Poet Lisa-Hase Jackson,Visiting Assistant Professor in Writing, Department of English, University of Pittsburgh, is posting daily writing prompts this month. Share with a friend who might in interested.
Category: poetry
Fading
When I was digging around in a box in the basement, looking for items to donate, I found my old Sink Poem. I took it out of the dusty glass frame to photograph, cleaned the glass and reinserted the parchment. I’ve typed it as the poem is fading.
Sink Poem
When you dump your glass in here,
Who will find it later, dear?
When you soak your pan or pot
Did you stop to give a thought?
Who will have to stay up late
When you leave your bowl or plate?
Who will rinse and wash and dry
I wonder who?
I wonder why?
Personal Poem by Artist Iz Horgan in Response to a Loss
I follow the Instagram account of artist Iz Horgan. She posted this on her link and I filled out the form about an object I’d lost in the late eighties. I wrote and asked for permission to post about her project and she graciously agreed.
And then in my snail mail box I received a personal poem on a postcard in response to my describing my lost object -a gold necklace with a band of tiny pearls holding the two ropes strands together
What a day brightener. Thank you Iz for your thoughtful response and your beautiful art postcard.
One Hundred Years Ago, Dorothy H. Holley was Born
Tribute to a Friend. Poem below by Liane Norman
Dorothy H. Holley. May 15, 1923 – June 6, 2010
I Dug Up the Iris
in Dorothy’s garden
to plant in the soaked
soil of mine, memorial
to her each spring
when they’ll open
complicated ruffles
and flourishes, purple
or blue with speckled
throats. They’ll rise
out of rhizomes
sprawling at soil’s
surface like the joints
of my old hands
anchoring the tall
stalks and frilly petals.
This morning
in the brief breath
of cool I dug shallow
trenches for this legacy,
this pantry of pollens
the bees prospect,
insects with lives
beyond what the mere
gardener knows.
Liane Ellison Norman, a Madwoman in the Attic, has published two books of poetry, The Duration of Grief andKeep (www.smokeandmirrorspress.com). She has published poems in 5AM, Kestrel, North American Review, Grasslimb, Rune, Voices from the Attic anthologies and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Her poem “What There’d Been” won the Wisteria Prize in 2006 from Paper Journey Press.
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http://rutheh.com/tag/dorothy-holley-poet/
DOROTHY H. HOLLEY – POET, FRIEND.
(Click link to see slideshow)
A slideshow, remembering Dorothy. Blackberries on Greek yogurt. Roses, iris and tulips from her garden. The back porch where we’d sit, have tea, watch birds feed and bathe. She wrote poems after viewing the photos of the Mill at Night and The Cider Press. She baked fresh bread and gave me some to take home for Steve. She’d slice tomatoes and make summer sandwiches to share. She contributed many comments on the blog. She showed us how to live life with courage, grace and love. for Pittsburgh Post Gazette obituary click here
A Real Can of Words
I opened a real can of words.
The lid was a bit rusty but clearly the contents had never been used.
I gave it to Laura.
Remembering Poet and Friend Dorothy Holley on Her Birthday
Two posts reblogged honoring
Dorothy Holley Poet, Friend post from 2010 click for slideshow
Link to her obituary
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Dorothy Holley’s Iris from her garden are in the photo below replanted by fellow poet and friend Liane Norman, who is the author of I Dug Up the Iris
I Dug Up the Iris
in Dorothy’s garden
to plant in the soaked
soil of mine, memorial
to her each spring
when they’ll open
complicated ruffles
and flourishes, purple
or blue with speckled
throats. They’ll rise
out of rhizomes
sprawling at soil’s
surface like the joints
of my old hands
anchoring the tall
stalks and frilly petals.
This morning
in the brief breath
of cool I dug shallow
trenches for this legacy,
this pantry of pollens
the bees prospect,
insects with lives
beyond what the mere
gardener knows.
Liane Ellison Norman, a Madwoman in the Attic, has published two books of poetry, The Duration of Grief and Keep(www.smokeandmirrorspress.com). She has published poems in 5AM, Kestrel, North American Review, Grasslimb, Rune, Voices from the Attic anthologies and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Her poem “What There’d Been” won the Wisteria Prize in 2006 from Paper Journey Press.
reblogged On the occasion of the birthday of poet Dorothy Holley http://rutheh.com/tag/dorothy-holley-poet/
Robert Burns 263rd Birthday -a Reblog
Originally posted 7 years ago- it’s snowing today, too! 2022-1759=263
SCOTTISH BARD’S 256TH BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY – JUST BEFORE SUNSET IN THE SNOW-January 25, 2015
Steve said it was Robbie Burns birthday today. Born January 25, 1759.
We missed the fancy fundraiser for the museum last week, the Haggis and men decked out in kilts of their clan.
We missed the “not your grandfather’s ” Robert Burns birthday party in Lawrenceville and the one on the South Side with all kinds of scotch at Piper’s pub.
But we got to pay homage to the Scottish poet, just before dusk. The end of a January gloomy Sunday.
We headed out to Schenley Park to the Robert Burns statue (by Scottish sculptor J. Massey Rhind) and it started to snow.
Right next to Phipps Conservatory.
Mrs. Peacock sounds like a game of clue but here is a snippet of the article in the Mary 3, 1914 Post-Gazette.
For a list of Robert Burns memorials around the world, click here
Quotes
“
“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley.
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
(To A Mouse)”
― Robert Burns, The Works of Robert Burns
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.”
― Robert Burns
from Tam o’Shanter
But pleasures are like poppies spread—
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river—
A moment white—then melts forever.
Line 59
“And man, whose heav’n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!”
― Robert Burns
Diane Kerr Poet, Author of PERIGEE
I received a copy of PERIGEE in the mail today. A gift from the poet Diane Kerr.
I had the honor of capturing her author photo which now graces the back cover of her just published poetry book.
Thank you Diane and congratulations on winning the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and having your book published at the University of Wisconsin Press.
To read reviews and/or purchase a copy click here
Release from the University of Wisconsin Press Click link for more information
“Diane Kerr mentors poets through the Madwomen in the Attic Creative Writing Program at Carlow University and is the author of the collection, Butterfly. Her work has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Mississippi Review, and Pearl, among others. She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Kerr’s forthcoming Perigee follows a speaker’s emotional reckoning with a traumatic secret she felt pressured to keep during her girlhood. In varied lyric narratives, these poems reinforce that shock and suffering have no statute of limitations.”
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Perigee.
-
the point in the orbit of the moon or a satellite at which it is nearest to the earth.
Two Roads Diverged in a Green Wood
We were on our way to a First Communion Party a week ago and my Daughter- in-Law was driving. When we saw the two branches of road in front of us, The Road Not Taken, the poem by Robert Frost, came to mind. Yes, these woods are a new Spring green, not a yellow wood, but poetic/blogging license?
When I went to find the actual poem I found this interesting Paris Review article by David Orr*. Here’s a quote from his article, The Most Misread Poem in America (click here )
Go to the article and read about a 2008 New Zealand Ford Co Car Commercial which uses the poem without even giving credit to Robert Frost! If you want to consider the variances in interpretation of Frost’s poem you will find the article enlightening.
“Given the pervasiveness of Frost’s lines, it should come as no surprise that the popularity of “The Road Not Taken” appears to exceed that of every other major twentieth-century American poem, including those often considered more central to the modern (and modernist) era.”Author Orr listed the GOOGLE stats of searches to prove it! Who knew this particular was so popular?Parts of verses still stick in my mind and when I saw this scene in the woods, they came right up. When I was in grade school, we had to memorize a poem a week and recite it from memory.
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
(By the way, we took the right of the fork)
*from the articleDavid Orr is the poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review. He is the winner of the Nona Balakian Prize from the National Book Critics Circle, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Slate, and The Yale Review.
McWalker Yarns Hosted a Poetry Reading in Millvale
Thursday evening in Millvale, Amy McCall, owner of McWalker Yarns hosted poets Sheryl St. Germain and her former MFA student at Chatham U, Michael Bennett.
The yarn store was a wonderful backdrop for Sheryl St. Germain’s reading. Surrounded by skeins and skeins of colorful yarn, Sheryl read her powerful essay (from Stitching Resistance: Women, Creativity and Fiber Arts edited by Marjorie Agosin). She told of the role crochet has played in her life since childhood, but focusing on how crocheting with yarn helped her cope while parenting a son who was in trouble with alcohol, drugs and the law. She also read poems about her son’s dying of a heroin overdose from her book The Small Door of Your Death. Her words touched the audience as she described the helplessness and grief, her numbness, as she centered herself every evening after a long day- crocheting an afghan for her son. The repetition of hook into yarn loops as a meditation, an ease from depression and the stress of hopelessness. A healing.
Pittsburgh native Michael Bennett read his poetry first and opened for Ms. St. Germain. Michael has worked for three years with Words Without Walls program, teaching incarcerated Juvenile offenders, teenagers being tried as adults.
Cellist David Bennett and McWalker Yarns supporter introduces the poet and provided delicious desserts by Millvale Baker Jean-Marc Chatelier
New Orleans native Sheryl St. Germain has published six poetry books, two collections of essays, and co-edited two anthologies. The Small Door of Your Death, a collection of poems about the death of her son from a heroin overdose, appeared in 2018 with Autumn House Press. A forthcoming book, Fifty Miles, is a collection of essays about healing that include a couple of essays about working with yarn. Sheryl directs the MFA program in Creative Writing at Chatham University where she also teaches poetry and creative nonfiction, and is co-founder of the Words Without Walls Program . She was named Louisiana Writer of the year in 2018. Sheryl is an avid and accomplished crocheter, and a much less accomplished knitter. See: www.sheryl-stgermain.com/ for more information.
Desserts created by Jean-Marc Chatellier French Bakery
