A Poem A Day

[brokenclay]

 

The Journey of the Magi

by T. S. Eliot

 

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

 

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

 

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

[brokenclay]

 

The Emptiness of Thought

by James K. Zimmerman

 

this morning I felt my life

as if you were dead

 

the expansiveness of the bed

the birds still singing

 

the remnants of the smell

of coffee in the morning

 

the emptiness of thought

the deafening silence of my heart

[hh1990]

 

Old Love - Pat Mora

 

When my aunt died,

my uncle raised his hands

like a prophet in the Bible.

“I've lost my girl,” he said,

“I've lost my girl,” over and over,

shaking his head.

 

I didn't know what to say,

where to look,

my quiet uncle raising his voice

to silence.

 

My aunt was eighty-seven.

“Listen,” my uncle said, sighing

like a tree alone at night,

“women know.

Every midnight on New Year's Eve,

when others sang

and laughed and hugged,

your aunt looked at me,

tears in her eyes.

Sixty years.

She knew.

One day, we'd kiss good-bye.”

[brokenclay]

 

Grandmother Speaks of the Old Country

by Lola Haskins

 

That year there were many deaths in the village.

Germs flew like angels from one house to the next

and every family gave up its own. Mothers

died at their mending. Children fell at school.

Of three hundred twenty, there were eleven left.

Then, quietly, the sun set on a day when no one

died. And the angels whispered among themselves.

And that evening, as he sat on the stone steps,

your grandfather felt a small wind on his neck

when all the trees were still. And he would tell us

always, how he had felt that night, on the skin

of his own neck, the angels, passing.

 

[HogwldFLTR]

A few years back I decided to write a poem per day. Woody Guthrie's a song per day was my inspiration. It lasted for six months until I had a health trauma that affected my attitude and writing. I've not restarted. Anyone else tried doing this? Curious about your success?

 

-Lee

[hh1990]

 

Sonnet 60 - William Shakespeare

 

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

[brokenclay]

  On 1/9/2021 at 2:59 PM, HogwldFLTR said:

A few years back I decided to write a poem per day. Woody Guthrie's a song per day was my inspiration. It lasted for six months until I had a health trauma that affected my attitude and writing. I've not restarted. Anyone else tried doing this? Curious about your success?

 

-Lee

Expand  

 

I've never aspired to actually writing a poem, but the exercise of finding a poem I like everyday is nudging me in that direction. Early on in this thread, both @Sailor Kenshin and @inkstainedruth said they had gone through periods of writing poems; perhaps they will chime in.

[brokenclay]

 

Soundings

by Robert Wrigley

 

The birdhouse made from a gourd is wired

to a flanged loop of steel and screwed to the southeast post

of the shack. Two holes at the top—near where the stem was,

for a thong of leather to hang it by, which long ago broke—

are now the fingerholes of the mournful wind instrument it’s become.

The broad round bowl of it makes a sort of birdly

basso profundo that pearls through the steel, into the post,

the floor joists and walls in two notes: a slightly sharp D

and an equally sharp F, says the guitar tuner,

which explains why all my thinking these days

is in B-flat, a difficult key for all but the clarinet

and this sudden covey of nuthatches, whose collective woe

makes it a minor chord I am in the middle of.

Nothing to do but hoist such silks as the luff

of limbs and needles suggests, and sail on,

the barely-escaped-from-the-cat chipmunk chattering

like a gull, and the mountain’s last drift of snow

resembling the back of a sounding whale. Hear the thrum of the rigging,

Daggoo? Hear its profoundest woo, its sensible gobbledy-goo

and doo-wop, the boo-hoos of the spheres, by vectors and veers,

by tacks and refractal jabberings, taking us deeper into the weirdness

of the ghost sea those prairie hills were the bottom of once,

this nowhere we shall not be returning from.

Draw the lines! Assume the crow’s nest, Pip. This ship

sails on music and wind, and away with birds.

 

[HogwldFLTR]

  On 1/9/2021 at 5:09 PM, brokenclay said:

 

I've never aspired to actually writing a poem, but the exercise of finding a poem I like everyday is nudging me in that direction. Early on in this thread, both @Sailor Kenshin and @inkstainedruth said they had gone through periods of writing poems; perhaps they will chime in.

Expand  

Thanks for the reply; I'm not certain if posting original poetry here is OK or not? Also I quite like the idea of posting other's poetry as a mechanism of getting back to reading poetry and getting inspiration!!! 🍷 Cheers!

[brokenclay]

  On 1/9/2021 at 7:04 PM, HogwldFLTR said:

Thanks for the reply; I'm not certain if posting original poetry here is OK or not? Also I quite like the idea of posting other's poetry as a mechanism of getting back to reading poetry and getting inspiration!!! 🍷 Cheers!

Expand  

Please do! I started this thread for exactly the reasons you state, and would love to read others' original poetry.

[Madeline]

  On 1/9/2021 at 2:59 PM, HogwldFLTR said:

A few years back I decided to write a poem per day. Woody Guthrie's a song per day was my inspiration. It lasted for six months until I had a health trauma that affected my attitude and writing. I've not restarted. Anyone else tried doing this? Curious about your success?

 

-Lee

Expand  

 

Welcome to FPN!  I am impressed by your earlier efforts to write a poem a day. That's amazing!  I've never been able to write more than one a week and even that's been challenging (but my 2021 resolution is to return to that idea :-)  When I am able to keep up that kind of discipline, I am always surprised by the results.  Definitely worth the effort!

 

And I hope you'll pen some for us here in this thread.  Just one caveat.... If, later on, you decide to submit any of your poems for publication consideration in a journal or magazine, keep in mind that many or most literary journals will not consider work already published online (in any online venue, even a personal blog).  Personally, I feel that perspective of publishers is rather extreme, but it's worth noting if you are looking ahead to formal publication of your work at some point in time.

 

In any event, keep writing!

 

~M

[HogwldFLTR]

  On 1/9/2021 at 8:46 PM, Madeline said:

 

Welcome to FPN!  I am impressed by your earlier efforts to write a poem a day. That's amazing!  I've never been able to write more than one a week and even that's been challenging (but my 2021 resolution is to return to that idea 🙂 When I am able to keep up that kind of discipline, I am always surprised by the results.  Definitely worth the effort!

 

And I hope you'll pen some for us here in this thread.  Just one caveat.... If, later on, you decide to submit any of your poems for publication consideration in a journal or magazine, keep in mind that many or most literary journals will not consider work already published online (in any online venue, even a personal blog).  Personally, I feel that perspective of publishers is rather extreme, but it's worth noting if you are looking ahead to formal publication of your work at some point in time.

 

In any event, keep writing!

 

~M

Expand  

Thanks for the encouragement!!! To quote Jimmy Buffet, my New Year's resolution is to make no more resolutions!!! (j/k, sort of.) At any rate I write on the computer so it's not quite the same as the old days when I was in school and would write in long hand and then would type up the finished poems. The computer is a one step easily edited approach. I'll see; maybe I can transcribe some of the ones I've already typed into long hand. One other thing, I considered the project of a poem a day like a school assignment to write on a topic. I figured I could always open a dictionary and pick a word as a subject for a poem.

 

-Lee

Edited January 9, 2021 by HogwldFLTR

[HogwldFLTR]

 

"The Christmas Story"

 

Somewhere in a small desert town,

A man searched for a bed, his wife to lay down.

From inn to inn they searched in vain,

'til none were left, not one remained.

 

To final keeper he pleaded at last,

My wife's with child her time comes fast.

We need a place where we can stay,

A place where she and child can lay.

 

"All I have is out in back,

It's with the animals, a little shack.

Not much more than on the road,

Nothing, not meant as human abode."

 

So there they stayed on that first yule,

Some walls to shelter them from winter cool.

The child born was laid in a trough,

Made out of wood, the texture rough.

 

"Nor what I wanted," he said to her,

It's as it should be," she tried to assure.

Her temperament, so kind and sweet,

Even without a meal to eat.

 

Camped outback some visitor stopped by,

Young shepherd, looking to the night sky.

Were told by strangers to go and see,

The future king of the land to be.

 

Perhaps it was the peace she showed,

That helped to call them from the road.

Or was it the child's inner light,

That brought them there that winter night.

 

They gave what they could to help the three,

Food and blankets, on that first nativity.

Little had they to offer as they were poor,

The simple shed, not much for sure.

 

From humble beginnings the story starts,

Little to bring hope to our hearts.

Few would believe that from that beginning,

A savior born, man's redemption winning.

Edited January 10, 2021 by HogwldFLTR

[inkstainedruth]

  On 1/9/2021 at 2:59 PM, HogwldFLTR said:

A few years back I decided to write a poem per day. Woody Guthrie's a song per day was my inspiration. It lasted for six months until I had a health trauma that affected my attitude and writing. I've not restarted. Anyone else tried doing this? Curious about your success?

 

-Lee

Expand  

Well, I haven't done a long stint the way you have, but for the past several years I've taken part in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month).  The woman who came up with the idea has a website http://www.napowrimo.net, and every day for the month of April (actually starting on March 31 for "early birds" in other time zones -- I think it may be international at this point -- she posts a prompt: it could be a theme a style of stanza, whatever.  And you can (but you don't have to) use the prompt as a jumping off point (maybe pointing to some piece that relates to the prompt).  Then the next day, she will post the next prompt and also posts a link to someone's website or blog so you can see how that person "interpreted" the prompt.  Someone had posted about NaPoWriMo in a thread here, and I've been doing it since at least 2016.  Last year, because that was just after Pennsylvania went Into lockdown mode for the pandemic, I was especially prolific -- 36 poems and a first draft at another one in 31 days.  

I don't always follow the prompts, or I might go at them obliquely.  But it's a good challenge and I have learned about different forms (especially ones from non-Western cultures.  And it gives me another reason to use my pens and inks.    (Back in college of course I used a typewriter; but there have been studies that writing by hand on paper with a pen or pencil will stimulate parts of your brain in ways that typing/keyboarding don't.)

Not all the poems are, of course good.  But I've been surprised at how well some of them have turned out, to the point I'm actually considering, at some point, setting up a blog of my own, and also maybe attempting to send some out for publication -- something I hadn't done since I was in college and taking writing classes (I ended up minoring in Creative Writing) after placing out of Freshman English -- my first advisor suggested I take a poetry writing class because I had written some for my high school literary magazine.  And actually had one poem published in a small press magazine when still a freshman; of course I didn't know that they HAD accepted it till I received my (one) free contributor's copy....

If you like, I can dig out the file I started of previous years' prompts.  Some of them are, well, odd (such as writing a poem using the titles of books on the shelf next to you), but the idea is to be a spark to the creative process.

Admittedly, Aprils have mostly been a creative spark time, with long lulls in between.  But I actually wrote one (a fairly long one) last week.  I can't post it here (it's VERY political, so a no-no by forum rules) but I actually got up the nerve to send it to the local newspaper, which has started publishing poems on Sunday on the same page as Letters to the Editor (I have been mentally daring them to publish it because it *is* so political -- and VERY different in political viewpoint from that of the current owners...).  So, we'll see.  It may go nowhere, but I've done it.  Emailed it to the Sunday the other night. If they don't take it, maybe I'll post it to Facebook....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[HogwldFLTR]

  On 1/10/2021 at 4:05 AM, inkstainedruth said:

Well, I haven't done a long stint the way you have, but for the past several years I've taken part in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month).  The woman who came up with the idea has a website http://www.napowrimo.net, and every day for the month of April (actually starting on March 31 for "early birds" in other time zones -- I think it may be international at this point -- she posts a prompt: it could be a theme a style of stanza, whatever.  And you can (but you don't have to) use the prompt as a jumping off point (maybe pointing to some piece that relates to the prompt).  Then the next day, she will post the next prompt and also posts a link to someone's website or blog so you can see how that person "interpreted" the prompt.  Someone had posted about NaPoWriMo in a thread here, and I've been doing it since at least 2016.  Last year, because that was just after Pennsylvania went Into lockdown mode for the pandemic, I was especially prolific -- 36 poems and a first draft at another one in 31 days.  

I don't always follow the prompts, or I might go at them obliquely.  But it's a good challenge and I have learned about different forms (especially ones from non-Western cultures.  And it gives me another reason to use my pens and inks.    (Back in college of course I used a typewriter; but there have been studies that writing by hand on paper with a pen or pencil will stimulate parts of your brain in ways that typing/keyboarding don't.)

Not all the poems are, of course good.  But I've been surprised at how well some of them have turned out, to the point I'm actually considering, at some point, setting up a blog of my own, and also maybe attempting to send some out for publication -- something I hadn't done since I was in college and taking writing classes (I ended up minoring in Creative Writing) after placing out of Freshman English -- my first advisor suggested I take a poetry writing class because I had written some for my high school literary magazine.  And actually had one poem published in a small press magazine when still a freshman; of course I didn't know that they HAD accepted it till I received my (one) free contributor's copy....

If you like, I can dig out the file I started of previous years' prompts.  Some of them are, well, odd (such as writing a poem using the titles of books on the shelf next to you), but the idea is to be a spark to the creative process.

Admittedly, Aprils have mostly been a creative spark time, with long lulls in between.  But I actually wrote one (a fairly long one) last week.  I can't post it here (it's VERY political, so a no-no by forum rules) but I actually got up the nerve to send it to the local newspaper, which has started publishing poems on Sunday on the same page as Letters to the Editor (I have been mentally daring them to publish it because it *is* so political -- and VERY different in political viewpoint from that of the current owners...).  So, we'll see.  It may go nowhere, but I've done it.  Emailed it to the Sunday the other night. If they don't take it, maybe I'll post it to Facebook....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Expand  

Hi Ruth,

 

Thanks for the reference of NaPoWriMo; I wasn't aware of it. As you said regarding yours, not all my poems were good or interesting. When I was doing this I was publishing them on my Facebook account for friends to read. I've not been able to keep at it since.

 

The one I posted above was written during my stint. Not perfect but i like it. I know that as I was transcribing it to hand written ink yesterday, I made changes which I think were for the better.

 

A few years ago I bought my Surface Book which is primary personal computer. During that time, Microsoft also introduced their Studio which is a pretty unusual creative platform. They stressed the advantage of writing on it as a method of creativity which doesn't come with a keyboard by fully engaging the the creator. 

 

I too placed out of Freshman English but my advisor at the time wanted my in her Freshman class. I was so turned off by the class and its rudimentary nature that I stopped attending and ended up with a "D." This was 1970 so I wasn't feeling particularly constrained by conventional norms.

 

I was looking for information on the site about politics. I tend to be a bit political in my opinions with a significant liberal bent. I'm glad you mentioned this as it's easy in poetry to target those I feel strong about. Thanks for the heads-up.

 

My first poem was published when I was still in grade school in the schools publication; it was a Shakespearean sonnet a form which I've always found easy to work with. I also had a number published in college back in my English days before I moved on to Science and Engineering. I started as an English major and ended as a Chemical Engineer. My dad too was an English major graduating from Dartmouth in 1930. He died in '83. He was Editor of Jacko, the Dartmouth humor magazine while he was there.

 

At any rate, thanks for the input and response. I appreciate your taking the time.

 

-Lee

 

[brokenclay]

Time for Brecht...

 

 

from Svendborger Gedichte

by Bertolt Brecht

 

II

 

In den finsteren Zeiten

Wird da auch gesungen werden?

Da wird auch gesungen werden.

Von den finsteren Zeiten.

 

In the dark times,

Will there also be singing?

There will also be singing.

About the dark times.

 

VI

 

Du der du, sitzend im Buge des Bootes

Siehest am untern Ende das Leck

Wende lieber den Blick nicht weg

Denn du bist nicht aus dem Auge des Todes.

 

Seated up at the boat's bow, as you

See the leak at the other end

Better not turn your eyes away, friend

For death can also see you.

 

 

[Madeline]

Thank you for this one!  If anyone would have a sense of these times, it would be Brecht.  I'm going to hold onto that idea of the "singing"....

 

 

 

[txomsy]

"But where there's a will there's always away, "

 

Aren't you missing a space between "a" and "way" there?

 

[HogwldFLTR]

  On 1/11/2021 at 8:38 AM, txomsy said:

"But where there's a will there's always away, "

 

Aren't you missing a space between "a" and "way" there?

Expand  

Thanks; I'll edit it. I'm always cleaning these up after I post. Edited now!!! I'd also caught a couple of my "they're/their/there" mistakes earlier. Some times I just can't see the trees for the forest.

  Quote

 

Expand  

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by HogwldFLTR

[txomsy]

There is Art in saying without saying. Your poems reminded me of this one from Blas de Otero

 

 

 

EN EL PRINCIPIO
Si he perdido la vida, el tiempo, todo
lo que tiré, como un anillo, al agua,
si he perdido la voz en la maleza,
me queda la palabra.
Si he sufrido la sed, el hambre, todo
lo que era mío y resultó ser nada,
si he segado las sombras en silencio,
me queda la palabra.
Si abrí los labios para ver el rostro
puro y terrible de mi patria,
si abrí los labios hasta desgarrármelos,
me queda la palabra.

 

IN THE BEGINNING
If I've lost the life, the time, everything
that I threw away, as a ring, to the water,
if I've lost the voice among the thicket,
I still have the word.
If I have suffered thirst, hunger, everything
that was mine and turned out to be nothing,
if I have reaped the shadows in silence,
I still have the word.
If I opened my eyes to see the pure and terrible
face of my homeland,
if I opened my lips until I torn them apart,
I still have the word.

 

 

Sorry for meddling. Sorry for the blob and terrible hand. It's freezing here (now, talk of lame excuses...)