Put A Poem In Your Pocket
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Kamy Wicoff wants She Writers to put poems in their pockets today, and to spread them all over town. Today my six-year-old son is going to school with a poem in his pocket. It's the last day of National Poetry Month, and every child in his kindergarten class will travel that way this morning, carrying words arranged in lines against their bodies. I love to think that he awoke with poetry on the brain (he wrote his own, about a poet who is eaten by a snake before he can finish reciting his poem about snakes), and I wanted to pass it on: if you didn't already know, it's Poem In Your Pocket Day, She Writes! And what better day or way to celebrate our shared passion for the written word than participating in this ingenious celebration, and sharing our Poem-In-Your-Pocket hi jinks with one another?
Because to tell you the truth what really caught my fancy on the positively joyous website of The Academy of American Poets (if you haven't spent time there, do) was the suggestion that each of us spend a day out in the world with pockets stuffed full of poems -- poems on paper, no less, poems you can run between your fingers, inky poems for real -- and unfold them, guerrilla style, all over our daily paths through life. I plan to do a drop in my local bagel shop, at Jamba Juice, in the subway, in my office building, in elevators, in restaurants, and on the street. I will carry a roll of tape and a camera with me (also known as my phone), so I can share photos of the poems where I leave them throughout the day. I hope you will consider doing the same, and post photos and anecdotes of your experiences strewing poems like word-flowers on the streets. Which poems will you carry with you? Tell us! Where will you leave them? Show us! And if you need pocket-sized poems ready for printing, check out the Academy's Poem In Your Pocket Printable PDFs. What a wonderful tool!
And along those lines, a final, hopeful thought. I feel buoyant in another way today. Around these parts (New York, New York, in case you didn't know), there is a lot of talk about the end of reading, the demise of writing, of literature under attack. And while the villains in this narrative are numerous -- the corporatizing of publishing, chain bookstores, TV -- one frequent target, the Internet, with its lightning-fast assault on the senses, its short-attention-span theater, and its cacophonous chatter, often looms largest as the enemy of real writing, the kind that takes years, the kind you can't come by cheaply. And yet consider what I did in the space of an hour this morning. I listened to a podcast of She Writer Mary Jo Bang reading from The Eye Like A Strange Balloon. I downloaded the Poem Flow iPhone app from poetry.org. I stumbled upon a video of my first real poetry teacher, Naomi Shihab Nye, who introduced me to the art as a ten-year-old in San Antonio, Texas, reading "One Boy Told Me," a poem composed of true utterances made by her toddler son. I visited the lively, vibrant poetry groups on She Writes, featured some of the poetry videos you have uploaded in honor of the day, browsed the 183 blogs posted here that use the word "poetry," and communed with fellow She Writer Wickham Boyle on her Memory & Movement blog, where she is chronicling her efforts to learn poems by heart while walking.
In other words: what wondrous good this online treasure chest of poets, poetry and poems brought me today, in ways that would have been unimaginable not so long ago. I don't always love what the Internet brings to my life. Words like noise, exhaustion, overstimulation, and junk do sometimes come to mind. But today one word pushed all others aside. Gratitude.Share
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What a poem! Thankyou thankyou thankyou
Here's a poem I wrote for my 84 year-old mother. I gave it to her while we were in Trader Joe's yesterday but I can't upload the pic I took of her reading it!
my mother sits in the passenger seat
bewildered
she frantically names the world
as we speed through it
she is from a slower time
where she stopped to admire
color, texture, form, scent
now she is hurled along boulevards
bowled past buildings
she grasps and flings nouns and adjectives
they trail
bright confused flares
as we fly the freeway
how the ancestors would fear us
we do not sing
our worlds into being
we ignore them
intent on destination
where we will stay for an hour
and then return
through torn landscape
unwitness
trees and hills and sky
aghast
that we do not see
do not hear
do not smell or touch
bounded only by the fury of tarmac
and my mother struggles
to honor the world
that moves faster
than birds
the white flowers
that cover the hillsides
the waves creaming endlessly
at Zuma Beach
the green of leaves
and we occasionally stop
and nod
vacantly staring
into cell phone horizons
unaware that the miracle
is an 84 year old woman
in size four sandals
bending her white head
over a pink rose
http:/
You can find the poem below. Roger then put my poem in his pocket.
xoxo S
This is a day late, but it's still Poetry Month until tomorrow, and I had a poem in my pocket today in Santiago, Chile. I was on my way to Pablo Neruda's house when a woman gave me a poem written by a student at Universidad de Chile. I stuffed it in my pocket and opened it up to read while I was having lunch and a beer at a cafe in the Bellavista neighborhood.
I was in the airport, heading home from a quick trip to Las Vegas. I scribbled down an impromptu page of impressions from the trip - here it is on a slot machine in the terminal. I tucked it into the seat-back pocket of my Southwest flight to amuse the next traveler. Thanks, Kamy, that was fun!
Maggie
http:/
If brevity is
the soul of lingerie, why,
haiku are panties.
Alle C. Hall
About Childhood
http:/
Originally published in the lit mag "Swivel."
Thanks for reading
Alle C. Hall
http:/
Most of the photos are Cliff's, and the captions mine; in haiku.
Blow off a little work. Have a laugh. Life is short. -AC
Here's an excerpt from T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton -- I've always loved its wistfulness:
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Hi - I did take a Mary Oliver poem, "The Journey," on a walk today. I have been doing a lot of walking and quite often I am thinking about mindfulness and being in the moment - Thich Nhat Hanh. Today, I decided to take Mary Oliver with me on a walk as her poems so often describe birds, deer, ponds she encounters on her route. And, always she encounters herself. She seems to live in the moment each day as she ventures out into nature that surrrounds her. I live in a city -Toronto - so the birds are fewer, but the flowers are abundant. It has been a spectacular spring so far! I too feel and touch the nature that surrounds me.
I am so happy to participate in this day of celebrating poems! Thank you for suggesting it...join me on the journey:
"The Journey" - Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop . . .
. . . as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world.
determined to do
the only think you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
---
Also, there is a favorite/funny/charming YouTube video - link: http:/
Karin
Here's one - not the one I left on the college campus my son attends.
http:/
Here's a poem I posted today, as well as having shared a physical copy, or several, today and over past few days.
I have posted it with photos at http:/
For Charlotte, Soft and Strong, Who Often Wondered Why She Was Still Here
By Iris Arenson-Fuller
No photo, but a poem anyway:
Adverbial Ketchup
Assemble some words, all your favorite words,
your biggest and best, most delicious of words;
Grind them with verb sauce, and odd punctuation,
Pepper with rhyme (to suit the occasion)
Then, if you will, some adjective yeast,
To bubble and build to a metaphor feast:
Rising unchecked o’er the brim of your brain,
spilling, and spreading, again and again--
poetry dough to be punched, to be kneaded,
to be stretched, to be strained, to be coaxed, to be wheedled,
and shaped at long last into poetry stuff,
some rich with thought and some with pure fluff,
but poems in makeable, bakeable form,
wrenched from the oven-- and read while still warm.
Mary McElveen
April 2010
My Roger friend is a Jester.
He has a pocket full of rubble from Haiti
Where he caused little children and grown men to jump up and down with laughter.
He poured some of the rubble in to my left hand.
It is exactly like the big pieces left among the dusty remains of my friend Joan
when I ran my hands through what was left of her.
I poured the rubble back in to the vial he carries it in.
Dust on palm, the impression of someone else’s life left upon mine.
Rumi talks about fire and water.
One transform us, one heals us.
Which will you choose?
Which cleansing will take you out of your horror and fear to
Reveal the naked beauty of you?
Will you, while considering your dust, your fire, your water
step beneath the flowering crabapple to let the laden boughs
rest pink on your forehead,
to bury yourself in spring?
Suzi Banks Baum
April 29, 2010
I posted this with photos on my website www.laundrylinedivine.com
If you are interested in Roger, follow the link on my website to his blog- he posts photos and video of his work in Haiti. Pass it on, if you like
Now, I will write the poem out and find someone to give it to.
Thank you for this great opportunity.
Love, S
A windy day on the Promenade of Brooklyn Heights:
Alter? When the hills do.
Falter? When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.
Surfeit? When the daffodil
Doth of the dew:
Even as herself, O friend,
I will of you!
Emily Dickinson
Deborah, thank you so much for posting Wild Geese! It's one of my all time favorites, and I haven't thought about it in a while. Perfect.
Love this day! This is what I wrote in my blog where I posted a poem yesterday to print for today.
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Wish I had known about this day when my children were younger--have fun!
This blogger put my own poems in my pocket, by unexpectedly illustrating them... she's amazingly beautiful...
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AMEN sister!!! I love picturing your little one off to school today with words in tow. And here's another one for your pocket, a gift from me to you, and one of my faves:
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.