Poetry Friday: For the Children

I must say, it's been an amazing summer. For many reasons. Chief amongst them, probably the fact that I've spent so many great moments with my children. I don't reflect too often on the metaphysical aspects of parenthood. What am I leaving them with? What will they remember? Just keep them happy, make memories, and teach them to be good people...those are my tenets, I suppose. And I'm ok with that.

Making memories with the kids--Real Madrid v. Manchester United @ Michigan Stadium

I found a poem today by Gary Oliver and it resonates on many levels, but it definitely speaks to what I'd like my children to be able to say they learned from me someday. Oliver says it better than me, so I'll get to the poem...

"For the Children"
By Gary Oliver

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

Read the rest of the poem (the ending's worth it!!!) at The Writer's Almanac. If you like it as much as I do, you'll probably find yourself reading it several times.

Glad to make a return to Poetry Friday, which today is being rounded up at A Year of Reading. Check out all the other amazing posts being shared there today.

Poetry Friday: A Poet to Love--Elise Paschen

Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago

Four Poetry Fridays in a row...after such a long hiatus, I'd say that's pretty good. Today I was going to share a short poem I found and adored. It was so good that I couldn't help but start searching for other poems by the poet. Here's the first bit of the first one I found, "Division Street" by Elise Paschen.

Division Street
by Elise Paschen
". . . Prayer book and Mother, shot themselves last Sunday."                                         Gwendolyn Brooks The spire of Holy Name Cathedral rose like a prayer above Chicago Avenue. I thumbed a leather-bound book in catechism class, recited the Hail Mary. Fire and devils blazed at night. The nuns told my mother I had a calling.

Read the rest of the poem here at Poets.org.

You really have to love a short poem. I've written before about how fascinating I find them. Brevity is not a strength of mine, so I'm awestruck when a poet can weave magic using a few short lines.

But I digress...I was so enamored with this poem that I absolutely had to find more by Elise Paschen. Here's a bit from one that tells sort of a heart-wrenching and uncomfortable story, it's called "Voir Dire:"

When he phoned the next morning from another state,

saying that, after our dance,

after my exit, in full view of the guests,

the waiters at long tables

of open bars, she lunged at him, tearing his tux,

his dress shirt, scratching his chest,

drawing blood with her nails, demanding a response:

"Why can't you love only me?"

You can read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.

Finally, I'll share two more, that you can click these links to read. They're worth it...

• "I Will Leave You in Possession of the Field" from Dangerous Liasons
• "Under the Dome"

Be sure to check out the Poetry Friday roundup over at On the Way to Somewhere, a new member of the Poetry Friday host club.

Poetry Friday: School is in the Air

Our friends among us who are educators are heading back to school soon. During the next five weeks or so, teachers and students will be starting another school year. For me, it will be the start of my 12th full year of teaching. (Although this year for the first time I'm working as an instructional coach, so I'm teaching teachers so to speak.)

Back to school time is always a mix of pleasure and pain. Pain when I think about all the things on my to-do list that didn't get done (I will fix you soon, storm door!) and pleasure regarding the excitement of a fresh start--new students, new goals, new ideas, etc.

So today's poem goes out to all the educators out there. It's a poem with school as the setting, but it's definitely about more than just school.

Handwriting Analysis

by Katrina Vandenberg

On the first day of fourth grade, Mrs. Hunter
collected our penmanship samples to save

until June; by then, she said, we'd write
in the handwriting we would have all our lives.

Though she probably read that in a book
on child development, I was so excited

I could hardly stand it. In nine months
my adult self would be born, she would

send me a letter; in the ways she swooped,
careened, and crossed her t's, I could

read everything I would need to know.
We were writing ourselves into the future.

Read the rest of the poem here. I think it would be a great poem to read with students. I'm curious about what they would think. And about what you think!


Next week I'll try for four Poetry Fridays in a row. I think I can do it! Until then, you should check out this week's Poetry Friday Roundup, hosted at a blog that's new to me and that's definitely worth a subscription, Life is Better With Books.

A Poetry Mixtape: Poems From Outer Space

I just love a poem that gets into my head. Maybe I'm the only one that happens to? I don't know.

What I do know is that lately, when Gotye or Carly Rae Jepsen isn't stuck in my head, it's been this poem:

Mars Poetica
by Wyn Cooper
Imagine you're on Mars, looking at earth, a swirl of colors in the distance. Tell us what you miss most, or least. Let your feelings rise to the surface. Skim that surface with a tiny net. Now you're getting the hang of it. Tell us your story slantwise, streetwise, in the disguise of an astronaut in his suit.

Read the rest of the poem HERE.

I just love the title's play on "Ars Poetica," and other subtleties such as the narration. Who's talking? Aliens? Cylons?

I also like the idea of telling a story "slantwise..." how does one do that exactly?

And the ending...the ending is tremendous: "how words mean things / we didn't know we knew." You're compelled to pause and think about that for a bit, and that's just beautiful. I would definitely enjoy teaching and discussing this poem with students, wouldn't you?

If you're like me when you read this, you get to wondering if there are any other poems out there about outer space. Well, you're in luck! I decided to make a little Poetry Mix Tape for you:

• The Universe: Official Motion Picture Soundtrack by Tracy K. Smith
• Man in Space by Billy Collins
• Skylab by Rolf Jacobson
• Orion by Susan Gevirtz
• Moon Gathering by Eleanor Wilner
• Atmosphere by A.V. Christie
• Ego by Denise Duhamel
• gigantic mountains by Brandon Scott Gorrell
• Halley's Comet by Stanley Kunitz

Ok, so some of those aren't exactly about outer space, especially the last few. But they have a celestial tilt to them, at least.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Please be sure to check out the amazing things happening at the Poetry Friday Roundup, being hosted today HERE.

Poetry Friday: Ending the Hiatus

I've had every intention of posting more often. I apologize, dear readers. Obligations with my teaching job and my side gig as CEO of a small educational consulting start-up have been more demanding than expected.

But I return today with a renewed commitment to at the very least participating in a few Poetry Fridays each month. I've been collecting poems with the plan of blogging about them...so today I want to share a few that stood out.

The first is one that I'm sure I've shared before, by one of my absolute most favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye. It's called "Famous," and I read it at the end-of-year ceremony for my fifth graders, who finished elementary school last month. I think it was fitting for the occasion.

FamousBy Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.  

Read the rest of the poem here at Poetry Out Loud. It's nothing short of brilliant.

To make up for my absence, here are two more poems I discovered. The first would be great for classroom use...the descriptions are incredibly vivid. The second...it's one of those I'm not sure why I like it. But I do. A lot.

To The Field Of Scotch Broom That Will Be Buried By The New Wing Of The Mall
by Lucia Perillo
Half costume jewel, half parasite, you stood swaying to the music of cash registers in the distance while a helicopter chewed the linings of the clouds above the clear-cuts. And I forgave the pollen count while cabbage moths teased up my hair before your flowers fell apart when they turned into seeds. How resigned you were to your oblivion, unlistening to the cumuli as they swept past. And soon those gusts will mill you, when the backhoe comes to dredge your roots, but that is not what most impends, as the chopper descends to the hospital roof so that somebody's heart can be massaged back into its old habits.

Read the rest here at Poets.org.

Saw You There
by Ander Monson
"Carrie says I should make my connections into a poem." —Dennis Etzel Jr. Sawed you there, through you there, girl whom I name Carrie, shine of sun on bonnet-handle at that Walgreens on 28th. A Friday night. It looked like you came straight from fighting something that looked like lightning. You were all scorched up. Tired look but with a residue of glow, not in the family way, as they used to say, and as I still do, since I venerate the old, but filled to the heart with stars. Looking light years away, the way you operated that Redbox: how can a girl seem so far from Earth while at a Redbox?

Read the rest here at Poets.org.

I hope you enjoyed these three gems. I hope to be back next Friday with more. 

Be sure to check out the other Poetry Friday posts at today's host, Jone at Check it Out.

Poetry Friday: Looking to the Past

I tend to turn towards modern poetry a lot in my teaching and reading. I thoroughly enjoy contemporary poetry  and all that it has to offer. Collins, Merwin, Shihab Nye, and so many other of my favorites write such beautiful and inspiring poems...there is never a shortage to choose from, both as a teacher and reader. I have to stop myself sometimes and remember to look to the past.

Poets.org provides me with a poem each day, delivered straight to my inbox (you should sign up, too), and while a lot of the poems they choose seem to be intended to provide exposure to late 20th and 21st century poems, every so often, they mix in poems from older greats such as Whitman, Dickinson, Donne, and Shelley.

A couple of weeks ago, they delivered a poem from the 19th century by someone I don't think I realized wrote poetry, Ralph Waldo Emerson. I really got into the transcendentalists as a high school student and read a lot of Whitman and Thoreau and Emerson...but none of his poems, I guess. Here's one I really enjoy:

Water
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.


Short and simple. I like it a lot. Poetry Friday is being hosted by Laura Salas at Writing the World For Kids. Please be sure to check it out.

Poetry Friday: The Joys of Poetry 180

Are you familiar with Poetry 180? It's a program designed to help integrate poetry into the daily lives of high school students. Founded by poet Billy Collins during his tenure as poet laureate, it offers up an incredibly enjoyable poem every day for all 180 days of the school year.

If you explore the Poetry 180 site, you're bound to find a gem that you haven't read before. Better yet, you can subscribe and have each day's poem delivered directly to you. A collection of the 180 poems has been published as a book and it was so successful they published a second collection, too.

Poetry 180 is one of my favorite sources for discovering new poems. Once you start exploring it, you'll have trouble stopping. Check out Poem #36, which was delivered to me earlier this week:

The Printer's Error

Aaron Fogel

Fellow compositors
and pressworkers!

I, Chief Printer
Frank Steinman,
having worked fifty-
seven years at my trade,
and served five years
as president
of the Holliston
Printer's Council,
being of sound mind
though near death,
leave this testimonial
concerning the nature
of printers' errors.

First: I hold that all books
and all printed
matter have
errors, obvious or no,
and that these are their
most significant moments,
not to be tampered with
by the vanity and folly
of ignorant, academic
textual editors.
Second: I hold that there are
three types of errors, in ascending
order of importance:
One: chance errors
of the printer's trembling hand
not to be corrected incautiously
by foolish professors
and other such rabble
because trembling is part
of divine creation itself.

Read the rest of the poem here. I think it's a brilliant piece, don't you? There's a lot there for students to sink their teeth into. I hope you find some time to explore Poetry 180. Let me know what you think.

Poetry Friday, my favorite day of the week, features a round-up of bloggers which this week is hosted by the awesome Diane at Random Noodling. If you liked this post, you'll love the collection of posts featured there. You'll also want to be sure to subscribe to this blog via email in the handy sidebar widget or via RSS.

Poetry Friday: Poet Laureate Philip Levine

Time is a tricky thing. It seems like W.S. Merwin was just named U.S. poet laureate a few days ago. But apparently his term in that position is nearly over. While The Small Nouns was on hiatus this summer, Philip Levine was named to the post. In typical fashion, Mr. Levine's response to his appointment included this nugget: "If you take it too seriously, you're an idiot."


His career is quite accomplished. He has published over 20 books and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. I'm particularly fond of his poems because of Mr. Levine's roots--he was born and raised in Detroit, the city I grew up not far from and in which I currently work. He has written about Detroit often and, in my opinion, some of his poems reflect an urban "grittiness," that definitely resonates with Detroiters.


So while I'm a few months late to the party, I want to showcase a few of Philip Levine's poems here for my weekly Poetry Friday post. I start with one about a Detroit landmark:


Belle Isle, 1949
By Philip Levine

We stripped in the first warm spring night

and ran down into the Detroit River

to baptize ourselves in the brine

of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles,

melted snow. I remember going under

hand in hand with a Polish highschool girl

I'd never seen before, and the cries

our breath made caught at the same time

on the cold, and rising through the layers

of darkness into the final moonless atmosphere

that was this world, the girl breaking

the surface after me and swimming out

on the starless waters towards the lights

of Jefferson Ave. and the stacks

of the old stove factory unwinking.

Read the rest of this poem here. It's worth it. I just love the imagery. Here's another, the title poem of his Pulitzer Prize winning book:

The Simple Truth
by Philip Levine




I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields 
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
into the dusty light. The woman who sold me 
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste 
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way, 
she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
"Even if you don't I'll say you did."
Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering 
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.


Read the ending of this poem here. His poems, in my opinion, have a similar voice, but each stands out on its own as unique somehow. Also, they all seem to have really good endings. The last few lines of "The Simple Truth" contains this amazing line: "Can you taste what I'm saying?"


Here's the ending of "He Would Never Use One Word When None Would Do:" 


Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.


I love that. The rest of the poem can be read here. 


I hope Philip Levine's poetry appeals to you as much as it does to me. I can see how it might not, but if it doesn't, give it another chance. You might change your mind!


Poetry Friday is hosted at fomagrams today. Please get over there and check it out!

Poetry Friday: Fill in the Blanks

I recently attended the TEDxDetroit conference and got filled up with a day's worth of motivation and great advice. I think the event was aimed mainly at entrepreneurs, but there was a good deal of stuff that had implications in education.

One of the tidbits was provided by improv comedienne and self proclaimed "Idea Goddess," Hailey Zureich. She proposed that in order to be successful, you must "articulate your reality." In other words, say it out loud...this will help make it so. She offered this as an explanation: "Every day, when you wake up, you make the decision of whether you're going to have an 'oh sh** day' or a 'hot sh** day.'" Making that decision, articulating your reality, saying it out loud...this goes a long way towards making it happen.

I found this to be fairly insightful. And it somehow brought to mind a poem by Lou Lipsitz that I came across a while back:

"Have a _____ Day"
by Lou Lipsitz

Have a nice day. Have a memorable day.
Have (however unlikely) a life-changing day.
Have a day of soaking rain and lightning.
Have a confused day thinking about fate.

Have a day of wholes.
Have a day of poorly marked,
unrecognizable wholes you
cannot fathom.
Have a ferocious day, a bleak
unbearable day. Have a
riotously unproductive day;
a grim jaw-clenched, Clint Eastwood vengeful
law enforcement day.
Have a day of raging, hair-yanking
jealousy and meanness. Have a day
of almost grasping
how whole you are; a finely tuned,
empty day.

Have a nice day of walking and circling;
a day of stalking and hunting,
of planting strange seeds and wandering in the woods.
Have a day of endearing nonsense,
of hopelessly combing your hair,
a day of yielding, of swallowing
hard, breathing more deeply,
a day of fondness for beetles
and macabre spectacles, or irreverence
about anything you want, of just
sitting and wondering.

You can read the rest of "Have a ___ Day" here. (Try reading it out loud, it makes this one even better.) I hope you're able to fill in your own blanks today. I hope today is the kind of day you want it to be. I hope you say it and make it so.

I also hope you check out the Poetry Friday round up at Great Kid Books. There's SO much great poetry to read about today. Enjoy!

Poetry Friday: Poetry Goes Mainstream?

(A day late on this post, but that's okay!)

Recently discovered in my mailbox:

Included among the coupons, you'll find "gems" such as this:

a pick-me-up perk

how about another cup?

two o'clock delight

and this:

fresh breath on a brush

mint polish for your choppers

make your momma proud

Some questions come to mind:

If the #2 retailer in the world is using poetry to sell Tide, Dasani, and Hefty, does that mean poetry has gone mainstream?

Will the average junk mail recipient really "get" what it's all about?

Are there some ancient Japanese poets rolling over in their graves as they see their beautiful form, written to celebrate the beauty of nature, hijacked to sell trash bags? (I checked the back of the booklet for an apology to Issa or Basho, but found none.)

I guess I don't know the answer. I don't know whether to find it cute or to be cynical about it. I don't know if I should be happy that Target has essentially tricked possibly millions of non-poetry readers into reading poetry.

I'll let you be the judge. Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

The awesome blog Picture Book of the Day hosted the Poetry Friday roundup yesterday. It's not too late to check it out!

Poetry Friday: From Under the Pile

My poetry blogging hiatus this summer was a double-edged sword. On the plus side, I got a lot of work done for my little side project (click the snazzy EE logo on the Small Nouns homepage to find out more). However, I was away from poetry for way too long...I missed reading poems. I missed blogging about poems. I'm not exaggerating when I say something was obviously missing from my life. It just wasn't the same.

So now I'm back and another benefit of taking the blogging break is that the poems have piled up. And I've got tons of reading and blogging material to choose from.

This Poetry Friday, I'd like to share one from the bottom of the poems that have piled up, waiting for me to read and write about them. It was one of the first to be delivered to my inbox (thanks to the Poets.org Poem A Day subscription) earlier this summer. I hope you like it:

Miracles
by Walt Whitman
Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of    the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night    with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer    forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so    quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

Read the rest of the poem here. I do love Whitman. And miracles. And knowing nothing else but them seems like a good outlook to have.

Poetry Friday today is being hosted by Amy at The Poem Farm and there are so many good poems to read about there today. You've just got to check it out!

Poetry Friday: Hiatus Time

I've been avoiding making it official although it's been unofficial for about 3 weeks now, so now I'm making it official (got all that?)--The Small Nouns is taking a hiatus. A little side project I'm working on is taking too much of my time, it seems, to get any poetry blogging done. So I think I'll step back for a bit, continue collecting poems, and return rejuvenated and with plenty of new material sometime later this summer.

Until that time, be sure to peruse The Small Nouns archive. There's plenty of posts to keep you going that you probably haven't seen. Here's one last poem I found that I just love. I hope you feel the same. Seemed like a good "beginning of hiatus" poem and also a good one to mark the unofficial start of spring, which I think just recently happened here in the Great Wet Midwest:

"Onset"
by Kim Addonizio

Watching that frenzy of insects above the bush of white flowers,   

bush I see everywhere on hill after hill, all I can think of   

is how terrifying spring is, in its tireless, mindless replications.   

Everywhere emergence: seed case, chrysalis, uterus, endless manufacturing.

And the wrapped stacks of Styrofoam cups in the grocery, lately

I can’t stand them, the shelves of canned beans and soups, freezers   

of identical dinners; then the snowflake-diamond-snowflake of the rug

beneath my chair, rows of books turning their backs,

even my two feet, how they mirror each other oppresses me,

the way they fit so perfectly together, how I can nestle one big toe into the other

like little continents that have drifted; my God the unity of everything,

my hands and eyes, yours; doesn’t that frighten you sometimes

Read the rest of "Onset" here. And even without The Small Nouns around, there's plenty of poetry to be enjoyed, especially on Poetry Fridays. Today's round up is hosted at The Drift Record. Be sure to check it out. See you soon.

Poetry Friday: Poetry Month Poem #15

We've reached the middle of National Poetry Month. And yet another Poetry Friday. If you've been following along, you know that my theme for NPM has been "New Poems" and I've been sharing a poem each day that's new to me (and hopefully to you, too).

Today, however, since it is Poetry Friday and the last day of work before my Spring Break, I think I'll break my own rules slightly. I'd like to share one of my favorite poems of all time...so it isn't new to me. Maybe, though, it's new to you.

Gary Soto is an incredibly talented (and quite prolific) writer. Not only does he write terrific fiction for children and young adults, but he also can write some really amazing poems. Here's my favorite of his:

"Oranges"
by Gary Soto
The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December.  Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge.  I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore.

Read the rest of the poem here. It's worth it, trust me. You can also find links to lots of other Soto poems there.

I just love the way he captures such a tender moment in vivid detail. Not only can you picture it in your mind, but also, more than likely, you can connect to it with a memory of your own from your youth. Perhaps you were the boy with the oranges. Maybe you were the girl walking with the boy. I wasn't exactly either one, but I remember being 12 and in love. Mr. Soto describes it way more perfectly than I ever could. I hope you like this one as much as I do.

Please continue to follow along via subscription or by following me on Blogger. And also be sure to check out the Poetry Friday round up at Random Noodling.

National Poetry Month: 30 New Poems--the 8th Poem

I hope that all my faithful readers have been enjoying my National Poetry Month series. I wasn't really sure how to celebrate. I wanted to be fresh and original. But I also wanted it to be high quality--there are just so many great blogs doing so many great things this month. I wanted to be deemed a worthy resource. I wanted to fit in!

I hope my idea to share a poem that's new to me each day does just that. It's been great fun searching for new poems and learning about new poets. And it's only day 8! I get to do this 22 more times.

But enough of my long-winded prattle...on to today's new (to me) poem...

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve
by Adrienne Rich

Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid

later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere

Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve

Syntax of rendition:

verb pilots the plane
adverb modifies action

You can read the rest here. I'm morally (and legally) obligated not to post the entire poem, but I really had trouble figuring out where to cut this poem off. The brilliance of it has yet to be fully revealed in the few lines above. Promise me you'll read the rest! It's just perfectly unique. And that title. Gosh, I do love a good title. What more can I say? And it's obviously a love poem, too, which you know I'm not that crazy about as a group. But one like this could get me to change my mind.

Let me know what you think of it. Then after that, check out the rest of today's awesome Poetry Friday round-up at Madigan Reads.

National Poetry Month: 30 New Poems--Poem the First

Welcome to National Poetry Month! After giving this much thought, I've decided that sharing a poem that's new to me each day during the month would be a good way to spread the joy of poetry. If it's new to me, there's a good chance that it's new to the 8 people per day who read this blog. (While we're on the topic, what better time than now to subscribe or follow us! Let's boost that number to double digits!!!)

So our first new poem comes via the Poets.org poem-a-day email...

Sutra
by Marilyn Krysl
Looking back now, I see I was dispassionate too often, dismissing the robin as common, and now can't remember what robin song sounds like. I hoarded my days, as though to keep them safe from depletion, and meantime I kept busy being lonely. This took up the bulk of my time, and I did not speak to strangers because they might be boring, and there were those I feared would ask me for money. I was clumsy around the confident, and the well bred, standing on their parapets, enthralled me, but when one approached, I fled. I also feared the street's down and outs, anxious lest they look at me closely, and afraid I would see their misery. I feared my father who feared me and did not touch me, which made me more afraid. My mother feared him too, and as I grew to be like him, she became afraid of me also. I kept busy avoiding dangers of many colors, fleeing from those with whom I had much in common.

Read the rest of the poem here.

I hope you find the images and descriptive language of this poem as enchanting as I do. And, of course, the perfection of the ending just makes this poem.

The theory behind this Poetry Month series is that there are so many wonderful poems out there that we aren't aware of. I want to at least spend the next 30 days sharing poems that might have gone undiscovered and that might strike a chord with you in a way that might make you want to pass it along, either to friends, students, or loved ones.

So sit back, relax, (subscribe!), and enjoy the wonders of National Poetry Month.

And how apropos that the first day of National Poetry Month falls on a Poetry Friday! Check out the roundup hosted by The Poem Farm. It's destined to be the most exciting roundup of the year, for sure.

Poetry Friday: Women's History Month Countdown #4

Have you been following our Countdown this month? What's that you say? You haven't? Well, my friend, you are in luck. Today we're bringing you our #4 poet in the countdown, Elizabeth Bishop, and if you want to get caught up on numbers 10 through 5, click here.

Elizabeth Bishop left behind a fairly small catalog of poems--she wrote just over 100 of them. But her attention to detail might have been unmatched among her 20th century counterparts. Some of her poems were made up of long, sprawling stanzas that are filled with intricate descriptions, vivid imagery, and beautiful language. Like, for example, "At The Fishhouses:"

Although it is a cold evening,

down by one of the fishhouses

an old man sits netting,

his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,

a dark purple-brown,

and his shuttle worn and polished.

The air smells so strong of codfish

it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.

The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs

and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up

to storerooms in the gables

for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.

All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,

swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,

is opaque, but the silver of the benches,

the lobster pots, and masts, scattered

among the wild jagged rocks,

is of an apparent translucence

like the small old buildings with an emerald moss

growing on their shoreward walls.

Read the rest of this wonderful poem here.

Choosing a favorite Bishop poem for me, I think, is an impossible task. I've blogged about "One Art" before. You can't resist a poem that starts like this...

The art of losing isn't hard to master

IF you don't know this poem, read it immediately. Your life may never be the same.

BUT...wait there's more. You know what my all time favorite poetic form is, right? If you said "sestina" you're correct! Elizabeth Bishop might have written the most amazing sestina of all time. On its own, it's brilliant. When you realize that it conforms to some very strict rules, it leaves you awestruck....

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac


There's no way you can resist reading the rest, is there?

I have to confess--although I knew all along that I wanted Bishop included on this countdown, I was never really sure where to put her. For a time, I thought that maybe #4 was too low, that maybe she was more of an 8 or 9. Now, after reviewing the poems of hers I really like, I am wondering if #4 is too high. She just might be top-three material...take a look at this sampling and let us know what you think:

• "It is Marvelous to Wake Up Together"
• "Sonnet"
• "The Fish"
• "Letter to N.Y."
• "Suicide of a Moderate Dictator"
• JUST ADDED: "A Word With You"

The Poetry Friday roundup is hosted by Mary Lee at A Year in Reading this week. Please stop by and check out all the blogosphere has to offer on this last Friday before the beginning of Poetry Month!

Poetry Friday: Women's History Month Countdown

Not only is Poetry Friday here. It's also HERE! Welcome to the first ever Poetry Friday to be hosted at The Small Nouns. 

For those of you new to The Small Nouns--welcome! Take a look around, enjoy, leave copious amounts of comments, and by all means subscribe to my RSS feed. And for all you wonderful fellow bloggers out there, why not take the time to add The Small Nouns to your blogroll? I'd really appreciate it and will certainly reciprocate.

Since it's a special day, I wanted to start a special series of posts dedicated to Women's History Month. And since nothing spurs discussion like a countdown (I'm still ticked that Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" beat out Tiffany's "Could've Been" in my best friend's Top Hits of Fifth Grade Countdown...wow, I was a dork), I decided to countdown my top ten favorite female poets.

Now, I need to admit that I'm not very good at limiting myself. I'm the guy who sneaks 12 items in the express lane and whose Top Five Movies list has ten movies on it. Et cetera, et cetera. So I'm limiting myself in this case to poets no longer among the living. It's still a daunting task, but I'll do my best. And of course, feel free to disagree or join in in the conversation by leaving a comment.

Without further ado, I give you my number 10 poet...Lucille Clifton.

I think the first Clifton poem I ever read was "homage to my hips." I was a poetry novice at the time and its frank voice and pure honesty really stood out to me. What a powerful piece, a bellowing from the mountaintop of independence and freedom. "So this is what you can do with poetry," I thought.

Another poem that is dripping with honesty and pride is "won't you celebrate with me:"

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand

Read the rest here. "i made it up." How great is that? And how true? My fifth graders loved reading this poem last year and it became an instant favorite. I think students of higher grades would enjoy it, too. The Poetry Foundation has a complete Poetry Guide for this one, including writing ideas, discussion questions, annotations, and teaching tips. Be sure to check it out.

So many of Ms. Clifton's poems strike a chord. She passed away last year and her powerful voice is surely missed. You might also enjoy:

• "sorrows"
• "jasper texas 1998"
• "it was a dream"
• "the garden of delight"
• "my dream about being white"

There are many, many more. And many of them are painful and sad. But they're all beautifully written and so, so honest. Let me know which favorites of yours I've missed.

And now it's your turn, friends. Please use the little gadget-thingy below to leave your link. Thanks to all and happy Poetry Friday!

A Poet to Know: Linda Pastan

Every so often as a reader, I come across a new poet that I know I should know already. They're just too good for me not to have read before. But, alas, it happens. Often.

One such poet is Linda Pastan. Her poem "The Bookstall" was one of the first I read in the anthology Poetry After Lunch edited by Joyce A. Carroll. I love it for its similes (a poetry move that I definitely need to write about in the future)...

Just looking at them
I grow, greedy, as if they were
freshly baked loaves
waiting on their shelves
to be broken open--that one
and that--and I make my choice
in a mood of exalted luck,
browsing among them
like a cow in the sweetest pasture.

(I couldn't find this poem reprinted anywhere with permission except in the Amazon "Look Inside" feature for this book. So you'll have find the rest there if you'd like to read it.)

Also featuring some great comparisons is the poem "A New Poet," which in addition to being brilliant is also perfectly suited to this particular post:

Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see

its name in the flower books and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way

its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled

red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.

Read the rest here.

In addition to wonderful similes and metaphors, I find Pastan's poems to have vivid imagery. She paints a picture with each one. Her word choice appeals to me, too. Each poem seems to be exquisitely and painstakingly crafted. You can tell that she has poured her soul into each and every one.

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?

BY LINDA PASTAN

Isn't the moon dark too,   

most of the time?   

And doesn't the white page   

seem unfinished   

without the dark stain   

of alphabets?   

When God demanded light,   

he didn't banish darkness.   

Instead he invented   

ebony and crows   

and that small mole   

on your left cheekbone.   

Read the conclusion of "Why Are Your Poems So Dark?" here.

If you want to explore more of Pastan's poems, I recommend her page at the Poetry Foundation, which features many of her best works. Garrison Keilor obviously likes her, too, because she's been featured countless times at the Writer's Almanac. You will also definitely enjoy this post on How a Poem Happens about another excellent poem of hers "Rereading Frost."

Linda Pastan is definitely a poet to know and follow. If she's new to you, I hope you enjoy her as much as I do (and remember this post when she becomes Poet Laureate someday). If you're a previous fan, you have great taste.

Please check out this week's Poetry Friday roundup, hosted at Read Write Believe. And be sure to check back next Friday when Poetry Friday will be hosted here at The Small Nouns!