The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Kimberlee Conway Ireton.

1 Art

In college, a girlfriend and I huddled in my dorm room in the dark, reading “The Telltale Heart” by candlelight, giving ourselves a delightful case of the shivers. (Yes, I really was that weird.) Our reading would have been even eerier if we’d had a copy of Poe with Harry Clarke’s haunting, even creepy, illustrations. On second thought, it’s probably better we didn’t.

In a similarly creepy vein, how about these skull-shaped bookshelves? I wouldn’t want one of them in my living room (I’m not that weird), but I still think they’re pretty cool.

And just for fun, check out these photos of serious writers in unguarded, even silly, moments. I love Eudora Welty watering her lawn. And Vladimir Nabokov chasing butterflies while sporting sweater-with-shorts chic? Classic! Then there are the Baywatch studmuffins Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe. Awesome.

2 News

Books of poetry turned into movies? Strange but true. James Franco has lined up several famous-to-people-who-are-not-me actresses to play in movie versions of Black Dog, Red Dog by Steven Dobyns and Tar by C.K. Williams. Now, who’s going to make a movie version of The Prelude?

It wouldn’t surprise me if someone made a movie out of this: Twitter-poet Patricia Lockwood learned that her husband was going to go blind unless he got a $10,000 eye surgery pronto, so she told the twit-o-sphere, and her followers donated the whole shebang—in less than 12 hours! You gotta read this one, tweeps.

3 Publishing

Author Neal Stephenson has an interesting take on the literary vs. commercial divide in publishing. (If you make the jump, skip trolly question 1 of the “interview” and just read his answer to question 2, headed The lack of respect.) Question for you: do you aspire to be a Beowulf or a Dante?

Either way, you’ll still need a publisher. The Los Angeles Review of Books has launched a new series of essays, each focused on a different publisher. Called Portait of a Press, their first installment highlights the work of Verse Press (now Wave Books). A fascinating look into the small world of a small press.

4 Reviews

I found this review of Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary intriguing. But I also felt annoyed: No link to the book! No image of the cover, which was so enticingly mentioned at the end! So I found the book and cover art for you, too. Here’s the book. Here’s the cover. And here’s an interview with Mullen about the book.

Oh. My. Goodness. It’s a poem. It’s a book. It’s a piece of art. Maria Popova writes a glowing review of “I Saw a Peacock With a Fiery Tail.” You have to see this one.

5 Creativity

Here on Tweetspeak, we’ve heard from a number of folks whose journeys into poetry came in the form of an outlet for adolescent angst. I remember one guy saying he wrote a whole book of poems to impress a girl. He’s in good company: poet laureate Charles Simic admits that waxing poetic started with his desire to impress girls. Of course, Simic is notoriously tongue-in-cheek, so I’m not sure we should believe him. Then again, he had to start somewhere. So: what sparked your poetic fire?

For me, it’s the words. I love ‘em. Edward Lear, King of British nonsense literature (but not to be confused with King Lear), did, too. Had he lived, Mr. Lear would have been 200 years old last Saturday. While he didn’t coin nearly as many words as the author of the other Lear, his creative vocabulary included such delights as plumdomphious, Ploffskin, Pluffskin, and Pelican jee (oh me!). Also scroobious, as in:

“It is impossible to imagine a more scroobious and unpleasant sound than that caused by the simultaneous sneezing of many millions of angry Mice.”

In the account of the adventurous peregrinations of four audacious and apprehensive children in which the above extract originally appears, he also inappropriately and inadvertently abused words simply because (I assume) he appreciated the way they articulated when alliterating or assonating. But he went still further: appropriating arcane and archaic appellations to advance his own abominable and apathetic aims.

(You may call me Lady Lear.)

6 Write-It

To get your creative juices flowing check out Tweetspeak‘s photo-based poem prompt for this week. Add your own poem in the comments. Or on your Facebook page. Or on our Facebook page.

Or if you’re looking for thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird (or a scarf or a shoe or a sidewalk), check out Eight Takes and let your inner Wallace Stevens out to play.

7 Poems

WARNING: Shameless act of self-promotion ahead! (Ahem.) In recent weeks, I’ve taken a page out of Maureen Doallas‘s book and written a series of found poems to raise awareness about human trafficking and to raise money for Love 146 and International Justice Mission. For some reason, poetry about children sold into brothels isn’t bringing in readers by the truckload (now there’s a shocker). Still, won’t you stop by and leave your John Hancock in support of these girls?

On a much lighter and more delicious note, Barbara Crooker celebrates all things dark and sultry in her ode to chocolate.

Ode to Chocolate

I hate milk chocolate, don’t want clouds
of cream diluting the dark night sky,
don’t want pralines or raisins, rubble
in this smooth plateau. I like my coffee
black, my beer from Germany, wine
from Burgundy, the darker, the better.
I like my heroes complicated and brooding…

Read the rest of “Ode to Chocolate.”

(Feeling like you want some chocolate after reading that decadent poem? Then check out our May-Play poetry prompts. If you play, you might just win some dark and sultry chocolate of your own to savor and wax poetic over.)

8 People

I remember reading Pushkin in my Eastern European lit class in college. I remember watching the opera version of “Eugene Onegin”, his famous novel-in-verse, in a Western Civ class. I remember nothing about either experience except that I had it. A Russian would be appalled. See, Pushkin is a big deal in Russia—so big that “Pushkin is our everything” is actually a famous saying there.

But he’s not such a big deal anywhere else. Pushkin’s great-great-grandson, whose name is also Alexander Pushkin (though he spells it a la Francais—Alexandre Pouchkine), is trotting the globe (the Western half of it, anyway) to try to change that. He wants to get the rest of the world to read and appreciate this greatest of Russian poets.

There’s even a documentary in the works, in which regular Russian Janes and Joes (Ivans and Ivanas?) recite Pushkin poems from memory. Apparently, he’s that kind of poet:

9 Education

Yesterday would have been Adrienne Rich’s 83rd birthday. But Rich isn’t the only feminist poet worth knowing about. So start your feminist poet education here: Flavorwire’s compiled a list of ten living feminist poets, from Maya Angelou to Alice Walker (yeah, she didn’t just write The Color Purple), along with a poem by each one of them.

Or if feminist poetry isn’t your thing, you could check out the world’s most-read books. I don’t guarantee that reading The Twilight Saga or The DaVinci Code will make you smarter (quite possibly the opposite), but you’ll get a crash course in pop culture if nothing else. N.B.: the most-read (or at least, the most sold) of those books contains quite a lot of poetry. Woot!

10 Sound n Motion

Sixty years ago last month, a very young John Ashbery (who earlier this year received a National Medal of Honor) read some of his early poems at the 92nd Street Y in NYC. (Click the play button at the top of the post to hear the recording.)

I am officially in love with this short video: a montage of the making of Ophelia’s skull, with a Millais painting making a brief cameo and Vivien Fox reading the monologue of Ophelia’s death. Altogether beautiful.

Photos by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post by Kimberlee Conway Ireton, author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

Kelly Cherry is Virginia’s 15^th Poet Laureate; her two-year term expires this year. Her most recent poetry collection is the book-length sonnet sequence The Retreats of Thought: Poems (LSU Press, 2009). This interview was conducted by e-mail.

What is your earliest memory of experiencing a poem?

I don’t recall hearing much poetry until high school, though my parents often sang rhyming songs to and with us. My mother told me that I wrote stories and poems when I was little but I have no memory of that. She did save a story I wrote that included a poem, which, perhaps, was a clue that I’d later want to write both.

What influenced your decision to become a writer and, more specifically, a poet?

When I was 12, I wrote a poem that concluded in a very simple rhyme. The poem was nothing special but the rhyme changed my life. My parents were string quartet violinists; when I made that rhyme, I thought, “This is my music.”

In addition to writing poetry, you are a novelist, short story writer, memoirist, essayist, critic, and translator. What draws you to these many different genres? Does any one tug at you more strongly than another?

I love them all. I think each lends itself to a certain exploration: fiction, to the exploration of character in relationship; nonfiction, to the exploration of the author’s mind; and poetry, to the exploration of the reality of what is outside us. These distinctions are a matter of emphasis, or focus, and are not absolute. The secret to the differences among forms or genres lies in rhythm. I think of the genres as concentric circles, since I am equally passionate about all of them, but poetry is always the first circle.

What is your favorite poetry-writing routine or practice?

I pretty much write all the time and don’t follow any particular routine or practice. I almost always write the first draft (or two or three) in longhand and move to a computer later; this is true for novels, as well as for poems. I write in spiral notebooks—grabbing whichever comes to hand, which means the same notebook may hold paragraphs from different stories and lines from various poems and a book review or essay. I would so love to be more systematic but I work on a lot of things at once and the result is, paper everywhere, with no way to organize it.

Billy Collins has said that “if you write, you love language”, and has also described poetry writing as a “journey of discovery”. How, given your affinity for philosophical inquiry, do you view your own poetry writing? What do you aspire to achieve or illuminate in your poetry?

I agree that writers love language. Writing in any form is a “journey of discovery”. Writing poetry is how I think, and learning what one thinks is terrifically exciting: That’s the journey, that’s the illumination. In any given poem, I want to make the idea of it as clear as possible—which is not to say an exposition but an unclouded vision.

I also have a great desire to include all kinds of things in my poetry; that is, to take on, in my poetry, different worlds, as in science, history, language, philosophy, visual art, music, religion, etc. I am interested in all these things, and it seems natural to me to want to write about them.

How do you know when a poem “works” or not? What helps you know that a poem is “finished”?

The poem isn’t done until it stops nagging you. That can take years but, thank goodness, usually takes six months to 12 months.

Which poets have had the most influence on you?

My main teachers were Fred Chappell and Robert Watson. Henry Taylor, David R. Slavitt, R.H.W. Dillard, and Gibbons Ruark are longtime close friends with whom I’ve shared poems and from whom I’ve learned. I like to read Russian poetry of the 20^th Century in translation. Major influences from early on, and favorites still, are Donne, Blake, Yeats, Frost, Eliot, Auden, and Stevens. I was happy to discover Seamus Heaney in my thirties. I read a lot of contemporary poetry and find much to admire: Richard Wilbur and William Jay Smith, Cathryn Hankla, Sandra Meek, Renee Ashley, Gjertrud Schnackenburg, Rhett Trull Iseman, Julia Johnson, Erin Hanusa . . . the list goes on. I could probably name about a hundred.

Two Roses

She is an angel in rose
Etched on a November sky.
He is a rose—
They are two roses, burning brightly.

They kiss in the car,
Their lips like petals: pink.
They must drive far
To find God, I think.

I think that angels’ wings spread
Against the sky are red
As roses, and fly not at all.
They fall

And fall, flower-flames,
And as they fall, they love and kiss,
Calling each other’s cherished name.
God loves this.

God loves this—
The twining, the arc.
They fall together,
Lightly, into the winter dark.

From Natural Theology: Poems by Kelly Cherry.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
All rights with author.

You can read more of Maureen Doallas’ interview with Kelly Cherry at Writing Without Paper.

Photo by Chikache. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Maureen Doallas, author of Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

Okay, so some people learn a foreign language better in the bath. Or after it.

What can we say? :)

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Drawing on Skitch, accessed through Evernote, by Lyla Lindquist. Half the inspiration by Princess L.L.
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

The James Laughlin Award is given by the Academy of American Poets to recognize and support a rather unusual (and unique) achievement — a poet’s second book of poetry. For 2011, the Laughlin Award was given to Anna Moschovakis for You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake.

I’ve never read a book of poetry quite like it.

The title suggests a story or a riddle, implying that something is going to happen or unfold, or a challenge or competition is going to begin. Or perhaps a choice is going to be offered. All of these things, or something like them, does indeed happen, as Moschovakis explores technology and technological culture.

And she does that in a kind of story format, using poetry, prose, prose poetry, and even lists to consider technology culture and the place of humans within it, or even if humans have a place.

The poems are divided into six parts — a one-page prologue, a two-page epilogue, and four sections (reminiscent in their own way of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.) The sections have intriguing titles, each a part of the story and each pulling the read forward: “The Tragedy of Waste,” “Death as a Way of Life,” “The Human Machine,” and “In Search of Wealth.” Each of these sections reads like an extended poem. Here’s a portion from “Death as a Way of Life, which asks questions about language and poetry in the context of technological culture:”

We know
that the worship of science,
logic, art, law, political theory,
fresh fruit, philosophy, conversation,
Yosemite National Park, a woman’s right
To stick to her plan, olives, justice, and
Higher education

can’t kill a church

What can grammar kill?

What can a poem kill?

From there, Moschovakis moves to a combined prose/poetic discussion of Bonnie and Clyde, two people who knew about killing and death. Later on, another character, “Anna” (for the author? will change to Annabot, who undertakes a conversation with the “Human Machine,” a conversation depicted through a partial playwright script, letters and poems.

As I said, I’ve never read a book of poetry like this one.

You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake is thought-provoking and unsettling, doing what poetry can often do more effectively than other literary forms — challenge your assumptions by forcing you to consider the familiar in a very unfamiliar way.

It deserved the award. I’m still pondering the question, what can a poem kill?

Post by Glynn Young, author of Dancing Priest: A Novel

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

The elementary school and playground which captivated my attention as a child was torn down many years ago. A bench surrounded by flowers is all that remains.

That and a thousand memories …

I kissed Amy Mayberry on the monkey bars. I pulled out a G.I. Joe action figure from my jeans pocket to fight battles with Jeff Vrabel among the exposed curling roots of an old tree. On the merry-go-round, I practiced my spelling words with Chuck Kirkpatrick.

Poetry brings us back to the big slide again so we can play in a green field of memory.

Tweetspeak Poetry’s May Play

We’ve decided to play together at Tweetspeak Poetry this month. We call it May Play. This week we wrote found poems using words taken from “Coated” by L.L. Barkat. Whenever we had a few minutes, we sat down on a bench and uncovered a poem. We played on Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs.

All this talk of May Play even got my wife writing poems again.

Toby McCrae wrote,

short sharp shock
the needle drops
sound spins
shiny black vinyl
play on
stretch it
tar covers hairline cracks
don’t stop don’t stop
Oh, God
Play on

nancy davis rosback wrote,

the magnolia is antique
or is it ancient
like crossing your fingers
it doesn’t matter
in this place
this farm
where the needle
is lost in the haystack
and the secrets
are buried beneath the skin
leaving hands hungry
to touch the truth
in the growing storm

We even had new visitors join us. Lorraine closed her eyes to find a beautiful truth.

holding you,
resting my cheek upon your velvet skin…
drawing your aroma in
mesmerized
I close my eyes
and escape…
to the hidden place,
and wonder who
will nurture you?
as crimson dusk turns dark then into dawn,
I waken to
the morning dew…
still holding you!

Lisa Miller felt a moment of inspiration in the holes in her jeans.

Fingers go where eyes have gone
Touching, nudging threads.
Stretching threads convey the cover
Rued within our heads.

We were tweeting the poems with the #mayplay hashtag, too.

@pathoftreasure: He is scarlet/ A coat of crimson/ Covering me/ Covering you/ Tying us together/As one/ No longer hanging/No longer alone

@monicasharman: Lost as a button, my inner/ compass needle points to the secret/ way home/ but I don’t buy it.

@DianaFrancis2: A secret lingers Sunday/ runs her hands around the afternoon tongue-/ hugging the evening/ She bites Monday’s neck/ truth revealed

@meganwillome: The red / was her favorite. / ”Ama red,” my kids call it. / I’m so glad / I bought the red camera / Almost didn’t buy it.

Creative word play is good for the soul. For the month of May, grab a word (or more) from our Monday poems and stretch it out into your own poem.

Here’s how it works …

If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to Every Day Poems.

1. On Mondays, the Every Day Poem in your inbox becomes Play-Doh. Pinch off a word. Or more. Mix in your words and colors. Until yours.

2. Tweet your poems to us. Add a #mayplay hashtag so we can find it and maybe share it with the world.

3. Or leave your found poem here in the comment box for each week’s May Play post.

We’ll read your tweets and share some of your weekly play each week. At the end of the month, we’ll choose a winning poem and ask the playful poet to record his or her poem to be featured in one of our upcoming Top 10 Poetic Picks.

Here’s today’s Every Day Poem. Now go play.

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BONUS: Winner Takes the Chocolate

If you have a short story about why you love Every Day Poems, leave it in the comment box here or post it to your blog and leave us the link.

We’ll enter your name in a drawing for some gourmet chocolate.

Photo by Camille Richez. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Matthew Kreider.

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

I could start this post talking about Mrs. Sullivan, who helped our fifth-grade class publish a book of poems called “Pegasus.” I could also talk about Mrs. Gorychka, who had us write a lot of poetry in her creative writing class that I took in 10th grade. But my journey into poetry kicked into high gear when my mom’s cancer returned in 2007.

She was supposed to have died sometime between fifth and 10th grade, but she hung on. This time she wasn’t going to pull through. So I turned to poetry. Only poetry seemed strong enough, yet it was short enough to keep me from getting bogged down. I could take a single image — a slice of apple pie, a bluebonnet — and capture a moment I didn’t want to lose. I wrote 72 poems. Actually, I wrote more than a 100, but some of them really sucked. I’ve revised the remaining ones a dozen times or more.

After my mom died, I thought I’d never write another poem. Enter Susan Wooldridge’s book Poemcrazy, which my Tuesday writers’ group took up. That book got me playing with words and experimenting again. Since then, our group has become all poetry, all the time. We’re on our fourth book now. We’re all getting better.

Only recently did I start putting poems up on my blog. It has been both scary and rewarding. The scary part is obvious. The rewarding part is that people seem to see things in my poems that I can’t — not so much hidden meaning as layers of meaning. So when I wrote a poem about laundry, and people asked if there had been a lot of tension in my home lately, well, um, yeah. They were right. I loved that poetry found things that I didn’t know were there.

So I keep hanging out here at Tweetspeak and in my poetry group. I subscribe to Every Day Poems, and I read American Life in Poetry and the Writer’s Almanac, looking for a good poem. Yours or mine. It doesn’t matter.

. . . . .

Tantrum

Mom and her five grandchildren made the cover
of a new cancer book: “The Smile Never Fades.”

My daughter, my nephew, and my oldest niece
smile big, hopeful smiles.

My son tries not to smile, while still looking
supportive.

My 2-year-old niece, safe in my mother’s arms,
wails. She’s done being nice.

As soon as the photo shoot is over, she shrieks,
sticks her thumb in her mouth,
throws herself on the floor.

If I could, sweetheart,
I would grab my blankey,
lay myself down next to you.
You won’t have to smile anymore.
I promise.

Photo by WestPark. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

She Grew Up to Be a Poet

More angel than Medusa,
      no temple serpents licking

clean her ears of dark words’
      fates, no ill- or fork-tongued

Cassandra she, the child hears
      her future sure: swirls of stuttered

combinations of letters unstrung,
      her own sweet-voiced Calliope

cajoling the spells of imagination’s
      epic rides through landscapes hued

in green, metered in dotted staccato riffs.
      Her paper tablet harnessed loose,

she plucks her language branch
      till bare, verses stacked on back

of butterflies, their wings ink-dipped,
      rendering impressions silent.

Illustration by Shelley Kommers Luna. Used with permission. Poem by Maureen Doallas, author of Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems.

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

Drawing on Skitch, accessed through Evernote, by Lyla Lindquist. Half the inspiration by Princess L.L.
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

The best in poetry, (and poetic things), this week with Matthew Kreider.

1 Art

I’ve never imagined anything like this. Sculptor Yasauki Onishi uses plastic sheeting, hot glue and an assortment of cardboard boxes to create “reverse of volume.” This breathtaking piece of “vapor frozen in time” might inspire you to remove the boxes and bulk from your own poetry.

As a kid, the appearance of a train crossing the street always captured my imagination. While sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s car, exotic train cars rolled past me with mystery cargo and spray-painted graffiti that broadcasted strange words and peculiar shapes. Where were the trains going? And who had marked them along the way? Here’s an Instagram tribute to the magic of graffiti.

2 News

When my students write research papers, I teach them about attribution. Attribution is vitally important for all forms of credible media, But in today’s online social networks, users often share the artwork of creatives without giving credit where credit is due. Behance recently seized an opportunity to inform, announcing a new collaboration with Pinterest, to ensure attribution counts every time.

In fourth grade, Olivia hit me in the face. My cheek burned for days, and my bruise didn’t go away for weeks. “No.” (That meant she didn’t want to be my girlfriend.) That was one of my earliest experiences with the powerful physicality of language. The Museum of Modern Art recently opened an exhibit which showcases the physical presence of words and their role as building materials in our lives.

3 Publishing

Jane Friedman is an expert on publishing and social media. She likes how the heat of innovation can bend how we process the world. Inspired by Friedman’s creative energy, L.L. Barkat, managing editor at T.S. Poetry, has just launched an exciting new sponsorship with Writing on the Ether for the month of May. I’d say it turned out pretty nicely. After all, her book is now sitting beside Munch’s “The Scream.”

Over the years I’ve taught journalism students to use Pagemaker and Quark Express. But then came the new format. Peter Brantley considers the current digital state of publishing. He says, “True digital standardization has yet to come, and we don’t even know where to watch for the vector of its arrival. But these are the most exciting days in publishing that I’ve ever seen.”

4 Reviews

You may have quoted him at some point. If not, you’ll soon be able to once you page through Phillip Larkin’s Collected Poems. Readers both love and hate the smooth accessibility of his style. Still, Stephen Aky writes, “Paraphrasable but irreducible, Larkin’s work remains poetry, not argument.”

Mark Strand’s new book, Almost Invisible, looks at how an aging American poet’s voice struggles to fill the sanctuary of poetry. Because Strand’s earlier work points to an echoing uncertainty about the relevance of poetry in our culture, readers will want to pay close attention to the tone and timbre of his words.

5 Creativity

I tend to think selfishly when it comes to creativity. How do I get it? And what can I do with it? But Katie Sokoler’s stone-painting project in her own Brooklyn neighborhood causes me to reconsider how I spend my creativity.

I have a four-year-old and a three-year-old at home, and well over 100 teenagers at school. Sure, they keep me busy with a hefty load of tasks each day, but they also fill my head with a dizzying cacophony of voices. I used to think creativity required a quiet week at the beach. Now I’ve learned creativity needs only 15 minutes between fights. Here are the Counter-Intuitive Benefits of Small Time Blocks.

6 Write-It

Some experts advise writers to eat, sleep and breathe writing contests. It’s the only way to beat the Pop Tarts of the publishing industry. Most contests cost us time and money. Do writers really need to enter them? And why should they pay? Stephanie Vanderslice shares her thoughts on fee-based writing contests.

Okay, while you sort through all of that, here’s a free poetry contest to consider.

7 Poems

Poems offer us an opportunity to play with design and scale. When I read Tania Runyan’s “Jelly Belly Warehouse Tour” last month as part of Every Day Poems candy theme, I quickly marveled at the arrangement of those jelly beans.

A few months ago I began reading some of Malcolm Guite’s poetry. Living in Cambridge, he’s a poet and scholar, priest and rock and roller. I invite you to read “What If” — and there’s even a link for you to listen to him reading the poem. His voice is unforgettable.

8 People

Do you categorize your bookshelves by genre, author, color or size? Whatever your personal style, if you love books, it’s bound to get tricky as your collections grow. Stephen King tells the UK Sunday Times Magazine the story of how a woman once tried to place him upon a shelf at a grocery store.

Maurice Sendak passed away a few days ago, but he left us with so many memories. Where the Wild Things Are was given to me by a friend in high school while I was recovering in the hospital from a coma and traumatic head injury. It was a “wild rumpus”, I assure you. But eventually I did make it back home to my bedroom, where I found my journal. That right there tasted like a plate of hot supper.

9 Education

Fiction is growing increasingly anemic in school curricula. Meanwhile, nonfiction has strong shoulders and clearly-defined muscle tone. Jonathan Gottschall makes a case why fiction is good for you. He says,

“Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.”

I don’t know about you, but I want my kids to grow up rubbery.

10 Sound n Motion

Growing up, I thought math was pretty ick. But then my grandfather, a mathematics professor, introduced me to new ideas, like those in Abbott’s spectacularly geometric book, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Here’s a 1965 Academy Award-winning short film based on the book. You’ll love The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics.

Finally, please don’t overlook the music of ordinary things. Dieggo Stocco was asked by Burt’s Bees to create a music video performance using only their natural ingredients as instruments. This is all natural, folks. No artificial colors, synthesizers or digital sampling.

Photos by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post by Matthew Kreider.

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In April we’re exploring the theme Candy.

The last time I spent any time with a book by Julia Cameron, I got into an altercation with my Writer. She hovered over my desk, whining relentlessly about how everyone else’s Muse went for long walks and exotic dates, sipping tea hot tea and macchiatos at tables adorned with fresh cut flowers.

I lost my temper and whipped a pencil, aiming between her doe eyes. She slunk away whimpering to the showers. Not long afterwards, I looked up to see her dripping form, wrapped in a towel and reaching out from the dim shadows of my office with a crumpled, soggy scrap of paper.

I sighed and read the shower-smeared ink. It turned out to be my very first poem.

Ms. Cameron and I have not yet reconciled.

But seduced by the intoxicating power of senseless banter and wordplay with Princess L.L., I reviewed a few book club options and watched in disbelief as I mouthed the words, “Let’s plan on The Artist’s Way.”

One of us believes I’ve matured enough to handle it this time. One of us is not so sure.

The book is considered by many to be a classic in learning to cultivate practices that will help unlock the creative process. In her introduction, Ms. Cameron calls it an “into-the-water” book that has helped readers move from “the embankment into the flow of a creative life. They went from not doing to doing, from not trying to trying, from stunted to flourishing.”

This is a twelve-week course, but we’ll be selecting five or six lessons to focus on together (if you have a don’t-miss chapter, let me know in the comments). The book club will start on Wednesday, May 23, with the introductory sections and Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety. Come and join the discussion in the comments, and link up any posts you write on the book.

My Writer, still rubbing that spot on her forehead, thinks it’s a terrific place to start. When she doesn’t think I’m paying attention, she whispers that she’s really excited to take this journey with you.

When I don’t think she’s paying attention, I steal her coffee mug.

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Lyla Lindquist.

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

“I have a poem to read before we eat,” I told my sister, Sierra, as we were searching for bright plastic Easter eggs filled with candy. The little children had finished their egg hunt in the front yard already. Now, we grown “kids” were running around the back yard looking for treasure.

“Did you write it?” Sierra asked, knowing that I do that occasionally.

“No, it’s a poem by Wendell Berry,” I said.

“Dingleberry?” my sister-in-law, Stacy, asked, joining us for the end of the conversation.  “What’s this about a dingleberry?”

“Not dingleberry,” I said. “Wendell Berry.”

They both cracked up laughing.

“I brought a poem by WENDELL Berry to read before we eat,” I said, clarifying.

“Oh, that’s better. I wondered why you were talking about dingleberries,” she said. Both women laughed again.

“WENDELL Berry,” I repeated, slowly. “I was just trying to bring a little culture to our family,” I said, feigning disgust. Little did I know.

As we headed back toward the house, they explained to me that “dingleberry” is a slang word for a “small clot of dung clinging to the hindquarters of an animal.” At least, that’s how dictionary.com described it. If only my sisters had been so dignified.

“I thought it was just a nonsense word,” I said, embarrassed.

“Nope,” Sierra said. “It’s a real word.”

On behalf of my whole family, my apologies to Mr. Wendell Berry.

I had spent a good deal of time thinking about what, if anything, I should say or read to my family on Easter Sunday. We would come to the table with a variety of thoughts and opinions about why we were gathered there that day. No one would object to a prayer. But would a prayer startle them? A small speech about newness might set the wrong tone. I wasn’t trying to persuade them of anything.

I just had this sense of gratitude – for Spring, for family, for life – that I wanted to wrap them all in, despite the grief and struggle that make up too much of our days. Poetry alone would have the subtlety to communicate that, to startle them all into hearing.

“When despair for the world grows in me,” Mr. Berry’s poem, The Peace of Wild Things began. I knew it was right.

When the kitchen counter was filled with bowls of potato salad and plates of grilled burgers, after the potato chip bags were opened and the tomato slices laid out next to the buns, my dad gathered us.

“Charity has a poem she wants to read,” he announced.

With no further introduction, I read to them of despair and fear, of the wood drake and the great heron. I described a laying down and a looking up. The poem ended with the word “free,” and we all stood quiet for a few seconds.

Then the laughter began again, along with the retelling of the dingleberry confusion and my insistence that this family needed a little more panache. We loaded plates and filled cups. Toddlers ran squealing through the house, hungry but refusing to eat.

And I rested again in the peace of wild things.

Photo by Michael Sissons. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Charity Singleton.

Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998.

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

The Poet Comic, by Sara Barkat, age 15.
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

Yesterday, my friend Monica Sharman had a post about Every Day Poems, the subscription at Tweetspeak Poetry that delivers a poem a day to your email box. She said it had become a kind of “poem-ography” for her – introducing her to both newer and older poets.

I wondered what my own “poem-ography” might look like. Who were the poets who shaped and guided and led my thinking, my education and my own writing? It turns out that the answer is in two parts.

The first group of poets and poetry was the group that shaped by teachers in junior high and high school – the poets we studied and the poets they encouraged us to read: Stephen Vincent Benet, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Carl Sandburg, and Amy Lowell. These were the American poets of the first third to first half of the 20th century who were “modern” when my teachers were in high school and college.

Some of the British poets showed up as well, but mostly from the Romantic Period (Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge) and the Victorian Period (Tennyson). The only modern British poet I can recall studying in school was born an American – T.S. Eliot.

The poems that I studied during that period that I recall most clearly were Benet’s John Brown’s Body, Masters’ Spoon River Anthology (which I’ve read and reread many times), Four Quartets by Eliot, and several by Robert Frost – like “Mending Wall,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” and “The Death of the Hired Man.”

In college, the only significant additions to the list above were Beowulf and Shakespeare’s sonnets.

The second part of my “poem-ography” started in the early 1980s. I began to read poetry again, largely inspired by full-time corporate speechwriting. And I ranged all over the literary map: William Cullen Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Poe, Whitman (I discovered why he was not much emphasized in high school), Emily Dickinson, the British poets of World War I, John Masefield, and lots more T.S. Eliot (like Murder in the Cathedral). Then came Dylan Thomas and Wallace Stevens, Robert Penn Warren and Robert Lowell.

I continued to read poetry right up to the present. Today, it’s Thomas Merton, Billy Collins, R.S. Thomas, and a number of newer, younger poets as well.

Something has definitely changed with poetry, and American poetry in particular. Even as late as the 1960s, there was a sense of “American poetry.” It was a sense a national poetry, yes, but also a sense of the poet as a representative of the nation’s “sensibility.” That is mostly gone today. Today, poetry is almost intensely private and individual. It didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen.

But I go back from time to time and read Whitman and Edgar Lee Masters, Dickinson and Teasdale, Frost and Benet, the poets I learned and found, the poetry that shaped and guided me.

And I am thankful.

Who – what poems – would comprise your “poem-ography?”

Photo by Norma Desmond. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of Dancing Priest: A Novel

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

Most mornings Donald stops by my high school classroom before school starts. He sits on the opposite side of my desk and we talk house music, longboards, even Steve Jobs.

As far as I know, Donald hasn’t written down any poems of his own yet, but I’ve already heard the voice of poet stir during our conversations.

Recently I surprised him with an Every Day Poems subscription. Now when he drops by, we have something new to share. We drop lines from our inbox-delivered poems, checking to see if the other recognizes them. We continue to play with the images and weave them into conversations.

It’s fun. Because we share.

Tweetspeak’s May Play

Last week, we invited our readers to play with found poems, using words or phrases from Pamela Miller’s “Marilyn Monroe at the Gates of Heaven.” A found poem happens when you choose words or phrases from a text and then stretch them out into a new poem.

Some of you posted your found poems in the comment section of last week’s post.

Linda McCrae Tame wrote,

Cuddle me up and hide me
In the secret place,
Our trysting place.
In the midst of noise
And chaos all around,
You quiet me;
My heart is open.

Louise Koutavas stopped by to play, too.

If you want sprinkles
on your head, there is always
room for one more, here.

And some of you tweeted your poems using the #mayplay hashtag. Here’s a sampling …

@vnesdoly: Lord, here I come/tired and wet/Cuddle me long/ballgown me white

@llbarkat: Cuddle me in white mink/I’ll pop out of a barrel for you,/smooth fur smiling

@HaikuHughes: I fill the bathtub./ “No tap-dancing up the stairs!”/ Sugar, she’s just four.

Creative word play is good for the soul. This month, whenever you have a spare moment, grab a word (or more) from our Monday poem and stretch it out into your own poem.

Here’s how it works …

If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to Every Day Poems.

1. On Mondays, the Every Day Poem in your inbox becomes Play-Doh. Pinch off a word. Or more. Mix in your words and colors. Until yours.

2. Tweet your poems to us. Add a #mayplay hashtag so we can find it and maybe share it with the world.

3. Or leave your found poem here in the comment box for each week’s May Play post.

We’ll read your tweets and share some of your weekly play each week. At the end of the month, we’ll choose a winning poem and ask the playful poet to record his or her poem to be featured in one of our upcoming Top 10 Poetic Picks.

Here’s today’s Every Day Poem.

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BONUS: Winner Takes the Chocolate

If you have a short story about why you love Every Day Poems, leave it in the comment box here or post it to your blog and leave us the link.

We’ll enter your name in a drawing for some gourmet chocolate.

Now go play.

Photo by .craig. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Matthew Kreider.

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

From the Offices of L & L. Okay, it’s true. Princess LL knows how to push buttons. Especially the kind that get you creatively motivated.

Poor Lyla. Last weekend she was just about worn out from all the Daily Dose ideas dropped stealthily into her inbox. She finally declared happy exhaustion and said something that seemed awfully profound for managers everywhere to heed: “Your delight is a powerful motivator.”

All things considered, LL thinks Lyla should be thankful she didn’t ask her to do the Funny Hamster Dance…

Drawing on Skitch, accessed through Evernote, by Lyla Lindquist. Half the inspiration by Princess L.L.
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

Sweat beads formed on my brow as soon as he removed the ice-cold washcloth. My matted hair straggled across the pillow; sheets wet with fever lay limp at the foot of the bed, almost slipping to the floor.

An ovened sun, begging to come from behind the curtains did not help the heat dissipate, so he gently soaked the washcloth, stroked my hair and held the cloth in place on my forehead. At some point I drifted to sleep but awakened with a start. The fever simply would not let go.

His inadequacy, his fatherly desperation at not knowing what to do showed. He stood up and left the room. I heard the car making its way down the driveway. I was too tired to wonder where he was going; I drifted off again.

He returned some time later with tea. It was black. I never drank black tea but the smell of vanilla pierced my congested nose and I inhaled deeply. All I wanted was nothing, but he started speaking: gently, ever so gently.

I lay my head back down, closed my eyes and turned my head so my ear would catch his gentle voice.

My grandparents took him out of school for a year and ferried him to the Seychelles to be with them. He was 16: young and very much alive, coming into manhood.

Days would blend into evenings like oil paints on a canvas, sea water lapping at the steps of his hut where he would lay his weary body down to sleep.

My fever raged but my heart was elsewhere. My lips sipping the vanilla tea transported me, held me there. My eyelashes closed as he continued stroking my hair.

This feverish afternoon opened my heart to the magnificence of the human form: mostly the beauty of the female curve, the contours of her mountainous landscape.

Recently, poetry re-awakened this for me, brought it into my present. Reading “Lady Love”, “Compass Rose” and “On Anatomy and Physiology” brings back those same feverish murmurings that opened me to beauty.

And so my rolls of film have spilled out of the cupboards again. My camera has been leaning into folds of skin and hair.

Photos and post By Claire Burge, owner Claire Burge Photography

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Kimberlee Conway Ireton.

1 Art

I love mash-ups! Today I have two:

The Music and Art Mashup
I am one of the least musical people I know. I can’t read music, and I can’t carry a tune—in a bucket or otherwise. But I found a beautiful piece of music I can study and appreciate, despite my musical illiteracy.

The Poetry, Folk Tale, and Dance Mashup
Live theatre and folk tales—does it get much better than this? Carol Ann Duffy, Britain’s poet laureate, is collaborating with choreographer Melly Still to produce the Rats’ Tales: seven folktales (including a few that Duffy herself wrote) brought to life with Duffy’s narration and dance.

And just for fun, and because I adore books, check out these buildings made of books. They really are. How cool is that?

2 News

Poetry is a risky endeavor if you’re a woman in rural Afghanistan. You take your life in your hands if you write poetry. And yet, women risk it. That, my friends, is a testament to the power of poetry.

On the other side of the globe, we glimpse another scene that reveals the enduring power of poetry: a first edition of Robert Burns’ Poems sold at auction this week—for 40,000 pounds. First published in 1786, Poems was Burns’ first book of poetry, and all 612 copies sold within a month. Anyone else feeling green-eyed?

3 Publishing

Got a poem about God? Or your search for God? Or your sister’s search for spiritual sustenance? Or your blind brother’s brief encounter with an angel? The folks at EyeWear Publishing are looking for poems that capture 21st century spirituality for a forthcoming anthology.

Or if you’re feeling really ambitious, you could submit to The Lumberyard, which has a brief open submissions period going on…right now.

4 Reviews

Here’s a review (or maybe it’s a critique? or a rambly essay?) of Conceptual poetry, the new Rita Dove poetry anthology, Susan Howe’s That This, Srikanth Reddy’s Voyager, Charles Bernstein’s All the Whiskey in Heaven and Peter Gizzi’s Threshold Song—all rolled into one. Whew! Trust me; this one ain’t for the faint of heart…unless your faint heart really (and I mean, really, really) loves contemporary poetry.

For those of you looking for something less academic or less esoteric or just less long, check out Maria Popova’s review (with pictures!) of Ounce, Dice, Trice by Alastair Reid (poet and translator of Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda) with illustrations by Ben Shahn. This one’s also for anyone who just plain loves words. Yum!

5 Creativity

I have four kids under the age of eight. I cannot write much when they’re around. But I can think and muse and let ideas simmer on the back burner of my mind. And I find that when I do get to the page or the screen to write, the words flow faster, require less revision because of all the mental pre-writing I’ve done. Cara Lumen argues that creativity requires aloneness. But my experience is often the opposite. Don’t get me wrong: I’d love some more alone time, but I find that in the rush and rustle of routine, creativity unfurls. What’s your story?

Creativity is taking what is and making something new. So when Vic Sizemore writes about insecurity, recognition, and the value of making art, he mixes Albert Camus, Tom Petty, and George Harrison to create an old-new cocktail: “There is meaning beyond the suffering, and art is the path to it.” And he believes that. Except when he doesn’t. What else makes sense?

6 Write-It

I love being outdoors. Okay, I love it when the weather’s nice. So I guess you’d call me a fair-weather friend. But when it’s sunny—or heck, when it’s just not raining—I enjoy getting outside and looking around. Especially at this time of year. There’s so much to see, so much to remember, so much just waiting to be captured in words. Children’s book writer Gill Lewis has five tips for people like me who want to write about the world outside our doors.

And since we’re talking about the great outdoors, the folks at The Poetry Foundation have a few poem prompts based on Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” the first of which is to notice the wildlife you encounter in the course of a given day and then write a poem about your encounter with the natural world. On Tuesday, we saw two bald eagles circling above the park where we were having a picnic. I can still see in my mind’s eye two dozen children stopping their game of tag to stare up into the sky. Perhaps there’s a poem there?

7 Poems

One of the first Tweetspeak blog posts I ever read was by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, whose poetic language and vision captured my imagination. So I’m thrilled to get to share with you her poem “St. Eve in Exile”:

Here amid a field of light
You say my name.

And I am not she
the girl You called Your own.

My mouth a cavern.
My chest an empty cave.

I am dry and dusty.
I am not wet or well.

Read the rest of “St. Eve in Exile.”

8 People

Seattle poet John Burgess finds inspiration for his poetry in punk rock. The words and wordplay of his short poems mirror the rhythm of punk, to which he often listens as he writes. An active participant in open mics and other read-it-aloud poetry events, he views poetry as much a performance art as a written one, revising poems based on an audience’s response (or lack thereof). He encourages young (or not-so-young-but-still-just-starting-out) poets to find an audience to read for. I’m sure that would work for some people, but I’m very much of the opinion that poetry (mine anyway) ought to be read silently…by people on the other side of the continent—or the world, preferably if they don’t read English.

Late last month the Academy of American Poets announced that Matthew Rasmussen has been selected to receive this year’s Walt Whitman Award for his first book of poetry, Black Aperture, which will be published next year by Louisiana State University Press.

9 Education

You knew that William Shakespeare was born April 23 (or 21 or 22), 1564. Of course you knew that. You’re a poet. And every last poet and writer among us owes a huge debt to the Bard of Avon. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Shakespeare is the second largest single source of words in the English language: over 1600 of them!

He coined such gems as hot-blooded, cold-hearted, watch-dog, and young-eyed, not to mention admired, abstemious, and airless. Of course, not all his words are still in colloquial use. Anyone met a flirt-gill recently? Or had opportunity to fishify something? No? Don’t be too chop-fallen. I expect you’ve used many another Bardism in recent days.

Just for kicks, I typed Tania Runyan’s poem “The Empty Tomb” into the little Shakespeare-o-meter. Turns out, Tania speaks 94% Shakespeare. So, how much Shakespeare do you speak?

10 Sound n Motion

Natalie Merchant (of 10,000 Maniacs fame) fell in love with old poetry, some of it obscure, some not, and decided to set it to music. Her TED performance of some of these songs brings the techie audience to their feet! A bunch of engineers and entrepreneurs, wildly applauding someone singing poems—that just makes my heart happy.

You’ll also want to hop over to Studio 360 to listen to the articulate and beautiful-voiced Tracy K. Smith, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry last month (on her birthday!), as she talks with Kurt Anderson and reads her David-Bowie-inspired poem (and several others) from her book, Life on Mars. (You’ll also get to hear some of that song…)

Photos by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post by Kimberlee Conway Ireton, author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In March we’re exploring the theme Angels.

Every day I pass my younger son’s wood shop project. It leans on a recliner in my basement and is nearly finished, sanded smooth and stained a rich, dark brown. It falls to me to help with the final precision work: laying green felt on the shelves, trimming and mounting white tees, installing hinges. When we finish, he’ll have a handcrafted case to display twenty valuable golf balls, tokens of his sport career.

He has a few already. I’ve saved two others, sealed in a Ziploc® bag. They’re embossed with an orange Callaway chevron, game-scarred and muddy. He played eighteen holes in the region meet two years ago, without losing a ball, and gave one of them to me as a souvenir, claiming I was his good luck charm.

I acquired the other, its unlikely twin, with much less fanfare.

He didn’t give it to me. If he even knows I have it, he’s not saying anything.

On a fateful hole in the state tournament that year, his drive off the tee sailed out of bounds. Then he knocked it past the trees straight into the creek. He pulled another from his bag and lashed out at it with his club; when he heard the ball crack against the wooden footbridge, he slumped, pulling his hat over his face to hide tears.

After pounding another ball toward the green, he stomped away, looking to the sky as if to curse the mythical gods of the game for abandoning him to flail on the fairway without hope. We followed behind and caught a glint of the Callaway with the orange chevron in the grass. It had bounced off the bridge and cleared the trees, playable but found too late.

I picked it up, feeling an ache for my son. At thirteen, he was among the youngest that day on a cruel, rigorous course. As the day wore on I reached often into my pocket, turning the ball and fingering its dirt-crusted dimples, wishing the gallery were permitted to even whisper a word of cheer.

We’ve never really talked about that hole. It’s a story he’s not wanted to tell.

In Rumors of Water, L. L. Barkat talks about allowing writing to come in its time, a “commitment to come to the edge of our memories and keep bringing them upward.” She goes on to say that

We might tell others these stories, each time adding a new detail, or we might scribble our memories into the small rooms of poems and private journals.

There is no hurry. The things we cannot write about today, we will surely find we can write about tomorrow. We should not worry about the process, but simply trust it and move on. After all, we contain fields upon fields of stories we’ve rehearsed over time. We must recognize that these are the ready ones, the now-stories. (pp. 152-153)

Last night I asked if I could write the story of my son’s devastating tenth hole. He twisted his cap self-consciously, then shrugged and returned a small smile.

One day soon, I imagine balancing two polished Callaways, each on a white tee on the top shelf. He’ll look surprised that I kept them safe. And maybe, then, he’ll be ready to tell me his side of the story, of what really happened that day.

Come on, son, pull your head
out of the bag. Keep moving. I know
it hardly seems fair, the way
she slices you. It’s rough
how she hooks you, drags you
screaming to the bunker.
She’s given you the shanks
laughing her mischievous laugh.
Still. Brush the sand from your eyes;
you know you’re not the first man
to kneel on her greens,
water her turf with his tears
while she swings
an iron through his heart,
not the first to want to drive
a wedge through hers.

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We’ve been discussing L.L. Barkat’s Rumors of Water, chapters 27-32 on Glitches and Time. Have you sometimes had trouble coaxing out a story before its time? L.L. likens memories to white moths that sometimes rise as we gently stir the grass. How have you stirred your own memories and lifted them upward?

If you’ve posted on the book this week, please be sure to drop your link in the comments so we can share your thoughts.

We conclude our discussion of Rumors of Water with today’s post, but beginning May 23, I’ll be taking on Julia Cameron and The Artist’s Way. Please, order a copy, borrow it from your library or snatch it out of your little sister’s hands. I’m going to need a lot of help.

Photo by MeckiMack. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post and golf photo by Lyla Lindquist of A Different Story.

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

At the University of Central America (known affectionately as “The UCA,” pronounced oo-ka) in the heart of the city of San Salvador, grows a beautiful rose garden. The roses were planted and meticulously tended by a man named Obdulio Ramos. Obdulio once worked at the UCA as a handyman and landscaper, and his wife worked for the University, as well, keeping house for the Jesuits who served as leaders, scholars and teachers.

On the night of November 16th, 1989, Julia Elba Ramos and her daughter, Celina, who was staying overnight with her mother, were awakened, dragged from their beds, and savagely murdered, along with 6 Jesuit priests who were living in the house: Ignacio Ellacuria, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Amando Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno, and Joaquin Lopez y Lopez.

Father Ellacuria, the president of the UCA, had been an outspoken critic of the corrupt leadership of the Salvadoran government and the civil war being waged against its own people. The government sent soldiers to assassinate him and to brutalize his body, and were given instructions to leave no witnesses; hence, the “collateral damage” of the 5 unlucky priests, the blameless housekeeper, and her 16-year-old child. The bodies were discovered the next morning, most of them prostrate on the lawn—the very ground where Obdulio’s roses now grow.

These shots were heard around the world. Pictures of the slaughtered innocents were circulated widely, symbolic of the massacre of an entire people. International pressure forced the government to sign peace agreements and made way for more peaceable leadership to take root in El Salvador. The murders of these good people were terrible, and citizens around the world were moved to insure that their lives and deaths not be wasted. They are remembered to this day as martyrs whose sacrifice saved a nation and countless lives, and their collective symbol has since been the rose.

Human beings have long associated Roses with Remembrance. The rose is a perennial: she blooms, faithfully, each year, attesting to the pitiless passage of time and, simultaneously, renewing the promise of the eternal. She is the queen of flowers, the biggest of blooms, possessor of the odor and attar that soothes and enchants all who approach her.

It is no accident that the flower arrangement that best bespeaks our grief is the Bleeding Heart: white carnations arranged in the shape of a heart riven by a streak of blood-red roses. Red roses, in particular, are associated with human passion, with the heart, and with precious human blood—all words and things demonstrative of life. They insist, in the face of loss, that love endures.

Five years ago, on the 16th anniversary of these deaths, I visited the rose garden at the UCA. It was a warm November day in San Salvador, and the roses bloomed in shameless abundance. I was awe-struck by the peace of the place, a small corner that breathes beauty amid a troubled city, blighted by new violences and new injustice, kidnappings and gang killings and grinding poverty, the wars—ever ancient and ever new—waged against the human spirit. I also learned that Obdulio had since died and another gardener has taken over his task of keeping these roses blooming, a husband’s and father’s refusal to forget outliving his own mortal body.

The strangeness of being in that place—ground where precious lives were lost—and witnessing the testament of roses, made me feel the presence, in an other-worldly way, of the men and women who breathed their last breaths there. The roses were rife with remembrance of people I had never met, and somehow they were there among us, reminding us of how steep the cost of freedom, justice, and peace has ever been (and will ever be).

“A terrible beauty is born” (gracias, Senor Yeats), and that “Beauty will save the world” (gracias, Senor Dostoyevsky). I wrote the poem below in the days that followed, another attempt at remembrance—though no arrangement of words can offer the solace of a single rose.

Return of the Saints
November 19, 2007
The Rose Garden, University of Central America
El Salvador

Tonight the grass is bloodless,
and you’re surprised to find
beauty where your bodies once lay,
your new wounds blooming red as roses.

The man who planted them is gone.
For years he tended every stem,
hands sure as a father’s
soothing his dying child.

Only the murdered ones return,
a gift given in exchange
for the horror of death in the dark
roused from your lonely beds.

Your crimes (un)common as love:
aiming truth at the face of falsehood,
claiming justice for the disappeared,
shaming the proud and the fortunate few.

No one calls you saints, even now.
You loiter on the well-trimmed lawn,
toe stones along the brickwork paths,
search for your selves in empty rooms,

then retreat as you once refused
to retreat, before the coming sun,
your roses blooming red
at the heart of the martyrs’ garden.

Single Rose photo by MeckiMack. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Rose Garden at UCA photo by David Romero, SJ. Used with permission. Post by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, author of Saint Sinatra and Other Poems
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.

From the Offices of L & L. This began with something about a red dot and a microphone. A protest was raised about hair and makeup. Lyla found the perfect solution in Princess LL’s Twitter avatar, and kindly drew it smack over Princesa’s face. Too bad it was a photographic misunderstanding. Or, too good.

Drawing on Skitch, accessed through Evernote, by Lyla Lindquist. Half the inspiration by Princess L.L.
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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $2.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.