Friday, December 27, 2013

Poetry Friday: Clean Laundry, Finnish Art, and a Happy New Year!!!

First let me say Happy New Year to everyone. By the time next Friday drives up and honks outside my house, it will be 2014.

Today I am answering a Facebook call from Diane Mayr: "Let's fill Facebook with beautiful art." All I had to do was let Diane know I was interested, and she assigned an artist: Elin Kleopatra Danielson-Gambogi. ("Don't you love the name?" she asked. Yes, I do! And why have I never heard of this wonderful painter????) Danielson-Gambogi was Finnish, born in 1861, died in 1919.  Look her up online - she painted many quiet moments, many women. I love these three especially (and I'll toss a poem into the mix for that third one): 


Sisters



On the Beach

In honor of Poetry Friday's last Friday of the year, here's a poem that converges with Danielson-Gambogi's lovely painting titled "A Sunny Day" (even though the painting is unseasonal for Seattle!): 


The Clothes Pin


How much better it is
to carry wood to the fire
than to moan about your life.
How much better
to throw the garbage
onto the compost, or to pin the clean
sheet on the line
with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin!
               
                                        - Jane Kenyon
----------------------------------------------------
Poetry Friday today is being hosted by Mary Lee Hahn, the woman who keeps Poetry Friday organized, over at A Year of Reading. Head over there to see what other people have posted.


Friday, December 20, 2013

Poetry Friday: Paul Violi



This week over at BOOKS AROUND THE TABLE I talk about making lists, and I mention a poet named Paul Violi who wrote many list-poems. Here is one of them, a parody of Christopher Smart's poem, Jubilate Agno, especially the section written for his cat ("For I will consider my cat Jeoffrey/ For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean./ For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there./ For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended. / For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood./ For fifthly he washes himself. / For sixthly he rolls upon wash....") Violi has a lot of fun in his poetry (read his "Index" or "Triptych" to confirm this - BTW: That last title is a parody of TV Guide listings.)I know this is a slightly weird offering for Poetry Friday, but I wish more people read Violi. He takes some geting used to, and he takes a sense of humor.


For It Feels Like February 29th or 30th

Paul Violi


For we were made to reach for things.
For imagination extends life.
For our reach must exceed our grasp.
For in confinement imagination thrives.
For the Book of the Month Club selection
Has finally arrived.
For it is The Life of Jeffrey Hudson.
For it is a February Classic.
For a wondrous life he made.
For he flourished in confinement.
For he was a champion who scoffed at restriction.
For at age nine, though scarcely 18 inches tall,
He was gracefully proportioned.
For he was a page to Duke Edward.
For at a banquet he leaped out of a pie
Placed before Queen Henrietta Maria.
For she adopted him on the spot.
For he was made captain of cavalry.
For he was called Strenuous Jeffrey.
For he was tireless and heroic.
For firing from horseback
He killed his opponent in a duel.
For he was captured by Dunkirkers and imprisoned.
For upon his release
He was found to have grown taller.
For he was captured and imprisoned by Turkish pirates.
For by the time he was freed he had grown a foot taller.
For after the Restoration he was pensioned.
For as an accused conspirator in the Popish Plot
He was again imprisoned and again released.
For shortly thereafter he died
At the age of 63 at the height of 3 foot 9.

---------------------------------------
The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by Buffy at the appropriately named Buffy's Blog. Head over there to see what other people are sharing.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Poetry Friday: Time for a bit of Walter De La Mare


From time to time, I find myself longing for a taste of Peacock Pie - one of my favorite books of poetry, written by Walter de la Mare. I've posted poems from it twice here at the Drift Record, both times for Poetry Friday, once last March and once way back in September of 2008. All I need to do, when I've pulled Peacock Pie down from the shelf, is find a couch, a blanket, a mug of cocoa, and have nothing in the world to do but enjoy the moment:

Dream Song

Sunlight, moonlight,
     Twilight, starlight---
Gloaming at the close of day,
     And an owl calling,
     Cool dews falling
In a wood of oak and may.

     Lantern-light, taper-light,
     Torchlight, no-light:
Darkness at the shut of day,
     And lions roaring,
     Their wrath pouring
In wild waste places far away.

     Elf-light, bat-light,
     Touchwood-light and toad-light,
And the sea a shimmering gloom of grey,
     And a small face smiling
     In a dream's beguiling
In a world of wonders far away.

                                 --Walter de la Mare

Not sure exactly why, but the effect this poem has on me resembles the experience of eating peppermint bark candy in December - maybe because both are just a little different from the normal sweet treat: they're sugary but they have some snap, they're layered - it's that crushed-candy-cane element, unexpected - and then there's white chocolate, dark chocolate, just sweet enough.
I know, that's a weird thing to say, but the two things - a Romantic Imagination and peppermint bark candy - converge.

Walter de la Mare 1873-1956
You can learn a little more about Walter de la Mare over at The Poetry Foundation and - who knew? - at The Official Walter de la Mare Society Website.
---------------------
This week's Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts over at The Opposite of Indifference. Head over there to see what other people are posting.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Poetry Friday: Invictus

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

I just heard on the news tonight about Nelson Mandela's death. During his long incarceration in various South African prisons, he is said to have recited the following poem to fellow inmates in order to share its empowering "message of self-mastery."  So I wanted to share it with you, by way of remembering Mandela's long, long struggle against apartheid.


INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

                       -William Ernest Henley


Mandela's message of reconciliation (as opposed to revenge) is one that world leaders need to be listening to, I think.

If you haven't read J.M. Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K., be sure to do so - short, powerful and haunting, and a good beginning point for learning more about the devastating effects of institutionalized racism, imprisonment and civil war. 
-----------------
Robyn Hood Black is hosting this week's Poetry Friday round-up. Head over there to see what other people are sharing.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Poetry Friday: Todd Boss


My Day-After-Thanksgivings are always busy with leftover-pie breakfast, family, turkey-sandwich lunch, family, jigsaw puzzle, dogs, family, turkey-soup dinner, etc. So I missed posting for Poetry Friday at the normal time. But since I haven't gone to bed yet, it's still Friday for me, yes, even if it's the wee (and bleary-eyed) hours of Saturday morning? Here's a poem I happened on and want to share:

The World Is in Pencil



—not pen. It’s got


that same silken
dust about it, doesn’t it,


that same sense of
having been roughed


onto paper even  
as it was planned.


It had to be a labor
of love. It must’ve


taken its author some
time, some shove.


I’ll bet it felt good
in the hand—the o


of the ocean, and
the and and the and


of the land.

                             by Todd Boss 

That is so carefully crafted. It does just what I want a poem to do, and just what I would love my poems to do: it hides the rhyme internally, subtly, and it has both gravitas and playfulness. The poet and critic Tony Hoagland, whose opinion I respect, says this of Todd Boss's second book, Pitch: "There is a rich physicality in all of Todd Boss’s poems, a reverent  gusto for representing the tactile aspects of human life. His poems are about matter in motion—apple-slices, Chopin, horses, light, and people. What makes Boss much more than a journalist is the great adroitness and physicality with which sound bounces around inside his language, in strong rhyme, all kinds of rhythm, and formal games. The poems in Pitch are never pretentious but always acrobatic, sensuous, technically inventive, muscular and fun.”
Todd Boss
 Be sure to look up Boss's first book as well - it's titled yellowrocket. Wonderful stuff.
---------------------------------
Poetry Friday was hosted by Carol at Carol's Corner this week.  Head over there to see what other people have posted. 

Friday, November 22, 2013

Poetry Friday: Mary Szybist, National Book Award Winner

Congratulations!
Mary Szybist, 2013 Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry
Mary Szybist was named the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry last night at a ceremony in New York City, for her second book, Incarnadine.  I watched the entire event on CSPAN/BookTV (from red carpet interviews through the actual presentation of medals) and Szybist's acceptance speech was one of the highlights of the evening. Overcome with emotion and fighting back tears, she said in accepting the award, "When I find myself in a dark place, I lose all taste for poetry." But she went on to say, "There’s plenty that poetry can’t do, of course, but the miracle is how much it can do ... how much it does do."

For those of you who don't yet know Szybist's work, which is remarkable for its intelligence, its precise focus and its heart, here's a poem for you to savor. This particular poem embodies what Szybist's best poems are all about: moments when the domestic and the spiritual overlap and set off harmonic reverberations. On the other hand, I sometimes think it's the near silence of Szybist's poems - the whispered quality - that appeals to me.



Annunciation Overheard from the Kitchen

I could hear them from the kitchen, speaking as if 
something important had happened.

I was washing the pears in cool water, cutting
the bruises from them.  
From my place at the sink, I could hear 

a jet buzz hazily overhead, a vacuum
start up next door, the click,
click between shots.

“Mary, step back from the camera.”

There was a softness to his voice 
but no fondness, no hurry in it.

There were faint sounds
like walnuts being dropped by crows onto the street,
almost a brush
of windchime from the porch—

Windows around me everywhere half-open—

My skin alive with the pitch.

                                            --Mary Szybist

Szybist has published only two books - her first, Granted, published ten years ago, and the NBA winner, Incarnadine, published this year, which (as Szybist describes it) "moves through several re-imaginings of the iconic Annunciation scene between Mary and the angel Gabriel." In his review of Granted, poet Joshua Kryah compares Szybist's work to that of John Donne, citing their similar impulse to "express spiritual ideas in physical terms," and he says that Szybist echoes "Donne’s insistence that the soul is made up of blood and bones, that 'all that the soule does, it does in, and with, and by the body.'"


The National Book Foundation has a website at which it has posted all the nominated authors reading from their work (thank you, NBF!) Here is a link to that - and if you don't have time to listen to the entire presentation (it's very long) then just catch Szybist reading one of her most haunting poems, titled "So and So Descending from the Bridge." It begins on the video at 2:00: 02, the two-hour mark (like I said, the entire evening session is long - but if you have the time to watch it all, you'll see George Packer and George Saunders and 18 other fine writers reading from their nominated books, including all the nominees for Young People's Literature - Kathi Appelt, Gene Luen Yang, Tom McNeal, Meg Rosoff, and Cynthia Kadohata, who was named the winner for her book, The Thing About Luck.)

---------------------------------
The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by  Katya Czaja over at Write. Sketch. Repeat. Head over there to see what other people have posted.


Friday, October 25, 2013

Poetry Friday: Oaxaca!

My Poetry Friday contribution is at the end of this post (scroll down for it) but first I want to say that I'm writing this on Sunday the 19th and scheduling it to go live (hopefully) on Friday. My husband and I are on our way to Oaxaca on Tuesday the 22nd, which means that by Poetry Friday on the 25th we will be enjoying our breakfasts at the Encanto Jalatlaco (no cell phone, no television, no computer)...

Fresh fruit, fresh juice, pan dulce, churros....


...and Oaxacan chocolate!

and looking forward to the Day of the Dead celebrations at the end of the month, particularly the visit to the panteon/cemetery...




and watching the comparsas/parades throughout the city, when the skeletons take over....





and visiting the archaeological treasures at Atzompa...



and the paper-making factory at San Agustin Etla Center for the Arts....


and visiting the weaving workshops of Teotitlan...


and seeing the green pottery...and the painted alejibres...and...and...as much as we can!




In anticipation of our trip, I'll post this poem I wrote about a market I visited with my family in Tepoztlan, Morelos (originally posted on Jama Rattigan's Poetry Potluck Series 4/9/2010. ) Hope you enjoy it:

Market Day

Black avocados, yellow mangos,
bowls of menudo to start the day.
Tall, cold glass of fresh horchata,
green papayas, pink mamey,

pork pozole, pumpkin seeds,
chiltepines, round and red,
coconut juice and gold guayavas,
then the different names for bread:

little shell and little piglet,
little ear and little horn,
now a cup of spiced hot chocolate,
sweet tamal with cream and corn,

pineapple popsicles, sugar cane,
guava jelly, caramel flan,
magic powders, hot tisane, :
Market Day in Tepoztlan.

------------------
 Poetry Friday is being hosted on the 25th by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem. Head over there for links to what other people have posted. And thanks, Irene!
P.S. Go ahead, please, and leave comments. I might not be able to approve them until I'm home on November 5th - we'll see. Thanks in advance to all who visit!
 





Friday, October 18, 2013

Poetry Friday: Edna St. Vincent Millay's Ferry Boat


I spent yesterday flaneur-ing my way through the neighborhoods of West Seattle, just looking around at houses, shops, Lincoln Park, views of Puget Sound. What I like most about that corner of Seattle (residents there feel like it's a little village, independent of the big city) are the views of the Sound, and of the ferry boats crossing from the Fauntleroy Dock over to Vashon Island.

Is there anything in the world more calming than the sight of a ferry boat sailing gracefully across water on a sunny autumn day? And then there's the long, low whistle as the ferry comes into dock - more like a moan than a whistle, really - it seems to come from way down deep. It's melancholy but dignified and industrious, that sound. And West Seattle, especially the neighborhood east of Lincoln Park, is configured perfectly for a view, with it's long, high backbone along 35th Avenue. The hillside drops westward from the there, down to the saltwater shore.

Ferry boats, ferry boats. They look like toys out there on the water, especially if Mount Rainier looms somewhere in the background.



I rode on the Staten Island Ferry once - when it still cost a nickel (it wasn't that long ago - the fare was a nickel until 1975, when it was raised to 25 cents round trip. Since 1997,  passengers ride free!)

That orange - so distinctive!
That boat didn't feel calm, probably because it was filtered through a tourist buzz ("There she is! The Statue of Liberty.") It's the ferry boat Edna St. Vincent Millay refers to in her poem "Recuerdo" - which I offer up here for Poetry Friday, in honor of crisp-as-an-apple days...with a water view. 

Recuerdo


We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
                                  
                                   by Edna St. Vincent Millay
                                   Published in Poetry Magazine, May, 1919
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by Cathy at Merely Day By Day. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

Friday, October 11, 2013

POETRY FRIDAY: Hallelujah, Alice Munro!

Alice Munro - Nobel Laureate
 A shout out to the Nobel Prize committee for bestowing the Prize in Literature this year on Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro, who said the following once about storytelling:

"A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

Hooray, Alice Munro, and hooray, Canada! 


In Ms. Munro's honor, I'm going to post the lyrics to the unofficial Canadian national anthem, "Hallelujah," a song of Leonard Cohen's, covered by dozens of other musicians. If you've ever sung it in a group setting (as we did during a lecture once at Vermont College of Fine Arts - that was glorious!!) you'll know how mysterious, hard-hitting, prayerful and haunting it is, just like the stories of Alice Munro. Below are the lyrics, but you need to hear this song as it is sung live (that last stanza of hallelujahs!) so here is a link to k.d. lang singing it. It's my favorite version - gad, gad, gad, seriously right.

And the line in it that speaks to the writing of Alice Munro?
"There's a blaze of light in every word...."


Hallelujah

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

[P.S. Just want to add, for the record, that there are apparently 28 verses to this song - not sure if anyone has ever recorded all 28...? k.d. lang doesn't sing all the verses I have up in the post - if anyone hears of someone singing a much longer version, please drop me line at the email address above. I'd love to hear. For now, k.d. lang in Montreal is as close to a perfect fit (singer to song) as it gets.] 
------------------------------------------
The Poetry Friday round-up is hosted today by Laura Purdie Salas over at her blog, writing the world for kids.  Head over there to see what other people have posted.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Wonderful!!

Brilliant news this morning: Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature!!!! She has been one of my favorite authors for years and years. I keep her characters in my head for months after reading one of her stories; they haunt me. Don't know how she does it, but she does it right. Oh, hooray for Ms. Munro, and hooray for the short story, and hooray for Canada.  Scroll down for a few quotations from her work and from interviews.


“A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

Alice Munro with her daughters....

 “Every year, when you're a child, you become a different person.”
 from Too Much Happiness


“The constant happiness is curiosity.”



“People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable – 
deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.”

               from Lives of Girls and Women


“What she felt was a lighthearted sort of compassion, almost like laughter. A swish of tender hilarity, getting the better of all her sores and hollows, for the time given.”



Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

I lie in bed beside my little sister, listening to the singing in the yard. Life is transformed, by these voices, by these presences, by their high spirits and grand esteem, for themselves and each other. My parents, all of us, are on holiday. The mixture of voices and words is so complicated and varied it seems that such confusion, such jolly rivalry, will go on forever, and then to my surprise—for I am surprised, even though I know the pattern of rounds—the song is thinning out, you can hear the two voices striving.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

Then the one voice alone, one of them singing on, gamely, to the finish. One voice in which there is an unexpected note of entreaty, of warning, as it hangs the five separate words on the air. Life is. Wait. But a. Now, wait. Dream.”

―from The Moons of Jupiter

Friday, October 4, 2013

The Mortimer Minute - My Turn with the Children's Poetry Blog Hop!




It's my turn to answer questions for The Mortimer Minute, the current Children's Poetry Blog Hop. Renee La Tulippe took The Hop last week and tagged me for The Hop today, and I'm tagging poet Diane Mayr for next week (see below.)

Right now, I have to take care of this charming bunny who keeps asking me questions.  Mortimer is sweet, but he's a twitchy guy. I think his whiskers make him curious. That's my theory, anyway (I am curious about where curiosity comes from....) All Mortimer knows is hopping, eating, twitching and poking his nose into interesting places.

[Hmmm. I've had some temporary formatting problems - sorry - a poem by Yeats seems to be haunting Mortimer's first question and ..well, I have no idea why it's there!!! If you see it, try clicking on just the title of this post (not The Drift Record in general) and that will take you to a clean copy of it, minus the ghost of Yeats. Yeats is tricky, you know.  Hard to master him. ]


Here are the rules for The Hop: 
  • Answer three short questions, one of them taken from the previous Mortimer Minute.
  • Invite another blogger (or two or three) to take part on the following week - writers, teachers, or anyone who loves children's poetry is the perfect choice.
  • Link to the previous Mortimer Minute and to your choice for next week. 
That's it. Now let's take care of the curious bunny.

Question #1 (multiple parts):
M: Do you eat grass?
JL: No.
M: Carrots?
JL: Yes.
M: Lettuce?
JL: Yes.
M: Rabbits? (shuddering)
JL: Oh-oh. Well, not often. And never a snuggly one.

Question #2: 
M: Look at me - I am very cute. Why don't you have whiskers? Why don't you have sunshine coming through your ears?
JL: Oh, I have some whiskers - don't look too close! They are cuter on a bunny than they are on me. As for my ears, my grandson will tell you that if you put a little flashlight up behind my ear lobe, light comes through it and makes it shine. Believe me, he and I have tried it many, many, many, many times and it always works and it always gets a laugh.

Question #3:
M: What children's poem do you wish you had written?
JL: Oh, that's a hard one. There are so many! I love "Bell" by Valerie Worth, because I think it describes just exactly what a poet does. And I love "The Stolen Child" by W.B. Yeats, because it's the kind of poem that makes a child fall in love with poetry - it's haunting and hypnotic. But if I could only choose one, it would be this one by John Masefield:

SEA FEVER

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Mortimer:
Yeah. Nice.
---------------------------------------------------------

The Mortimer Minute/Children's Blog Hop moves next week to Diane Mayr's Random Noodling
You will like Diane, Mortimer - she's curious, too, and she really does have whiskers...
...though I think they are kitty whiskers (as in Diane's other blog, Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet.)

By the way, Mortimer....

Mortimer? 
 
Mortimer is on his way to do some random noodling around....(and I think I need to write a poem about sunshine coming through the ears of a rabbit.)

POETRY FRIDAY: It's October: Time for Yeats



The other day poet Renee LaTulippe asked fellow bloggers on Facebook to suggest scary poems that she might perform for her site, No Water River, as Halloween approaches. Many good poems were suggested - though the best were probably too long (Edgar Allen Poe) for the video she had in mind. I suggested "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti - too long, yes, but it starts so well and gets so creepy! Just this morning, I remembered Yeats's "The Stolen Child" which gives me goosebumps every time I read it. I think it's too late to suggest it to Renee, but I do think it's unnerving. Scary? Well, it scares me! Especially because the fairies who steal this child don't just steal the child, but they convince him or her to leave the world behind because it is "more full of weeping" than can be understood. The poem worries me, it scares me, haunts me, breaks my heart. Oh, to write a poem like this, but for a modern child....that would be a challenge!

THE STOLEN CHILD

 WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.
Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we've hid our faery vats, Full of berrys And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And anxious in its sleep. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wandering water gushes From the hills above Glen-Car, In pools among the rushes That scarce could bathe a star, We seek for slumbering trout And whispering in their ears Give them unquiet dreams; Leaning softly out From ferns that drop their tears Over the young streams. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Away with us he's going, The solemn-eyed: He'll hear no more the lowing Of the calves on the warm hillside Or the kettle on the hob Sing peace into his breast, Or see the brown mice bob Round and round the oatmeal chest. For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19415#sthash.xLQAB7Ox.dpuf
Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we've hid our faery vats, Full of berrys And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And anxious in its sleep. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wandering water gushes From the hills above Glen-Car, In pools among the rushes That scarce could bathe a star, We seek for slumbering trout And whispering in their ears Give them unquiet dreams; Leaning softly out From ferns that drop their tears Over the young streams. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Away with us he's going, The solemn-eyed: He'll hear no more the lowing Of the calves on the warm hillside Or the kettle on the hob Sing peace into his breast, Or see the brown mice bob Round and round the oatmeal chest. For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19415#sthash.xLQAB7Ox.dpuf

 Here's a link to a beautiful musical rendition of the poem by Loreena McKennitt.

 The Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted today by Dori at DORI READS. Head over there to see what other people have posted.