Celebrate Poetry Month With Lisa E.

Posted by Lisa E.

Block City
by Robert Louis Stevenson
What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castle and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
but I can be happy and building at home.

Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and mill and a palace beside,
And a harbour as well where my vessels may ride

Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
A sort of a tower on teh top of it all,
And steps coming down in an orderly way
To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.

This one is sailing and that one is moored:
Hark to the song of the sailors on board!
And see on the steps of my palace, the kings
Coming and going with presents and things!

Now I have done with it, down let it go!
All in a moment the town is laid low.
Block upon block lying scattered and free,
What is there left of my town by the sea?

Yet as I saw it, I see it again,
The kirk and the palace, the ships and the men,
And as long as I live, and wher'er I may be,
I'll always remember my town by the sea.

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Celebrate Poetry Month With Deanne H.

Posted by Deanne H.

The Waking by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

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Celebrate Poetry Month With Alana T.

Posted by Alana T.

A Sleepless Night by Philip Levine

April, and the last of the plum blossoms
scatters on the black grass
before dawn. The sycamore, the lime,
the struck pine inhale
the first pale hints of sky.
An iron day,
I think, yet it will come
dazzling, the light
rise from the belly of leaves and pour
burning from the cups
of poppies.
The mockingbird squawks
from his perch, fidgets,
and settles back. The snail, awake
for good, trembles from his shell
and sets sail for China. My hand dances
in the memory of a million vanished stars.

A man has every place to lay his head.  

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Celebrate Poetry Month With Amanda E.

Posted by Amanda E.

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There)

'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!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

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

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Celebrate Poetry Month With Judy T.

Posted by Judy T.

A Prayer In Spring by Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil. 

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Reference Question of the Month: April

 

Posted by Judy T.

Since being inaugurated in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month is now held every April.  In consideration of poets and poetry lovers everywhere, here are this month’s trivia questions:

1.  One of Longfellow's most famous poems begins: "Listen my children and you shall hear/ Of the midnight ride of ___________."

2. “'The time has come,' the Walrus said,/ 'To talk of many things' " was written by _________________.

3.  What is the name for an unrhymed form of verse of Japanese origin having three lines usually containing five, seven, and five syllables respectively?

4.  He was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, on Jan. 25, 1759 and is regarded as the National Poet of Scotland.   Besides being recognized for his spectacular poetry, he is well known for being a notorious womanizer.  By the end of his short life he had fathered fourteen children, nine of them out of wedlock, by six different mothers.  Who is he?

5.  Who is the current Poet Laureate of the United States?

6.  This famous 19^th century English poet is the female half of a famous literary couple.  She wrote Sonnets from the Portuguese during their courtship, and she was forced to wed in secret because her father had forbidden any of his children to marry.  Who is she?

Answers:

1.  Paul Revere

2.  Lewis Carroll

3.  haiku

4.  Robert Burns

5.  Philip Levine is the 2011-2012 Poet Laureate of the U.S.  According to the Library of Congress “His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.”

6.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning   In 1846 she and Robert Browning eloped to Italy and married there.  She dedicated Sonnets from the Portuguese to her husband.