Friday, September 7, 2012

Poetry Friday: One of My Favorite Poetry Sites

Do you have someone in your life who not only shares poems with you and who never EVER shares one that isn't absolutely brilliant? How they do it, I'm not sure. But I'm lucky enough to have poet laureate Ted Kooser to do just that for me.

Now, Ted and I aren't friends per se. But I do have an RSS subscription to his site, American Life in Poetry. So we're practically BFFs. And Mr. Kooser is one of those kinds of friends...every poem he shares (one per week) is pure gold. I highly recommend subscribing to his site.

Here's some evidence to support my opinion:

The Word That Is a Prayer 
By Ellery Akers
One thing you know when you say it:
all over the earth people are saying it with you;
a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,
a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
What if you take a cab through the Tenderloin:
at a street light, a man in a wool cap,
yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;
he says, Please.
By the time you hear what he’s saying,
the light changes, the cab pulls away,
and you don’t go back, though you know
someone just prayed to you the way you pray.
Please: a word so short
it could get lost in the air

Read the rest here.

You MUST also read this one, which I featured here previously.

Night Dive 
By Peggy Shumaker
Plankton rise toward the full moon
spread thin on Wakaya’s surface.
Manta rays’ great curls of jaw
scoop backward somersaults of ocean
in through painted caves of their mouths, out
through sliced gills. Red sea fans
pulse. The leopard shark
lounges on a smooth ramp of sand,
skin jeweled with small hangers-on.
Pyramid fish point the way to the surface.

Read the rest of this poem here.

And be sure to check out the Poetry Friday roundup, hosted today at Write. Sketch. Repeat.

2 comments:

  1. So glad you are still posting regularly! I LOVE "The Word That Is a Prayer." It knocked my socks off. Thanks.

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  2. Trying to get back in the swing with an attempt at weekly posting. I like that poem a lot, too. Thanks for your comment Tabatha!

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