• Home
  • Poetry Prompts
  • For Writers
  • Daily Poem-Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Free Stuff + BOOKS
  • Patron Love

By Heart: ‘The Dandelion’ + New Keats Challenge

By Megan Willome Leave a Comment

green grass
A lush green yard in the USA symbolizes family and prosperity. It can also symbolize a little old fashioned American ridiculousness, since most municipalities use treated, drinkable water on grass. But in spite of our efforts to achieve pristine lawns, dandelions happen. They spring up, unasked for and unrepentant.

The Dandelion by Vachel Lindsay Coloring Page Poem

A dandelion is a weed. As I spent the month with Vachel Lindsay’s flower poem I realized all my favorite wildflowers are weeds.

What is the difference between a weed and a wildflower? After owning three homes in my adulthood, each with varying compositions of flora, I have decided a weed is something you don’t want and a wildflower is something you do.

Perhaps you crave “a sea of stars / More golden than before” — then blow on that dandelion and let its “troop” of florets defeat the “blue-grass spears.” If your goal is to foster a green carpet that will hug your home like a blanket, then you’ll need to rid your yard of dandelions by hand so that you don’t create more “yellow heads.”

But if you do that, you get no wishes.

Children don’t need to be told to yank the dandelion and blow with all their might and make a wish. Because children know royalty when they see it. Who wants the sameness of boring green yard after boring green yard? Let there be color! Let wildness win.

Vachel Lindsay was known as the “Prairie Troubador.” He wrote often of small town Midwestern America, and what could be more American than a well-tended lawn? But in this poem Lindsay points us not to the ideal but to the indomitable. The dandelion will not be vanquished. Wishes will be wished.

What did Lindsay wish for? He wished for Sara Teasdale,

He knows she kept on with Vachel
even so, even though they never married.
Because Sara loved Vachel, and maybe he loved
her limericks, and my God, don’t we need
somebody to love the side of us
we are always burning for fear?

— from “Sara Teasdale,” Love, Etc. by L.L. Barkat

I have written about Sara Teasdale, but not about Vachel Lindsay, and as the poem above shows, the two go together. His poem The Chinese Nightingale is said to be for her. Both died by suicide, only a few months apart. For a time their poems were largely found in collections for children, like All the Silver Pennies, which contains six by Lindsay and six by Teasdale.

As Barkat’s poem says, we need somebody to love the side of us that “we are always burning for fear.” The side that writes limericks. The side that treasures weeds. The side that will not be mown down by “fate’s triumphant shears.” We could burn all the dandelions, but we’d kill the grass too. Even worse, we’d lose the chance to wish.

https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/22The-Dandelion22.m4a

 

Your Turn

Did you memorize “The Dandelion” this month? Join our By Heart community and share your audio or video using the hashtags #ByHeart and #MemoriesWithFriends and tagging us @tspoetry. We also welcome photos of your handwritten copy of the poem.

By Heart for September

For the next By Heart gathering, September 25, we’ll learn the last stanza of “To Autumn” by John Keats.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

Photo by Bureau of Land Management, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.

Browse more By Heart

MW-Joy of Poetry Front cover 367 x 265

“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”

—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro

Buy The Joy of Poetry Now

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Author, Editor at Tweetspeak Poetry
Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. She also writes for the WACOAN magazine, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post, and Magnolia Journal. When she goes to the library, she always comes home with at least one book for young people. Her day is incomplete without poetry and tea.
Megan Willome
Latest posts by Megan Willome (see all)
  • How Blogging Works for Writers: Think Seasons - January 22, 2021
  • Children’s Book Club: ‘Katy and the Big Snow’ - January 15, 2021
  • Reading Generously: ‘How We Fight for Our Lives’ by Saeed Jones - January 8, 2021

Related

❤️✨ Sharing is caring

Filed Under: A Poem in Every Heart, Americana Poems, Blog, By Heart, Sara Teasdale

About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. She also writes for the WACOAN magazine, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post, and Magnolia Journal. When she goes to the library, she always comes home with at least one book for young people. Her day is incomplete without poetry and tea.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our January Menu.

Keep the World Poetic

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world thoughtful and poetic.

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Join the Poetry Club

Join the poetry club, when you become a subscriber to Every Day Poems ✨

The classic—Now a Graphic Novel!

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

Recent Comments

  • Sandra Heska King on Poetry Prompt: Poems of Experience
  • Chelsea on The Artist’s Way: Safety
  • Callie Feyen on Poetry Prompt: Poems of Experience
  • Callie Feyen on Poetry Prompt: Poems of Experience

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Join Tweetspeak Poetry

Categories

Explore Work From Black Poets

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

Free Printable Poet Bios

Browse all poet bios now

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

About Us

  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • How to Write Form Poems-Infographics
  • • Poetry Club Tea Date
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • A Ritual to Read to Each Other
  • • Best Love Poetry
  • • Book Club
  • • Children’s Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Literary Analysis
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • VerseWrights Journal
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Give the Gift of Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2021 Tweetspeak Poetry · Site by The Willingham Enterprise · FAQ & Disclosure