During this season of giving, many of us are thinking about gifts of one kind or another. Have you ever thought about what gifts mean, why we give them, how giving and receiving gifts makes us feel? This week, let's write about gifts.
Here are some suggestions:
1. What is the most special gift you've ever received? Was the gift something tangible, or was it a spiritual gift? Write a poem about it.
2. What is the most special gift you've ever given? Write a poem about it.
3. Write a "gift" poem addressed to someone special. (Think about gifting your poem to the person who inspired it.)
4. Write a poem about a simple gift with a large meaning.
5. Write a poem about the spiritual gifts of Chanukah or Christmas.
6. Memories can be metaphorical gifts. Read "At Christmas Time," a poem about "Christmases past." Does the poem "speak" to you? If so, try using it as a model for a poem of your own.
7. If you could give a gift to the world, what would it be? Write a poem about this gift. (Alternatively, what gift would you give to someone in your life, someone in need, a special friend?)
8. Read Sara Teasdale's "The Gift." Have you ever given a similar gift that you might write about?
Great prompt for this time of year! We're all rushing about buying, wrapping, etc., and this prompt asks us to stop and reflect.
ReplyDeleteThere's a nice little poem about the gift of friends at this site: http://www.netpoets.com/poems/friends/1359003.htm
Thanks, Bob's Mustangs, for your comment. Thanks, too, for the friendship poem - it's lovely.
ReplyDeleteThis poem might not be an example of a traditional Christmas gift. It's possible to view it as a gift of a mother's love and the retun of that gift in the form of a snug fit of a casket. This was a traditional burial. Relatives and friends would have been amazed if it were anything else. My mother would have been as amazed as anyone else. The form of burial and service might be the most significant part of that type of gift.
ReplyDeleteTO KEEP
How do you pick out a bed?
My wife and I went to Macy’s
and opted for firm and cushy.
We charged it big time, ten
years ago, when charge cards
meant something. Tonight,
outside our window, there are
fireworks at the ballpark. Every
night, another promotion. Tonight,
it’s Roman candles and what
passes for M-80s. Our son works
in baseball, off-field stuff.
When we went to see him, there
were fireworks—mid-May, a month
and a half short of July Fourth. I
don’t get enough sleep, there are
pouches under my eyes, concentric
hemispheres, exhaustion’s ripple
effect. I take a mild sleeping pill—
dreamy, three milligram buzz. I
could be a poster boy for Lunesta—
a moon, some stars, a prescription
plan. Lunesta, Lusitania (the words
are close)—I feel torpedoed.
Imagine a room filled with beds,
a Sleepy’s showroom. Imagine, a
more protracted sleep—a room
filled with caskets. The funeral
director asks, “What kind of casket
would your mother have liked?”
I answer, “What do you think?”
She was my mother. She’d want
for herself what she wanted for
me, for my brothers—something
comfortable, warm—something
to keep the dampness out.
WOW! What a powerful and moving poem, Bloom306!
ReplyDeleteYou move from picking a bed with your wife to fireworks to a room filled with caskets, and then the "clincher" (which is the GIFT) - your mother's love! Your last stanza is absolutely stunning.
You mother would love this poem. You've returned her gift with these words. Thank you for sharing.
Jamie
Bloom306! Thank you so much for sharing your poem. Jamie's comment really says it all. A wonderful poem and a kicking last stanza!
ReplyDeleteI know this poem is in your book REUNION, and I urge readers to order a copy at
http://www.amazon.com/Reunion-Robert Rosenbloom/dp/1599246511/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291489901&sr=1-1.
To Bloom306,
ReplyDeleteGREAT poem! Thanks for posting it.
This part is especially powerful.
"The funeral
director asks, “What kind of casket
would your mother have liked?”
I answer, “What do you think?”
She was my mother. She’d want
for herself what she wanted for
me, for my brothers—something
comfortable, warm—something
to keep the dampness out."
As Adele would say, it's great "dismount."
Thanks again!
Jamie and Bob,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. I agree with both of you!
Pied Beauty
ReplyDeleteby Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
This poem is essentially a hymn of praise, but I thought of it in relation to this week's prompt because it is also a poem about God's gifts to the world. It's hard to think of "gifts" and not consider those of our Creator. In this worshipful inventory of God's "pied" creation, Hopkins acknowledges God's "gifts."
Thank you, Adele!
Máire Ó Cathail (Ireland)
The Scarf
ReplyDeleteDistinctive red lines,
grey, black and white plaids
weaved with a soft touch of cashmere
a gift -
wrapped, yet tied,
casually, but warmly, around my neck.
Blustery winter’s morning.
Sunday’s walk from the car to the church door.
This scarf comforts,
shelters me from the cold.
Like the arms of my love in the morning,
around 6 am
her chenille robe and her embrace
reassuring.
A good scarf is like the tender embrace
of a warm lover
whose intimacy carries the spirit
through a difficult winter.
Ray Brown
http://raybrown.wordpress.com
Thanks, Ray, for posting your poem! I can picture that scarf and imagine the warm feelings you describe.
ReplyDeleteTo Ray Brown,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting your poems! I really enjoy them, and this one ("The Scarf") especially touched me because I have a scarf my mom gave me the Christmas before she died. I know about those difficult winters and how memory's warm "embrace" can be healing. Thank you!
Jamie
Máire,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for the Hopkins poem and for your comments on it!
Yes, a "worshipful inventory" of God's gifts to us. How beautifully stated.
Thanks again.
CHANUKAH
ReplyDeletefor Amy,
This isn't the holiday where we eat
unleavened bread; or the holiday
where we don't eat at all and cast
our sins, through bread crumbs,
into the nearest river or lake, or
even bay, where tides carry our
transgressions out to sea alongside
oil tankers and cargo ships, as if the
sins were tug boats; it's not the holi-
day where we eat outdoors in a cloth-
and-bamboo covered booth, celebrate
the harvest with other "farmers" in our
Lefrak apartment. It's not the holiday
where we received tablets of law, or
the one where we paint our faces and
wear masks and costumes, our very
own Halloween. It's the holiday of gift-
giving, because all holidays are gifts,
our edition of Christmas, its tag-along
brother, gambling with a dreidl for pocket
change, this festival of lights and
candelabras, 44 candles to a super-
market box. It was the holiday of
melted wax which we'd ball up while
still warm and press into comic books,
then transfer the colored images of
the cartoon characters onto our mostly
hairless arms and hands. These were our
symbols of freedom from oppression, beat-
ing the odds, our week off from school.
This poem covers the gift-like nature of holidays. It's off the above gift prompts which Deborah La Veglia used these prompts at her writing workshop at Barron's last night. This is for my daughter. The poem covers a few Jewish holidays
Thank you Bob Rosenbloom (Bloom306)! Another great poem with a superb ending. I'm so glad Deborah used the prompt at Poetswednesday! Thanks for sharing! What a beautiful gift to give your daughter.
ReplyDeleteP.S. So many great images - the melted wax balled up and pressed into comic books to transfer colored images into "tattoos" is WONDERFUL - such a perfect expression of childhood!
I just discovered a wonderful poem titled "The Gift" by Li-Young Lee.
ReplyDeleteYou can read it at this website:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171752
Enjoy!
"Chanukah for Amy" is superb. Thanks for posting it, Bloom306.
ReplyDeleteTruly memorable imagery! And you're right, "all holidays are gifts."
The children in your poem could be any children at any holiday, which makes the poem one with which we can all identify. It doesn't get any better than that.
Máire Ó Cathail (Ireland)
I owe my daughter a dedication or two. On occasion she's been a first reader and editor.
ReplyDeleteDeborah La Veglia had us read the Sara Teasdale and Li-Young Lee poems in the workshop. The Lee poem, especially, helped create a mood, a child's view of things, a feeling towards a parent. I tried for a religious holiday through a child's eyes, a child growing up in Brooklyn. If I could manage identification in Manhattan or The Bronx, that'd be good. That someone in Ireland could identify with it, all the better because I've never been to Europe.Thanks to Maire for her comment and thanks to Adele for the posting(s).
For those who aren't local, Deborah LaVeglia is a gifted poet and long-time director of the Poetswednesday series at Barron Arts Center in Woodbridge, NJ. Before each monthly reading, a poetry workshop is offered. Deborah recently used this prompt for the workshop in which Bloom306 participated.
ReplyDeleteThanks Bloom306 for your poems and for your comments!
bloom306 and raybrown,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your poems. Hope you post more with other prompts!
Thanks,
Jayne