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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.

84th Virtual Poetry Circle


Welcome to the 84th 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.

I’ve been reading The Rorschach Factory by Valerie Fox, and I thought I would share a sample of her work.

Intruder (page 41)

I didn’t eat the food in your refrigerator or turn on the spigot, or
track mud through the hallway.  I wouldn’t do that.

I went through your art books and attached paper clothes to photo-
graphs of naked ladies. Sometimes also I covered their eyes. To one I
gave mittens — she looked cold.

The cracker-box girl had a shadowy face. She looks back to the 19th
century. I put her in a boxy suit jacket with concealed buttons.

I adorned one blond bomber with a diamond necklace. No glue
smudges — I used sticky office notes. Surrealists can be such peep-
holes.

A certain double exposure blends body with hand. One droll hand
reaches out from a shell. Some round and flat breast-laid tabletops I
dressed in checkers, like in Italian restaurants.

Also I took away for myself a few unobvious items. You’ll see but it
may take you a while. I did not leave you this note.

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.

83rd Virtual Poetry Circle


Welcome to the 83rd 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 Dayle Furlong’s Open Slowly, which I reviewed earlier this week:

Dizzy Mountain Precipice (page 42)

On a dizzy mountain precipice I dangle
precarious between
here and now —
then and maybe

he floats by
a dandelion seed caught on a breeze

my heart, a fat cherub
clumsy hands pluck at the veins —

a choir of children
could not capture
the harmony of this
lost love.

I plant memory firmly
on this mountain
a flag.

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.

82nd Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 82nd 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.

t’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 Valerie Fox’s The Rorschach Factory:

Adulation of a False God (page 39)

The alchemist never dreamed
he could succumb
to disease. He avoided

all his vices–avoided one
each year. He frowned
like Benjamin Franklin

on the 100 dollar bill.
This world–
so which is it?

A pick-up truck
or a person
carried in it.

Or does the world reside outside,
that is outdoors, in one of those
silver or gold ghost-

reflecting spheres adorning
a neighbor’s lawn,
a glaring eyeball of fire

on a chalk white concrete pillar:
the subdivision gardener’s
improvisation

on Victorian superstition.
He yearns to backstroke
in a glass of beer,

scissor his legs, converse
with Madame Lena
She Knows What Is

The Trouble With You
who will undo his
hand while they stare

at the fragile,
interchangeable lives
of gaunt stars,

their color off
their eyes and noses uneven
containing

finally
beauty,
like everyone else’s.

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.

81st Virtual Poetry Circle


Welcome to the 81st 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.

I’m going to highlight a poet I’ve interviewed for 32 Poems Magazine, Danielle Sellers, whose interview will appear on the blog on Feb. 9, from her book, Bone Key Elegies:

Elegy for a Living Girl (page 40)

She’s autistic, with thick glasses.
Her eyes are koi eyes under pond-sheet.

She earns a jellybean if she spells her name.
A-S-H-L-E-Y is rice glued to cardboard.
Her voice rises an octave on the Y.

She moves heavy fingers along the letters
as she says them. She likes pink jellybeans.
I persuade her to spell her name again.

Behind the curtain wall Miss Dapper plays
Für Elise out of tune for Wally.
The awful strains hang above our heads.

Ashley eats her prize. Hands, moving free
from her body, flutter against her face,
wave the air, telling me she’s happy.

Can you sing a song? I ask.
She sings second alto,
slow with effort: I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow…

She slaps me hard in the ear
and, like church bells, chants
God damn it. God damn, damn, damn, damn…

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.

80th Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 80th 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, and why not start with a confessional poet, like Anne Sexton.

I’ll admit I chose a poem from this author because I’ll be reviewing a heartbreaking memoir from her daughter, Linda Gray Sexton, that deals with depression and death on Monday.

Wanting to Die

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.  
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!--
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.

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.

79th Virtual Poetry Circle

Welcome to the 79th 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, and why not start with the contemporary poet featured today?!

Today, we’re going to take a look at a poem from Sweta Srivastava Vikram‘s latest collection, Kaleidoscope:  An Asian Journey of Colors:

I Am Cleopatra

My teacher thinks I have fangs
that dart out words at victims,
slobber my venom over them
and break their spirit —
an anaconda mutilates a rabbit.

My sister says I scare the mirror
with my own reflection. Stupid slut,
she said. I growl until my face
changes colors but hurt remains.
I wipe my tearstains alone.

My parents think I am a dead body
of metallic perforations drowning
in the sea of my idiocy. I should earn
a purple heart for surviving the war
in my family. What can I say?
At teenage, sarcasm doesn’t come free.

I embody the flavors of Cleopatra.
How difficult is that to remember?
Should I soak twenty thousand
Purpura snails to get an ounce
of Tyrian purple to flaunt my charm
and get your unbiased attention?
I like purple, but I do no harm.

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.