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147th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 28, 2012 by

Welcome to the 147th 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from William Stafford:

Once in the 40's

We were alone one night on a long
road in Montana. This was in winter, a big
night, far to the stars. We had hitched,
my wife and I, and left our ride at
a crossing to go on. Tired and cold--but
brave--we trudged along. This, we said,
was our life, watched over, allowed to go
where we wanted. We said we'd come back some time
when we got rich. We'd leave the others and find
a night like this, whatever we had to give,
and no matter how far, to be so happy again.

What do you think?

***For Today’s National Poetry Month post, go to Wordcoaster.

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146th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 21, 2012 by

Welcome to the 146th 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Diana Raab’s Listening to Africa:

Tse Tse Paradise (page 55)

An early evening game ride
rolls us through high savannah grass,
to where sleeping sickness lurks
and a bug blanket forms
to burrow under
our glistening white skins
coated with toxic repellants
which my doctor says
are better than
the disease they protect against.

We relentlessly duck and swat them away,
those pregnant noiseless flies
smothering us with their bug shower,
my son with a woolen blanket suspended
over his twenty-year-old head,
as we all dart from what could be
the absolutely fatal bite.

What do you think?

About the Poet:

Diana M. Raab is a memoirist, essayist and poet. She has a B.S. in Health Administration and Journalism, and an RN degree from Vanier College in Montreal, in addition to an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Spalding University’s Low-Residency Program.

Diana has been writing from an early age. As a child of two working parents, she spent a lot of time crafting letters and keeping a daily journal. A journaling advocate and educator, Diana teaches creative journaling and memoir in workshops around the country. She frequently speaks and writes about the healing powers of writing.

***For today’s National Poetry Month Tour stop, Solid Quarter‘s Megan Burns visits Savvy Verse & Wit.***

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145th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 14, 2012 by

Welcome to the 145th 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.

Click for Schedule

Also, sign up for the 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Carole Bugge (aka C.E. Lawrence):

Meditation on an Ancient Widow

Her husband has just died
after sixty-two years of his stark, lean body next to hers
in their creaking, aged bed with the musty mattress and rusty springs
And now she listens from within this grey house with its peeling paint
weathered wicker chairs and faded sea green shutters
as the wind and the waves beat against the bellows of the bay
Her ancient voice, thin as paper,
dry as the brittle rushes growing along the side of the house
floats across the water to where the buoy floats
bobbing in the restless water with its swelling, roving tides
She sits under the yellow corner lamp, crossword on her lap,
listening to the seagulls run their hollow, falling scales
as they caw and cry and call to each other
the tea in her cup is cold
She draws her sweater close around her thin, sharp shoulders
the curve of her back bent with age
like the prow of a ship
all the more keenly to press through the waves
to cut cleanly through the wake of his leaving
Her body has stored each touch of his hands
sixty-two years of kisses and caresses
sixty-two years of his body next to hers
Self-pity is not in her nature
she is keen and sharp and unsentimental as the sun-bleached driftwood
gathering dust on the window sill
Still, at night she thinks she hears his footsteps along the floorboards
padding slowly down the hall to her room
As the old ship’s clock on the mantel strikes midnight
she turns her face toward the door
and opens her arms to him

What do you think?

About the Poet:

Carole Bugge ( C.E. Lawrence) has eight published novels, six novellas and a dozen or so short stories and poems. Her work has received glowing reviews from such publications as Kirkus, The Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, The Boston Herald, Ellery Queen, and others. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. Winner of both the Euphoria Poetry Competition and the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award, she is also a Pushcart Prize nominee and First Prize winner of the Maxim Mazumdar Playwriting Competition, the Chronogram Literary Fiction Prize, Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Award, and the Jean Paiva Memorial Fiction award, which included an NEA grant to read her fiction and poetry at Lincoln Center.

A finalist in the McClaren, MSU and Henrico Playwriting Competitions, she has read her work at Barnes and Noble, The Knitting Factory, Mercy College, Merritt Books, the Colony Cafe and the Gryphon Bookstore. She has received grants from Poets and Writers, as well as the New York State Arts Council. Her story “A Day in the Life of Comrade Lenin” received an Honorable Mention in St. Martin’s Best Fantasy and Horror Stories, and she was a winner in the Writer’s Digest Competition in both the playwriting and essay categories.

More recently, “Chrysalis” will be appear in an anthology entitled Motherhood, very shortly, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize last month for her poem “In Other Words.”

Her latest book is Silent Kills; stay tuned in May for a guest post and giveaway.

***For Today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop, visit Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia.***

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144th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 7, 2012 by

Welcome to the 144th 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.

Click for Schedule

Also, sign up for the 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Jennifer C. Wolfe, author of Somewhere Over the Pachyderm Rainbow. She’s sharing a poem from one of her upcoming collections, Elegies of Vitriolic Harmony, and she is working on another collection, Reflections of Hostile Revelries, as well:

(Roving) Eye of Newt

Ah, Newt Gingrich—that alleged everyman, who cheated on
His first two wives, while they were hospitalized; sallying forth,
To marry his third voluptuous blonde bedroom conquest.

Yes, Newt Gingrich—that alleged “family values” supporter,
Who remarked that his first sick wife was not “young enough or
Pretty enough to be the (US) President’s wife.”

My, Newt Gingrich—that realistic pinnacle of chauvinism,
Self-righteously imagining a working scenario, where he would
Even be elected to the US Presidency, in the first place.

Watch out, current “Mrs.”  Calista Gingrich:
You’ve won yourself the equivalent of the garish stuffed animal
Nobody wants from the gambling midway at a State Fair.

What do you think?

***For Today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop, check out Peeking Between the Pages.***

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143rd Virtual Poetry Circle

March 31, 2012 by

Welcome to the 143rd 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Elaine Equi

National Poetry Month

When a poem
speaks by itself,
it has a spark

and can be considered
part of a divine
conversation.

Sometimes the poem weaves
like a basket around
two loaves of yellow bread.

"Break off a piece
of this April with its
raisin nipples," it says. 

"And chew them slowly
under your pillow.
You belong in bed with me."

On the other hand,
when a poem speaks
in the voice of a celebrity

it is called television
or a movie.
"There is nothing to see,"

say Robert De Niro,
though his poem bleeds
all along the edges

like a puddle 
crudely outlined
with yellow tape

at the crime scene
of spring.
"It is an old poem," he adds.

"And besides,
I was very young
when I made it."

What do you think?

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142nd Virtual Poetry Circle

March 24, 2012 by

Welcome to the 142nd 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Li-Young Lee

Black Petal

I never claimed night fathered me.
that was my dead brother talking in his sleep.
I keep him under my pillow, a dear wish
that colors my laughing and crying.

I never said the wind, remembering nothing,
leaves so many rooms unaccounted for,
continual farewell must ransom
the unmistakable fragrance
our human days afford.

It was my brother, little candle in the pulpit,
reading out loud to all of earth
from the book of night.

He died too young to learn his name.
Now he answers to Vacant Boat,
Burning Wing, My Black Petal.

Ask him who his mother is. He'll declare the birds
have eaten the path home, but each of us
joins night's ongoing story
wherever night overtakes him,
the heart astonished to find belonging
and thanks answering thanks. 

Ask if he's hungry or thirsty,
he'll say he's the bread come to pass
and draw you a map
to the twelve secret hips of honey.

Does someone want to know the way to spring?
He'll remind you
the flower was never meant to survive
the fruit's triumph.

He says an apple's most secret cargo
is the enduring odor of a human childhood,
our mother's linen pressed and stored, our father's voice
walking through the rooms.

He says he's forgiven our sister
for playing dead and making him cry
those afternoons we were left alone in the house.

And when clocks frighten me with their long hair,
and when I spy the wind's numerous hands
in the orchard unfastening
first the petals from the buds,
then the perfume from the flesh,

my dead brother ministers to me. His voice
weighs nothing
but the far years between
stars in their massive dying,

and I grow quiet hearing
how many of both of our tomorrows
lie waiting inside it to be born.

What do you think?

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141st Virtual Poetry Circle

March 17, 2012 by

Welcome to the 141st 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna:

St. Patrick's Day: With an Irish Shamrock

From the region of zephyrs, the Emerald isle,
     The land of thy birth, in my freshness I come,
To waken this long-cherished morn with a smile,
     And breathe o’er thy spirit the whispers of home.
O welcome the stranger from Erin’s green sod;
  I sprang where the bones of thy fathers repose,
I grew where thy free step in infancy trod,
  Ere the world threw around thee its wiles and its woes.
         But sprightlier themes
         Enliven the dreams,
My dew-dropping leaflets unfold to impart:
         To loftiest emotion
         Of patriot devotion,
I wake the full chord of an Irishman’s heart.

The rose is expanding her petals of pride,
     And points to the laurels o’erarching her tree;
And the hardy Bur-thistle stands rooted beside,
     And sternly demands;—Who dare meddle wi’ me?
And bright are the garlands they jointly display,
     In death-fields of victory gallantly got;
But let the fair sisters their trophies array,
     And show us the wreath where the shamrock is not!
             By sea and by land,
             With bullet and brand,
My sons have directed the stormbolt of war;
             The banners ye boast,
             Ne’er waved o’er our host,
Unfanned by the accents of Erin-go-bragh!

Erin mavourneen! dark is thy night;
     Deep thy forebodings and gloomy thy fears;
And O, there are bosoms with savage delight
     Who laugh at thy plainings and scoff at thy tears!
But, Erin mavourneen, bright are the names
     Who twine with the heart-vein thy fate in their breast;
And scorned be the lot of the dastard, who shames
     To plant, as a trophy, this leaf on his crest!
             Thrice trebled disgrace
             His honours deface,
Who shrinks from proclaiming the isle of his birth!
             Though lowly its stem,
             This emerald gem
Mates with the proudest that shadow the earth!

What do you think?

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140th Virtual Poetry Circle

March 10, 2012 by

Welcome to the 140th 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Joy Harjo:

Equinox

I must keep from breaking into the story by force
for if I do I will find myself with a war club in my hand
and the smoke of grief staggering toward the sun,
your nation dead beside you.

I keep walking away though it has been an eternity
and from each drop of blood
springs up sons and daughters, trees,
a mountain of sorrows, of songs. 

I tell you this from the dusk of a small city in the north
not far from the birthplace of cars and industry.
Geese are returning to mate and crocuses have 
broken through the frozen earth.

Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead

and made songs of the blood, the marrow.

What do you think?

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139th Virtual Poetry Circle

March 3, 2012 by

Welcome to the 139th 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Federico García Lorca:

Arbolé, Arbolé . . . (translated by William Logan)

Tree, tree
dry and green.

The girl with the pretty face 
is out picking olives. 
The wind, playboy of towers, 
grabs her around the waist. 
Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies, 
with blue and green jackets 
and big, dark capes. 
"Come to Cordoba, muchacha." 
The girl won't listen to them. 
Three young bullfighters passed, 
slender in the waist, 
with jackets the color of oranges 
and swords of ancient silver. 
"Come to Sevilla, muchacha." 
The girl won't listen to them. 
When the afternoon had turned
dark brown, with scattered light, 
a young man passed by, wearing 
roses and myrtle of the moon. 
"Come to Granada, muchacha." 
And the girl won't listen to him. 
The girl with the pretty face
keeps on picking olives 
with the grey arm of the wind 
wrapped around her waist.
Tree, tree
dry and green.

What do you think?

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138th Virtual Poetry Circle

February 25, 2012 by

Welcome to the 138th 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Sara Teasdale:

The Look

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
      Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
      And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
      Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
      Haunts me night and day.

What do you think?

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137th Virtual Poetry Circle

February 18, 2012 by

Welcome to the 137th 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Molly Peacock:

Couple Sharing a Peach

It's not the first time
we've bitten into a peach.
But now at the same time
it splits--half for each.
Our "then" is inside its "now,"
its halved pit unfleshed--

what was refreshed.
Two happinesses unfold
from one joy, folioed.
In a hotel room
our moment lies
with its ode inside,
a red tinge,
with a hinge.

What do you think?

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136th Virtual Poetry Circle

February 11, 2012 by

Welcome to the 136th 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 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Andrew Marvell:

The Definition of Love

My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its Tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant Poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole World on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the World should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite can never meet.
                                                    
Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the Mind,
And opposition of the Stars.

What do you think?

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