Prompt #372 – The Cherita

As summer stretches on, and the heat continues where I live, it's nice to have an easy prompt to relax with and to write from. Accordingly, I've culled some info from the Net about a form of poetry called the Cherita. Here's hoping you'll find it an enjoyable "summer form."

The "Cherita" is a creation of ai li, the founding editor of "still: home for short verse," and now its independent e-zine offshoot "dew-on-line." 

Cherita [pronounced CHAIR-rita] is the Malay word for story or tale. A Cherita consists of a single stanza verse, followed by a two-line verse, and then finishing with a three-line verse. It can be written solo or with up to three partners. The Cherita tells a story. More can be found about the cherita's origin, on the still website at still: home for short verse Here you will find examples of ai li's cherita, and others, by looking under the section "linked forms" and under that for "Cherita."

“Cherita forms its own plural just ad “haiku” and “tanka” do.

For additional info on this form, please visit www.thecherita.com.

Believing that the reading of the form surpasses any effort to explain it, here are a few examples by some of the Cherita's first and finest practitioners. 

 

Two Cherita by Larry Kimmel

his clothes to charity

unpacking the suitcases
of the vacation no longer awaited

finding
the Valentine meant
for today
__

 

after seeing you off

taking the path along
the canal

a rustle of
leaves
underfoot

Copyright © Larry Kimmel 2007
__

 

Two cherita by ai li

 

drifting paper boat

the rain
on banana leaves

indoors
by an open window
poet
__

 

Copyright © ai li 2002-2007

 

Two Cherita by Sheila Windsor

 

the agoraphobic's room

along the windowsill
porcelain dolls

perfectly aligned
and smiling
at any passer-by
__

 

 

Two Cherita by Ed Markowski

wildflowers unfolding

in a field between two
sagging barns

she reassures me
"it's so much better
than a room at the Drake."
__

Benny's Diner

"the blue plate special, meatloaf
mashed, a wedge of cream pie

$4.99-5765
off at ten,"
the waitress winks

Copyright © ed markowski 2007

Suggestions:

1. Have fun writing a cherita or two. It’s that simple! Read some cherita, get an idea of the form, and then try writing some. Enjoy!

 

 

Prompt #371 – Condense, Condense, Condense

 

Here we are in the "dog days" of summer, and where I live, we're just beginning to move toward a respite from extremely humid, 95º+ days. I find myself looking forward to autumn! In weather like this it's hard to concentrate on writing, and perhaps even harder to work on refining poems already written. This prompt will revisit one from the first year of the blog that I hope will be helpful to you, whatever weather you may be experiencing.

In poetry, condensing and compression are about making poems more compact and less wordy. They are skills that enable poets to use the fewest possible words and to extend beyond literal understanding into nuances and associations that offer deeper meanings. In poetry, less really is more. As Dylan Thomas wrote, "The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps ... so that something not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in." Those holes and gaps can't happen in an overwritten poem.

 

In the earlier prompt I mentioned an interesting article that presents a view toward boosting awareness of condensing in our poems. From the article (http://poetry.about.com/od/poems/a/ginsbergsentenc.htm):

 

"Allen Ginsberg was a full believer in condense, condense, condense – which is a Pound dictum..." 

 

The article continues (and this is what caught my attention), "Check Allen's poetry for articles (remember "a," "an," "the"?) and you'll see where he starts – these bitty words all but disappear in his work, which not only condenses but gives a rushing sense of immediacy to his work." The article goes on to discuss Ginsberg's reaction to haiku, a genre that I credit with teaching me much about condensing and compression. Ginsberg's answer to haiku first appeared in his book Cosmopolitan Greetings in the form he called "American Sentences." According to Ginsberg, an American Sentence is simply one sentence that contains seventeen syllables (the writing of which is a great way to focus on condensing and compression). 

 

So here goes – our prompt this week is to create American Sentences in the manner of Allen Ginsberg, and then to look at our already-written poems with an eye toward condensing and compressing them. 

Before you begin, be sure to read some American Sentences online and become familiar with how they work.

Suggestions:

1. Pick 3-5 topics (anything that catches your fancy).

2. Write an American Sentence on each topic you chose (have fun with this and be aware of how you condense  and compress).

3. After you've written a few American Sentences, take a look at some of your already-written poems. Think about how you might condense and compress to improve them.

4. Are there unnecessary prepositions that you can lose?

5. Are there articles (a, an, the) that you don't need?

6. Are there conjunctions (and, but, although, when, while, yet, because, for, until, etc.) that your poems can live without?

7. Do you include more details than necessary? Do you "tell" with words rather than "show" with effective imagery? The best [poems show without overt telling.

8. How can you condense and compress to create greater immediacy, energy, and power?

Prompt #370 – Choice or Chance

 

In looking back at some of the prompts from years ago, I came across this one (based on a Robert Frost poem) that I thought might be interesting to revisit during these hot July days. We've all made decisions in our lives that we either bless or regret. Frosts's "The Road Not Taken" is about the process and the repercussions of making choices. I’ve always loved this poem for its symbolisms, accessibility, and universal appeal. This one of the best known and most often quoted of Frost’s poems. There is, of course, much more to this poem than a surface understanding reveals.

For this week’s prompt, “The Road Not Taken” will be our inspiration poem. Before beginning, please give it a read.  

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken

 

As you read, note that one of the poem’s fascinations is its archetypal dilemma. Be sure to note that it is later in his life that the narrator looks back, reflects upon the meaning of choice and chance, and marks this decision as a defining moment in his life.

Suggestions:

Frost’s poem is about actual and figurative roads, and the fork in the path is an extended metaphor for making choices.

1. Write a poem about a metaphorical road that you didn’t take. Not the choice you made, but the one you didn’t. “Forks in the road” and “roads” seemed clichéd today, so be sure to create other symbolisms and metaphors for making choices that are fresh and new.

2. Write a poem about a “road not taken” in your life? Have you ever had to make a decision and then wondered much later how making the other choice might have impacted your life? Do you have any regrets?

3. Some analyses claim that Frost’s poem is about lost opportunities. Write a poem about a lost opportunity in your life?

4. Write a poem about the complexities of choice making. How do you feel about choice and chance?

5. Write a poem about a time that you had no choice.

Other Examples: 

 

“Choices” by Tess Gallagher

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178872

“The Decision” by Jane Hirschfield

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/181480

Guest Blogger Yvonne Zipter "Healing the World, One Poem at a Time"

For this post, I'm very happy to introduce you to poet Yvonne Zipter. I first encountered Yvonne's poetry when I saw the cover of her book Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound and knew that I had to read the poems inside. Her publisher, Diane Lockward of Terrapin Books (www.terrapinbooks.com), kindly sent me a review copy, and I was immediately struck by Yvonne's skill and spirit. Here's a brief except from the review I wrote (Tiferet, Autumn/Winter 2020): 

 

“It isn’t often that a book cover is so visually stunning that a potential reader is immediately captivated. Sometimes, however, a book’s contents don’t measure up to the cover. In this case, Yvonne Zipter’s poems do not disappoint! Her work is extraordinarily rich in metaphor and meaning and skillfully crafted in language that is both compressed and compelling. The poems in this collection come to bear on love, loss, and grief—things the poet has been forced to learn about herself, things we are all, ultimately, required to learn.”  

 

Yvonne is the author of the poetry collections Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound (https://www.womenandchildrenfirst.com/book/9781947896291), The Patience of Metal (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), and Like Some Bookie God. Her poems have appeared in numerous periodicals over the years, and her published poems are currently being sold individually in Chicago in two vending machines to raise money for the nonprofit arts organization Arts Alive Chicago. She is also the author of the nonfiction books Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend and Ransacking the Closet and the Russian historical novel Infraction. She appears in and provided some narration for the documentary A Secret Love about All-American Girl Professional Baseball Player Terry Donahue and her long-time partner Pat Henschel. Retired from the University of Chicago Press in 2018, where she was a manuscript editor, she lives in Chicago with her wife and their former racing greyhound.  

 

 

Healing the World, One Poem at a Time 

 

I have long suspected that poetry is healing. As long ago as forty years, after my mother died at age forty-one when I was twenty-four, I started processing my grief through poetry. A lot of it wasn’t good poetry, but even those lousy poems gave me some place to put my pain and figure out how to move on. It was also a way of keeping my mother alive for myself in some small way—our happy moments together as well as the tough ones, when she got sick—and a way of sharing with others what a wonderful woman she was. But mostly, especially in the beginning, it was a way for me to find comfort in the face of unthinkable loss. To put it another way, writing poetry can create a sense of control or order over what otherwise seems like chaos. 

 

It’s not only writing poetry, however, that can be healing for the psyche, but reading it can be as well. Anecdotally, I once had a young college student write to me that a poem of mine about incest helped him realize he was not alone in that experience. Therapists Phyllis Klein and Perie Longo echo this experience, saying, “When we read a poem that speaks to our experience, there is a shift, a click within. Someone has understood our darkness by naming their own. We feel less alone.”  

 

The National Association of Poetry Therapy actually publishes an entire periodical devoted to research on the use of language arts in a therapeutic capacity: the Journal of Poetry Therapy. At the association’s website, there is a short history of poetry therapy, in which the unnamed author points out that it was not uncommon for witch doctors and shamans to chant poetry during religious rites intended to promote well-being. But my favorite bit of the history given there—or should I say bite?—is that, “in ancient Egypt, words were written on papyrus and then dissolved into a solution so that the words could be physically ingested by the patient and take effect as quickly as possible.” To the best of my knowledge, no one has physically ingested one of my poems!  

 

Poetry isn’t just helpful in dealing with psychological trauma. It can also help with physical pain. Psychiatrist and poet Robert Carroll writes about research that has shown that expressive writing can result in a reduction of symptom complaints by patients and can decrease physiological stress. Physician and poet Rafael Campo says that one of the ways that poetry can heal “is through the rhythms in poetry. There’s actually some science to back this up. Much like meditation, when we hear rhythmic language, when we read poetry aloud, our breathing and our heart rates synchronize. So just as meditation might be beneficial for certain health conditions, the same can be said of poetry.” 

 

It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, writing or reading poems is far from being a cure-all. Obviously, writing a poem is not going to fix a blocked artery or get rid of a malignancy. But even with psychological issues, poetry writing can only do so much if those issues of very deep (think: Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton). Nevertheless, poetry can be very helpful in a variety of ways, as indicated above.  

 

Poetry also makes for better doctors—which can make for better medical outcomes. McMaster University, some years ago, created a literary companion for pediatric residents there. In the introduction to the list of recommended readings for doctors, they say that “exposure to creative works allows for development of skills essential for the practice of medicine, especially empathy.” (As an aside, I’m proud to say that the list—which is divided into different areas of medicine—includes a poem of mine: “Osteosarcoma: A Love Poem.”)

 

Rafael Campo concurs that poetry can make for better doctors, saying: “I don’t think of poetry as an irrelevant diversion. I think it’s central to how we can best treat our patients. How we can heal. We doctors, who deal with life and death every day, who look into the eyes of people who are in pain, who are dying, or who are giving birth and having one of the most joyous experiences of their lives, need the humanities to help us make meaning of those experiences for ourselves, and for our patients. That to me is what being a healer truly is.” Campo so strongly believes in the healing power of poetry that he edits the “Poetry and Medicine” section of the Journal of the American Medical Association.  

 

Books on the subject of poetry and both physical and psychological healing abound, with literally thousands of books on the subject listed at Amazon, including collections of poems that address varying medical conditions, such as Alzheimer’s and breast cancer, as well as other stressful occurrences. One such collection, for example, Poetic Medicine in the Time of Pandemic: A Collection of Poems from around the World, sought to gather poems from various countries in “an international effort to unite humanity in a fight against Covid-19.”  

 

The pandemic has without a doubt been a traumatic health crisis for many worldwide, inflicting both physical harm and psychological pain. But what has had me thinking lately about poetry and how it can heal has been my own personal journey during the latter half of 2020. Smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, I ended up developing a partially collapsed lung from pneumonia and being diagnosed, as well, with early-stage ovarian cancer. Through two hospital stays over twelve days and through most of my time during chemotherapy treatments, my wife was not allowed to visit because of Covid precautions, making a scary series of events even more difficult.  

 

Certainly, the kindness and competence of my many doctors and nurses eased some of my anxiety. But I feel confident saying that I was able to deal with all that I had to go through because I was writing poetry through much of it. I also strongly suspect that I had an easier time with chemo than many people do because I could pour my fears, my confusions, and my small moments of victory into poems. And the poems, in turn, let me share with friends and family what my experience was like, and in a more profound way than I could have if I’d only provided them with the facts. From the procedure to implant a port in my chest (for the delivery of the chemo into my veins) to the procedure to remove it, months later, I documented nearly everything—including probably far too many poems in which I fixated on losing my hair and getting it back!  

 

While some of the poems were written directly on the heels of whatever they addressed, letting me poetically vent about the good and the bad of it all, others have needed months to take shape, the PTSD of some things requiring time on my part to process them. For instance, surgery for the cancer took place in August of last year, but there were no poems specifically on that topic until I wrote “Valedictory for My Womb” in December. And the pain of two or more blood draws every day for my eight-day hospital stay in July for the collapsed lung wasn’t documented until I wrote “Night Nurse” in April of this year. The point is, even when it takes months or years to be able to write a poem confronting an event, the work they do in terms of bringing some closure is no less powerful.  

 

As social worker Phyllis Klein says, “Because a poem has a border, a frame, or structure, as opposed to prose, the form itself is a safety net. Strong emotions will not run off the page.” This holds true for the poet no matter her skill level, as well as for those who read the poems, looking for comfort, for understanding, for shared experience.

References

Robert Carroll, “Finding the Words to Say It: The Healing Power of Poetry,” Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2, no. 2 (June 2005): 161-72, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1142208/.

Harvard Medical School Community, “Imagination and Healing,” March 27, 2019, https://hms.harvard.edu/news/imagination-healing.

Phyllis Klein and Perie Longo, “The Therapeutic Benefit of Poetry,” nd, https://phyllisklein.com/writing-for-healing/the-therapeutic-benefit-of-poetry/

“McMaster Paediatric Residency Literary Companion,” nd, https://www.macpeds.com/documents/MacPeds_Literary_Companion_11JUL16.pdf.

“History of NAPT,” nd, https://poetrytherapy.org/History.

_______________________________________________

 

To order a copy of Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, 

 

CLICK HERE.

Prompt 369 – This Is Not Grand Theft Poetry!

Hi Everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve posted regularly. An aged iMac (15 years old) has had a lot to do with that. Happily, I’m now working on a refurbished iMac that belonged to a former college professor and friend. When he and his wife got new computers, he had this one fixed up for me, and it’s a joy to work on. Of course, there are things I still have to learn, and I don’t have Office on this machine. As you will note, I'm still not completely adept at formatting yet. I’ve been plodding along but figuring things out at the same time. 

 

Sadly, two very dear poet friends, Vincent Tripi and Laura Boss, passed away recently. Neither had Covid, but the losses, coming during the pandemic, have been disturbing. I haven't written much in the last few months, and I just happened to remember a form called the Cento. We’ve worked with it before on the blog, and just “playing” with a few cento poems helped me to recharge enough to write a couple of new (not cento) poems. 

 

Sometimes, it’s fun to revisit an old post and try it out in a new year. This year, with Covid’s specter looming over all of us, has been both challenging and frightening. Finding inspiration isn’t always easy but, often, another poet’s words can be a rich source of inspiration. Cento derives from the Latin word for patchwork (as in a patchwork quilt). In poetry, a cento is a kind of collage poem made entirely of lines taken from poems by other authors. The rules are simple: no more than one line may be taken from any one poem; any number of quotes is acceptable; and centos may be lined, prose poems, or any form that strikes your fancy. Though some poets adapt this form to include borrowed lines from other poets’ work along with lines of their own, a true cento is composed only of lines from other sources.

 

Remember that “borrowing” other poets’ words is typically regarded as an honorific practice when the work is well done and sources are properly credited. Be sure to provide credits (usually at the end of your poem).

 

Historically, the cento is ancient. Early Greeks built poems from such works as The Iliad and The Odyssey. Roman poets composed centos taken from the works of Virgil, and Renaissance poets worked with lines from Petrarch and Cicero. Modern cento forms include variations (i.e., a single borrowed line that’s echoed throughout a poem), and today’s centos are often witty or ironic. 

 

One of the things that appeals to me about the form is that reading poetry by other poets is part of the process, we read and write all within the space of a poem.

 

Remember, this isn’t a prompt about “grand theft poetry”—it’s a prompt about how other poets’ writing can inspire your own.

 

  

Guidelines:

1. Centos are reasonably easy to “put together.” For this prompt activity, create a cento based on a particular idea or theme (don’t simply collage randomly—start with a subject idea in mind). Using a poetry anthology is one way to get started. Read some poems and write down any lines that particularly strike you (be sure to include the poets’ names and the titles of the poems in your notes so you’ll know the poems and poets from which the lines you use in your cento originated). Alternatively, the Internet offers many poetry sites at which you can look for poems by poets or by titles and themes. Another place to look for inspiration might be in any copies of poetry journals that you have handy.

 

2. At some point, be sure to read “The Dong with the Luminous Nose” (a cento by John Ashbury that takes its title from Edward Lear and includes lines from poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, T. S. Eliot, and Lord Byron, (http://dougkirshen.com/dong/start.html), and "Ode: Salute to the New York School 1950-1970" by Peter Gizzi, http://www.jstor.org/pss/20132337).

 

3. Next, read some poems by other poets (time-honored or more contemporary).

 

4. Let yourself be inspired gently—take whatever suggestions the poems you read might have to offer, but don’t be locked into anything. 

 

5. Spend a lot of time, “playing” with the ideas you gathered from other people’s poems. Where do they lead you? What moments of inspiration do they bring? How can you “piggy back” from these ideas into something spectacular of your own?

 

6. Be sure to reject anything that doesn’t fit the poem you begin to write and make sure that each line you use is taken from a different poem.

 

7. Remember that, although you’re assembling a selection of lines from various poems, your poem must make sense. This is important!

 

8. Keep your poem short, don’t ramble.

 

9. After you’ve written a draft, look for “lifeless” parts of the poem and delete or rework them.

 

10. In the end, your new poem should bear little or no resemblance to any of the poems from which you’ve borrowed lines. 

 

11. Be sure to list each poet’s full name and the name of the poem from which you’ve borrowed. this can be done at then end of your cento (see the example below for one way to do this).

Tips:

1. Think of poetry at the line level.

2. Work on associative thinking and making connections among various poems.

3. Pay attention to tone, syntax, and mood.

4. Think about context, arrangement, and form in writing.

5. Examine how art can be disassembled and reassembled to create new works of art. 

Examples:

That Was by Adele Kenny

That was the real world (I have touched it once),

which, though silent to the ear,

licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

where wings have memory of wings…

Ah, sweet! Even now in that bird’s song,

even now I may confess,

we are what life made us, and shall be –

more glory and more grief than I can tell.

All pleasures and all pains, remembering –

(I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret).

These are the years and the walls and the door.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,

(long after the days and the seasons)—

better by far that you should forget and smile.

I lift my eyes in a light-headed credo,

then let you reach your hat and go.

Acknowledgments:

Line 1: (Edwin Muir, “The Labyrinth”)

Line 2: (Percy Busshe Shelley, “Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici”)

Line 3: (T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)

Line 4: (William Butler Yeats, “Upon a House Shaken by the Land Agitation")

Line 5: (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Blessed Damozel”)

Line 6: (Alexander Pushkin, “I Loved You”)

Line 7: (Algernon Charles Swinburne, “At a Month’s End”)

Line 8: (Emily Bronte, “Stanzas”)

Line 9: (Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning”)

Line 10: (Dylan Thomas, “From Love’s First Fever To Her Plague”)

Line 11: (Elizabeth Bishop, “Visit to St Elizabeths”)

Line 12: (William Wordsworth, “Resolution and Independence”)

Line 13: (Arthur Rimbaud, “”Barbarian”)

Line 14: (Christina Rossetti, “Remember”)

Line 15: (Seamus Heaney, “ Remembered Columns”)

Line 16: (Hart Crane, “The Bridge”)

Perfect (a cento)

By Wendy Rosenberg

I put you into my memories on purpose –

a balm for the nerves –

the notion of some infinitely gentle thing.

You do not have to walk on your knees

like a willow swept by rain.

Beauty is momentary in the mind,

conceived in a wordless encounter

by means of a searching pause.

We all have reasons for moving –

I never knew survival was like that.

I would like to be the air –

more like a memory of heaven

and certain certainties.

Your face sounds like that.

Let me hear every perfect note.

_____________________________

Line 1: Julia Cohen “In the Dark We Crush”

Line 2: Alberto Rios “Coffee in the Afternoon”

Line 3: T. S. Eliot “Preludes”

Line 4: Mary Oliver “Wild Geese”

Line 5: Wallace Stevens “Peter Quince at the Clavier”

Line 6: Wallace Stevens “Peter Quince at the Clavier”

Line 7: Naomi Mulvihill “Poetry”

Line 8: Naomi Mulvihill “Poetry”

Line 9: Mark Strand “Keeping things Whole”

Line 10: Ada Limón, “Before”

Line 11: Margaret Atwood: “Variation on the Word Sleep”

Line 12: Li-Young Lee “Discrepancies, Happy and Sad”

Line 13: T. S. Eliot “Preludes”

Line 14: Julia Cohen “In the Dark We Crush”

Line 15: Jonathan Wells “Love’s Body”

From Whatever Happens (Tiferet, 2016). Reprinted by permission. Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.

https://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happens-Wendy-Rosenberg/dp/0692812709

 

 

National Poetry Month 2021

Established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month begins on April 1st and runs through April 30th. The largest literary celebration in the world, this month-long celebration of poetry is held every April “to widen the attention of individuals and the media to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern.” During April, poets, poetry lovers, publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, and schools throughout the United States celebrate poetry.

 

One of the challenges of NPM is to read and/or write a poem every day. So ... in the spirit of the observance, as I’ve done for the past several years, I offer you a prompt re-visit that I hope will be inspirational for each of April’s thirty days.

 

Guidelines:

 

1. Each day, think about the key word (in caps next to the date).

 

2. Then click on the link and read the poem—one each day of the month. Let each day’s poem inspire you.

 

3. After thinking a bit about the content of the poem you read, identify something in that poem that “strikes a chord” for you.

 

4. Working from that “chord,” try to write a poem of your own that somehow incorporates the key word (doesn’t have to be exact) and which may or may involve content similar to the example poem.

 

5. I’ve deliberately made some leaps in the ways my key words sometimes differ from the content of the poems to which I’ve matched them—take some leaps yourself!

 

Tips:

 

1. Don’t feel compelled to match your content to the examples’—in fact, do just the opposite and make your poems as different as you possibly can. The inspiration titles and the example poems are only intended to trigger some poetry-spark that’s unique to you, to guide your thinking a little—don’t let them enter too deeply into your poems, don’t let their content become your content.

 

2. Let your reactions to the key words and poems surprise you. Begin with no expectations, and let your poems take you where they want to go.

 

3. Give the topics your own spin, twist and turn them, let the phrases trigger personal responses: pin down your ghosts, identify your frailties, build bridges and cross rivers, take chances!

 

4. Keep in mind that writing a poem a day doesn’t mean you have to “finish” each poem immediately. You can write a draft each day and set your drafts aside to work on later.

 

5. Whatever you do this month, find some time (a little or a lot) to enjoy some poetry!

 

 

 April 1—REMEMBRANCE

“If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda

http://allpoetry.com/If-You-Forget-Me

 

 

April 2—THE COLOR RED

“The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams

http://allpoetry.com/The-Red-Wheelbarrow

 

 

April 3—AGING

“When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats

http://allpoetry.com/When-You-Are-Old

 

 

April 4—PEACE OF MIND

“Where the Mind Is Without Fear” by Rabindranath Tagore

http://allpoetry.com/Where-The-Mind-Is-Without-Fear

 

 

April 5—SOUND or SOUNDS

“Echo” by Christina Rossetti

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8449151-Echo-by-Christina-Georgina-Rossetti

 

 

April 6—MUSIC

“I am in Need of Music” by Elizabeth Bishop

http://allpoetry.com/I-Am-In-Need-Of-Music

 

 

April 7—A DAY TO REMEMBER

“A Golden Day” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

http://allpoetry.com/A-Golden-Day

 

 

April 8—BEING ALONE

“Alone Looking at the Mountain” by Li Po

http://allpoetry.com/Alone-Looking-at-the-Mountain

 

 

April 9—HAPPINESS

“A Moment of Happiness” by Jalal al-Din Rumi

http://allpoetry.com/A-Moment-Of-Happiness

 

 

April 10—LOVE

“April Love” by Ernest Christopher Dowson

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8509781-April-Love-by-Ernest-Christopher-Dowson

 

 

April 11—BIRDS

“Birdhouse” by Diane Lockward

http://www.versedaily.org/2010/birdhouse.shtml

 

 

April 12—PATTERNS

“Patterns” by Amy Lowell

http://allpoetry.com/Patterns

 

 

April 13—RAIN

“The Rain” by Robert Creeley

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171562

 

 

April 14—BOREDOM

“Dream Song 14” by John Berryman

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176994

 

 

April 15—NAMES

“The Naming of Birds” by Edwin Romond

http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=2173

 

April 16—INDIFFERENCE

“Twilight” by Henri Cole

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/247914

 

 

April 17—ROMANCE

“The Romantic” by Gerald Stern

https://poets.org/poem/romantic

 

 

April 18—LISTENING

“The Risk of Listening to Brahms” by Michael T. Young

http://www.rattle.com/the-risk-of-listening-to-brahms-by-michael-t-young/

 

 

April 19—CHANGES

"The Moment I Knew My Life Had Changed" by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

http://www.inspirationalstories.com/poems/the-moment-i-knew-my-life-had-changed-maria-mazziotti-gillan-poem/

 

 

April 20—WAKING

"Why I Wake Early" by Mary Oliver (Audio)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4O_QcpJlzc

 

 

April 21—FAILURES

“Failure” by Philip Schultz

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2007/10/failure.html

 

 

April 22—PROMISES

“Family Promises” by Laura Boss

https://laurabosspoet.wordpress.com/poems/

 

 

April 23—FAMILY MEMBERS

“Fists” by Joe Weil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq1wYgavJ2U

 

 

April 24—LIFE

"The Yellow Brick Road" by Donna Baier Stein 

http://www.saintjulianpress.com/donna-baier-stein---the-yellow-brick-road.html

 

April 25—FAITH

“Breakfront” by Bob Rosenbloom

http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=180

 

 

April 26—THE FUTURE

“To the Next Centuries” by James Richardson

http://www.thenation.com/article/next-centuries/

 

 

April 27—SPRING

“Spring” by Christina Rossetti

http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=3668

 

 

April 28—MAGNOLIA BLOSSOMS

“Dear Magnolia Blossom” by Grace Marie Grafton

http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=3439

 

 

April 29—ANIMALS

“Hedgehog” by Paul Muldoon

https://www.best-poems.net/poem/hedgehog-by-paul-muldoon.html

 

 

April 30—MORNING

“On The Pulse of Morning” by Maya Angelou

https://poets.org/poem/pulse-morning

 

 

 

Happy National Poetry Month!