Poetry Friday: A Better Resurrection (Christina Rossetti)

April has brought both poetry month and Easter this year. I've been grateful for this coinciding, as poetry month tends to push me to reading and writing more poetry.  When my heart is moving out of the Lenten season and into the celebration of Easter, especially when the world is waking up into spring, there is a lot to ponder.

This year, there is more than ever to ponder as I am in the midst of my continued battle against cancer. I was there this time last year too, but far too exhausted and in shock (I had just finished my initial intensive chemo treatments) to do much thinking or writing. Exhaustion has become just part of the new normal landscape, but thankfully shock does wear off, and you find ways to move forward as boldly and creatively as you can. You find life in the midst of illness, beauty in the midst of brokenness, hope in the midst of worry, prayer in the midst of pain.

I could go on, but Christina Rossetti shares it all so much more profoundly in her poem "A Better Resurrection" which I've pasted below.

Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Tabatha Yeatts' blog The Opposite of Indifference.

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

~Christina Rossetti 

Poetry Friday: Metropolis by Billy Collins

I haven't joined in on a Poetry Friday in a long time, but today I felt myself wanting to share this gem of a poem that I shared on FB four years ago. I love it when FB reminds me of what I shared, especially when it brings me back around to lovely words like these.

I think one reason I love Billy Collins so much is that he captures so many ordinary kinds of moments, and yet he always adds that one observation or one feeling that makes you catch your breath in wonder and think "oh yes!" or "me too!"

Here's his wonderful meditation on wandering through a museum on a rainy day.

METROPOLIS
by Billy Collins

These are my favorite museum rooms,
the out-of-the-way ones on the upper floors,
usually unpeopled except for a single guard
who appears and disappears in the maze of walls
where these minor American paintings are hung.

I like the calm rustic ones: a surface of lake,
the low bough of an oak like a long arm,
a blue smudge of distant hills,
anything with cows, especially if they are standing
in a stream, their large, vacuous faces
staring into the warm, nineteenth-century afternoon.
And if one has lowered her head to drink
and the painter has indicated with flecks of white
the water pouring down from the animal’s mouth,
then the day, I feel, has achieved a modest crest.

And if it is raining outside that day
and low clouds press down on city buildings
while people under umbrellas climb the marble steps,
I usually find myself in front of the still lifes,
those painstaking devotions to objects,
agreeable possessions laid out on the altar of a table.

The rest of it can be found here at the Billy Collins Facebook page.

The poetry roundup today is at My Juicy Little Universe. Happy reading! 

Poetry Friday: The Cedar Tree (Jessica Powers)

I woke this morning with snow on my mind. I'm not sure why, since it's still quite mild here for December, and all we've seen this week is rain. But I found myself marveling over the beauty of Monet's painting "The Magpie," and then I found myself turning to one of my favorite Jessica Powers poems, "The Cedar Tree."

The Cedar Tree

In the beginnng, in the unbeginning
of endlessness and of eternity,
God saw this tree.
He saw these cedar branches bending low
under the full exhaustion of the snow.
And since He set no wind of day to rising,
this burden of beauty and this burden of cold,
whether the wood breaks or the branches hold
must be of His devising.


The rest of the poem is here. The end of the poem almost always brings me to tears. 

The Poetry Friday round-up today is at A Teaching Life.

Poetry Friday: Why Write? (an original poem)

Why Write?

Because words can bite
And words can sting,
But words can fly
And words can sing.
Because words make pictures in your head
And find the heart of gold in lead.
Because words can hope
When hope seems gone
And bring you friends
When you’re alone.

~EMP 10/4/12

Yesterday I found myself playing with list poems, inspired by the wonderful collection Falling Down the Page edited by Georgia Heard. This was my favorite result.

Poetry Friday roundup is at Laura Purdie Salas' site writing the world for kids. Visit and read some wonderful poetry!

Poetry Friday: The Swing in Everything

I came across this poem I wrote back in January when our whole family was in love with a Duke Ellington recording from the library. It made me smile. And it made me realize anew how important music is in my life.

We dance around

the kitchen

to the Duke’s

jazzy swing.

I love just

how he heard

the swing

in everything.

I love the

way he made

new tunes

but still let

old tunes sing.

I love just

how Duke heard

the swing

in everything.

EMP 1/12

Music is a huge part of my life and my home. I hardly realized how much until the past couple of days when my husband and daughter have been traveling and I’ve been structuring my days completely around my own schedule – an occurrence so rare and bizarre that I almost had forgotten how to do it.

Two days on my own – I’ve been balancing work, play, rest (or trying to) and also balancing sound and silence. I’ve been basking in morning quiet time, just me by the window with my cup of tea and my Bible and prayer book and a couple of other books I’m reading. In the stillness, so rare, I notice all sorts of things speaking to my heart.

In the afternoons I’ve been working – grading, writing, housecleaning – and that’s when I crank the music. It’s mostly been classical and jazz, and oh, how grateful I am for these gems. Benny Goodman playing anything, Yo-Yo Ma playing Vivaldi and Franck and Morricone and Gershwin preludes, Elgar’s Enigma Variations (of course) and Michael Tilson Thomas playing Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody – okay, it’s been a very Gershwin kind of week.

Music tends to chase us all over the house even in our busy, crowded days – I’m forever putting something in the player. And if I don’t, the sweet girl will. And my husband when he’s home, especially when he’s cooking on Saturday mornings. But it’s been listening to it on my own these past couple of days that I realize how much it upholds and encourages me, lends essence and structure and sweetness to my days, helps inspire energy when I’m tired or calming space when I’m wired.

So grateful for music, for the swing in everything. 

The Poetry Friday round-up is at Write.Sketch.Repeat. 

Poetry Friday: The Wise Men by G.K. Chesterton

It's been a while since I've been able to participate in Poetry Friday, but Epiphany has me inspired today. I wrote an Epiphany poem this morning (still very much in rough draft) that I felt pretty good about until I read this stunning masterpiece by G.K. Chesterton.

Actually I'm kidding about how the Chesterton poem made me feel. Great art, while it may make our own art look a little pale and wobbly in contrast, does not diminish us. It expands and enriches and nourishes us -- all words I would definitely apply to how this poem affected me this morning. And in the end, a great poem that inspires me so deeply when I read it can only have a good influence on my own poetry-making. I know when I go back to that rough draft, I will have a whole other layer of imaginative humus to grow the poem in.

I do love this poem.

The Wise Men
~by G.K. Chesterton

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all the labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but truth.


...The rest of the poem can be found here. And the Poetry Friday roundup today is at Teaching Authors .

Poetry Friday: Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'd almost forgotten how much I love the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. But for the past week or so, my nine year old daughter has been memorizing "Afternoon on a Hill." Its gentle music still speaks to my heart, and I've loved discussing it with her. We've talked about the lovely alliteration of "I will look at cliffs and clouds/ with quiet eyes" (how I long for "quiet eyes"!) and we've also talked about how the speaker of the poem felt joy in the present moment as she declared "I will touch a hundred flowers/and not pick one." That's always been my favorite line ~ I love the way the narrator doesn't feel the need to possess what she's enjoying, but just lets the flowers stay free, growing right where they are.

Remembering this poem sent me looking for another old favorite by Millay. I was introduced to "Recuerdo" (the title means "Memory") through Madeleine L'Engle, who provided my introduction to so many wonderful poems through the years. I still love the whimsical, lilting quality of this poem:

"We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable --
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon."

I love the story sense in this poem. How easy it is to picture two people having such joy in each other's company that they spend the whole night just talking, riding back and forth (no destination intended) on the boat, lying on the hilltop, watching the moon give way to the sunrise. It strikes me that this poem also celebrates the practice of the present moment, the joy of living right where you are without worry about what's to come next. In the final stanza, they do start for home (as does the person on the hilltop in "Afternoon on a Hill") but they give away all their remaining fruit and all their money except what they need for subway fares. Just living simply and with gratitude in the moment, again without the urgent need to possess.

The whole poem can be found at Poetry Archive.

Today's poetry round-up can be found at Picture Book of the Day.

Poetry Friday: The Gift

When I was going through old papers the other day, I stumbled upon a few photocopied poems by Li-Young Lee. I can't remember when I first read his poem "The Gift," but coming upon it unexpectedly and reading it again was indeed a gift.

I love the way Lee tells two stories in this poem, linking the present and the past by way of a small silver splinter. The power of memory shines in this poem, as well as the power of the love we carry with us through memories.

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.


The rest of the poem can be found here at The Poetry Foundation. Karen Edmisten is hosting Poetry Friday this week.

Poetry Friday: Jessica Powers

Not long ago I came across a gorgeous photo on the Facebook page for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I don't have permission to post it here, so a verbal sketch will have to suffice: imagine an indigo bunting perched on a branch, his body startlingly blue against a misty purple blur of mountains, his mouth wide open in a song you can practically hear. He's alone against a backdrop of beauty and majesty, just singing and singing.

Though it's not about an indigo bunting, the picture made me think of one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, "Robin at Dusk" by Jessica Powers. Jessica Powers was a Carmelite nun who lived from 1905-1988. My copy of her Selected Poetry is thumbed over, paged through, spilled on...sort of the Velveteen Rabbit equivalent of a well-loved book.

I thought I'd send the poem winging and let it perch here. Imagine the little bird singing for all he's worth...

I can go starved the whole day long,
draining a stone, eating a husk,
and never hunger till a song
breaks from a robin's throat at dusk.

I am reminded only then
how far from day and human speech,
how far from the loud world of men
lies the bright dream I strain to reach.

You can go here to read the final two (and amazing) stanzas. You'll need to scroll to the middle of the page.

Happy Poetry Friday! The roundup is at The Writer's Armchair.

Poetry Friday: Da Vinci's Parachute

I was on a website the other day that had one of those calendars with days you can celebrate in March. I was chuckling over some of the funny things that people celebrate when I was brought up short by the notation for March 5. It read: "the invention of the parachute: Da Vinci."

Many, many years before what many people consider the actual invention of the parachute, Leonardo Da Vinci sketched his ideas for a parachute in one of his notebooks. And 11 years ago a British man actually dropped from a balloon, about 10,000 feet above the ground, using a parachute made from Da Vinci's design (and using materials, canvas and wood, that would have been available in Da Vinci's day). I remember reading about this, not long after it happened, in a scientific magazine I picked up at a library sale. You can read a brief news article about the event here. It includes the line that still captures my imagination: "It works, and everyone thought it wouldn't."

I bring this story up on Poetry Friday as a prelude to the poem I wrote not long after first reading that inspiring news story. I hope it captures your imagination too.

Da Vinci’s Parachute

They laughed when I took to the sky
buoyed by outmoded invention.
Sheltered by a five hundred year old idea
finally fleshed
in canvas and rope,
I jumped, caught the air,
and dangled
over undulating brown-grey hills.
I did not look down for long.
Upheld by ancient design,
my face turned upward in awe,
I held my breath.
For a moment I was the scribbled sketch
in the margin of Leonardo’s imaginings,
buffeted across the pages of time,
my body, my faith
sustained by the heavy sphinx-like tent
ballooned above.
The tent held true
and I drifted down
lines taut, then slack
in a dance of purposeful pulling.
And true is true.
Lines clear and pure.
Did you not think
the old ways would hold
in these new winds?
Watch me fall
and think again.


~EMP (all rights reserved)

Today's poetry roundup can be found at The Small Nouns.

Poetry Friday: "O Frabjous Day!"

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

My husband, an amateur actor, loves to recite these lines (and all the rest of them) from Lewis Carroll's remarkable poem "Jabberwocky." People who only know my husband's everyday persona -- gentle, shy -- are often astounded into silence when they first get a glimpse of his confident, humorous acting persona. I've long since reconciled the two parts of his personality, loving them both, but I still delight in seeing jaws drop when my husband moves into actor mode. It's one reason I enjoy this poem so much.

And now here's another...the other day I came across this delightful ASL version of the poem. "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" I must confess I have never heard of ASL poetry until recently, and I am completely fascinated. It seems to combine all sorts of skills: poetry making, translation, performance art.

Today's poetry roundup is at Read Write Believe.

Poetry Friday: Cynthia in the Snow

In honor of the beautiful snowfall we had yesterday, and the season in general, I thought I'd share Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "Cynthia in the Snow." I have many favorite snowy poems, but this pops into my head frequently when I'm looking at a snowy city street, especially the first musical line. "Sushes" is such a perfect word to capture that sense of blanketed quiet. The whole poem has that sense of being "just right."

Cynthia in the Snow

It SUSHES.
It hushes
The loudness in the road.
It flitter-twitters,
And laughs away from me.
It laughs a lovely whiteness,
And whitely whirs away,
To be
Some otherwhere,
Still white as milk or shirts.
So beautiful it hurts.

~Gwendolyn Brooks


Happy Poetry Friday! The roundup today is at A Teaching Life.

Poetry Friday: Aileen Fisher

I fell in love with Aileen Fisher's poems when the sweet girl was a toddler. We seemed to come across them regularly in poetry collections and anthologies, and almost every one became a favorite. Sometimes her work is hard to find (and I think a lot of it is out of print) but it's always worth looking for.

I couldn't find a copy of this one online, but I wanted to share it -- it feels so wonderfully appropriate for the month we're having!

December
~Aileen Fisher

I like days
with a snow-white collar,
and nights when the moon
is a silver dollar,
and hills are filled
with eiderdown stuffing
and your breath makes smoke
like an engine puffing.

I like days
when feathers are snowing,
and all the eaves
have petticoats showing,
and the air is cold,
and the wires are humming,
but you feel all warm ...
with Christmas coming.

Happy Poetry Friday! The roundup today is at Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup.

Poetry Friday: Daffodils in November

My eight year old is memorizing William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" and I'm remembering how much I love this poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

You can find the final stanzas here at The Poetry Foundation.

I hesitated briefly about sharing this. It is, after all, November ("dull November brings the blast/then the leaves are whirling fast"!). So it may seem a bit strange to share such a springtime poem.

But then it occurred to me that Wordsworth would love knowing we're reading and enjoying his poem in November. For Wordsworth, part of the magic of poetry was "recollection." He wrote elsewhere that poetic images could provide "life and food for future years." And so we see him in this poem, in that last stanza, lying on his couch in "vacant or in pensive mood," finding pleasure as this remembered image of the golden daffodils "flashes" on his "inward eye."

We don't know, of course, when he lay pensively on his couch recollecting this golden sea, but a dull, gray November day might be a good bet.

For some extra loveliness, you can listen as Jeremy Irons reads the poem.

This week's poetry round-up can be found at Random Noodling.

Poety Friday: Rain in Summer

I love rain. When I was a little girl, I was sure that rain in the summer smelled differently than rain at any other time of year. In fact, I still think that even now. I think some of it has to do with certain other smells we associate with summertime, like the sulfurous scent of thunderstorms or, to pull on some of the predominant summer smells of my childhood, melting street tar or blooming magnolias.

To me, rain smells and sounds are often associated with colors. There can be green rains (often in spring) blue rains (especially in certain mountains, or near twilight) and brown rains (some I've experienced in the desert, or in autumn). Silver-grey rains (the misty kind) and crystal-clear rains (the pouring kinds).

I just love rain. The way it refreshes the world. The way it refreshes me. The way it makes things grow. Its beauty when it falls. The way it fills rivers up and sends streams rushing. The puddles we can play in with great abandon when it's over.

I thought I'd celebrate the first week of summer with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Rain in Summer.

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

~~~
You can read the rest of the poem here. And all of the Poetry Friday posts this week can be found at The Art of Irreverence. This is my first time joining in with an official post for Poetry Friday, but I've enjoyed so many of the poems I've found there over the past year or so.