Happy National Poetry Month! The first collected works I ever owned, my mama gave it to me for my twelfth birthday, was William Carlos Williams. The spare and earthshaking power of a single image–in his hand, it was miraculous.
Make art about walls.
Happy National Poetry Month! One of my favorite poets, and one of my favorite truths 🙂 “A child’s wisdom is wisdom still.”~Jewish proverb
Make art about what children know.
Happy National Poetry Month!
I love this poem, its fierceness, its choice.
A Message from the Wanderer
by William Stafford
Today outside your prison I stand
and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
you have relatives outside. And there are
thousands of ways to escape.
Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
and shouted my plans to jailers;
but always new plans occured to me,
or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
or some stupid jailer would forget
and leave the keys.
Inside, I dreamed of constellations—
those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
heroes that exist only where they are not.
Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as—often, in light, on the open hills—
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then—even before you see—
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.
That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.
Now—these few more words, and then I’m
gone: Tell everyone just to remember
their names, and remind others, later, when we
find each other. Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way—
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.
There will be that form in the grass.
Make art about escape, the “thousands of ways to escape.”
Happy National Poetry Month! No way the month can pass without Walt Whitman ❤ I still have the copy of Leaves of Grass my mama gave me when I was ten.
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,
Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)
Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,
The announcements of recognized things, science,
The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.
I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.
But I too announce solid things,
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,
triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,
They stand for realities—all is as it should be.
Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth,
The rapt promises and luminé of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.
Make art about walking.
Happy National Poetry Month!
Spent this weekend making things with my hands, gifts for some of the children I’m blessed to have in my life 🙂 I often tell my writing students, “Remember: you are now the maker. You have the magic of the maker.” Thinking on this a lot this weekend, on how the mystery of art emerges from our hands.
Making a Poem
by Paul B. Newman
You make a poem like a man
taking the measure of a sheet of copper;
first you cut it in the round
clipping the disc of dull soft metal,
then you take a hammer and pound
over all its surface on the small
iron hoof of the anvil,
forming a deepness within the curve
light within light reflecting
cool as the ripples in a well,
forming it on the resistance of the anvil
until it is so with texture, and with
usefulness a form and with delight a unity.
Make art about being a maker, about the act of making.
Blacksmith hammering red hot steel on a wooden surface that is catching on fire. Focus is on the hammer and glove.
Happy National Poetry Month!
The Messenger
by Ann Stanford
I don’t deny that I believe in ghosts
Myself being one. No, not the ultimate last
Spirit, I mean, but this is a messenger.
Soft, soft, last night, falling into sleep
I rose like smoke up, curving past the window,
Floating, a grey cloud seaward, slow and pale.
And then, the wings!
Did you hear the birds piling against your window?
A snow of wings, crowding and gentle, crying
Over and over, each with a single errand
Light cannot bring, nor ever my tongue would say.
Archaic doves, rustling your sleep, and calling
Crowding upon you, drifting and crying love.
Make art about a messenger.
Happy National Poetry Month! I got a little side-tracked by a visit with my beautiful daughter and her precious new son 🙂 So enjoy a cluster of prompts for catch-up! 🙂
4/16/2016
I’m over the moon in love 🙂 His name is Max and he is beyond magical 🙂 So’s his Mama 🙂
Grandchild
Maxine Kumin
All night the douanier in his sentry box
at the end of the lane where France begins plays fox
and hounds with little spurts of cars
that sniff to a stop at the barrier
and declare themselves. I stand at the window
watching the ancient boundaries that flow
between my daughter’s life and mine dissolve
like taffy pulled until it melts in half
without announcing any point of strain
and I am a young unsure mother again
stiffly clutching the twelve-limbed raw
creature that broke from between my legs, that stew
of bone and membrane loosely sewn up in
a fierce scared flailing other being.
We blink, two strangers in a foreign kitchen.
Now that you’ve drained your mother dry and will
not sleep, I take you in my arms, brimful
six days old, little feared-for mouse.
Last week when you were still a fish
in the interior, I dreamed you thus:
The douanier brought you curled up in his cap
buttoned and suited like him, authority’s prop
–a good Victorian child’s myth–
and in his other hand a large round cheese
ready to the point of runniness.
At least there, says the dream, no mysteries.
Toward dawn I open my daughter’s cupboard on
a choice of calming teas–infusions—
verbena, fennel, linden, camomile,
shift you on my shoulder and fill the kettle.
Age has conferred on me a certain grace.
You’re a package I can rock and ease
from wakefulness to sleep. This skill comes back
like learning how to swim. Comes warm and quick
as first milk in the breasts. I comfort you.
Body to body my monkey-wit soaks through.
Later, I wind the outside shutters up.
You sleep mouse-mild, topped with camomile.
Daylight slips past the douane. I rinse my cup.
My daughter troubles sleep a little while
longer. The just-milked cows across the way
come down their hillside single file
and the dream, the lefthand gift of ripened brie
recurs, smelly, natural, and good
wanting only to be brought true
in your own time: your childhood.
Make art about babies, the miraculous beginning of life.
_____________________________________________________
4/17/2016
One of my favorite things about traveling are the signs on the road 🙂 And one of my favorite poets ❤
Signs
1.
All night I dreamed of my home
of the roads that are so long
and straight they die in the middle—
among the spines of elderly weeds
on either side, among the dead cats,
the ants who are all eyes, the suitcase
thrown open, sprouting failures.
2.
And this evening in the garden
I find the winter
inside a snail shell, rigid and
cool, a little stubborn temple,
its one visitor gone.
3.
If there were messages or signs,
I might hear now a voice tell me
to walk forever, to ask
the mold for pardon, and one
by one I would hear out my sins,
hear they are not important—that I am
part of this rain
drumming its long fingers, and
of the roadside stone refusing
to blink, and of the coyote
nailed to the fence with its
long grin.
And when there are no messages
the dead lie still—
their hands crossed so strangely
like knives and forks after supper.
4.
I stay up late listening.
My feet tap the floor,
they begin a tiny dance
which will outlive me.
They turn away from this poem.
It is almost Spring.
Make art about seeing signs.
________________________________________________
4/18/2106
Today is my niece Jennifer’s birthday. I was fourteen when she was born, and I was absolutely certain that my sister Andrea had this miraculous fairy child just for my enjoyment. From scrambling through woods to the tune of Little Rabbit Foo Foo to watching her become a loving accomplished incredible woman, and one of the best mothers I’ve ever seen, that fairy child grown to woman has consistently been one of the greatest gifts of my life. No other poem would do 🙂 ❤
Phenomenal Woman
by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Make art about a phenomenal woman in your life.
Happy National Poetry Month!
My late husband John Little Bear Eaton loved Stevens, especially this poem. When I read it now, I still hear his beautiful voice reciting it, that deep Georgia drawl.
Happy National Poetry Month! 🙂 Thinking a lot about my sweet daddy, so there must be Yeats. ❤
Make art about your wandering.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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