Wanted: Your Poetic Wordle

This past week, at T. S. Poetry Press Facebook, we asked for help to make a poetic Wordle. People answered three questions, which we used as grist:

1. one of your favorite poets?
2. one of your favorite poetry books?
3. one of your favorite lines from a poem?

How about you? Would you consider Wordling, using some kind of poetic grist? What would you use?

If you decide to try it out, post your Wordle on your blog, with an explanation of what kinds of material you used to create it. Then share your Wordle with us by next Wednesday, May 18th, for definite links and possible feature at Tweetspeak Poetry. Just drop your link on the T. S. Wall.

We've already gotten some cool entries. You're cool. Can we have yours too? :)

Guy Kawasaki Starts Reading Poetry

You never know where a Twitter party will take you (or where you will accidentally take yourself during one).

Last night, TheHighCalling and Dan King hosted a party with guest Guy Kawasaki (former chief evangelist of Apple).

Okay, so I got a little tipsy and promised Guy a poem. This, to assure that he would become a reader of poetry. Or, at least a reader of one poem.

I am keeping my poetry promise. This one's for you, Guy. May it be the beginning of your poetry-reading career. (Anybody who worked with a company that chose an image for its core really needs to be reading poetry. :)

Enchanting the sky

is serious business;
that's why it's left
to Blue Morpho butterflies
(I saw one once, on a Venus night,
as I boarded a plane to leave Brazil—
it dipped down,
almost touched my face
as if to deliver
some kind of grace for a future
I could not foresee,
a future of tricolons
I'd write for a guy, a girl, a giving,
a moment at dawn,
when day would just be shaking off
the magic of Blue Morphos, Cereus,
and a crowd of winking stars.)

For the Sake of a Cheetos Lover Who Claims He Can't Write Poetry

This is just a little something for someone (no names mentioned, Duane :) who thinks he can't write poetry.


Proof

Nothing is impossible with God,
I said.

So I researched wikipedia
to gather the quintessential

information on
Cheetos (which I realized

I had mixed up with Fritos).
But aren't these crunchy

things just all the same?
And wouldn't I merely need

to hand him a rhyme, a place
in time, a couch somewhere

across the universe, where
he could let his thoughts

out of the bag? Would you say
this was easier than

making Leviathan play
on seas. Of course it is.

Now I'm simply stuck with
asking shy Duane:

a poem please?


---

Apparently, there was a Cheetos Poem Celebration, which I missed. But if you are a lover of Cheetos, or poetry, or both, you can check out the Cheetos poems here.


THIS JUST IN (From Lyla. Read the comments below to understand)





Cheeto Twist photo by Serious Eats. Used under Creative Commons licensing terms, via Flickr. Amazon Cheetos 'n LL's Books, by Lyla Lindquist. Used with amusement. :)

I Need a Simple Signal

Signaling is a technique successful leaders use to connect with various audiences— while speaking to what may look like, on the surface, one homogenous audience.

If you ask me, signaling is itself a sign. That a person has learned to work with words in an optimal way. Some people might call this "spin," and I suppose it could be. I prefer to call it wisdom, savvy, and skill.

This week over at TheHighCalling.org, Marcus called us to work with words through the practice of writing poetry. I can't think of a better way to develop a keen sense of language and learn the subtle art of signaling.

So, if you want a simple way to become a better leader, consider writing poetry. (Besides, all the cool business men are doing it.)

Words

stick in our throats,
when we haven't learned
to loosen them
with a little tea
and honey.

I Refuse to Start Another Blog

Today I got this little nudge, "You need another blog."

It was because I have so much poetry I don't know what to do with it. And I fear putting too much on my "regular" blogs. So I felt like I should start a blog just for poetry.

Ack.

I have three active blogs already (and a handful that serve more like book websites).

But I'm like a poetry teapot with more than I can hold in. I told a friend about this today, and the friend said, "So what. Put it on your blogs."

Friends are cool that way. They forget about things like audience and just want you to do what you need to do to stay sane.

Another friend sent me this little poem recently, by Samuel Menashe. It said, "A pot poured out fulfills its spout." And, hey, see the pot in the picture? Another friend sent that today.

Which is all to say, I am refusing to start another blog. And I hope you don't mind the poetry outpouring here and at my other two places. (Even if poetry is not your cup of tea. ;-)


Zombie Ontology

Why do we raise
the dead
in stories,
where half alive
they haunt us?
We run to our basements
or garage, find chainsaws
axes, mallets,
anything to bludgeon,
bleed the bodies
that chase us down,
refuse our lilies
at the tomb, where we have
wept our love for weeks,
months, years on end,
fed our hatred
of the way they come again
to eat our memories,
our very souls
that gave them, once,
a home.

Teapot photo by L.L. Barkat.

Acorns on the Way

Pound Ridge, Leatherman's Loop

The hills are littered
with acorns
scattered—moldering wheels
that could take you down
long before you look out,
over maple-cradled
waters.


Acorn photo generously lent by Susan Etole. Thank you, Susan! :) Photo below by L.L.



This post is for One Shot Wednesday.

I Found My Sticky Writing in Bed

I wanted to write. But I felt empty of words. So I sat on my bed, opened How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry, and started... reading.

The author was talking about his first brush with grief poetry— the image of Achilles with his face in the dirt. The image stuck. So much so that when the author dealt with a friend's death years later, Achilles somehow consoled him.

"Poetry is a stubborn art," the author concluded. By this he meant that poetry refuses to let humanity go. It sets down a record of our deepest feelings. It gives us a place to lay our heads.

I sat in bed and thought about this. I thought about my struggle to write poetry. I realized I needed to let my poetry be a stubborn art.

It was raining, and I'd just been reading a poem in David Wheeler's upcoming book. You wouldn’t/ believe all the water teeming/ in the cracks of our streets/ ...We/could almost be swept away. The rhythm of rain was on my mind. I could almost feel it moist-tapping my skin.

So I began with the rain and this is what came (see below). Other poems, perhaps more stubborn and sticky, followed.

In the end, I found my sticky writing in bed. This wasn't on Heath & Heath's "how-to" list. But as Linda noted in one of her recent comments to me, sometimes a quiet place is where we find our best words, a place to lay our heads.

Aubade, October

I must hear my way
to the rain,
falling,
what do you do
when the rain is falling,
and whispered night comes early,
covers apples
in the orchard, red, unspoken for,
falling, falling...
like the rain.


Autumn Trees at Pound Ridge, photo by L.L. Barkat.

---

Over at TheHighCalling.org we're reading and discussing Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Heath & Heath. Want to join us? :)

French on Fridays: After the Rain

I listened, as she told her son in French, "Here are your shoes." I lost the rest, focused on those few words I understood.

And each time I hear a French song, my mind picks out little things I've come to know... tomorrow, I love you, doll, don't leave me. I try to cherish moments of understanding, lose myself in the music, forget to be afraid of all I still don't know.

Today, the words of novelist Anthony Trollope echo my hopes for me and French. "A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules." Yes, yes. I want this to be true. And so I whisper to my French, Tomorrow, I love you, doll, don't leave me.

Here is another phrase I am tucking away, part of my small daily task of study. I will keep it, to whisper as I need...

Après la pluie, le beau temps. After the rain, good weather.


Après la pluie,
le beau temps

After the rain,
après la pluie. After.
Après the weight of grey,
words that stray, slant,
sending swallows
(hirondelles) to hemlock
arms— sway,
spring, sway. After
the rain, après.
Le beau temps come.
Good weather hurries in,
on heels of wind. So
they say.

---

Want to participate in French on Fridays, but don't know French? Type any English word here and get a translation into French. Include your word in a poem or vignette. Or just write about anything French (music, history, art, food). We're flexible. If you feel comfortable doing so, link back here in your post. That way we have a meeting place.

Making April Educational (and fun)

She woke me early to say, "I made breakfast for you!"

What a treat on April Fool's Day. A perfectly guileless action: waffles with blueberry compote and syrup, compliments of my Littlest.

We smiled around the sunny breakfast table, and I announced my sudden idea. "Hey, did you know it's National Poetry Month?"

The girls admitted they'd never heard of such a thing.

We decided then and there that we'd read a poem a day for the month of April. And the girls would write a poem a day, and I would feature their poetry here (as much as possible).

My Littlest decided to write down the poem titles we've read, and their page numbers, so she can go back to them if she likes. We even had a discussion about how English poetry didn't used to rhyme (it used alliteration), but when it merged with French (a rhyming language) everything got mixed up... and now we think we should rhyme in English when, well... that's not natural (the third poem below might be struggling through that idea! :)

Happy National Poetry Month. And so we begin...

The First Day

It's the first day of April,
light shines in the window,
the National Poetry Month.
When people write poetry
whenever they can, it's
the first day of April,
National Poetry Month!

-- by Sonia, 10


Just for Me

Write one
poem every
day just
for me, me
April.

Read one
poem every
day just
for me, me
April.

Just in April,
just for me,
just for me,
me April.

-- by Sonia


Try

Try to write a poem when
when you're thinking through
something different,
when you wonder
about things; then
you can't.

Your poem pursues the subject,
gets caught, and
never turns back.
Or you can order it back,
tell it to go,
force it.

You can do it,
you can...
but-- poems don't
work that way,
not naturally.

If this is your case,
then let it go, let it
write itself out--
it'll work.

-- by Sara, 12


Sonia in the Tree photo by L.L. Barkat. Poems by Sara and Sonia, used with permission.

An Offer While Waiting

More snow today. The winter of never-ending snow.

Last week, most of the flights out of LaGuardia were cancelled due to weather (I took the picture above on my way to the airport). As I sat in the airport wondering if my flight would be cancelled next, as I waited out the delay to Pittsburgh, there were a few offers to places I wasn't going...

"Flight"

I am not,
as far as I know,
going to Raleigh Durham,
but if I want to become
someone else for a day,
maybe a lady who
goes to midnight plays
in the center of Raleigh
Durham, why I couldn't
be more in luck, because
Gate Number 5 just now
has a flight beyond
heavy snow, past fall
of white-blind night.


Snow Trees photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Kids Teaching Kids

When I was a public school teacher, sometimes I got a bit of flack over the idea that kids could teach kids. After all, reasoned certain parents, wasn't the *teacher* supposed to be teaching?

As a home educator, I get to be my own principal. And in my room, kids teach kids. Without me even asking.

Like this afternoon. My girls had a friend over, and they were secreted away in the study. At some point, my eldest popped down to the kitchen to hand me a villanelle (a challenging kind of form poem that she taught herself to write in the first place).

She thrust the paper towards me. "I taught Michaela how to write a villanelle," she said. "I told her to give me certain kinds of lines and I wrote it down for her. Here!"

I read the poem and smiled. Wow. Nobody assigned this. I wasn't even in the room when it happened. Maybe that's even part of WHY it happened. Anyway, Michaela's first villanelle...


"She Alone"

Rippling across the cool green grass,
tulip alighted on a leaf;
she gazed out the window on the mountain's stony pass

in an inkling of a wink she basked
filled with deep grief,
rippling across the cool green grass

but she among all of them was last
beyond the shifting fields of wheat,
she gazed out the window on the mountain's stony pass

but she alone could fulfill the task
to find the king of the mountain's golden seat
rippling across the cool green grass

in there among the songs of the past
but the winds of the north she could not beat,
rippling across the cool green grass
she gazed out the window on the mountain's stony pass.

by Michaela, 12. used with permission.

Katie and Sara on the beach photo, by L.L. Barkat.

When Morning Comes

The sun makes his way yet again, and I remember. I said I will write my gratitude into lines and breaks, pauses and still places of poems.

Where to keep these scribbles of awe? Maybe here. Even though I started there. All right then... the second of my "for" poems...

"When Morning Comes"

I open my mouth and breathe the day,
wish for a kiss like the one this golden
trumpet of jewelweed is getting full
on the mouth. Furry bumblebee embraces

her like there's no tomorrow. And I remember
to hold the day because it's true, there may not
be a morning after. And this is why I pause when
rusty shovel unearths rotted pit, peach long gone,

her hope for progeny emptied but now home to
red ants, tiny thousands pouring forth like honey,
spilling onto cocoa shells newly lain beneath
the hyssop, soft pink and pungent. Now I trouble

the bronze-suited honeybee who is fumbling Russian
Sage, tickling her purply-blue tongues, riding her
shining silver leaves that curl and sweat in rainbowed
mist. Shall I forget the three-leafed red maple fragment

on the stair, its green seeds like outstretched arms
now blushing dusty rose? Let me not forget these
seeds, nor the catbird who delights to echo each
whine of my clipping shears, nor the Bible leaf

relieved of yellow flower but fragrant still when I
break a spear and press it to my face. Let me not forget
the white carnation, purple aster, and the stars who
shut their eyes and sleep when morning comes.

Jewelweed and Russian Sage photos by L.L. Barkat.

Before it Was Gone

I turn the paper over and find this... musings on coming-of-age, loss, change. Somehow the very things she writes of in her own little world are the things of my world too. I swallow hard and my soul says to this twelve-year-old, "Yes, daughter, yes."

Here is what she wrote, in answer to the question someone put to her: What's the most important thing you learned this year? The woods she refers to are a place she has played with a certain set of friends for five years. Next year, the woods will still be there, but the friends won't be...

I learned that sometimes there isn't one answer I can
think of for this question. And I learned that Michaela
and Noah and Eli are not coming back next year (and
the rest will never come), and I learned that someday

I might want to go across the log and I learned that
you can't sun-cook with aluminum foil and an empty
orange juice bottle, wild mustard leaves, in the woods
and I learned that I keep trying to write about the

woods and I can't and I know even if we can go back
there with them it won't be the same. And I learned
that gardens and bridges and water catchers for plants
and building ziplines don't actually work or happen but

we do them anyway and I don't know why. Well, I do
actually, sort of. We do it because it's something to
do, but after we knew they weren't coming back it was
as if we were trying to do everything before it was gone

and I learned to teach cello and write villanelles and I
learned that sometimes answers are right in front of
you already and you just have to find them and I
learned that there are some things you can't stop...

even if you really, really want to.

Purple flower tree photo by L.L. Barkat. Poem by Sara. Used with permission.

Just Sing and Lay Your Weapons Down

One of the things I love about home educating my children is that they have time to pursue their passions. In case you hadn't noticed, both my girls are currently passionate about poetry. Maybe it's because I've taken to reading to them about it at supper time (that's another thing I love about home education... the school day is quite... flexible!) Last night we read about using the voice of 'apostrophe', which is when the poet speaks to an object as if it could answer back. They liked a poem that was addressed to a t-shirt.

After dinner, my youngest felt quite inspired and wrote a number of poems, including one to the moon. Later, sitting alone, I felt a bit teary-eyed, to see the soul of her coming through. Funny how you can live with someone and not see certain things until a just-right moment. That moment, for me, came in the silence of the house, reading Sonia's poems while she slept.


"The Time"

On a night so dark
with the moon's face
peeking out from behind a cloud
and a figure with
fire hair, on a horse,
holding a flag of
white. And the knights
lay down their
weapons to peace.


"Song"

I will play the
song for you
and then show
you how to play it.
You will love it
forever. I know that,
because I know you.


"A Feeling"

A feeling comes
from music,
one I can't describe,
but even how wonderful
the feeling is, it
will never match
up to you.


"For You"

How I do love you, I
would spend all my time
with you, making stuff
for you, helping you,
if only I had the time.


"Nothing"

Nothing bigger,
nothing bigger than
your kindness,
your presence, your talent,
nothing bigger than you.


"King"

A ring? Just
sing for me the
king. All that
nonsense about
gifts. Just sing for me
the king. A royal carriage
to an airport... deluxe
vacation; I have to
run my kingdom.
Just sing for me
the king.


"Moon Talk"

Moon, why is your name
moon? Do you have friends
of small stars and not just
the sun who sends you
light at night, for you to reflect
into your own? Moon, are you
friends with me? What is it like
to live in the sky up there so high,
do you like being admired so much
as you look down on the earth?
And moon, before you and I go to sleep,
just one more question... will you
meet with me next night? Will
you hum the Moonlight Sonata,
will you put me to sleep again?

— poems by Sonia, 9.

Crocuses photo by Sara, 12. Used with permission.

Poetry as Stress Relief

If stress causes brain damage (and we don't want that), a logical question is, how do we minimize stress in our lives?

Oddly enough, it doesn't always mean we have to change our situations. Sometimes we can't. For instance, we might have a job that's causing us stress, and we don't have other immediate options. What can we do?

John Medina, author of Brain Rules, observes that the "biggest part of successful stress management involves getting control back into your life." He says that employees need a "way out" of the stress they feel at work. This could mean reorganizing one's priorities, letting go of a few things or of our visions for perfection, or being honest with co-workers about things that need to change.

And I'd like to suggest an overlooked option— the power we gain by writing. I'm sure there is research out there somewhere that proves this is true, but I can simply say from my own experience that writing helps us shape our pain, explore our emotions, unravel and refashion our thoughts.

Writing poetry is a particularly marvelous way to do this, as we narrow everything down to the bare essentials, the center, and express it in beautiful language. This is an act of supreme control and creativity where chaos may otherwise be reigning.

If you try your hand at writing poetry for stress relief, let the people who are doing Random Acts of Poetry know about it. Maybe your work will be featured sometime. And there's nothing like sweet recognition to provide a little stress relief too.


Thanks to High Calling Blogs for sharing this Billy Collins poetry video.

RELATED:

Erica's Poetry Friday
Scot McKnight's Poetry and Kathleen Norris

Wordless Wednesday: Seasons

Autumn bleeds
fragrant, I cannot
close my senses.

Thorn photo by J. Barkat. Used by permission.

Revival

How lovely the rain,
come at last.

And the earth,
how greedy its draught.

Oh my soul knows,
knows of this.


Susan after the Rain photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Wordless Wednesday: Rain Girl

How is it that the rain
sometimes makes us feel so lost,
so small. This light refreshment
from the sky, heavy to our souls.


Sara's "Rain Girl" drawing and 3D paper art. Photo by L.L. Barkat.

Wordless Wednesday: Rainfrosted

Rose of Sharon,
rain-frosted, limps
into morning.


Rose of Sharon after Rain photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Wordless Wednesday: Provision

I come around
a leafy bend
only to discover
red. Tart red,
bursting red
provision...
guarded ever so
cleverly by thorns.

As the scratches on my arms will attest, I reached for this beautiful provision despite the risks. And these three containers were my reward.

Photo by L.L. Barkat.