I sipped my morning tea today while dunking a just-made-yesterday spicy gingerbread biscotti. As the book title in the Unsplash photo by lilartsy says, “Life is good.”
Tabatha has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at her blog with the fantastic name: The Opposite of Indifference.
Pomegranates are one of my very favorite fruits. Mom was an adventurous eater, and she did everything she could to pass this along to my brother and me. Whenever an unusual fruit or vegetable showed up in our small-town Safeway grocery store, she would buy it for us to try. Good memories.
Now it’s time to savor this week’s poetry offerings! Click here to add your link, and enjoy all the goodies! (EDITED TO ADD: Please forgive the messy, ad-filled link up. I could not for the LIFE of me get Mr. Linky to cooperate. I should have just gone old school.)
EDITED TO ADD: I can’t stand this linkup. Here are the links without you having to wait five seconds to see the blog post. Ugh.
Heidi gave the Inklings a tough challenge this month. She suggested that we use the “The Lost Lagoon” by Mohawk poet, Emily Pauline Johnson (d. 1913) “to build your own poem FOR CHILDREN about a treasured place that you return to again and again (geographical or metaphorical).”
The first thing I did was copy the poem into my notebook and “unpack” the poem the way we used to do weekly in my classroom. As you can see, there’s a LOT going on in this poem!
What wasn’t hard was picking my topic — the swimming pool. What WAS hard was writing a poem “FOR CHILDREN.”
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings interpreted Heidi’s challenge:
There are my favorite bells in music, “The Bells of St. Geneviève”…
…and my favorite bells in film…
…and my favorite classic bell poem which contains my favorite bell word: tintinnabulation. (I so wanted to include that word in my own bell poem, but it was not to be.)
I was all over the place trying to write my bell poem this month, but my drafts kept getting closer and closer to my heart, until this memory emerged:
Carol Wilcox, at Carol’s Corner, has this week’s final Poetry Friday roundup. Let’s hold her, and all of those in the Denver area who are reeling from the recent wildfires, close in our hearts.
There are bound to be lots of bell poems around the roundup, ringing in the New Year. I can’t wait to read them all! Check out what the other Poetry Sisters came up with:
Buffy Silverman has the Christmas Eve edition of the Poetry Friday roundup. Thanks, Buffy! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and to those who don’t, Happy Solstice!
Next Friday, the Poetry Sisters will be showcasing our poems that feature bells. Do join us, please!
Photo credit: Martin LaBar, Creative Commons photo on Flickr
Today I picked up my copy of Amanda Gorman’s new book, CALL US WHAT WE CARRY. I’ve only dipped in to browse, and I can’t wait for time to curl up on the couch and savor every single word. This sampling via The New Yorker takes my breath away.
It’s that time again. Six months have passed since last we queued up to host the Poetry Friday roundups.
UPDATE: THE SCHEDULE IS FILLED! If you missed out this time, stay tuned for July
What is the Poetry Friday roundup? A gathering of links to posts featuring original or shared poems, or reviews of poetry books. A carnival of poetry posts. Here is an explanation that Rene LaTulippe shared on her blog, No Water River, and here is an article Susan Thomsen wrote for the Poetry Foundation.
Who can do the Poetry Friday roundup? Anyone who is willing to gather the links in some way, shape, or form (Mr. Linky, “old school” in the comments, or ???) on the Friday of your choice. If you are new to the Poetry Friday community, jump right in, but perhaps choose a date later on so that we can spend some time getting to know each other.
How do you do a Poetry Friday roundup? If you’re not sure, stick around for a couple of weeks and watch…and learn! One thing we’re finding out is that folks who schedule their posts, or who live in a different time zone than you, appreciate it when the roundup post goes live sometime on Thursday.
How do I get the code for the PF Roundup Schedule for the sidebar of my blog? You can grab the list from the sidebar here at A(nother) Year of Reading, or I’d be happy to send it to you if you leave me your email address.
Why would I do a Poetry Friday Roundup? Community, community, community. It’s like hosting a poetry party on your blog!
Little grey dreams holding up the hawk: a blur in the periphery. I’ve little time left. Everything’s been said. My heart is so giant this evening following old migratory patterns that would have been better left alone. Someone raised a camera to capture us both in a moment; the only gift I have to give.
Molly’s challenge for the Inklings this month was to try a poetry form that was new to us. I tried a tricube, a rondelet, and this cento. The definition of a cento (from poets.org) is “From the Latin word for “patchwork,” the cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets.”
I was downstairs in my “studio,” doing some stitching and catching up on episodes of The Slowdown podcast. Rather than using a concrete/old school approach (poring over books of poetry, copying down lines by hand, cutting them apart, and rearranging them into a poem), I used a digital approach (listening to the poem, copy/pasting the line I liked, and hyperlinking the poem in my list of sources).
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met Molly’s challenge:
Michelle has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at her blog, Michelle Kogan. She’s celebrating holidays and happy poetry news along with some of her gorgeous cards and several poems!
Take note…next week I’ll put up the signup for Poetry Friday Roundup Hosts for January-June 2022! Get ready to claim your spot!
Yesterday’s Ode to Thanksgiving is perhaps a more proper ode (even though it starts off angry and critical) in that it directly addresses Autumn, and focuses narrowly on a single autumnal event: Thanksgiving.
This Ode to Autumn, on the other hand, is really only an ode because I say so in the title. Poet’s prerogative.
Here’s how the rest of the Poetry Sisters met the challenge of writing an Ode to Autumn: