Grab a pencil and pull up a chair, this is the place for poetry!
Thanks to The Poetry Society (which I highly recommend checking out if you haven’t before), I just found out it’s the bicentenary of Shelley’s death. So it’s a good day to read him! Got a favorite poem of his? Comment below!
My plan is to read, and hopefully maybe write something inspired by him. It won’t be the greatest poem in the world, it will be a tribute (and if you get that reference, friends, HIGH FIVE).
These days of sun and languor
where a cool breeze brings a
clash with Mother Nature,
interrupting what she’s busy
cooking up, with a clash of
pots and pans her face like
a thunderclap she shouts
from the threshold, letting an
oven blast unleash from
the open door
This time of cats in pools of
light from the blazing window
and dogs smiling in the
shade, tongues lolling, lapping
noisily at water bowls like
ripple waves at the lake,
boat wake tickle-lapping at
the wooden legs of the dock
This beating heart of the year,
a day when day wins
overtaking the night in a
moment of triumph,
everything vibrating in its
full luscious glory, trembling
at its peak, the bask of
vacation in the glow of
fulfillment, desire winking and
beaconing from beneath the
trees at twilight, when it
sneaks in on sunset’s coattails
and the stars shine with
special brightness, knowing
their reign is fleeting for now
but still sister Moon will pull
everything along in its season
and the clock will wrap it
all in a pretty shining bow
until the days of August
arrive, fresh from the kitchen,
fat and tall-layered,
iced and candle-bedecked,
ready to be sliced and
devoured, while the bees make
their liquor and the melons
ripen, while the tractors
tune up for the harvest, and
crickets awaken, ready to
greet another sweet September night.
I’ve been reading some Whitman, and I’ve been experiencing a HOT summer. Thanks for reading, y’all!
The Romantics wrote poems
to pay for European walking tours
Wordsworth and Coleridge
traipsing across the Alps
with boots and packs
made of words.
Jules Verne quit his job
on the stock market, having
brokered himself such a
golden position, penning
the extraordinary, he poured
out jingling tickets with
his morning cereal.
In classic Russian novels
there are poets by trade
not just by name or nature
fiery brooding legends
in their own lunchtimes
arguing around the samovar
and over glasses of vodka,
always wary of the pistols
lurking in a drawer,
the fearsome rope strung
in innocence across
the handle of a door.
Mary Oliver earned her keep,
by her own admission,
at uninteresting jobs
to keep her mind free and wild
rising in the pre-dawn darkness
to illuminate the page with
her daily genius.
The University of Texas’
College of Fine Arts used to sell
a t-shirt that cheekily asked
if you’d like fries with that
Once, I was paid $20
for a photograph published
in a magazine
read mostly, no doubt,
by the vast commodity
of artists who hunger
in their deepest bellies
to be treated like their
work is worthy
of a paycheck,
for the effluence
of their creative efforts
to be given more than
just a pat on the back.
It ain’t a living,
but it’s living.
The details in this poem are not exhaustively researched, so please don’t assume it’s all historically accurate (except for the part about the t-shirt, because I considered buying one, being a CoFA graduate myself and appreciating the comedy of it). It seems like a lot of writers, especially on Medium, spend a lot of time and energy discussing how to make a living at it. I’ve thrown in the towel on that little piece of pie-in-the-sky, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still ponder it and at least half wish it could really happen without having to completely compromise everything in order to work the system. . . . .
By the way THIS is the magazine that paid me for publishing one of my photos. Y’all go check them out and give them some love!
Because I subscribe to the Paris Review – one of the two magazines whose subscriptions I can’t bear to cancel yet even tho the rest have gone the way of economy (sigh) – I get daily emails from them with lovely poems. On the 22nd, the poem was the one you see in the above screen shot…. except that I got to read the whole thing. Yes I could have just screen shot the entire email or even copy-pasted the text, but that didn’t seem right. Hopefully y’all get the gist BECAUSE ….
My point in sharing it with you – lovely readers, poetry enthusiasts that you are – is to suggest doing the same thing. Make an anagram with your name (or someone else’s name, or a sentence, or something else), and make it into a poem! I’m going to do it, for the sake of play if nothing else; I suspect it will inspire several poems.
So, ready-set-go if y’all are up for it! I’ll share mine eventually here, hopefully with some relevant photos attached. Happy writing to you! ❤️
I took a slow stroll around the square
I saw a man with
a Westie who ambushed children
the woman from the cafe
looking at real estate
in a window
three men with beards
discussing the theatre
“And then, my character says. . . . “
a new fancy restaurant
in the old post office building
Texas Formal dress required
the wonderful presence of a
classic car, convertable,
top wantoly left down
fawn colored leather seats
built like a boat to sail
down local streets, sharkin’
an old couple with their
own portable table set up
for wine and cheese from home
so many picnics
fathers double-fisting
plastic-cupped lidded beers,
hurrying back to the family blanket
I saw a summer Friday night
easily sighing its way
into being, a languid
lay back under the trees
and wait or the fireflies
evening sauntering in,
the real life of what tries
to remain a small town
in spite of an encroaching
city on the move,
the slow blossom of taking it easy,
the joy in spite of it all
I love my town, but I also have a special deep love for the next town north, with its fabulous old square which boasts the title of “Most Beautiful Town Square in Texas” – and I can’t argue with that! It’s a great place to hang out on a summer evening. Thanks for reading!
slumped, socks and flipflops
snacks nearby, a can of wolf brand chili
his backpack stashed under a table
a corner chair, upstairs
snoring lightly in the quiet section
an exhausted seat of questions:
does his bed not suit?
does he have one?
what four walls, or lack
thereof, give him no rest?
if he needed help,
would he ask for it?
or would he go on a’snooze,
hiding out in the more
comfortable realm of
broken down dreams?
Stuff and things that went through my head one afternoon hanging out at the library. Thanks for reading!
At dusk the birds have
a lot to say to each other
everybody has a lot of
catching up to do, after
their busy days
Perched together at last,
there are meals to recount,
close calls with danger
(in the form of snakes,
or cars, or cats)
new friends made,
who has hatchlings and
who is still waiting
The evening fills up with
their noisy chatty banter,
so inviting and enticing,
but we can’t join in
or even really relate,
since in the joyfulness
of their avian life
it all comes out as a song
Just a little something I wrote sitting out on my patio the other night. Hope y’all are having a happy summer so far! Thanks for reading!
Shore birds with the
arms and legs of industry
rushing gush for tidal plunder
half blinded drowned
by beating spray
steam and groan
on the horizon with the
heave ho of group effort
always the sea will
return to wash over
what remains
This is the final ekphrastic poem from the exhibition of Turner paintings at the Kimbell Art Museum earlier this year. HERE you can see the painting this poem is based on. Thank you for reading!
Lashing out, fair rations
the slap and sting
of salt waves mixed
with snow
ice and fire, a cold burn
swirl and tumult of
upturned cargo and souls
nearly foundering
with progress breathless
for the suffrage of a new life
This is the second of three ekphrastic poems I wrote at the Kimbell Art Museum during their exhibition of Turner paintings earlier this year. THIS is the painting the poem is based on. Thanks for reading!
The field of death illuminated
Light suspended, in suspension
pigment in medium,
applied, brushed and varnished
but not glossed – so much loss
at what cost
By their own light
those who could not fight
search for signs of life
Wandering in suspension
the crowds pass in
muted tones, hushed and dim
making their own inspection
frame by frame
mostly weighed by age
and time, and glossed
by the wonder of art’s rime
This is the first of three ekphrastic poems that I’m going to share from the trip my daughter and I made to see an exhibition of Turner paintings at the Kimbell Art Museum earlier this year. THIS is the painting that the poem is based on. Thank you for reading!
The Poetry Patio