Poetry Friday III, or Poetry Saturday I

I had an email from my new friend, poet J. Patrick Lewis asking, with even more kind ruffles and flourishes, if I’d post the following poem he wrote in time for tomorrow, Saturday, April 4, School Librarian Day.  I said certainly, after stopping to wonder which comedian gave the poor school librarians a Saturday instead [...]

Poetry Friday II: More on the case for memorizing

It never fails.  Just as I press “publish” and even add a few quick edits to my Poetry Friday post this morning, I stumble across something new on the same subject.  I was delighted to see in today’s sneak peak of The New York Times Sunday Book Review Jim Holt’s essay on the case for [...]

Poetry Friday: Festival entries

Happy first Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month 2009!
To celebrate the occasion, and also how well the kids did this week at the Music/Speech Arts festival, I have a selection of the poems they recited.  Davy (age eight) recited “Mother Doesn’t Want a Dog” and “The Brook in February” by Canadian poet Charles G.D. Roberts [...]

Happy National Poetry month!

Begin your month of poetry over at GottaBook with Gregory K. and his 30 Poets / 30 Days celebration.  Today’s poet is America’s first children’s laureate Jack Prelutsky with “A Little Poem For Poetry Month“.
Today is also the official kick-off of poet Robert Pinsky’s Poems Out Loud blog.  Unofficially, Mr. Pinsky’s been blogging since Monday.
Updated [...]

National Poetry Month 2009: Essential Pleasures

Poetry is like peace on earth, good will toward men.  It’s something we should read and enjoy year-round, not just in spring and all, but for many of us, without the extra effort of a special day or month, it gets rather lost of the shuffle of daily living.
National Poetry Month is celebrated both in [...]

Poetry Friday: Is it truth you want?

More Phyllis McGinley, from her collection, A Pocketful of Wry (1940). This is a poem she wrote in response to a news item, which nowadays is nowhere to be found online. I can’t find any mention of the American Library Survey Report she mentions, which I suspect may have been an American Library Association [...]

Poetry Friday: Down the human road

I don’t know what made this poem jump into my head this week. It’s one of Phyllis McGinley’s most powerful, I think, and I have no idea whether she was inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous quotation, “I have seen gross intolerance shewn in support of toleration” from his 1817 essay, “Blessed are ye [...]

Poetry Friday: The February hush

The February Hush
by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911)
Snow o’er the darkening moorlands,
Flakes fill the quiet air;
Drifts in the forest hollows,
And a soft mask everywhere.
The nearest twig on the pine-tree
Looks blue through the whitening sky,
And the clinging beech-leaves rustle
Though never a wind goes by.
But there’s red on the wildrose berries,
And red in the lovely glow
On the cheeks [...]

Poetry Friday II: Be Mine

excerpt from
Love-songs, at Once Tender and Informative –
An Unusual Combination in Verses of This Character
by Samuel Hoffenstein (1890-1947)
Maid of Gotham, ere we part,
Have a hospitable heart –
Since our own delights must end,
Introduce me to your friend.
—–
If you love me, as I love you,
We’ll both be friendly and untrue.
—–
Your little hands,
Your little feet,
Your little mouth –
Oh, [...]

Darwin 200: Day 5: Poetry Friday

A twofer, featuring excerpts from an 1802 poem by Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin; his last work, the volume was published posthumously. You can find the entire work here.
The Temple of Nature:
Or, The Origin of Society:
A Poem, with Philosophical Notes
by Erasmus Darwin
Canto I
Production of Life
I. BY firm immutable immortal laws
Impress’d on Nature by the [...]

Darwin 200: Day 3 III: More Radio Darwin

CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition program finally has available for online listening their show from last Sunday, February 8, which includes ” ‘Darwin’s Ghost,’ a collection of interviews, characters, songs, poems and other stimulating bits about the legacy of Charles Darwin”, and other “debate, discussion and dissection of Darwin” with Brian Alters, Director of Evolution Education [...]

Poetry Friday: Old Abe in the marble and the moonlight

“Reflection” by Bob Staake, The New Yorker, November 17, 2008 (psst…click on the cover if you’re a fan of Mr. Staake’s artwork)
*  *  *
In celebration of the upcoming bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln, a poem for a President who loved poetry,
Lincoln Monument:  Washington
by Langston Hughes
Let’s go see Old Abe
Sitting in the marble and the moonlight,
Sitting lonely [...]

Poetry Saturday: Updike and light verse, with detours through science and suburbia

I was so keen yesterday to slip Phyllis McGinley’s January admonition into the very last Poetry Friday of the month that it didn’t even occur to me to give the late John Updike his due as poet, let alone light versifier; the poet Robert Wallace once called his friend “clearly the preëminent American light-verser of [...]

Happy birthday, Edgar Allan Poe

Another bicentennial to celebrate this year: Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809.
The fine folks at Naxos Audiobooks, whose Junior Audiobooks selection we are especially fond of, are offering a free download of Poe’s The Raven:
The Raven (MP3 file, 8 mins., 2.9 MB)
*  *  *
And, also from Naxos for another bicentennial, a free download of [...]

Poetry Friday

I was going to skip Poetry Friday today (yet again…) because we’ve been busy, and I’ve been away from the computer, with the Farm Curl (the kids are curling with Tom and two others), a birthday party that suddenly  materialized for tomorrow, and writing 4H speeches, but then I saw that Karen Edmisten is hosting [...]

“A true and precious stone”

I wasn’t going to go through this week’s New York Times “Books Update” newsletter which arrived yesterday by email, but I’m glad I reconsidered this morning, for there in my inbox was Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978).
Because Miss McGinley is the mind behind “The Year without a Santa Claus”, which was originally the following:

and also several other [...]

Poetry Friday: Lights and trees and snow

Hard to believe we’ve been back for little over a week. The kids had a full 4H weekend, the older two at a public speaking workshop on Saturday (to help prepare for the big public speaking event in February) and all three at a volleyball tournament all day Sunday. Davy, who’s one year [...]

Poetry Friday: A thousand whirling dreams of sun

Langston Hughes has been on mind all week.  I think he would be amazed and agog and joyful at the election results. One can only imagine what he might have been inspired to write. Throughout the course of his life (1902-1967), Hughes wrote movingly, painfully, and honestly about blacks in America, in poetry, plays, essays, and [...]

Vigil

Some links for Remembrance Day 2008:
I’m at least two days late in writing about Vigil 1914-1918, which began this past Tuesday. Vigil 1914-1918 is a project from noted Canadian actor and director R.H. Thompson and lighting designer Martin Conboy to mark the 90th anniversary of the armistice.  From November 4 through November 11, the names [...]

Chosen

I lied. I thought I’d avoid election eve results but between my own overwhelming curiosity and Laura’s, we’ve been glued to the computer since coming home from curling; we have only the two Canadian TV stations and neither is covering the election until the late evening news. Laura is madly and gleefully filling in [...]