Poetry Friday: Mushrooms

It’s still Friday around here, for another two hours and 50 minutes, so technically I’m not late. It’s been a busy week, with swim club starting (requiring us to be in town four afternoons a week), an art lesson (we had just about forgotten what the art teacher looked like), and a make-up singing [...]

Poetry Friday: A little trust and encouragement

An anonymous but appropriate and still fairly well-known bit of American doggerel, near as I can figure from the 1940s or thereabouts. From our small, battered copy of the Arrow Book of Funny Poems, collected by Eleanor Clymer and published in 1961 by Scholastic:
The wind riz
And then it blew,
The rain friz
And then it snew.
Spring [...]

Poetry Friday: From the tower, for children

I was delighted yesterday to find online Alison Lurie’s New York Review of Books May 1st Rapunzel reviews and essay, “The Girl in the Tower“. Which brought to mind the delightful poem below by the late Liverpudlian painter and poet, Adrian Henri, from our copy of The Macmillan Treasury of Poetry for Children, with a [...]

Home from the hill

Well, home from three days at the peforming arts festival (piano, voice, and speech arts), which was a hill of its own.
We returned to find that it’s finally, really Spring here in our corner of the prairies. I’ve had pussy willows in a vase for a few weeks, the geese have been flying overhead [...]

A daily gift for National Poetry Month

Sherry at Semicolon is offering a post a day for National Poetry Month.  Here’s the initial post, and you can find the others by searching the blog (under the “Picture Book Preschool” block on the right) for the term “NPM”.  From Sherry’s first post,
April is National Poetry Month, and I intend to give you a [...]

Poetry Friday: Remembering Dr. King

who was assassinated 40 years ago today.
Lift Every Voice and Sing
by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing [...]

A monthlong celebration of delight and glory and oddity and light

April is National Poetry Month,

brought to you for the 13th year by the Academy of American Poets.
Why poetry? Because, as Dylan Thomas wrote in
Notes on the Art of Poetry
I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,
such staggering peace, such [...]

Poetry Friday

Nothing here today — we’ve been waylaid by the big hockey tournament in town, where we spent a good chunk of today cheering on the children’s friend and the rest of the team (they won, hurray!) — but head over to Gina at Cuentesitos, who’s hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: Oldies but goodies

Ever since the kids have each been four or five years old, they’ve been reciting poems at the speech arts part of the annual spring arts festival.
This year, the boys have one Rudyard Kipling poem and one Canadian poem each, and Laura one poem and her 4H speech. I gave the kids a small [...]

Poetry Friday

A dear friend died this week, much too young, much too painfully.
All I can come up this week is a brief excerpt from Donald Hall’s “Without”, written after the 1995 death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon, from cancer,
hours days weeks months weeks days hours
the year endured without punctuation
february without ice winter sleet
snow melted recovered [...]

Poetry Friday and Big Birthday Bash week #2: George Washington

A letter and a poem written in 1775 or 1776 to General George Washington (born on this date in 1732) from Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784):
To His Excellency
George Washington
Sir,
I have taken the freedom to address your Excellency in the enclosed poem, and entreat your acceptance, though I am not insensible of its inaccuracies. Your being appointed [...]

Poetry Friday: For Abraham Lincoln

For Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was on Tuesday, February 12th, because we don’t remember him, or his poets, as often as we did, as often as we should:
Abraham Lincoln
(1809-1865)
by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benét, from A Book of Americans
Lincoln was a long man.
He liked the out of doors.
He liked the wind blowing
And the talk in [...]

Poetry Friday: Forcing Spring

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: it’s in the -20s, with blowing snow. A very, very nasty day.
The kids are baking apple pies today for a contest tomorrow. If we can’t get out to deliver them and get them judged, well, we’ll just have to stay home and eat ‘em.

The other day [...]

Poetry Friday: A good example

The mercury has finally moved out of the bottom of the bulb and we’re enjoying a relatively balmy, sunny, and snowy -24 C today.
I have to admit the week has been rather like Christmas, minus all the baking and gifts, which is fine by me. Yesterday afternoon’s art lessons and evening’s rehearsal were [...]

Poetry Friday: Bookshelves and anthologies

When My Ship Comes In
by Robert Burdette (1844-1914)
One room I’ll have that’s full of shelves,
For nothing but books; and the books themselves
Shall be of a sort that a man will choose
If he loves that good old word “peruse,”
The kind of book that you open by chance
To browse on the page with a leisurely glance,
Certain of [...]

Poetry Friday: The Round Up Is Here

Peter Mark Roget, inventor of the slide rule but most famous for his thesaurus, boon to poets everywhere, was born on this date in 1779. In his honor, I give you not a poem but an entry:
poetry, poetics, poesy, Muse, Calliope, tuneful Nine, Parnassus, Helicon, Pierides, Pierian spring. versification, rhyming, making verses; prosody, [...]

Poetry Friday

No. 668, c1863by Emily Dickinson
“Nature” is what we see –The Hill – the afternoon –Squirrel – Eclipse the Bumble bee –Nay – Nature is Heaven –Nature is what we hear –The Bobolink – the Sea –Thunder – the Cricket –Nay – Nature is Harmony –Nature is what we know –Yet have no art to say [...]

Yo walks in beauty, like the night

The current issue of New Scientist reports on new American Speech.
To which I can only add, sure, why the hell not?
may i feel said yo
by E.E. Cummings
may i feel said yo
(i’ll squeal said yo
just once said yo)
it’s fun said yo
(may i touch said yo
how much said yo
a lot said yo)
why not said yo
(let’s go said [...]

Poetry Friday: That’s life

Lifeby Charlotte Brontë
Life, believe, is not a dream, So dark as sages say; Oft a little morning rain Foretells a pleasant day: Sometimes there are clouds of gloom, [...]

Poetry Friday: Poems for late December

An old favorite, and something new, at least to the blog.
I Heard a Bird Singby Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
I heard a bird singIn the dark of DecemberA magical thingAnd sweet to remember:
“We are nearer to SpringThan we were in September,”I heard a bird singIn the dark of December.
Time, You Old Gypsy Man by Ralph Hodgson [...]