"The L. M. Montgomery Christmas Collection"

I love L. M. Montgomery's writing, and I love Christmas, so I am naturally drawn to her festive stories and poetry.  The Christmas with Anne collection is one of my favorite Christmastime reads, so I am excited to add this new collection to my shelf.  It does have some overlap with that other volume -- both contain the "Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves" from Anne of Green Gables, as well as several of the same short stories.  This collection has a couple of different Anne chapters too, and six Christmas/winter poems that are paired with appropriate classic paintings.  There are paintings to go with the short stories and Anne chapters as well, and I love all the thought that obviously went into the pairings.

I bought the paperback edition of this book, but I wish I had gotten the hardcover instead.  I see there is now a pocket-sized hardcover edition available, as well as the full-sized one, and I might get that for myself and put this paperback copy into my kids' box of Christmas books that we haul out every year.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  It's everything sweet, wholesome, and lovely.

This is my 57th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"The Depths We'll Go To" ed. by Alex Silvius

This is an enjoyable collection of short stories and poetry all centered around the sea.  There are sailors, mermaids, and shipwrecks galore, in lots of different styles and genres.  Most of the stories are speculative fiction or fantasy.  Some of the writing is quite professional, and some of it reminded me of what my friends and I were writing in college, especially the "ambiguous ending" sorts of stories we were so fond of at that time in our lives.

My favorites are as follows:

Short Stories

• "Edge of a Knife" by Beka Gremikova
• "The Mermaid's Soul" by Beka Gremikova
• "Mernaido" by Abigail Falanga
• "Tears of the Sea" by Savannah Jezowski
• "The Selkie's Gift" by Katie Hanna
• "To Touch the Earth" by Beka Gremikova

Poetry

• "Begins to Thaw" by Alissa J. Zavalianos
• "Deadweight" by Ariel Choate and Anne J. Hill
• "Drowning" by Cassandra hamm
• "Master of the Waves" by Savannah Jezowski

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a little mild language here and there.

"The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" by J. R. R. Tolkien

I did not realize this is a collection of poetry!  I thought it was going to be short stories like Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham, but about Tom Bombadil instead.  But it's not, it's poetry.  

The edition I read, which is the one pictured here, contains the poems that Tolkien published under this title in the '60s, plus a whole lot of commentary on the poems, earlier variations of them, explanations of their history, discussions of how they fit into his Middle-earth world, and so on.  There's more of that than of the poetry itself, really.

The poems themselves are not long, and quite varied.  Tolkien states, in his preface, that they come from the Red Book of Westmarch, in the Shire, but they were collected from different places.  Some of them are attributed to Bilbo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee.

My favorites were "The Hoard" and "Shadow-Bride."  

"The Hoard" is about a sort of cursed treasure that various people acquire and then waste their lives guarding, only to lose it to someone else when they die.  It doesn't do anyone any good, least of all those who 'own' it, and is rather a dark and cautionary tale.

"Shadow-Bride" is mysterious and ethereal and a little spooky.  An immovable man-statue suddenly comes to life when a shadowy woman comes near him, they embrace, and become a double-statue that only comes back to life at certain times.  Or something.  Like I said, it's fairly mysterious -- but that's what I liked about it.

If you love Tolkien, especially his poetry, this is a lot of fun.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a bit of violence here and there, and some imagery that might scare small kids, but there's nothing harmful here.

This has been my 27th book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list and my 39th from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021.  This has also been another contribution to my 2021 Tolkien Blog Party :-)

"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

Well, that was weird.

At least now I know where the line "Mistah Kurtz, he dead" from the beginning of "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot comes from, though.  That was literally the most interesting part of the book, for me -- I hit that line and went, "Wait!  I know that!  So this is what that's from!"  That's one of my favorite poems, so it was a really fun moment for me.  I think the title of it might be a reference to this book too, actually, coming from the second quotation below.  Nifty.

So, reading all 72 pages wasn't a total waste of time, I guess.  I do like knowing what little referential things are from.

Particularly Good Bits:

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much" (p. 4).

"But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion.  i think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude -- and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.  it echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core" (p. 53).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for a lot of use of the n-word, some creepy stuff, violence, and general weirdness.

This was my 22nd book read and reviewed (sorta) for my 3rd Classics Club list, and my 28th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021.

"Faces to the Sun" edited by S. J. Blasko

This is a collection of poetry and short stories all written by people who struggle with mental health and mental illness.  The point of the anthology is to help other strugglers to see they're not alone, and to help people who don't deal with mental health troubles to understand what that can be like.  It succeeds admirably at the latter, for me.  

All proceeds from sales of this book go to organizations that provide mental health services, which I think is neat.

I liked so many pieces in this book, so I'm just going to list my favorites, in the order in which they occur:

• "From Suns to Moons" by Karen Nelson
• "The Sunflower Cycle" by Adrien Farinas
• "While Gardening" by Theo Oliver
• "Bouquet" by Beka Gremikova
• "Dichotomy of Queen Anne's Lace" by Maggie D Brace
• "Walls" by Lucinda Cylights
• "Wormwood: A plant that smells so sweet and looks so nice but will kill you if you take a bite" by Erik Olson
• "Dandelions" by Katie Hanna
• "the noose" by Cassandra Hamm
• "CICADAS AND COFFEE AND ROSES" by Suzanne Lea

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some discussion of panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, and other things that younger readers probably aren't ready for yet.

This was my 9th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021.

Top Ten Tuesday: Poetic Justice

This week is a freebie from That Artsy Reader Girl for Top Ten Tuesday, so I decided to celebrate National Poetry Month with my list!  I hereby present to you my ten favorite poets:

1.  Robert Frost

2.  Kenneth Koch

3.  Langston Hughes

4.  Carl Sandburg

5.  Robert Browning

6.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

7.  William Shakespeare

8.  Billy Collins

9.  T. S. Eliot

10.  Shel Silverstein

(From my Instagram)

What did you do for TTT this week?  Are you celebrating Poetry Month in any way?  Do you like any of these poets?

"April Twilights and Other Poems" by Willa Cather

I always try to read a collection of poetry in April, since it's National Poetry Month here in the US.  And how could I resist a book with April in the title?  It was too perfect to pass up when I spotted this at the library earlier this month.

According to the foreword, Cather originally published a collection of poetry called April Twilights in 1903.  She later revised and republished it.  In this volume, you get the revised versions of those poems, and also a lot of unpublished poems and some early, uncollected poems she wrote before 1903.  I actually liked more of those early poems than her later ones, as they were more playful and spontaneous.  But I did like a great many of her poems -- I marked ten poems to re-read, altogether.  They were "Shakespeare," "Bobby Shafto," "In the Garden," "Broncho Bill's Valedictory," "The Namesake," "Sonnet," "L'Envoi," "The Swedish Mother," "A Silver Cup," an "Remembering is Like a Crimson Rose."

Of those, I think "In the Garden" was my favorite.  Certainly it was the most timely, as I read it only a day or two after Easter, and it concerns Mary Magdalene going to the tomb with spices to embalm Jesus' body, only to meet him alive there.  Here's the middle verse, because it's so lovely:


She found Him in the garden, 
   Before the morning broke.
From out the night above the grave 
   He came -- ah, God! -- and spoke.
Walked as of old His garden, 
   Where sobbing night winds yearned,
Where trembling lilies waited 
   And pale narcissus burned.

The imagery there really struck me, the way she's naming flowers and talking about light and wind, using them to represent the emotions of Mary and the other believers.

Cather wrote about a wide range of subjects: immigrants, cowboys, children, the elderly, romance, grief, and so many other things.  I think her finest poems were the ones where she spoke about life on the prairie and in the wilderness.  Some of the others come off as affected attempts at what poetry "ought" to be like, and I'm guessing those are some of the ones she liked less when she got older.

This volume also collected many of Cather's letters that discussed poetry and writing.  I didn't find them nearly as interesting as her poetry, but a fan of hers probably would enjoy them.  I've been trying to like Cather for a long time, and I'm happy to say she's slowly growing on me.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  Nothing scandalous here.

This is my eight book read and reviewed for my second go-round at the Classics Club.

Happy Poetry Month!

"The Blythes are Quoted" by L. M. Montgomery

Until earlier this year, I didn't know The Blythes are Quoted existed.  I had heard of The Road to Yesterday, which a lot of people who loved the Anne books didn't like, so I never bothered to read it.  But I didn't know until recently that The Road to Yesterday is actually an abridged, altered form of Montgomery's final book, The Blythes are Quoted.

I say "book" and not "novel" because this is not a novel.  It's a collection of short stories and poems framed as things that happened around Ingleside to people who know the Blythes, and as poems written by Anne and Walter that Anne reads aloud in the evenings.  The Blythes don't appear in the stories, but they comment on the poetry, either in words or thoughts.

The stories are an interesting mix -- many of them had been previous published, but Montgomery reworked them to include mentions of the Blythes.  My favorite was "A Dream Comes True," and it was possibly the most straight-forwardly happy story in the lot.  Most of the stories have happy endings of one sort or another, but many of them also delve into the ideas of disillusionment, despair, regret, spite, and the constant misunderstandings between generations.  

But I liked the stories better than the poetry, overall.  Some of the poems, I skimmed.  Some, I read more than once.  My favorite was probably "Come, Let Us Go."  But again, the tone of the poetry overall was one of regret and loss, a wishful look back at a happier time.

This is not a cheerful book.  It's an interesting book to study -- I enjoyed thinking about what Montgomery must have been trying to say with the collection, and I'm glad I read the book.  But overall it has a feel of disenchantment that did not appeal to me.  

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for discussions of marital infidelity (NOT Anne or Gilbert, stop freaking out!), illegitimate children, and war.

This is my last book read and reviewed for the Anne of Green Gables Reading Challenge, and closes out My Year With Anne.  I'm so glad I re-read this series and discovered the ninth book.  My thanks to Elyssa for hosting the challenge!  It's been fun sharing thoughts on the books with others.

This is my fifty-first book read and reviewed for the Classics Club, and my nineteenth for the Women's Classic Literature Event.

Poetry Month Celebration 2016 -- The End

Well, instead of doing a recap post for this final week, I'm just posting ALL the links from the whole month here.  I'll be deleting the official page later this month to make room for my Jane Eyre read-along's page, so this way, all these links will not be lost!  

Thanks so much to everyone who participated!  This event was a much bigger success than I ever hoped.  I'm happy there are so many people who dig poetry and wanted to celebrate it with me.  Whether you contributed a post yourself, filled out the tag, or just read and commented on other people's posts, you made this event lots of fun!

Contributed Poetry Posts

Two Favorite Poems -- Joseph
"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes -- Hannah
Why I'm Celebrating Poetry -- Hamlette
Haikus by Matsuo Basho -- Hannah
"The Morning of Life" by Victor Hugo -- Cleopatra
Australian Poetry in WWI -- Carol
"No Coward Soul is Mine" by Emily Bronte -- Hannah
Poetry, a Gift to Our Children -- Silvia
Poetry Efforts #1 -- Hannah
Poetry Efforts #2 -- Hannah
"The Lovebird" (original poem) -- Joseph
Poetry Efforts #3 -- Hannah
"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou -- Hannah
"All That is Gold Does Not Glitter" by J.R.R. Tolkien -- Hannah
Galvanized by Leland Kinsey -- Lory
Poetry and Baseball -- Joseph
"Narnian Suite" by C. S. Lewis -- Cleopatra
"As I Walked Out One Evening" by W. H. Auden -- Hannah
"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley -- Hannah
"Sonnet XVIII" and "Love Sonnet XI" -- Hannah
"The Boy in the Moon" (original poem) -- Joseph
"Sonnet 6" (original poem) -- Hamlette
A Selection of Poems -- Hannah
"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. -- Joseph
"An Anglo-Saxon Riddle" (original poem) -- Cleopatra
3 Reasons Why You Should Go to a Poetry Reading -- Suzanne
A Pride and Prejudice Poem (original poem) -- Naomi
"Ode to Dr. Seuss" (original poem) -- Joseph
"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne -- Brona Joy
"Today" (original poem) -- Kara
"A Curious Inbetween" (original poem) -- Kara
"Known" (original poem) -- Kara
"All You Who Sleep Tonight" (original poem) -- Hamlette
Nature Poetry -- Carol
"The Horse Show at Midnight" by Henry Taylor -- Joseph
Poetry and Prose in Shakespeare's Plays -- Hamlette
"The Crew of Columbia" (original poem) -- Joseph
My Favourite Poets -- Rose
"Mythopoeia" by J. R. R. Tolkien -- Joseph
Three Dashes of Poetry -- Heidi

FORTY POSTS!  People, you are amazing.  That doesn't even count all the tags y'all filled in and added to the link-up.

Thank you, thank you, one and all!

Poetry Month Tag -- My Own Answers

I've suddenly realized that I never filled out my own tag for my own Poetry Month Celebration!  Well, I've got a few days to spare, so I guess I'm not exactly late.  Here goes.

What are some poems you like?

"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" by Kenneth Koch (which is funnier if you have read WCW's "This is Just to Say"), "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost, "Fog" by Carl Sandburg, "Hush'd be the Camps Today" by Walt Whitman, "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot, "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes, "The Man from Snowy River" by A. B. "Banjo" Patterson, "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning... those are the first ones that pop into my head.

What are some poems you dislike?

I am not a huge fan of the poems of Emily Dickinson or e. e. cummings, though some of their stuff I do like okay.Are there any poets whose work you especially enjoy?  If so, who are they?

Kenneth Koch, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, and Robert Browning are my top favorites.

Do you write poetry?

Not as much as I did when in college and my early 20s.  But once in a while, I still jot one down.Have you ever memorized a poem?

Goodness me, yes!  When I was really little, I memorized all of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore, and also "Eletelephony" by Laura Elizabeth Richards.  I still know all of the latter, but not the former anymore, alas.  I've memorized other favorite poems over the years too, including two I mentioned above, "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost and "Hush'd be the Camps Today" by Walt Whitman.  I know several other Robert Frost poems too, including "Nothing Gold Can Stay," which I love because of the role it plays in The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.  And one of these days, I'll finish memorizing "The Man from Snowy River" too -- that one has such a delicious cadence to it that it's very easy to memorize.  I know a lot of Shakespeare too, mostly Hamlet of course, like the whole "To be or not to be" soliloquy.

Do you prefer poetry that rhymes and had a strict meter, or free verse?  Or do you like both?

I like both.  Rhyming poetry is easier to memorize, though.

Do you have any particular poetry movements you're fond of?  (Beat poets, Romanticism, Fireside poets, etc?)(If you haven't got any idea what I'm talking about, that's fine!  You can check out this list for more info, if you want to.)

Well, on a whole I am NOT fond of the Romantics.  Or the Beat poets.  Most of my favorite poets are from the 20th century, but not associated with any particular movements.

Poetry and Prose in Shakespeare's Plays

So today is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.  And this is also the day we traditionally observe his birthday on, because we know he was baptized on April 26, and babies were usually baptized 3 days after they were born back then, so though we don't have a record of his birthday for certain, it's the day we celebrate it because it's our best guess.

It's also my birthday.  Yes, I seem to have been fated to love Shakespeare, right from birth, hee.  We are going to be doing something Shakespeare-and-Mommy-oriented for my birthday today, which I'll doubtless post about later, probably over on my Soliloquy blog.  But for right now, I am going to post a bit about Shakespeare and poetry, as part of my Poetry Month Celebration.

When Cowboy and I were first dating, and he was learning about my obsession with great fondness for Hamlet and Shakespeare in general, he told me he was always really annoyed by how sometimes the characters in Shakespeare's plays speak in rhyme, and sometimes they don't.  Has that ever annoyed you?  Or made you wonder why he did that?  Did he just get sick of rhyming stuff and stop for a while, or have trouble coming up with rhymes, or what? 

I have no good answers for you on this.  Gasp!  I haven't really spent any time studying why and when he used rhymes.  However, this excellent post on The Shakespeare Blog explains some of the ways he used rhyme, so if you're curious, you can go read that.

However, I do know a bit about why he shifted from poetry to prose and back within his plays.  You probably know he mostly wrote in "blank verse," or "iambic pentameter," meaning that most of his poetic lines are 10 or 11 syllables long and have a cadence to them that makes them really easy to memorize, and sound very pleasing when spoken aloud.  For the most part, Shakespeare and other Elizabethan playwrights used poetry for more formal speeches, and for high-born and/or tragic characters, and prose for more relaxed speeches, and for lower-class and/or comic characters.  

When you're reading one of his plays, it's easy to see the difference.  The poetry is written with each line being about the same length, and each starting with a capital letter regardless of whether that word is the beginning of a sentence or not.  Like this:

To be, or not to be- that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die- to sleep.
To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life. 
          (Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1)

His prose goes all the way to the margin, and only the beginning of sentences are capitalized, like this:

I have of late -- but wherefore I know not -- lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire -- why, it appeareth no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?
          (Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2)

So it's really easy to see the difference if you're reading one of this plays.  But what if you're watching one be performed?  According to Shakespeare and the Arts of Language by Russ McDonald (Oxford University Press, 2001), "Shakespeare' first audiences seem to have been more sensitive to verbal structures than their modern counterparts" (p. 108).  Today, we have to learn to listen for the difference, but it seems that in Shakespeare's day, everybody knew that trick already.  Kind of like how, today, we might know that a scene shot in black-and-white stuck in the middle of a color movie is probably going to be a flashback or a dream.  It's a story-telling device we're familiar with.


To quote McDonald again, Shakespeare "employs prose precisely because it is not poetry, because it makes a change.  In other words, the introduction of a speech or scene in prose signals an alteration of mood, a relaxation of tension...  Prose can also signal reversals in character, indicating for example the onset of madness or a loss of control" (p. 113).  Shakespeare deliberately chose to write each speech in poetry or prose based on what he was trying to convey to the audience about a character's station in life, mood, and whether some major change was occurring, as well as whether they were overall a comic or tragic figure.  

Okay, that's your literary lesson for the day :-)  Also, if you're interested, the BBC is doing alllllll kinds of stuff to celebrate today, which you can learn about here.  

Happy birthday, William Shakespeare!  You died 400 years ago today, but while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe, we will remember you.  

"All You Who Sleep Tonight"

I wrote this the year after I graduated from college and got married.  My husband was a year behind me, so while he did his senior year of college, we lived on campus, and though I did have a full-time job, I got to participate in a lot of stuff at the college with my friends who hadn't graduated yet.  I still attended the writing group when I could, and took part in some events like "poetry jams" they hosted.  They let me compete even though I was no longer a student, and I won first place at one of them with this poem.

"All You Who Sleep Tonight"

All you who sleep tonight,
Full, cozy in your beds:
The world is full of ancient fright
That aches to creep inside your heads.

Beneath your sheets and blankets
You cuddle, dreaming dreams
Of childhood memories and pets
When someone sudden screams.

You bolt upright, eyes wide.
You search the darkness, scared.
The fear you feel so deep inside
Insists its fierceness can't be beared.

Aha!  Two eyes now glow
From somewhere near the door -- 
And from the darkness down below
Your bed, you hear a roar.

Your happy dreams have flown,
Your dolls and dogs forgot.
The fear that all the world has known
Seems here to hold you to this spot.

Another scream rips through
The air -- it sounds like Tom,
Your younger brother, yes, he who
Is favored most by Mom.

Those glowing eyes there at
The door, you recognize
As Jeeves, your Dad's old ugly cat,
Who slowly leaves amid the cries.

You scramble from your bed,
Ignoring Things below,
And run into your brother Fred,
Who falls and stubs his toe.

You disregard Fred's cries
When yet another scream
Shreds through your heart as poor Tom tries
To waken from his horrid dream.

Then opens up the door
That guards your parents' room,
And out upon the shadowed floor
Spills light that parts the gloom.

Your mom and dad appear,
They smile to you and Fred.
Then armed with sword and torch and spear,
They march to rescue Tom from bed.

With Jeeves and Fred beside,
You follow in the wake
Your parents leave as on they glide -- 
The shadows you forsake.

Then suddenly they stop
Just outside poor Tom's room.
They draw their swords, their sheathes they drop,
Then fiercely rush to challenge doom.

You wait in the cold hall
As battle then begins.
With Jeeves and Fred, you one and all
Hold breath to see who wins.

Abruptly, all noise stops.
Your parents reappear,
Their nightgowns splattered with the drops
Of blood from that which you did fear.

And there stands little Tom,
Not harmed by the attack,
And after a quick hug from Mom,
You all demand a snack.

So down the stairs you go
For milk and cookies warm,
But though you're safe now, yet you know
What terrors in your bedroom swarm.

Copyright Rachel (Ohlendorf) Kovaciny, 2003

Poetry Celebration Recap -- Week 2

Time to share links to all the posts people wrote for the Poetry Celebration this past week, April 10-16!  Here they are, in case you haven't had time to read them all and want to catch up, or if you're just joining us.  

Poetry and Baseball -- Joseph
"Narnian Suite" by C. S. Lewis -- Cleopatra
Galvanized by Leland Kinsey -- Lory
"The Boy in the Moon" (original poem) -- Joseph
"Sonnet 6" (original poem) -- Hamlette
"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. -- Joseph
"An Anglo-Saxon Riddle" (original poem) -- Cleopatra

And of course, links to all the posts for this month-long event can be found on this page, and people's links to their tag answers are over here.

I have been blown away by the participation in this event so far!  I'm so excited by this!  The posts are so diverse, we've got a great mix of original poetry, poetry analysis, and sharing of favorite poems... this is really cool, y'all.

"Sonnet 6"

I went through this phase toward the end of college, and continuing a bit afterward, where I wrote a lot of sonnets.  Because I liked the structure and the rules, and because... why not?  I've decided to share a few of my own poems here for the Poetry Month Celebration, and I'm starting with this one because... I can.

I wrote it during the mid-break in this 3-hour, one-night-a-week science class I took my senior year.  The professor told us something about a place called Puku-Puku, and one of the other students tried to find it on a globe, and this poem happened as a result.


"Sonnet 6"

But did you find Puku-Puku?
As you wandered o'er the planet,
Did it nearly make you cuckoo
Not to find your island? Man, it
Could drive a man to chocolate milk,
This unrequited longing for
The island where the finest silk
Feels rougher than its freckled shore,
Where kumquats fall from friendly trees --
The only true ambrosia grows
On your dream isle. The jolly breeze
Delightfully dispels "uh-ohs,"
So Puku-Puku-ites won't worry,
Won't argue, won't gripe -- they won't even hurry.

Copyright Rachel (Ohlendorf )Kovaciny, 2002

Why I'm Celebrating Poetry

A lot of people I've encountered think that poetry is pretty, but boring.  Or that it's hard to understand unless you're a poet yourself.  Or that poetry is just fluffy, romantic glop.  I felt that way myself until I went to college.  I disliked almost all the poetry I read for my high school lit courses.  In fact, I avoided poetry whenever possible.  My lit classes made me memorize all kinds of things about iambs and feet and meter and other technical jargon that made poetry about as enjoyable and interesting as scrubbing the kitchen floor.

Then I went to college and made friends with a couple of fellow writers.  They wrote poetry.  They loved poetry.  And their poetry was fun!  Not only that, but I discovered that I could write poetry too.  And it wasn't stiff and formal and dull.  I found that poetry could dance and sway and frolic.  

My second semester that year, I took a class called Poetry and Drama.  Fast-forward to my senior year, and I helped teach Poetry and Drama as part of my internship working for the head of the English department.  Quite a change over the course of four years, from actively disliking poetry to teaching others about it because I enjoyed it so much myself.

And now here I am, fourteen years after that, hosting a month-long blog celebration of poetry.  Pretty crazy, huh?  

But why do I like poetry?  Because it makes me view things in a different way than I otherwise would.  My favorite poems revolve around one small incident or image, something that would get barely mentioned in prose.  Plums, a fence, fog, a few words exchanged between a grieving husband and wife.  Spending time considering small things, fleeting moments, ordinary people.  I like poems that are like a photograph -- I can spend lots of time studying that one captured image and learning things from it, noticing what I might otherwise have overlooked or not understood or ignored.

Of course, there are lots of other kinds of poetry too.  Love poems, epic poems, ballads, and so on.  I enjoy those too.  But the types of poems I like best, and usually write myself, are the intimate little ones that make me pause and pay attention to the little things in life.

However, I don't read (or write) as much poetry as I used to, and so this Poetry Month Celebration is my way of encouraging myself to include more of it in my life.  While I'm at it, I figured why not spread the poem love?  So here we are.  

If you haven't already, please check out the Poetry Giveaway I'm hosting, which runs through Thursday, April 7.  And if you're so inclined, you can copy the Poetry Tag and fill it out on your own blog.  But above all, please go to the Poetry Month Celebration page and see all the cool posts that other bloggers are planning to contribute to this event -- what they've already posted!  If you want, you can sign up to participate too.

The Poetry Giveaway

Do you love poetry?  Kind of like poetry?  Are you curious about poetry, but aren't sure what poets to try out?  If you answered "Yes" to any of those, then this giveaway is for you!  I am giving away SIX books of poetry!

I figure this is a fun way to kick off my month-long celebration.  These are inexpensive poetry collections, and would be a good place to start if you want to expand your knowledge of poetry.  If you don't win one here, you can find them online or at your local library, if you're interested.

Here are the prizes, with a note or two on what they're like:

Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg -- very readable poetry from the 20th century.  Sandburg is one of my absolute favorite poets.

Songs for the Open Road:  Poems of Travel and Adventure (with poems from Whitman, Stevenson, Cummings, Frost, Keats, Dickinson, Longfellow, Hughes, Browning, and more) -- this would be great for someone who think they don't like poetry, or who are adverse to lovey-dovey sorts of poems.

Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson -- most of her poems are quite short, and lots of them are famous.

Great Short Poems edited by Paul Negri (with poems from Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson, Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Sandburg, Eliot, and more) -- this would be great for someone with a short attention span or limited reading time.

Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- lovely poems, many of them romantic, many of them famous.  This is where "How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways" comes from.

100 Best-Loved Poems edited by Philip Smith (with poems from Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Longfellow, Kipling, Frost, Sandburg, and more) -- this would be great for someone who wants to read lots of classic poetry.

Okay, so this runs through the end of Thursday, April 7th Sunday, April 10th. I will draw six names on Friday, April 8th Monday, April 11th, and post the names of the winners that day, as well a notify them by email.

Sadly, shipping rates went up this year, and I can only send these to US addresses. If you live outside the USA and have a friend who lives here that is willing to have it shipped to them for you, that's fine, but I can't send them internationally.

PLEASE make sure your information for the giveaway widget includes your current email address so that if you win a prize, you'll get the email informing you that you won! If you don't reply to my email by Friday, April 15th Monday, April 18th, I will choose another winner and award your prize to them instead.

The first way to enter, as you see, asks you to leave a comment telling me your top two prize choices. If you DO NOT want one (or more) of these books, please say so in your comment as well! I'd rather not send you a book of poetry you already have, or have read and decided you don't want to own, or have no interest in.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Don't forget to check the Poetry Month Celebration page all through the month to read the poetry posts that lots of bloggers are contributing!  You can also sign up there yourself to join in yourself.  And I've also posted a poetry tag with a link-up, for anyone who wants to fill it out on their own blog.

Poetry Month Celebration -- The Tag and Link-Up

Today marks the start of my month-long poetry shindig.  And what would a blog celebration be without a tag?  Here are seven poetry-related questions for you to answer, if you so desire.  Copy and paste to your own blog and answer them there, then come back and add your post's link to the linky list so we can all learn about each others' tastes in poetry!

The Questions

What are some poems you like?

What are some poems you dislike?

Are there any poets whose work you especially enjoy?  If so, who are they?

Do you write poetry?

Have you ever memorized a poem?

Do you prefer poetry that rhymes and had a strict meter, or free verse?  Or do you like both?

Do you have any particular poetry movements you're fond of?  (Beat poets, Romanticism, Fireside poets, etc?)(If you haven't got any idea what I'm talking about, that's fine!  You can check out this list for more info, if you want to.)

The Link-Up

Please note:  This link-up is just for the tag.  When you post other poetry-related things for the month-long celebration, comment with the links on this page here and I'll add them to that list.  Please comment after you add your link so others will get notified that you've joined the fun.



Don't forget to enter the poetry giveaway -- it runs through April 7th 10th.  And please have a look at the official page for the Poetry Month Celebration.  I'll be updating it all month, so check back now and then for links to other people's poetry posts!