Blasting You With Poetry: Week 4

Welcome to another Thursday in April, filled with poetry!

(This week, a view from my desk. Because it is too discouraging out in the garden right now . . . with all the frost-kill and all.)

“I’m a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I’d rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.”
—Billy Collins

Although my mom read me the standard children's poetry available in the 1960s, it was mostly of the Nursery Rhyme and Robert Louis Stevenson variety (Shel Silverstein's Cracks in the Sidewalk - which really changed the landscape for poetry-directed-at-children - wasn't published until 1974). My mom wasn't a fan of poetry. She thought it needed to rhyme, that it needed to be taken seriously, and that it wasn't for "regular people." Like us.

Then, in third grade, I had Mrs. Hermann as my teacher. She turned my world upside down when it came to poetry!

(Third grade me.)

Mrs. Hermann loved poetry, and she found poetry in everything.  We had poetry in the classroom almost every day. We memorized poems and recited them, which most kids hate -- but Mrs. Hermann made it fun. She showed us that poems could be serious or funny - or sometimes both at the same time. She introduced limericks and haiku. She shared nonsense poems like The Jabberwock and had us create an entire "zoo" of the creatures we imagined in the poem. We wrote poems for her -- that didn't ever have to rhyme, although they certainly could. She taught us that songs (like "Waltzing Matilda," which we sang on the regular and with gusto) were poems, that stories were poems, that poetry was everywhere. And that it was most definitely for "regular people." Like us.

(I often wonder about the rest of the kids in my third grade class. I wonder how many of them, like me, still love poetry. I wonder if any of them actually became poets. I'm betting . . . the percentage is higher-than-average.)

Anyway. Mrs. Hermann made poetry accessible to us as children. She knew that the way to a child's heart . . . was through silliness, (age-appropriate) humor, and fun. I believe that the best way to get people who "hate poetry" to actually pay attention and listen to poetry - to make it accessible to them - is much the same: silliness, humor, and fun. (What poetry-hating adult doesn't appreciate silly limericks, for example?)

And when it comes to making poetry accessible for the masses (for all of us "regular people"), I think no one does it better than Billy Collins. His poetry is serious. It covers serious themes and universal truths and all that "poetry stuff." But he always gets there with cleverness. With humor. With a bit of the silly thrown in to make you smile . . . in that very knowing kind of way.

This week, Bonny, Kat, Sarah, and I are sharing the "fun stuff" -- poems that are silly or clever; poems that are easily accessible and that "regular people" can "get." Mine, as you might have guessed, is by Billy Collins. (And I think my mom would have loved this one.)

Enjoy!

==

The Lanyard
Billy Collins

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past --
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them, 
but that did not keep me from crossing 
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift -- not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother, 
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

==

Today's poem was originally published in Billy Collins' collection The Trouble With Poetry, 2005, but can also be found in Aimless Love: New and Collected Poems by Billy Collins, 2013, Random House. For more information about the poet, check out his entry at Poets.org. 

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I hope you'll stop by and "blast yourself" with more poetry about spring, new beginnings, and renewal today . . . on Bonny's, Kat's, and Sarah's blogs.

==

For a real treat, here is Billy Collins reading The Lanyard. Worth a watch/listen!

 

When Spring Gives You Snowflakes . . .

There has been some knitting happening here . . . 

Nice and springy. (Just ignore the fact that as I took this photo out on my back patio, snow was falling.) (Spring is so very fickle.)

The pattern is Sun Dog by Laura Aylor. (Here's a Ravelry link.) It's a great spring sweater, and by the time I finish, the weather should be Just Right. (That's my story and I'm sticking with it.)

What are you making these days?

Cultivate the Root

"Cultivate the root; the leaves and branches will take care of themselves."
            --- Confucious

I have a love-hate relationship with houseplants.
(Oh. No. That's far too strong.)

Let's begin again: I have an off-again/on-again relationship with houseplants.
(Much better.) 

There have been periods of time in my life . . . when I have tended a lush, indoor jungle. And there have been other (honestly longer) periods of time when my indoor gardens . . . hmmmm . . . shall we say fail to thrive? 

It seems to be challenging for me to to care for the plants both IN my house and OUTSIDE my house/IN my garden . . . at the same time. And those plants outside/in my garden tend to win out every time.

But as I was thinking about my word - root - earlier this year, back when it was deep-winter and dark and I was not feeling very hope-full and being IN my garden seemed a very long time time away, I decided to build myself an indoor garden again. I decided to follow that advice from Confucious: I'd cultivate some roots, and let the leaves and branches take care of themselves.

Back in January, I had two very old (but hanging in there!) Christmas cactus plants, a mini jade tree, and a few amaryllis bulbs (3 new; 3 dormant that I was hoping to coax back to life). If I was going to create a new indoor garden, I was going to have to do better than that! Luckily, my favorite nursery sells houseplants in the "off season." And I signed up for a Horti membership.

And I put down some inside roots.

I love the results!

And I'm committed to cultivating the roots IN my house even as the roots OUTSIDE my house call ever louder.
(Remind me of that should you notice neglect, won't you please?)

“Gardening is the greatest tonic and therapy a human being can have. Even if you have only a tiny piece of earth, you can create something beautiful, which we all have a great need for. If we begin by respecting plants, it’s inevitable we’ll respect people.”
     — Audrey Hepburn

==

How about you? Do you tend an indoor garden?

 

Sometimes Mondays

. . . look like a day of reckoning!

My weekend was full of spring cleaning. The laundry room. The hall closets. The garage. Things that are AWESOME now at completion, but that were hard and not particularly pleasant in the doing.

I'm also putting a long course of nasty antibiotics behind me, starting today. Although grateful for the treatment (which worked!), these particular antibiotics (yeah, there were two) leave me . . . not quite myself. Out of sorts. Whiney. Generally off my game.

So these are Very Good Things to have completed and gotten through. But Good Things sometimes have A Price To Pay. Trailing behind me, you'll see . . . a wake of undone chores, everyday tasks, and loose ends.

A day of reckoning, indeed.
(But isn't that what Mondays are for?)

==

"Here comes the sun. And I say, it's alright."
        -- George Harrison

==

I hope your week is off to a great start!

Magical . . . and Totally Over the Top

It's been a couple of weeks since my birthday now, but it's not too late to share the gift I got from my sister. Because it was awesome. And totally . . . over the top.

First, I'll just say that my sister was . . . kinda cagey . . . about this particular gift. She warned me that I'd have to "do something with it" when it arrived, and she mentioned the words "right away" more than once. So I was pretty curious from the get-go. Once she knew the delivery date, she checked in with me about my schedule (which - of course - is wide open these days. . . ). And once she had confirmation that it had been delivered, she texted me right away. "Open it now," she said. 

Curiouser and curiouser. . . 

As I opened the box (which was quite large, I'm gonna say), I unpacked flowers. 

Lots of flowers.
Live flowers.
Really gorgeous BIG flowers.

Also bunches of evergreen and herbs and snapdragons and roses!

By the time I got everything unpacked and stuck in water . . . it looked (and smelled!) like my kitchen had been transformed into a floral shop.

What my sister had sent me . . . was a "posy kit" from floral expert and slow-flower artist Teresa Sabankaya!

After consulting Teresa's book (which came with the kit) and then after watching her excellent instructional video (I got a link as part of the kit), I was ready to try and create my own posy!

I set up "shop" in my dining room, and followed Teresa's instructions. You build the arrangement while you hold the flowers, bouquet-style, rather than arranging them in a vase. It would have been helpful to have a third (or fourth, even) hand. But I think with practice, it would get a lot smoother to do with only two.

Here's my finished posy. . . 

I even had plenty of flowers left over to make a second.

It was an absolutely magical birthday gift. Lovely flowers -- AND I learned a new skill. You can bet that I'll be creating more posies from the flowers I cut from my garden this summer -- and even from the bouquets I pick up in the future from the grocery store or Trader Joe's.

Over the top.
But just right!

==

Here's to a great weekend for all of us.
See you on Monday.

==

NOTE about the posy kits. If you get inspired to send someone a posy kit, it's important that you do just what my sister did: Make sure the recipient is home when the kit is delivered, and available to open and "release" those flowers right away. This is a very time-sensitive gift, and the recipient is going to need to dig in right away.

 

 

 

Blasting You With Poetry: Week 3

Welcome to another Thursday in April, filled with poetry!

"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep the spring from coming."
        ---Pablo Neruda

I love watching spring . . . unfold . . . in my garden. It's like a miracle every single day out there! I mean, one minute everything is totally bleak and colorless and cold and bare, and the next? Hellebores are popping up (through the snow, even) to say "hey!" It really is poetry . . . happening right before your eyes.

During the long winter, sometimes it's hard to remember that spring is going to come back again. 
But it does.
Every year!
It gives me hope. It renews my spirit. It fills me with the good stuff again!

Have I ever told you about my larch tree? (Some of you might be more familiar with its other name . . . tamarack.) I bought it at the Master Gardener plant sale one May, many years ago now, to plant next to the little pond Brian and Tom were putting in for me at the time. The little larch was about 18" tall, and I thought it would look very nice next to my new pond. I didn't know much about larches at that point, but I've learned a lot about them since!

Like . . . that they can grow to be over 120 feet tall! 
(And mine is on the way. . . )

You can see it out my living room window there . . .on the left.

Originally, I meant for it to cast a little shade over my pond. I really had no idea it would get as big as it did (is). I also had no idea it would make such a pretty picture out my big window! Guests to our house (y'know . . . back when we had those) always assume I created that space with the pond and the larch on purpose -- to be viewed from my living room. I'd like to take credit, but it was pure serendipity.

Larches are conifers. But they're an unusual kind of conifer: they're deciduous! That means . . . their needles (which are very soft) turn a brilliant gold in the fall, and then fall off. Leaving a very dead-looking tree in the landscape. (Another thing I didn't know when I planted it.)

Here is my (absolutely stunning) larch in the fall . . . 

and here it is, weeks later, when all the needles fall off and it looks like a giant Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Every year, about now - and especially that first year, I start to worry about whether or not my larch will come back. It always seems to be so dead-looking for so long. But then . . . overnight (seriously) . . . spring comes again for my larch, and the green needles pop out again! 

(That's looking out my window yesterday morning.)

My larch is a visible reminder for me . . . of new beginnings. Of starting again. Of renewal!
Poetry, I tell you!
It's everywhere in my garden.
For me, nothing brings a sense of beginining again . . . like spring.

==

A Purification
Wendell Berry

At start of spring I open a trench
in the ground. I put into it
the winter’s accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors. And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun, growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.

=

Today's poem can be found in New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry, 2012, Counterpoint. For more information about the poet, check out his entry at Poets.org. 

==

I hope you'll stop by and "blast yourself" with more poetry about spring, new beginnings, and renewal today . . . on Bonny's, Kat's, and Sarah's blogs.

 

Sometimes Mondays

. . . are quiet. (And that's nice.)

I need a little break. No big deal, and I'll be back by Thursday to blast you with more poetry. But I need a to . . . step away . . . for a couple of days to recover from an episode of diverticulitis. And I'm getting my second vaccine tomorrow, so who knows how I'll feel after that (but clearing the decks, all the same). It's time for a short break.

Here's to the start of a good week for all of us!

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you."
            -- Anne Lamott

 

Blasting You With Poetry: Week 2

Welcome back to another Thursday in April, filled with poetry!

"Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language."
        -- Lucille Clifton

When we started talking about how we'd celebrate National Poetry Month on our blogs, Bonny, Kat, and I (and now Sarah has joined us, too!) thought it might be fun if, one week, we all focused on a specific poet. After a bit of thought and some back-and-forth emails, we decided that we wanted to bring you the work of a poet that might be somewhat less familiar to you. We decided on Elizabeth Alexander.

I was first introduced to Elizabeth Alexander when she presented her poem "Praise Song for the Day" at President Obama's first inauguration in 2009. You can watch her recite the poem below, or if you'd like to read it, you can find it here on the Poetry Foundation website.

[In last night's version of this post, I had conveniently embedded the YouTube clip of Elizabeth Alexander reading her poem at the inauguration. But in my ongoing - and growing - frustration with my blog platform host, TypePad, it will not work this morning, and in fact, caused formatting issues with this post that made me need to . . . start over. Not a fun way to begin the morning. I hates the TypePad. Anyway, if you'd like to see the clip - which is quite wonderful, click here to watch it on YouTube. My apologies.]

After the inauguration, I sought out more of her poetry, and started collecting a few of her books for my little library shelves.  Several years later, I read her wonderful memoir, The Light of the World (which is the most beautiful and moving memoir I have ever read; it's so much more than a memoir -- it's . . . well . . .  pure poetry) (as you might expect). 

Bonny has written a terrific background piece on Elizabeth Alexander today, so be sure to check out her post. You can also read more about Elizabeth Alexander's background, accomplishments, and current work on her website. She has a fascinating story, and I hope our posts today encourage you to learn more about her - and to delve deeper into her poetry. Her words are always deep, evocative, and powerful.

The poem I chose to share with you today is one of those poems where the poet talks about what poetry IS. (I'm always drawn to poems . . . poets write . . . about poetry.)

==

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe
Elizabeth Alexander

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves
(though Sterling Brown said

"Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'"),
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I'm sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

==

Today's poem can be found in Crave Abundance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 by Elizabeth Alexander, 2010, Graywolf Press. 

==

I hope you'll stop by and "blast yourself" with more poetry by Elizabeth Alexander today . . . on Bonny's, Kat's, and Sarah's blogs.

 

Playing Those Mind Games

[Click here for a soundtrack to accompany today's post.]

Sometimes, with knitting, it's really a . . . mind games . . . kind of thing.

Will these colors work for this design?
Do I have enough yarn?
Will it fit?
Will I wear it?
Do I have the skills?
Can I persevere through the hard parts?
 . . .  and the boring parts?
And, of course, there is that whole gauge thing.

It's always nice when it works out in the end.

We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dude lifting the veil
Doing the mind guerrilla
Some call it magic the search for the grail

Yep. This time, I found THE GRAIL!

Of course, now that I've finished, spring has arrived in my corner of the world (it was in the upper 70s yesterday!), so I will be packing this sweater away until fall. 

Mind games, I tell 'ya!

(You can find all the details on Ravelry, here.)

==

A few of you asked me last week how I divide up the "progress bars" for my projects. I'm here to tell you . . . it ain't rocket science! With some projects, there are a clear number of steps (or zones or whatever), and it is easy to divide a progress bar into those steps. With other projects? It's a bit trickier. Knitting projects, for example. I mean, I know you could go through the trouble and the maths to figure out how many stitches you'd be knitting in any given project and create a bar that reflects that. But, for me, in a project, I divide it into chunks of work that make sense for me. For a top-down sweater, the project chunks generally look like this:

• Get ready: gather materials/needles, wind yarn, mark up pattern, do a gauge swatch, etc.
• Cast on and get yourself "situated" with the start
• Divide for sleeves
• Body
• Sleeve 1
• Sleeve 2
• Cast off, weave in ends, block

Of course, those project chunks are not equal in terms of time and effort, but . . . they work to move the project forward anyway.
(So, basically, I fudge it.)
Hope that helps.

==

Be sure to hop on over to Kat's for more Unraveled posts today.

Better Together . . . C'mon Along

"For most people, what is so painful about reading is that you read something and you don't have anybody to share it with. In part what the book club opens up is that people can read a book and then have someone else to talk about it with. Then they see that a book can lead to the pleasure of conversation, that the solitary act of reading can actually be a part of the path to communion and community."
        --bell hooks

Some books . . . just cry out . . . to be discussed.
You can't just read them alone, and then keep them to yourself. 
You need to talk about it!

And that's what's so great about a book group.

Keep that in mind as we reveal our next Read With Us title . . . 

NPR has this to say about Shuggie Bain (2020's Booker Prize winner):

"Shuggie Bain is a novel that cracks open the human heart, brings you inside, tears you up, and brings you up, with its episodes of unvarnished love, loss, survival and sorrow."
        -- NPR Interview with Douglas Stuart, Author, November 14, 2020

So, yeah.
It's kinda dark.
It's kinda long.
It's sad.
And very real.

But it's . . . So. Dang. Good.

And it will be even better when we share it together! Shuggie Bain is one of those books that cries out . . . to be talked about. Preferrably with friends. (And maybe with a glass of wine. Your call.) I hope you'll take a chance on this book with us. It may not offer an everything-works-out-in-the-end kind of read, but it will make you feel all the feels.

The book is currently available on Kindle for $8.67, and it's recently been released in paperback as well ($14.30 for Prime members). My local independent bookstore has it on the shelf for full price, and it's also available through Audible if you'd prefer to listen. I was able to pick it up right away at my library. It is a little bit longer than any of our previous Read With Us selections, so you may want to get your hands on the book sooner than later. (I will say that it's quite compelling, and once you get started, it reads pretty quickly.)

We'll be talking more about the book and providing some background information later in April and May. Then . . . mark your calendars now for our blog book discussions AND a Zoom discussion on Tuesday, June 8 (probably 6:30pm Eastern time; Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel).

I hope you'll c'mon along. 
Read with us!
And then . . . let's talk about it.

==

Previous Read With Us book selections:

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Fever by Mary Beth Keane

I'm Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam