding Haiku there are several variations and the requirement is number of syllables per line, not word count or rhyme. The standard haiku format is three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables per respective line. The meaning should paint an evocative picture. Haiku has no title and usually no punctuation.
Here’s one of mine:
Thundering rainstorms
My garden singing life songs
In the key of green
In my own experience, working with forms is a two way street. A poem that wants to be born will frequently choose its own structure but there are times that the form itself, as with my attempt at Triolet, may call forth specific poetic imagery.
Learning more about poetry and getting feedback are definitely huge benefits of belonging to a poetry group. But I can’t ignore another important aspect for me; getting to know and share with people who have a deep common interest and who expand my own vision as they express in their own voice and unique point of view.
Exploring Poetry Groups...the poetic form
One of the unexpected benefits of moving from Florida to Greenville, SC, 6 years ago was meeting a published English professor who had formed an ongoing poetry group. After hearing me read my work at a local coffee house, he invited me to join them. Five years later, the group of 10 is going strong and many of us are published on our own and also as a collective with “Fruit of the Banyan Tree”(Orchard Park Press, 2009).
A great feature of being in a dedicated poetry group such as this one is the supportive feedback given to each member. Each month, we study a poet and get to read what we’ve come up with. Engaging in this way spurs the creative juices to flow faster and with more confidence. And you are always exposed to new resources and inspiring ideas.
Despite having been an English literature major at NYU and very familiar with writing in sonnet form, one of the poetry group members introduced me to many other interesting poetic forms. That this group member is an Engineer makes her interest in this type of writing stand to reason both literally and metaphorically. She brings the information to the table and challenges us to produce one of our own.
Many of these forms go back to old European styles. They each require a certain number of lines, some rhyming, some repeating, in a fixed sequence. www.poets.org is a good online resource for poetry forms and ‘how to’ write them.
The first one she suggested is called the Triolet. Seven lines, some repeat, a certain rhyme pattern. My own attempt missed the exact formula but I was very satisfied with the effect nonetheless. I felt the inspiration of the form caused the following poem to be born:
To Hafiz
A waiting hole in the god’s flute
Seeks thick lidded Krishna’s blue kiss.
He’s paused…wooden instrument mute.
She tastes the ripe offering fruit,
Will his music ever begin?
A waiting hole in the god’s flute
Seeks thick lidded Krishna’s blue kiss.
Another form I tried was the Tritina. This one does not ask for rhymes at all but a choice of three words that will end three stanzas of three lines in a certain order and be used in the final, sum it up, sentence. With a true form poem it is typical to announce the form before the title as:
Tritina:
The Birth of Drama
Had detachment attended the show that began
as a fevered fantasy, staged within his head,
the reviews might have shortened the actor’s reach,
the dialogue’s delivery not been heard to reach
levels that rose and swelled while memory began
increasing his spotlight’s focus beyond range of a cool head.
Nothing entered from stage right to stop the bullet to her head
that propelled her life story’s potential to reach
a conclusion far sooner than imagined when it began.
When his plot began to reach for revenge, drama came hurtling out, head first.
Poetry forms like the Elizabethan sonnet and the Japanese haiku are more commonly known. Regarding Haiku there are several variations and the requirement is number of syllables per line, not word count or rhyme. The standard haiku format is three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables per respective line. The meaning should paint an evocative picture. Haiku has no title and usually no punctuation.
Here’s one of mine:
Thundering rainstorms
My garden singing life songs
In the key of green
In my own experience, working with forms is a two way street. A poem that wants to be born will frequently choose its own structure but there are times that the form itself, as with my attempt at Triolet, may call forth specific poetic imagery.
Learning more about poetry and getting feedback are definitely huge benefits of belonging to a poetry group. But I can’t ignore another important aspect for me; getting to know and share with people who have a deep common interest and who expand my own vision as they express in their own voice and unique point of view.
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