Day twenty-two poem: LexPoMo 2017

Another exercise from The Daily Poet.

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Found poetry: Twitter

In his dictionary, Dr. Johnson defined a stoat as “a small stinking animal.”
Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts would hit rural patients hard
All the characters are on trial in any civilized narrative. — William Empson
Poetry can do many things. But what I value is a poem’s ability to make me simply reconsider: a single word, an image I see daily, a thought

Day twenty-one poem, LexPoMo 2017

Today’s poem is from an exercise in The Daily Poet.

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Dali poem no. 1

two pieces of bread
expressing the sentiment of love:
a couple with their heads full of clouds

Not poetry: swallowtail

I’ve been so busy with poetry and other stuff that I’ve neglected to post about what’s happening in the garden.

My lovage plant didn’t survive the winter, but it left a couple of self-sown offspring to be remembered by. I was delighted to discover this fellow on one of them last week:

swallowtail larva in the open

I checked on him today, and he’s almost twice as large. He’s a little hard to see because of his excellent camouflage, but that’s a good thing: I don’t want him snapped up by the neighborhood robins or cardinals.

swallowtail larva hidden

Day twenty poem, LexPoMo 2017

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is on my daughter’s summer reading list for school. This afternoon she read aloud a passage she found especially beautiful, so I decided to see what I could do with it.

(from p. 12 of the reprinted 1899 edition, Black and White Classics, 2014)

Reblogged (with corrected typo) from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Many souls perish in its tumult

embrace close its soft, enfolding body
the sensuous sea of touch
the soul speaks the sea of voice

contemplation itself loses inward mazes
solitude of abysses, a spell for wonder
to the soul, inviting, murmuring, clamoring, whispering,
ceasing:
never seductive, the sea of the voice

Day nineteen poem, LexPoMo 2017

I’m still tinkering around with William Carlos Williams’ “The Pink Locust,” finding new ways to take it apart and make something different out of the pieces. Fair warning: there will probably be more derangement poetry in the weeks to come because I’m having too much fun with this exercise.

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Naked

they could but hide anything
among pride public thief

a resembling flower: modest, laughable
is it so myself to think too flattering

will remain rootless, hair-thin
if ground from the tear

will you garden the admitted one
locust-pink, as persistent as I am?

Day eighteen poem, LexPoMo 2017

I found a copy of Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook at the used book store last week. I picked it up this morning and these sentences jumped off the page.
(Found poetry from p. 9)

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Beyond the margins of the self

Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem
after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river
waves. None is timeless; each arrives
in an historical context; almost
everything, in the end, passes. But the desire
to make a poem, and the world’s willingness to receive
it—indeed, the world’s need of it—
these never pass.

Day seventeen poem, LexPoMo 2017

I love the library, for more reasons than I can possibly express. While working there today I made a list of intriguing titles as I wandered the stacks. Each line of this poem, including the title, is from that list.

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

History of the rain

what the waves know
the yellow eyes of crocodiles
exposed
the time between
love and ordinary creatures

hard to handle
the night falling
untethered
into the beautiful north

they may not mean to, but they do
listen to me
a city breathing

secret of a thousand beauties
chasing fire

reckless disregard