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.
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.
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
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| by Lucia Perillo |
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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.
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Saw You There
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| by Ander Monson |
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"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?
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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.
That last Redbox poem was intriguing. I don't know why I liked it either. But the part: "It looked like you came straight from fighting something that looked like lightning" gave me such a picture of her.
ReplyDeleteI think I like references to every day objects and things...like a Redbox.
ReplyDelete