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205th Virtual Poetry Circle

June 8, 2013 by

Welcome to the 205th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Check out the stops on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Sally Keith from The Fact of the Matter (my review):

Providence (page 3)

The restaurant owner opened the doors
to let in the smell from the sea
which stuck on the breeze.  On the table,
a white linen, a low candle, a tiger lily bouquet.
The specials chalked in cursive we read
from a slate, while the waiter, starched shirt
and folded apron, explained them and we ordered,
at first, a carafe of a thinner than usual pale colored wine.
My mother sat across from me.
She did not lean into her elbow on the table, did not
slide her weight up her arm to make a leading shoulder.
The light in her eyes was first a pool, then a line.
Outside the skiffs in exit sailed toward us.
On the corner a crushed Diet Coke can.
What she then told me, I remember.
Salt was exploding all over the sea.

What do you think?

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204th Virtual Poetry Circle

June 1, 2013 by

Welcome to the 204th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Check out the stops on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Eric Pankey:

Restless Ghost

The wasp's paper nest hung all winter.
Sun, angled in low and oblique,
Backlit—with cold fever—the dull lantern.

Emptied, the dangled nest drew him:
Gray. Translucent. At times an heirloom
Of glare, paper white as burning ash.

Neither destination nor charm, the nest
Possessed a gravity, lured him, nonetheless,
And he returned to behold the useless globe

Eclipse, wane and wax. He returned,
A restless ghost in a house the wind owns,
And the wind went right through him.

What do you think?

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203rd Virtual Poetry Circle

May 25, 2013 by

Welcome to the 203rd 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Check out the stops on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Lynn Levin’s Miss Plastique (my review):

The Notebook (page 33)
            An adaptation of Gaspara Stampa's Sonnet CXXXII

I ask for Love's attention through my tears--
Love who can scarcely turn his head my way
though I ask a thousand times a day.
The reason? Those other lips about his ears.
His silence rips my heart, it tears
my dress, the pages of my books. Pray
how can this be? I gave my heart and soul away
to him.  There's nothing left in me.  He cares
little for my grief.  I feel my blood run
like an icy stream of envy, dread.
He was my life's great joy and reason.
Now I die in love.  I live in pain.  In bed
I have a notebook and a quill.  Let him shun
me.  On these sheets he's mine, though I am dead.

What do you think?

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202nd Virtual Poetry Circle

May 18, 2013 by

Welcome to the 202nd 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Check out the stops on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Jeannine Hall Gailey’s Unexplained Fevers: (my review) (This one is for Ti over at Book Chatter)

Sleeping Beauty's Insomniac Twin
             an homage to Haruki Murakami's After Dark

I thought you might recognize me
without the dress and haircut.
Black eyeglasses and a thick book
are enough to dissuade most of the nightcrawlers,
the men looking for a good time and easy lay.
If you come with me, you'll cower at the mafia men
at midnight, pimps and broken prostitutes wrapped in sheets.
We'll narrowly miss being hit by a car.
The late night coffee shops croon their old, seedy jazz tunes.
Come with me, through the open mouth of the city,
where we will rescue the other half of our souls.
If you fall asleep, you'll miss what's right in front of you.

What do you think?

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201st Virtual Poetry Circle

May 11, 2013 by

Welcome to the 201st 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Check out the stops on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Seth Abramson’s Thievery:

Things Unso (page 18)

If the wind takes the house
it will be someone else's
soon enough, and they too
will find it cold.  What breaks
breaks open.  After a house
one finds oneself in a wood,
and after too long in a wood
one finds oneself sullen
in heaven.  Someone else lies
in my bed now so I can't sleep
any better than they do.
To be lost is to be connected
interminably.
When they turn in my bed
the whole house turns, and I 
turn, and the wind is emptied
through my own and theirs
and through a common door
to some place I do not know.
If things fall far enough apart,
they are all equally gone.

What do you think?

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200th Virtual Poetry Circle

May 4, 2013 by

Welcome to the 200th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please sign up to be a stop on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Mary McCray’s Why Photographers Commit Suicide:

Starbaby

When I was a baby, my mother called me her Martian child.
Now at sixteen, she calls me her starbaby, in the evening hours
when she thinks I'm too tired to hear and the nurses,
breaking for a smoke, snicker in the garage.
But I don't believe in highway abductions
or starship inseminations.  So what can they tell me
about who my father is, from where my alienation comes.
I have such a desire to overcome this life.
But I'm not good at it.  Immune to nothing,
my body has taken the path of least resistance
and my lungs argue breathing.

My mother calls me her starbaby
as if trying to remind me of my kind
of half-breed quality.  But I don't believe
in sudden memory recovery, like some circuit
fully convalesced:

             My father in curious landscapes, fire-blizzard outside
             hands on the strings of low-gravity swing,
             scratching his sandy face, long fingers, an ovalesque
             mouth blowing smoke, blue ceiling, six
             shadows at the door, he's trying to tell me
             something, maybe wisdom, maybe recognition --
             tugging on a smooth sleeve

What can she tell me about who my father is,
about what maneuvers he has made on my behalf:
what little alms of life, like pieces of himself
he may have left behind? Maybe his good intentions
were lost, peeled-off in space, over the barricades
he would have had to cross to reach me.

I can imagine his eyes appearing and disappearing
beyond the shadows of my bed, the missing years --
all back over my shoulder, these bones of his
holding up my body.

How did we come to be me?

In dusk -- when I am alone, lost reclining
in the solemn relief of a back-porch rocker,
I'll clear my throat and the night sounds will quiet
as if listening to what I'm about to say.

Beyond the trellis, some unidentifiable presence
will speak out to my future, my possibilities.
But in the end, I'm never up to the journey,
and the nurses resume their gossiping
and I wonder who was there, caught up in the door
as I was breaking down.

When I stop breathing,
who will be there with the key?

What do you think?

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199th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 27, 2013 by

Click on the above image for today’s National Poetry Month blog post!

Welcome to the 199th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please sign up to be a stop on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Sandra Kasturi’s Come Late to the Love of Birds:

Moon & Muchness (page 43)

My moonsicle sour-candy-pocked moon!
I have licked and loved you to a dim lustre,
the hollow-smooth swell of an orchestral bassoon,
a worthy glow that can only be mustered
by the administrations of my spectral
tongue.  Let us lap up the song-elevated
spheres! -- the phases and phrases of their kestrel
migrations, the meandering paths of crenelated
stars.  Let us tower and fall to crumbled-
cake battlements, forge to life from god-dusted bellows,
and spoon-feed the sun in all his pie-humbled
runcible wit--let us be bean-struck bedfellows.
We can swallow the universe in its entirety,
its star-speckled, moon-freckled boundless absurdity.

What do you think?

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198th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 20, 2013 by

Welcome to the 198th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please sign up to be a stop on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Sylvia Plath’s Crossing the Water:

Blackberrying (page 24-5)

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,   
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.   
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,   
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me   
To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock   
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space   
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths   
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

What do you think?

Click on the image for today’s National Poetry Month tour post!

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197th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 13, 2013 by

Welcome to the 197th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please sign up to be a stop on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Jehanne Dubrow‘s The Hardship Post:

Third Generation

We dream of falling as we fall
               asleep, but wake to feel
the weight of quilts, our pillows chill

       as granite to the cheek.
What science calls the hypnic jerk---
               a heartbeat slows too quickly

in the body's cage, air ripped,
        lynched half between the lips
and ribs.  We know that memory skips

                some families like a stone
across a lake.  They sleep alone.
         But we, the chosen ones,

are chosen for a crowded sleep,
                        each night compelled to leap
the barbed wire ledge, a heap

                of limbs.  We somersault
to spill ourselves on basalt
         slabs below.  It's not our fault,

this twitch of muscles snapping us
         from rest, electric pulse
so like descent we drop weightless

         until we flinch awake,
so sure of death that we mistake
                 our nightmares for the ache

         of breaking bone.

What do you think?

For Today’s National Poetry Month Tour post, click the image below!

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196th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 6, 2013 by

Welcome to the 196th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please sign up to be a stop on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Linda Gregg:

The Secrets of Poetry

Very long ago when the exquisite celadon bowl
that was the mikado's favorite cup got broken,
no one in Japan had the skill and courage
to mend it. So the pieces were taken back
to China with a plea to the emperor
that it be repaired. When the bowl returned,
it was held together with heavy iron staples.
The letter with it said they could not make it
more perfect. Which turned out to be true.

What do you think?

Click the image below for today’s National Poetry Month blog tour post.

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195th Virtual Poetry Circle

March 30, 2013 by

Welcome to the 195th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please sign up to be a stop on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Charles Martin’s Sleep: New and Selected Poems:

Happy Ending for the Lost Children

One of their picture books would no doubt show
The two lost children wandering in a maze
Of anthropomorphic tree limbs: the familiar crow

Swoops down upon the trail they leave of corn,
Tolerant of the error of their ways. 
Hand in hand they stumble onto the story,

Brighteyed with beginnings of fever, scared
Half to death, yet never for a moment
Doubting the outcome that had been prepared

Long in advance: Girl saves brother from oven,
Appalling witch dies in appropriate torment;
Her hoarded treasure buys them their parents' love.

              ***
"As happy an ending as any fable
Can provide," squawks the crow, who had expected more:
Delicate morsels from the witch's table.

It's an old story—in the modern version
The random children fall to random terror.
You see it nightly on the television:

Cameras focus on the lopeared bear
Beside the plastic ukulele, shattered
In a fit of rage—the lost children are

Found in the first place we now think to look:
Under the fallen leaves, under the scattered
Pages of a lost children's picture book.

              ***
But if we leave terror waiting in the rain
For the wrong bus, or if we have terror find,
At the very last moment the right train,

Only to get off at the wrong station—
If we for once imagine a happy ending,
Which is, as always, a continuation,

It's because the happy ending's a necessity,
It isn't just a sentimental ploy"
Without the happy ending there would be

No one to tell the story to but the witch,
And the story is clearly meant for the girl and boy
Just now about to step into her kitchen.

What do you think?

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194th Virtual Poetry Circle

March 23, 2013 by

Welcome to the 194th 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 2013 Dive Into Poetry Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please sign up to be a stop on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Claudia Reder:

Untranslatable Song

          "Everyone needs one untranslatable song." --Juarroz 

On hearing the striped contralto of guinea fowl, 
its mock opera quivers the parsley atop its head--

The song makes its imprint
in the air, making itself felt,
a felt world. Here, there, 
the stunned silence 
of knowing I will not remember 
what I heard;

futures
that will never happen,
a fluidity we cannot achieve 
except as a child 
creating possibility.

This is the untranslatable song
hidden in the earth.

What do you think?

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