Today

Soaking up the sun

Today is a complete contrast to my last post. The sun is out and it is warm. Not hot, not warm as in "it has been so cold that anything above freezing counts as warm," but genuinely springtime warm. Malcolm and I went to the park this morning to watch geese and play on the playground; this week I've been trimming the crepe myrtles, and the first seeds of the vegetable garden have been planted.

Last night before bed I was reading Aimless Love, the new collection of poetry by Billy Collins (one of my absolute favorite poets) when I rediscovered this poem, which completely captures my feelings about our spring weather:


Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden sprouting tulips

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

(Also available online from Poetry Magazine)

Poem in Your Pocket Day

As I was getting ready for work this morning, listening to NPR as usual, I heard a story that inspired me to write an actual, non-whining post! So here you go - and I liked the topic so much I am making it do double duty, since I also posted the first part of it on my work blog: Tomorrow, Thursday April 26th, is Poem in Your Pocket Day. What is Poem in Your Pocket Day? Here is the description from Poets.org:

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends. You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Need help finding a poem? There are many good resources available online, including the Poetry and Literature page of the Library of Congress,  the Scottish Poetry Library, the Poem-a-Day email from Poets.org, and Poetry Archive. I hate to admit how little poetry I have read, for an English major and literature lover, but I do have my favorites, including William Butler Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, Liz Lochhead, Norman MacCaig, Seamus Heaney, Dorothy Parker, Nizar Qabbani, and Billy Collins.

Here is one of my favorite poems, the one I insisted we put on our program at our wedding:

Fidelity
Man and woman are like the earth, that brings forth flowers
in summer, and love, but underneath is rock.
Older than flowers, older than ferns, older than foraminiferae,
older than plasm altogether is the soul underneath.
And when, throughout all the wild chaos of love
slowly a gem forms, in the ancient, once-more-molten rocks
of two human hearts, two ancient rocks,
a man’s heart and a woman’s,
that is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust,
the sapphire of fidelity.
The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

Funny (not intentionally) Poetry

We are evaluating our collection at work, hence the uber-saccharine poem on Friday.  Today I ran across Health and Safety Plays and Programs by Aileen Fisher from 1953.  It contains such gems as "Robots to the Rescue," a play about how hard it is to build a robot that is as efficient and wonderful as the human body, "The King's Toothache," in which two children from "the present" go back to Once Upon a Time and tell a king how to take care of his teeth, and the following poem (for recitation purposes, of course):

A Big Little Word

Plenty of sleep and
Exercise,
Plenty of food and play -
that spells PEP,
and the one who's wise
gets plenty of each, each day.

Isn't it lovely? There is also the ABC of Safety, a few of which I present for your pleasure:

C for clearing - clearing junk
from stairs before you go kerplunk!

K for keeping - keeping fit
by running to the first aid kit.

X for X-ing - Xing out
all the hazards roundabout.

Z for zigging and zagging
when a climb is steep and fagging.

Bad poetry interlude

From "The Value of a Smile," in Verses I Like, by Major Edward Bowes, 1939:

The thing that goes the farthest towards making life worth while,
That costs the least and does the most, is just a pleasant smile.
The smile that bubbles from a heart that loves its fellow-men
Will drive away the cloud of gloom and coax the sun again.
It's full of worth and goodness, too, with manly kindness blent -
It's worth a million dollars, and it doesn't cost a cent.

That is just verse one - it goes on for several more verses. If you English major-types wish, you can discuss why this is bad poetry in the comments. Happy Friday!