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96th Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 96th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry.  Please contribute to the 2011 Indie Lit Award Poetry Suggestions, visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April, and check out Holocaust Remembrance Week.

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Week, hosted by The Introverted Reader, we’re going to look at a Holocaust related poem from Holocaust Poetry compiled by Hilda Schiff:

Shipment to Maidanek by Ephraim Fogel (page 57)

Arrived from scattered cities, several lands,
intact from sea land, mountain land, and plain,
Item: six surgeons, sightly mangled hands,
Item: three poets, hopelessly insane,

Item: a Russian mother and her child,
the former with five gold teeth and usable shoes,
the latter with seven dresses, peasant-styled.

Item: another hundred thousand Jews.

Item: a crippled Czech with a handmade crutch.
Item: a Spaniard with a subversive laugh;
seventeen dozen Danes, nine gross of Dutch.

Total:  precisely a million and a half.

They are sorted and marked — the method is up to you.
The books must be balanced, the disposition stated.
Take care that all accounts are neat and true.

Make sure that they are thoroughly cremated.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

Also, please visit and enter the National Poetry Month giveaway.  The giveaway is international.

95th Virtual Poetry Circle & Giveaway

Welcome to the 95th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry.  Please contribute to the 2011 Indie Lit Award Poetry Suggestions and check out the National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

For today’s poem, we’re going to look at Andrew Kozma’s “Agoraphobia” from City of Regret, which I reviewed this week:

Agoraphobia

Look up and a nutshell carves itself into the sky,
wormholes draining light
like a car dripping oil.  Under this coffee-shop roof,

surrounded by glass and the pop
of empty air, concrete is quicksand.
But your hand lies there

like a painted anchor, a string of fishhooks
dulled with wear,
a twin I cannot name, a gag,

a one-way mirror, a mannequin
on a thin lattice of steel, a trellis
for thorns, a cupped nest,

there, on your side of the table, prepared.
A mug steams between us
like a wall merging with air.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

***For the giveaway, I’m offering one of the poetry books I’ve reviewed during National Poetry Month up for grabs.  The winner can choose from the following books (click the links for my reviews):

1. The Poets Laureate Anthology edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt
2. City of Regret by Andrew Kozma
3. Bone Key Elegies by Danielle Sellers
4. City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco
5. White Egrets by Derek Walcott

To enter leave a comment about why you would choose one of those books if you win the giveaway.

Deadline is May 14, 2011, at 11:59 PM EST; This giveaway is international.

94th Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 94th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry.  Please contribute to the 2011 Indie Lit Award Poetry Suggestions and check out the National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

For today’s poem, we’re going to look at Luke Rathborne’s “Calypso”:

CALYPSO

I am slipping
who is slipping
blue rips in the sky
I am sleeping through
an unbelievable dream
where a man rips through
my throat
I re-imagine you in my
faintest dream
you are never disappointed
I see California clearly
like Colorado sees mountains
I cherish silence more than music
Calypso, Mediterranean,
I write you thousands of end-
less letters about the fur-
thering from love
I read the same lines over
and over, completely entranced
You cannot see me, because
I disappear the parts while
you are looking
I am overly looking rea-
ching into you
but I have never gone deep
enough
to puncture in
do not remind me of myself

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

**Check out the giveaway for Luke Rathborne’s poetry and music as part of National Poetry Month.

93rd Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 93rd Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry.  Please contribute to the 2011 Indie Lit Award Poetry Suggestions and check out the National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

For today’s poem, we’re going to look at Arthur Sze:

Spring Snow

A spring snow coincides with plum blossoms.
In a month, you will forget, then remember
when nine ravens perched in the elm sway in wind.

I will remember when I brake to a stop,
and a hubcap rolls through the intersection.
An angry man grinds pepper onto his salad;

it is how you nail a tin amulet ear
into the lintel. If, in deep emotion, we are
possessed by the idea of possession,

we can never lose to recover what is ours.
Sounds of an abacus are amplified and condensed
to resemble sounds of hail on a tin roof,

but mind opens to the smell of lightening.
Bodies were vaporized to shadows by intense heat;
in memory people outline bodies on walls.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

***Also check out today’s National Poetry Month Tour stop at Rhapsody in Books.

92nd Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 92nd Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry.  Please contribute to the 2011 Indie Lit Award Poetry Suggestions and check out the National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

For today’s poem, we’re going to take a look at Greater Love by Wilfred Owen:

Greater Love

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,—
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,—
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

91st Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 91st Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

It’s a new year, and if you haven’t heard there is a new feature on the blog this year . . . my first ever, Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge 2011.  Yup, that means everyone should be signing up because all you need to do is read 1 book of poetry.

Today’s poem is from Haiku Mama by Kari Anne Roy:

That spaghetti squash
does not resemble pasta
or fool two-year-old.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

90th Virtual Poetry Circle


Welcome to the 90th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

It’s a new year, and if you haven’t heard there is a new feature on the blog this year . . . my first ever, poetry reading challenge. Yup, that means everyone should be signing up because all you need to do is read 1 book of poetry.

Today’s poem comes from Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith:

Superdome (page 40)

I did not demand they wade through the overflow from toilets,
chew their own nails bloody in place of a meal.

I didn’t feed their squalling babies chewing gum,
force them to pee out loud in gutters,
or make them lick their own sweat for healing salt.

I pity the women who had to sleep with their legs
slammed shut, and the elders with their rheumy eyes
trained on my crown even after it was ripped away.

Glittering and monstrous, I was defined by a man’s hand,
my tight musculature coiled beneath plaster and glass.
I was never their church, although I disguised myself as shelter
and relentlessly tested their faith.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

89th Virtual Poetry Circle


Welcome to the 89th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

It’s a new year, and if you haven’t heard there is a new feature on the blog this year . . . my first ever, poetry reading challenge. Yup, that means everyone should be signing up because all you need to do is read 1 book of poetry.

Today’s poem by Annie Dillard comes from her Mornings Like This:

Learning to Fear Watercolor (page 59)
++++++Nicholson’s Peerless Water Colors. Instructions. 1991

FEARLESS WATER COLORS . . . The ONLY
Water Colors on FILM LEAFLETS.

Lay them on quickly. Begin.
They flow; they form shades and tints.

FLESH TINT: Be very careful
With this color. The tendency is
To get the wash too strong.

LIGHT GREEN: The tendency is
To get all greens too dark.

SKY BLUE: The tendency is
To color the sky too deeply. It must
Be well diluted and put on with great care.

SEPIA BROWN: Roadway, limbs
Of trees . . . a very serviceable color.
Much patience will be required.

DEEP BLUE: Very strong,
So use only small clippings.

Go at the work boldly. Cultivate
A free wrist movement. WE THANK YOU
For your interest in Peerless Colors
And hope you have enjoyed using them.

Always color your sky first–
Most fascinating, and so simple.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

88th Virtual Poetry Circle


Welcome to the 88th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

It’s a new year, and if you haven’t heard there is a new feature on the blog this year . . . my first ever, poetry reading challenge. Yup, that means everyone should be signing up because all you need to do is read 1 book of poetry.

Today’s poem is from Alicia Suskin Ostriker‘s collection The Crack in Everything:

Somalia (page 32)

Compared to being burned alive
When they torch your village
Death by starvation is a good death
Compared with being shot
Dying slowly of wounds
Or being beaten
By frenzied young men
This is much better

You experience little pain
You become like dry wood
Though your lips parch
It is not so bad
You simply shrink up, except for your eyes
Which grow ever larger, like sponges
Taking in the beautiful liquid sun

And the night stars–

And if you are a baby, like me,
Sighing and growing sleepy
Strapped to this woman who keeps
Humming high in her throat
A thing to drive the devil far away
Death by starvation
Is very good, yes, good
As life can be.

+++++++++October 1992

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

87th Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 87th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

It’s a new year, and if you haven’t heard there is a new feature on the blog this year . . . my first ever, poetry reading challenge. Yup, that means everyone should be signing up because all you need to do is read 1 book of poetry.

Today, we’re going to wrap up National Black History month (I know it ended in February) with Gwendolyn Brooks from her collection, Selected Poems:

Negro Hero (page 19)
+++to suggest Dorie Miller

I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them.
However I have heard that sometimes you have to deal
Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.
Or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish
+++beneath.
(When I think of this, I do not worry about a few
Chipped teeth.)

It is good I gave glory, it is good I put gold on their name.
Or there would have been spikes in the afterward hands.
But let us speak only of my success and the pictures in the
+++Caucasian dailies
As well as the Negro weeklies. For I am a gem.
(They are not concerned that it was hardly The Enemy my
+++fight was against
But them.)

It was a tall time. And of course my blood was
Boiling about in my head and straining and howling and
+++singing me on.
Of course I was rolled on wheels of my boy itch to get at
+++the gun.
Of course all the delicate rehearsal shots of my childhood
+++massed in mirage before me.
Of course I was child
And my first swallow of the liquor of battle bleeding black
+++air dying and demon noise
Made me wild.

It was kinder than that, though, and I showed like a banner
+++my kindness.
I loved. And a man will guard when he loves.
Their white-gowned democracy was my fair lady.
With her knife lying cold, straight, in the softness of her
+++sweet-flowing sleeve.
But for the sake of the dear smiling mouth and the stuttered
+++promise I toyed with my life.
I threw back! — I would not remember
Entirely the knife.

Still–am I good enough to die for them, is my blood bright
+++enough to be spilled,
Was my constant back-question–are they clear
On this? Or do I intrude even now?
Am I clean enough to kill for them, do they wish me to kill
For them or is my place while death licks his lips and strides
+++to them
In the galley still?

(In a southern city a white man said
Indeed, I’d rather be dead;
Indeed, I’d rather be shot in the head
Or ridden to waste on the back of a flood
Than saved by the drop of a black man’s blood.)

Naturally, the important thing is, I helped to save them, them
+++and a part of their democracy.
Even if I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to
+++do that for them.
And I am feeling well and settled in myself because I believe
+++it was a good job,
Despite this possible horror: that they might prefer the
Preservation of their law in all its sick dignity and their
+++knives
To the continuation of their creed
And their lives.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

86th Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 86th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

It’s a new year, and if you haven’t heard there is a new feature on the blog this year . . . my first ever, poetry reading challenge.  Yup, that means everyone should be signing up because all you need to do is read 1 book of poetry.

This week, I wanted to share a poem from Langston Hughes, since February has been Black History Month:

Night Funeral in Harlem

 Night funeral
     In Harlem:

     Where did they get
     Them two fine cars?

Insurance man, he did not pay--
His insurance lapsed the other day--
Yet they got a satin box
for his head to lay.

     Night funeral
     In Harlem:

     Who was it sent
     That wreath of flowers?

Them flowers came
from that poor boy's friends--
They'll want flowers, too,
When they meet their ends.

     Night funeral
     in Harlem:

     Who preached that
     Black boy to his grave?

Old preacher man
Preached that boy away--
Charged Five Dollars
His girl friend had to pay.

     Night funeral
     In Harlem:

When it was all over
And the lid shut on his head
and the organ had done played
and the last prayers been said
and six pallbearers
Carried him out for dead
And off down Lenox Avenue
That long black hearse done sped,
     The street light
     At his corner
     Shined just like a tear--
That boy that they was mournin'
Was so dear, so dear
To them folks that brought the flowers,
To that girl who paid the preacher man--
It was all their tears that made
     That poor boy's
     Funeral grand.

     Night funeral
     In Harlem.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

85th Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 85th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

It’s a new year, and if you haven’t heard there is a new feature on the blog this year . . . my first ever, poetry reading challenge.  Yup, that means everyone should be signing up because all you need to do is read 1 book of poetry.

Here’s a treat from Derek Walcott‘s White Egrets:

1. (page 3)

The chessmen are as rigid on their chessboard
as those life-sized terra-cotta warriors whose vows
to their emperor with bridle, shield and sword
were sworn by a chorus that has lost its voice;
no echo in that astonishing excavation.
Each soldier gave an oath, each gave his word
to die for his emperor, his clan, his nation,
to become a chess piece, breathlessly erect
in shade or crossing sunlight, without hours —
from clay to clay and odourlessly strict.
If vows were visible they might see ours
as changeless chessmen in the changing light
on the lawn outside where bannered breakers toss
and the palms gust with music that is time’s
above the chessmen’s silence. Motion brings loss.
A sable blackbird twitters in the limes.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions.  Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles.  It’s never too late to join the discussion.