Poetry Friday: Poetry Mix Tape for Autumn 2

It has been quite some time since I put together a Poetry Mix Tape. Since autumn is in full swing here in Michigan, I thought it would make for the perfect topic. I mixed some poems on autumn for you last year, but I think I like these even more. I hope you like them, too:

Theme in Yellow by Carl Sandburg
Aftermath by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
October by Bobbi Katz
Fall, Leaves, Fall by Emily Bronte
After Apple Picking by Robert Frost
Late Autumn Wasp by James Hoch

And perhaps my new favorite poem about Autumn by Juhan Liiv...

"Leaves Fell"


A gust roused the waves,
leaves blew into the water,
the waves were ash-gray,
the sky tin-gray,
ash-gray the autumn.


It was good for my heart,
there my feelings were ash-gray,
the sky tin-gray,
ash-gray the autumn.

You can read the rest of the poem here. The ending is good. Really good. And while the mood of the poem is kind of down, I like it for the complexity that's hidden there. The repetition and the imagery. I like it a lot.

If you like it, too, let me know. And if you like poetry, you'll love Poetry Friday, which today is being hosted at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Jama's also sharing some autumn poetry today (and one delicious-looking photo of a doughnut). So be sure to check it out!

Poetry Mix Tape: Poems on The End of the World

I like a little music in the morning on the way to work. But it has to be a certain kind of music. Nothing light. Nothing sappy. In the morning, I like my music up-tempo. And I like to play it loud. Is it weird to admit that I use music to pump me up some mornings as I drive to work? Too late now to take it back, I suppose. (I'll leave off the confession that I also like to sing along. At the top of my lungs.)

One song I often turn to for a little waking up is called "How Far We've Come" by Matchbox 20. It's up-tempo. It's loud. It's singable. And it's about the end of the world.

Where exactly am I going with this? Well there seems to be a small sub-genre of poetry that I enjoy--poems about the end of the world. Not sure why I enjoy these poems. I'm sure a psycho-analyst would have a field day with that one. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here to share some good "End of the World" poems with you. Now, I have to admit, there aren't many that I can find, but here are the ones I enjoy.

My favorite has to be this one, by Stanley Kunitz...

HALLEY'S COMET

Miss Murphy in first grade

wrote its name in chalk

across the board and told us

it was roaring down the stormtracks

of the Milky Way at frightful speed

and if it wandered off its course

and smashed into the earth

there’d be no school tomorrow.

A red-bearded preacher from the hills

with a wild look in his eyes

stood in the public square

at the playground’s edge

proclaiming he was sent by God

to save every one of us,

even the little children.

“Repent, ye sinners!” he shouted,

waving his hand-lettered sign.

At supper I felt sad to think

that it was probably

the last meal I’d share

with my mother and my sisters;

but I felt excited too

and scarcely touched my plate.

So mother scolded me

and sent me early to my room.

Read the rest of this poem here. As with so many end of the world poems, it's the ending that seals it.

Even though there aren't a ton of this type of poem out there, here are some more you might enjoy...well maybe poems about the end of the world aren't "enjoyable" per se, but you know what I mean:

• "Update on the Last Judgement" by Ellen Hinsey
• "When the World Ended as We Knew It" by Joy Harjo
• "A Song on the End of the World" by Czeslaw Milosz
• "The End of the World" by Archibald MacLeish
• "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost
• "The end of the world" by Miroslav Holub
• "The Powwow at the End of the World" by Sherman Alexie
• "The End of the World" by Erica Jong
• "Disappointments of the Apocalypse" by Mary Karr

Maybe there are some more out there that I'm missing. Please let me know. And enjoy the mix.

Poetry Mix Tape: Prose Poems

It's been awhile since I last posted a Mix Tape. If you aren't familiar with the concept, you should check out the earlier incarnations. I think you'll find it satisfactory and self-explanatory. And to make up for the dearth of Mix Tapes, I'll provide you, dear reader, with an super-sized edition for your reading enjoyment.

For this installment, I'm focusing on prose poems. For awhile, I couldn't figure them out. They seem pretty straightforward, but how can something be both prose AND poetry? Silly me. So naive. Since I started exploring them, I've figured out there's so much more to them than meets the eye. It's all in the language, the imagery, the sounds, the rhythm. All that's really missing are line breaks--they are poems through and through. And when they're well written, I find them irresistible. I think it's the prose poems with a "stream of consciousness" feel to them that I'm drawn to the most.

Take "A Supermarket in California," by Allen Ginsberg for example. I'm not a Beat kind of guy. But a prose poem about Walt Whitman? With the word What's not to love? Take a look:

 What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. 
         In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! 
         What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? 

Read the last two stanzas here and bask in all the psychedelic ramblings that make up this terrific poem.

But wait, it gets better. Ales Debeljak is a Slovenian poet whose following prose poem was published in Naomi Shihab Nye's international anthology This Same Sky:

The sodden moss sinks underfoot when we cross half frozen bays and walk through birch groves, wandering in an uneven circle that widens into darkness, through the minds and bodies of men and animals trapped in last year’s snow - no: trapped from the beginning, emptiness all around us, ice collecting on our pale faces, I can hear you singing on the run, an unknown melody, I can’t make out the words, clouds of breath freeze on your fur collar, eyes open wide as we trudge through silence and weakening starlight, through the fevered babble of children exiled to distant camps, insects, curling up under bark, December or June, no difference

Read the remainder of this beautiful piece here. I think it's all one sentence. And I like that. A lot.

My final sampling reminded me of my 2010 trip to Los Angeles (apparently I'm still obsessed with California). So descriptive and perfectly arranged, Fanny Howe's "Everything's a Fake" starts like this:

Coyote scruff in canyons off Mulholland Drive. Fragrance of sage and rosemary, now it’s spring. At night the mockingbirds ring their warnings of cats coming across the neighborhoods. Like castanets in the palms of a dancer, the palm trees clack. The HOLLYWOOD sign has a white skin of fog across it where erotic canyons hump, moisten, slide, dry up, swell, and shift. They appear impatient—to make such powerful contact with pleasure that they will toss back the entire cover of earth.

You can finish it here.

If you like prose poems as much as I do, allow me to recommend these as well:

• "Futility in Key West" by Mark Strand--utterly moving with a perfect ending
• "Drawing for Absolute Beginners" by Monica Youn--prose poem + list poem = bliss
• "And There Were Swallows" by Ray Gonzalez--you know how I feel about repetition
• "foundling" by Matthew Baker--I use the word brilliant too much, but it fits here. Great one for discussing with a class or group
• "The Secret of Light" by James Wright--A longer one, but worth a close reading
• "Be Drunk" by Charles Baudalaire--best title of the bunch, for sure
• "Seurat" by Ira Sadoff--first poem I've read that is written from inside a painting
• "Alphabet of Mother Language" by Anne Waldman--it goes on and on...in a good way
• "Interruptions" by Mary Crow--I've written about this one before...I still adore it
• "Update on the Last Judgement" by Ellen Hinsey--was saving this for a future Mix Tape, but I couldn't resist including it

Well, I sure have provided a deluge of reading material, haven't I? I hope you're able to take the time to explore these or at least bookmark this page or subscribe via RSS or email or (shameless plug) add me to your blogroll so you can come back and read more when you have time. And if I'm missing one of your favorite prose poems, by all means let me know in the comments.

Poetry Friday: Birthday Poems Mix Tape

I'm a huge supporter of birthdays. In a way, I feel like birthdays are the most important of all holidays. Well, today happens to be mine and once you pass a certain age and become the parent of the certain amount of children, it becomes impossible for birthdays to be as special as they once were. However, I still think everyone deserves to be treated to whatever they want on their birthday. My birthday wishes, the ones that are attainable, are pretty simple...I want to watch whatever I want on TV, and I want to share Merwin and Kunitz with the world.

Forced to choose, I am 99 percent certain that I'd have to pick W.S. Merwin and Stanley Kunitz as my all-time favorite poets. I hardly ever read anything they write that I don't like/love. So on my birthday, I turn to them. Here's a bit of W.S. Merwin's "A Birthday"...

Something continues and     I don't know what to call it
though the language is full of suggestions
in the way of language
                but they are all anonymous
and it's almost your birthday     music next to my bones

these nights we hear the horses     running in the rain
it stops and the moon comes out     and we are still here
the leaks in the roof go on dripping     after the rain has passed
smell of ginger flowers     slips through the dark house
down near the sea     the slow heart of the beacon flashes

Read the rest here. But you should also check out "In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year" by Mr. Merwin:

It sounds unconvincing to say When I was young

Though I have long wondered what it would be like

To be me now

No older at all it seems from here

As far from myself as ever

Walking in fog and rain and seeing nothing

I imagine all the clocks have died in the night

Now no one is looking I could choose my age

It would be younger I suppose so I am older

It is there at hand I could take it

Except for the things I think I would do differently

They keep coming between they are what I am

They have taught me little I did not know when I was young 

For this poem, you can read the rest here.

This may not be the best birthday poem ever, though. That title may belong to Mr. Kunitz's "Passing Through:"

—on my seventy-ninth birthday

Nobody in the widow’s household   

ever celebrated anniversaries.   

In the secrecy of my room

I would not admit I cared

that my friends were given parties.   

Before I left town for school

my birthday went up in smoke   

in a fire at City Hall that gutted   

the Department of Vital Statistics.   

If it weren’t for a census report   

of a five-year-old White Male   

sharing my mother’s address

at the Green Street tenement in Worcester   

I’d have no documentary proof   

that I exist. You are the first,   

my dear, to bully me

into these festive occasions.

Read the rest of this amazing poem here. And if today is your birthday, too, (I'm talking to you, P. Diddy) or even if it's not, please take the time to enjoy these beautiful birthday poems. 

Poetry Mix Tape: Poems of Autumn

Is it trite to say that autumn is my favorite season? It seems to be a lot of people's favorite season. Granted, all of these people are awesome, so maybe it's not trite at all. Maybe it's brilliant.

Anyway, I wanted to revive the mix tape concept for some autumn poems before it gets to late. Here in Michigan, autumn can often seem like it last's about 3 weeks. Before we know it, the leaves are all on the ground waiting to be raked or, even worse, those leaves are blanketed by a layer of snow.

There's just something about a crisp autumn day or taking a walk and kicking up clouds of fallen leaves as you go that just seems perfect. It seems I'm not the only one to think so, because there is no shortage of poems about autumn. I tried to pick a few you might not have heard before...

Autumn Movement by Carl Sandburg
The name--of it--is "autumn" by Emily Dickinson
To Autumn by John Keats (I set aside my Romantic bias for this one. It's a really good poem.)
Echoing Light by W.S. Merwin
Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare
When Autumn Came by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

And then there's this one by Lucy Maud Montgomery called "An Autumn Evening:"

Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow
And wake among the harps of leafless trees
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar,
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star
Above the darkening druid glens of fir
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir. 


Read the final stanza here. I love the imagery and word choice in this poem: "crocus sky" and "purple air." Words that don't go together but somehow here make perfect sense.

Got an autumn poem or two to share? Add them in the comments below, please. And happy falling.

Poetry Mix Tape: Ordinary Things

I try to start my year with poems students will enjoy. When they come to me, their exposure to good poetry is fairly limited. So what I want to help them do is realize how fun poetry is. I do this with some silly rhyming poems, but also with poems that have poetry moves that they can easily understand and enjoy, moves like metaphor and repetition and multiple meanings. (I used Hughes to talk about a lot of these things).

Now, I like to hit them with free verse and show them that poetry can truly be about anything. Check that. Not just anything. But ANYTHING. There are no limits really, I tell them, when it comes to where poems "hide."

In that spirit, for the next few weeks we'll be reading poems about everyday, commonplace, mundane, and ordinary things. This Mix Tape may be the easiest to add to for the wonderful readers out there. So feel free to comment and contribute more poems. But here's my Mix Tape of poems about ordinary things, also known as poems that make the ordinary seem extraordinary...

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
Between Walls by William Carlos Williams
Daddy Longlegs by Ted Kooser
Gas Pump by Jed Chambers (can't find this one anywhere but here -- scroll down to find it)
Safety Pin by Valerie Worth
Ode to My Socks by Pablo Neruda
To Television by Robert Pinsky
The Broken Sandal by Denise Levertov
The Heron by Linda Hogan

And finally, I'm not sure if this qualifies, but it is a poem about an ordinary situation involving ordinary things. And it paints a vivid, beautiful picture of the situation...

In the Basement of the Goodwill Store

BY TED KOOSER

In musty light, in the thin brown air   

of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,   

beneath long rows of sharp footfalls   

like nails in a lid, an old man stands   

trying on glasses, lifting each pair

from the box like a glittering fish   

and holding it up to the light

of a dirty bulb. Near him, a heap   

of enameled pans as white as skulls   

looms in the catacomb shadows,   

and old toilets with dry red throats   

cough up bouquets of curtain rods.

Read the rest at the Poetry Foundation, please. And, of course, add your favorite "ordinary" poems in the 

Comments.

Poetry Friday: Poetry Mix Tape...Rivers

Not only is Tuesday my first day of school, it's the first day of school for two of my children as well. One of the things on my "Things to do with the kids before summer ends" list is to take them downtown to ride the People Mover (a train that carries commuters and visitors around the city's main downtown area) and have a nice picnic lunch by the Detroit River. I guess I don't have many days left to do this, but I think we can squeeze it in.

Detroit's downtown isn't the most bustling of places, but I do have a fondness for the river. Water of any kind is something I enjoy, but I always find myself enchanted by the shores of the Detroit River. Maybe it's the view of a foreign country. Maybe it's that "water symbolizes rebirth" thing. Maybe it's the huge ships and barges. Who knows.

Source: www.flickr.com/photos/22735153@N06/2741610040

This got me thinking about poems about rivers. I don't know that many, so it seemed a good one to research. Thanks to the Poetry Foundation's Poetry Tool, I even came across one (albeit a slightly depressing one--you'll see when you click the link to read the rest) about the very river pictured above:

Poem to the Detriot River

By Terry Wolverton

Not really a river at all,

but a handshake between two Great

Lakes, Huron stretching to embrace

Erie in its green-gray grasp. You

stitch the liquid boundary of

a city dismantling itself,

bricks unmortared, spires sagging, burnt

out structures razed to open field.

Prairies returning here, foxtails

and chicory, Queen Anne’s lace sways;

tumbleweeds amble down Woodward

Avenue, blow past fire hydrants,

storefronts and rusted Cadillacs.

You are the mirror into which

we plunge. 

Read the rest of the poem here.

And please also check out these poems about rivers (although I'm not sure "Gold River" nor "The Way to the River" are about rivers, they river in the title and I like them a lot, so they make the mix tape!):

"A River" by John Poch
"The Way to the River" by W.S. Merwin
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes
"Trout" by Kathryn Starbuck
"Gold River" by Catie Rosemurgy
"Niagara River" by Kay Ryan

Know more poems about rivers? Please add them in the comments section. I just know there are more out there.

And while I have your attention, if you haven't subscribed yet, please do so either by email or RSS. My ego needs a boost and topping the 10 subscribers I currently have would certainly do the trick. Also, if you are new to my "Poetry Mix Tape" concept, please check out the previous three, which I do think were top notch, in my humble opinion.

Oh, and please check out the Poetry Friday Roundup over at Susan Taylor Brown's wonderful blog.

Poetry Mix Tape: Poetry by Native Americans

It's been a busy week, what with the return to work and all, so I'm tardy in my creation of a Poetry Mix Tape. My inspiration for this week's theme, Poetry by Native Americans, came after reading a poem by the award-winning author and poet Sherman Alexie. It was a beautiful, moving piece. There was only one problem--I couldn't remember where I'd found it. I knew I read it within the last couple weeks, but wasn't sure if it had been online or in one of the anthologies I checked out from the library.

After much searching, I finally found it. And I was glad I did:

I Would Steal Horses  

By Sherman Alexie 

For Kari

for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born

and where he will die sometime by dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.

I would sign treaties for you, take
every promise as the last lie, the last
point after which we both refuse the exact.

I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.

(I apologize for posting the entire poem; I couldn't resist. You can find copyright info and the entire poem here.)

So I went on to spend some of my free time this week hunting for poems for this week's mix tape. I came across many new poems by poets that were both familiar and new to me. It was challenging because it's an area of poetry that I don't have much of a experience with. And also because there's no one place on the net where Native American poems can be accessed. They're spread out quite a bit. I guess that's why I like this mix tape project. It lets me search far and wide for poems that fit my theme and then compile them in one place for perpetuity.

Please, if you know of any poems that fit this week's theme, post them to the comments. The more, the better. And while I think of it, teachers out there, feel free to encourage your students to participate in this little weekly project. The Poetry Mix Tape has no age limits!

So here is my Poetry by Native American Poets Mix Tape:

"What is Broken Is What God Blesses" by Jimmy Santiago Baca
"Blankets of Bark" by Sherman Bitsui
"The Girl Who Loved the Sky" and "Song of Our Times" by Anita Endrezze
"When the World Ended as We Knew It" by Joy Harjo
"Blind Curse" and "Culture and the Universe" by Simon J. Ortiz
"Ash" and "Birth" by Elise Paschen (scroll down to find them)
"Hoola Hand" by Henry Real Bird (scroll down here, too)
"I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move" and "Captivity" by Louise Erdrich

I know this is my biggest mix tape so far, but I couldn't narrow it down. I didn't have many poems by Native American poets in my mental database to begin with, so I really wanted to push myself to come up with a good number of them. I hope you find the time to look through some or all of them. And please add your contributions to the mix tape in the Comments section.

Poetry Mix Tape: Summer Poems

I had some trouble thinking of a theme for this week's Poetry Mix Tape. I toyed around with a few ideas, but couldn't settle on a good one. I really thought last week's Mix Tape was a home run, thanks in no small part to a number of great comments from readers. A tough act to follow you might say.

But then I got to thinking about the end of summer. I go back to work on Monday, so my summer has just about come to a close. So although it took some research on my part, these are all poems I read for the first time this week, I have chosen SUMMER for this week's Poetry Mix Tape theme.

Here are five poems about summer for you to (hopefully) enjoy:

"Summer Song" by William Carlos Williams
"Morningside Heights, July" by William Matthews
"Jet" by Tony Hoagland
"To the Light of September" by W.S. Merwin
"Summer" by Carlo Betocchi

Now, I have to say I applied the theme fairly loosely here. Not all of these are strictly about summer. Some are set during summer or simply just mention "summer." They are, however, all very good poems. Check out the opening of Hoagland's "Jet:"

Sometimes I wish I were still out

on the back porch, drinking jet fuel   

with the boys, getting louder and louder   

as the empty cans drop out of our paws   

like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.   

Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,   

bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish   

and old space suits with skeletons inside. 

It gets better, too, so make sure you read the rest at The Poetry Foundation.

Maybe you know some good ones that fit this theme a little better. Please contribute to our Poetry Mix Tape by leaving your poems in the Comments. I am sure there are more great summer poems out there than these. Share them with the world!

Poetry Friday: Poetry Mix Tape Number One

I wish there was a poetry iPod. You know what I mean--you could store all your favorite poems on it so you'd never forget them. Then you could just hit "shuffle" and get your favorites delivered to you randomly. Hmm...maybe I'm onto something here. (Now, I think, is a good time to say that if anyone ever produces or creates something like this, I thought of it first. I want royalties!)

Until I'm able to figure out how to make this product, I think I'll start a new series of blog posts. I'll call it "Poetry Mix Tape." Here's how it works...

Each week, I'll pick a theme and provide a list of poems that I really like that fit the theme. I guess I should probably pick a day of the week to do this, so let's go with...Wednesdays!

Naturally, you, dear reader, are invited to participate. I encourage you to create a mix tape of your own that fits the weekly theme. Leave your list (or a link to where we can find your list) in the comments section. And, if you don't like the theme, feel free to create your own!

(Now, I think, is a good time to say that The Small Nouns needs subscribers! I know there's about 2 of you who read on a regular basis, but I want more. So, what are you waiting for? Use the links in the sidebar to get The Small Nouns delivered to your inbox or RSS Reader. Now would also be a good time to politely beg all my fellow bloggers out there to please add me to their blog rolls! Ten hits a week just isn't cutting it with my ego.)


So without further ado, I give you this week's Poetry Mix Tape. The theme--Poems about Poets and Poetry.

"Poetry" by Marianne Moore
"Digging" by Seamus Heaney
"Poet's work" by Lorine Niedecker
"Valentine For Ernest Mann" by Naomi Shihab Nye
"Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway" by Gregory Corso

These are poems I really enjoy. I hope you enjoy them, too. And I look forward to reading the poems in your Mix Tape. Even if you're only able to contribute a poem or two, please do so in the comments.

The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by The Stenhouse Blog this week. Be sure to check it out!