I have a “true north” practice designed to bring me back to the present by “seeing art everywhere”… I have a little notebook and pen in my back pocket to notice the magical in the mundane…simple and available to all throughout the day
Here's a poem by Lucille Clifton that's that's keeping me afloat on some very rough waters. Lucille Clifton, "i am running into a new year/and the old years blow back/like a wind/that i catch in my hair/like strong fingers like/all my old promises and/it will be hard to let go/of what i said to myself/about myself/when i was sixteen and/twentysix and thirtysix/even thirtysix but/i am running into a new year/and i beg what i love and/i leave to forgive me."
I have a very "Poetry 101" question...Can someone recommend a good book or talk or resource that addresses line breaks in the composition or making of a poem? When these poems are read on the podcast, I am caught up in the story and what's happening in the poem - and then, when I go online to read the poem, I marvel at the crafting of the poem...the visual of it on the page, the choices the poet made. So much, for me, comes back to the line and the path into the next line...and so on. I would love an entire workshop or slim volume or recommendation about the mysterious work of the line. Years ago, in nonfiction workshops and discussions, we would often reference Vivian Gornick's *The Situation and the Story*. As essayists or memoirists, we lived a situation, but then comes the gnarly work of making it a story...Is there a similar work or resource for us to consider, say, "the situation and the Poem"?
Question: how do you relate to poetry that others think is great and you don’t? Is there anything to be learned from NOT liking a poem?
At home, I was a fan of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, Eugene Field, Christina Rosetti, A.A. Milne and Robert Louis Stevenson. BUT, I disliked John Ciardi. The easy answer then was: don’t read the poet you don’t like, even if your parents gave you a book by that poet.
This question formed in a real way in junior high school. What was I supposed to do about hating the poet and poems that were being touted as one’s introduction to serious literature and poetry. This will betray my age. I am quite sure that Longfellow’s epic poems, Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha, no longer occupy that place in the American curriculum. In my own case, thank god for a few teachers who threw in some Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman or I might have gone off poetry forever! In those days, my answer had to be: learn what the teacher wants you to learn and keep your opinions to yourself.
But the question remains: in a discussion with others who care about poetry in a serious way or in engagement with a poet considered important or worthy of praise, is there anything useful to consider or to say or learn from that?
This morning I’m wondering about the connection of poetry to psalms. When I trace the word "psalm" backwards in time, I arrive at the Greek psalmos, which means "twanging of the harp". (That made me laugh because I play the harp. :-)
The question that emerges from this little rabbit hole is when did poems cease being songs with musical accompaniment and turn into recitations which contain their own music? That transition may not have happened in all cultures and languages. Why did ours leave the harp at home and wander off?
I’d like to start a daily prayer practice and am looking for the language. Of course I know “The Lords Prayer”. When I was a child, my mother taught me “Now I lay me down to sleep”... which I always thought was a bit gruesome. Can you point me in a direction or offer insight in developing a practice?
My question is about the Poetry Unbound (PU) team. I was kind of sad when Lily Percy left a couple of years back with nary a “so long, Lily” from the producers. Realizing the comfort that comes from the familiarity of voice - it was just their name announcement…but still! - I wonder what the next iterations of PU will be.
We are so accustomed to hearing our dear friend Pádraig invite us to go deeper into poems each episode, that it would be a loss if he hit the lottery and left us!
What a gift to start my day with this post. I feel tender, shaken, and almost uncomfortably seen to have so much of me resonate with this poem carried on Padraig’s voice and interpretation.
I only listened to the first episode, because I will need time to let these words settle in. I know I will come back to it throughout this week. Perhaps I’ll listen to Episode 2 this evening. Thank you so much. ❤️
I asked my question last time so a comment here on the first 2 poetry unbound poems.
I laughed to myself when thinking about how a Milky Way and a Coup tie these 2 poems together and bind each of us to these poets. They both remind me how the tiniest moments can reverberate within our personal worlds with such
vibrancy but when observed later, a bit of wisdom helps us observe the moment with poignancy and even humor or irony. And to me that's what
makes these great poems. Their distance between being daring with a touch of humor or irony, rather than being merely sensationalized drama.
🚣♀️ My boat - my vessel - my journey 🗺️ is shaped as much by the waters I cannot control, as the ancestral hand who crafted this cradle that holds me now.
Ours is but a Piker’s (Pikey) song of struggle, decision, ramification, and resolve. We as thieves of our story, commonly do not like light 🕯️over the waters as we risk being seen.
It’s not like anyone ever sat me down to teach me this lesson. But you know, you have to use a different musculature to rotate your wrists at the precise moment to make their pike your oar. You get to bend time, if you trust only alchemy of the weapon to become the tool.
With Olympian movement of grace and grit, stretching it forward and backward, your solfeggio song synchronizes to ease Poseidon back to sleep. 🧜♂️
And again. And again. You go again. Let the pikes pierce the water, not your skin. Blisters are just barnacles to a sea-faring soul. 🌊 Do we call these salt burns perhaps?
We’re in an 8 year as we wade into 2024. ♾️ And that numerological “nearness” is not lost on me. Infinite work, forgiveness. Isn’t it? And no matter how tired, you keep rowing, all as one, never singularly, always striding. Practice levitating.
Having seen the film adaptation of great book “Boys in the Boat” recently I’m still caring and carrying the emotions of facing the Father Wound on an IMAX-sized screen.
I stopped blaming my parents, once I first conversed with the galactic. ✨ For the stars that guided them was merely light that arrived a little late. Just as the light I see now originated its travelers song eons ago. 💫 I cannot blame inadequacies on that which is in movement, ever in motion.
Thank you 🙏🏻 for a wonderfully reflective start to the year.
Hallo, everyone! It’s great to be back to the ‘Stack with folks.
I don’t have another question about poetry as was requested in the prompt/assignment...
But I was reminded of art class in college where I followed the prompt/assignments each time and got a solid ‘C’ grade, while others who took the prompt and expanded upon it and ended up with pieces that didn’t much resemble to prompt to me were awarded higher letter grades. And reflecting on earlier approaches to art and at this point in life being able to riff off the prompt/assignment.
I'm curious if there are studies about poetry's effects on the brain. When I listen to Poetry Unbound episodes, I find myself continually wandering and pulling myself back to the tether of the poem and the thoughts presented on them. It reminds me so much of the mindfulness practices that are so encouraged and promoted these days. I wonder if the similarities have been studied at all.
I'm having a bit of a struggle learning into the Happy New Year greeting ... 2024 is looming out there like a threat. Then someone said "have as happy a new year as possible" this felt so right - an acknowledgement, the two words "as possible" giving permission to lean into the both/and. Poetry can do this a simple turn of phrase, slight of hand and something is illuminated. Could you talk more about that? How poetry helps us navigate this being human.
I have a “true north” practice designed to bring me back to the present by “seeing art everywhere”… I have a little notebook and pen in my back pocket to notice the magical in the mundane…simple and available to all throughout the day
"Muscular Language" - What are aerobic, strength and balance exercises to build poetic muscles?
Here's a poem by Lucille Clifton that's that's keeping me afloat on some very rough waters. Lucille Clifton, "i am running into a new year/and the old years blow back/like a wind/that i catch in my hair/like strong fingers like/all my old promises and/it will be hard to let go/of what i said to myself/about myself/when i was sixteen and/twentysix and thirtysix/even thirtysix but/i am running into a new year/and i beg what i love and/i leave to forgive me."
I have a very "Poetry 101" question...Can someone recommend a good book or talk or resource that addresses line breaks in the composition or making of a poem? When these poems are read on the podcast, I am caught up in the story and what's happening in the poem - and then, when I go online to read the poem, I marvel at the crafting of the poem...the visual of it on the page, the choices the poet made. So much, for me, comes back to the line and the path into the next line...and so on. I would love an entire workshop or slim volume or recommendation about the mysterious work of the line. Years ago, in nonfiction workshops and discussions, we would often reference Vivian Gornick's *The Situation and the Story*. As essayists or memoirists, we lived a situation, but then comes the gnarly work of making it a story...Is there a similar work or resource for us to consider, say, "the situation and the Poem"?
Question: how do you relate to poetry that others think is great and you don’t? Is there anything to be learned from NOT liking a poem?
At home, I was a fan of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, Eugene Field, Christina Rosetti, A.A. Milne and Robert Louis Stevenson. BUT, I disliked John Ciardi. The easy answer then was: don’t read the poet you don’t like, even if your parents gave you a book by that poet.
This question formed in a real way in junior high school. What was I supposed to do about hating the poet and poems that were being touted as one’s introduction to serious literature and poetry. This will betray my age. I am quite sure that Longfellow’s epic poems, Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha, no longer occupy that place in the American curriculum. In my own case, thank god for a few teachers who threw in some Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman or I might have gone off poetry forever! In those days, my answer had to be: learn what the teacher wants you to learn and keep your opinions to yourself.
But the question remains: in a discussion with others who care about poetry in a serious way or in engagement with a poet considered important or worthy of praise, is there anything useful to consider or to say or learn from that?
This morning I’m wondering about the connection of poetry to psalms. When I trace the word "psalm" backwards in time, I arrive at the Greek psalmos, which means "twanging of the harp". (That made me laugh because I play the harp. :-)
The question that emerges from this little rabbit hole is when did poems cease being songs with musical accompaniment and turn into recitations which contain their own music? That transition may not have happened in all cultures and languages. Why did ours leave the harp at home and wander off?
I’d like to start a daily prayer practice and am looking for the language. Of course I know “The Lords Prayer”. When I was a child, my mother taught me “Now I lay me down to sleep”... which I always thought was a bit gruesome. Can you point me in a direction or offer insight in developing a practice?
My question is about the Poetry Unbound (PU) team. I was kind of sad when Lily Percy left a couple of years back with nary a “so long, Lily” from the producers. Realizing the comfort that comes from the familiarity of voice - it was just their name announcement…but still! - I wonder what the next iterations of PU will be.
We are so accustomed to hearing our dear friend Pádraig invite us to go deeper into poems each episode, that it would be a loss if he hit the lottery and left us!
What a gift to start my day with this post. I feel tender, shaken, and almost uncomfortably seen to have so much of me resonate with this poem carried on Padraig’s voice and interpretation.
I only listened to the first episode, because I will need time to let these words settle in. I know I will come back to it throughout this week. Perhaps I’ll listen to Episode 2 this evening. Thank you so much. ❤️
I asked my question last time so a comment here on the first 2 poetry unbound poems.
I laughed to myself when thinking about how a Milky Way and a Coup tie these 2 poems together and bind each of us to these poets. They both remind me how the tiniest moments can reverberate within our personal worlds with such
vibrancy but when observed later, a bit of wisdom helps us observe the moment with poignancy and even humor or irony. And to me that's what
makes these great poems. Their distance between being daring with a touch of humor or irony, rather than being merely sensationalized drama.
🚣♀️ My boat - my vessel - my journey 🗺️ is shaped as much by the waters I cannot control, as the ancestral hand who crafted this cradle that holds me now.
Ours is but a Piker’s (Pikey) song of struggle, decision, ramification, and resolve. We as thieves of our story, commonly do not like light 🕯️over the waters as we risk being seen.
It’s not like anyone ever sat me down to teach me this lesson. But you know, you have to use a different musculature to rotate your wrists at the precise moment to make their pike your oar. You get to bend time, if you trust only alchemy of the weapon to become the tool.
With Olympian movement of grace and grit, stretching it forward and backward, your solfeggio song synchronizes to ease Poseidon back to sleep. 🧜♂️
And again. And again. You go again. Let the pikes pierce the water, not your skin. Blisters are just barnacles to a sea-faring soul. 🌊 Do we call these salt burns perhaps?
We’re in an 8 year as we wade into 2024. ♾️ And that numerological “nearness” is not lost on me. Infinite work, forgiveness. Isn’t it? And no matter how tired, you keep rowing, all as one, never singularly, always striding. Practice levitating.
Having seen the film adaptation of great book “Boys in the Boat” recently I’m still caring and carrying the emotions of facing the Father Wound on an IMAX-sized screen.
I stopped blaming my parents, once I first conversed with the galactic. ✨ For the stars that guided them was merely light that arrived a little late. Just as the light I see now originated its travelers song eons ago. 💫 I cannot blame inadequacies on that which is in movement, ever in motion.
Thank you 🙏🏻 for a wonderfully reflective start to the year.
Do you prefer listening to poetry over reading on the page? Impossible question I know, how do you see the benefits of each experience?
Hallo, everyone! It’s great to be back to the ‘Stack with folks.
I don’t have another question about poetry as was requested in the prompt/assignment...
But I was reminded of art class in college where I followed the prompt/assignments each time and got a solid ‘C’ grade, while others who took the prompt and expanded upon it and ended up with pieces that didn’t much resemble to prompt to me were awarded higher letter grades. And reflecting on earlier approaches to art and at this point in life being able to riff off the prompt/assignment.
Here's my prayer or reflection on witnessing what felt like a Divine Rise in the Phoenix Park in Dublin this morning.
I turn to Art, to Beauty, to Love, I turn to poetry as a prayer, they always seem to blend into one.
'All the Love we can be '
The Rise sets a ribbon of gold ablaze
on the horizon
Breaks open the morning
screams ‘Hallelujah’ at the intoxicating
Cut of you
-
Golden luminary, old friend
When you invite me brightly to edge
of the roof of the world,
It reminds me where Love lives
-
Keep whispering your winter encouragement
through the tall, dark trees
Of this hide and seek light
Bubbling and winking, and teasing a staring
-
The jolts and bolts feel divine, where are they coming from?
-
All the love we can be
And all the love we cannot see
Is ablaze in ribbons of glory
this beautiful January morning
I'm curious if there are studies about poetry's effects on the brain. When I listen to Poetry Unbound episodes, I find myself continually wandering and pulling myself back to the tether of the poem and the thoughts presented on them. It reminds me so much of the mindfulness practices that are so encouraged and promoted these days. I wonder if the similarities have been studied at all.
I'm having a bit of a struggle learning into the Happy New Year greeting ... 2024 is looming out there like a threat. Then someone said "have as happy a new year as possible" this felt so right - an acknowledgement, the two words "as possible" giving permission to lean into the both/and. Poetry can do this a simple turn of phrase, slight of hand and something is illuminated. Could you talk more about that? How poetry helps us navigate this being human.