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It's a day when all the dogs of all
the borrowed houses are angel footing
down the hard hardwood of middle-America's
newly loaned-up renovated kitchen floors,
and the world's nicest pie I know
is somewhere waiting for the right
time to offer itself to the wayward
and the word-weary. How come the road
goes coast to coast and never just
dumps us in the water, clean and
come clean, like a fish slipped out
of the national net of "longing for joy."
How come it doesn't? Once, on a road trip
through the country, a waitress walked
in the train's diner car and swished
her non-aproned end and said,
"Hot stuff and food too." My family
still says it, when the food is hot,
and the mood is good inside the open windows.
I'd like to wear an apron for you
and come over with non-church sanctioned
knee-highs and the prettiest pie of birds
and ocean water and grief. I'd like
to be younger when I do this, like the country
before Mr. Meriwether rowed the river
and then let the country fill him up
till it killed him hard by his own hand.
I'd like to be that dog they took with them,
large and dark and silent and un-blamable.
Or I'd like to be Emily Dickinson's dog, Carlo,
and go on loving the rare un-loveable puzzle
of woman and human and mind. But, I bet I'm more
the house beagle and the howl and the obedient
eyes of everyone wanting to make their own kind
of America, but still be America, too. The road
is long and all the dogs don't care too much about
roadside concrete history and postcards of state
treasures, they just want their head out the window,
and the speeding air to make them feel faster
and younger, and newer than all the dogs
that went before them, they want to be your only dog,
your best-loved dog, for this good dog of today
to be the only beast that matters.

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It's a day when all the dogs of all the borrowed houses are angel footing down the hard hardwood of middle-America's newly loaned-up renovated kitchen floors, and the world's nicest pie I know is somewhere waiting for the right time to offer itself to the wayward and the word-weary.

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Shared by Alan Cumming at Poets.org gala.

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Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

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Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes, We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return, We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark, We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks, We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side, We browse, we

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Shared by Daniel Dae Kim at Poets.org gala.

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though they'll attempt the imprint.

trauma can seal the future
if presented as a given.

if you cannot be a hammer,
does that make you a nail?

if you become the hammer,
who do you strike down first?

if the hammer
only shows you its force,
will you ever learn
how to extract what's false?

never let only being taught the stick
prevent you from living the carrot.

regurgitating
what kept you down
only reflects
what those
who've held power
tell you is powerful.

how they prop up the obsolete
as universal law,

when we've clearly
grown out of dial-up.

but what happens
when we freaky friday
into roles we've only witnessed
beneath the heel of?

will we find darker people
to justify pressing down
to stay standing?

will we erase what challenges
our harmful?

will we wreck lives for
pittling nuisance?

will we burn the evidence
to keep our elevation?

will we ever grow out
of the payback
that plays out
in positioning
pretending
to be progress?

will we ever learn from those
who have wiped out generations,
that their way is dinosaur
before the meteor?

will we choose something
besides
putting another through
what we paid
too dearly for?

as the dying animal
clings to past power's purpose,

may we finally learn from
past pain

to see domination
as a thing of the past.

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though they'll attempt the imprint. trauma can seal the future if presented as a given. if you cannot be a hammer, does that make you a nail? if you become the hammer, who do you strike down first? if the hammer only shows you its force, will you ever learn how to extract what's false?

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Imperatives for Carrying on the Aftermath by by Natasha Tretheway

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Imperatives for Carrying on the Aftermath by by Natasha Tretheway

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Do not hang your head or clench your fists

when even your friend, after hearing the story,

says, My mother would never put up with that.

Fight the urge to rattle off statistics: that,

more often, a woman who chooses to leave

is then murdered. The hundredth time

your father says, But she hated violence,

why would she marry a guy like that?-

don't waste your breath explaining, again,

how abusers wait, are patient, that they

don't beat you on the first date, sometimes

not even the first few years of a marriage.

Keep an impassive face whenever you hear

Stand By Your Man, and let go your rage

when you recall those words were advice

given your mother. Try to forget the first

trial, before she was dead, when the charge

was only attempted murder; don't belabor

the thinking or the sentence that allowed

her ex-husband's release a year later, or

the juror who said, It's a domestic issue-

they should work it out themselves. Just

breathe when, after you read your poems

about grief, a woman asks, Do you think

your mother was weak for men? Learn

to ignore subtext. Imagine a thought-

cloud above your head, dark and heavy

with the words you cannot say; let silence

rain down. Remember you were told,

by your famous professor, that you should

write about something else,

yourself of the death of your mother and

just pour your heart out in the poems.

Ask yourself what's in your heart, that

reliquary-blood locket and seedbed-and

contend with what it means, the folk saying

you learned from a Korean poet in Seoul:

that one does not bury the mother's body

in the ground but in the chest, or-like you -

you carry her corpse on your back.

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Do not hang your head or clench your fists when even your friend, after hearing the story, says, My mother would never put up with that. Fight the urge to rattle off statistics: that, more often, a woman who chooses to leave is then murdered.

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James Wright Poetry Festival 2023 | Ohio Poetry Association

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Agenda, location, and featured poet information for the James Wright Poetry Festival.

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To the Buyer of Our Old Home by Helen Pruitt Wallace

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To the Buyer of Our Old Home by Helen Pruitt Wallace

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Transcript

I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

As I write this, I am looking out the window at the 110-year-old elm tree that fell on my house. The earth surrounding the tree's base resembles a raised carpet. Sixty-five mile per hour winds toppled it. There it rests, until a tree service comes along with a chipper truck, buzzing chainsaws, and massive loppers. Then, roofers and carpenters will arrive to repair the dented eave and smashed gutter that broke the tree's fall. In due time, the house will be restored to its former look, with no trace of nature's tornadic winds having karate chopped this section of the house. The leaning elm is a striking visual reminder of nature's power, one that can easily turn the sturdiest tree, for a brief moment, into a hovering Mary Poppins.

I cannot help but turn my century-old home into a symbol. This house probably bears more scars than I am aware, hidden by cosmetic changes and renovations, new owners with new intentions. The footprint has been slightly altered from its original construction. The former breakfast nook where the damage occurred is now a small sitting room. Occasionally, I walk around and listen to its creaks, hoping to hear its history, the events and lives of the people who occupied this space long before me, who ran their hands down a banister, who bent to stoke flames in the fireplace, who looked out this very window as the world passed by.

If you are a writer, old houses are more than quaint. They send the imagination down the corridors of time. What did the children dream of? Which songs were sung? What stories did the elders share? What sadness fell upon their souls and how did they tend to their wounds?

Today's wise poem unearths the idiosyncrasies of an old home and in doing so, reveals how its past and future inhabitants are woven together in time.
To The Buyer of Our Old Home by Helen Pruitt Wallace "To the Buyer of Our Old Home" by Helen Pruitt Wallace. Used by permission of the poet.
We can tell you, if you want, which doors creak,
       or windows that need to be re-glazed, which faucet
has a tendency to leak, and where a wine glass
       left a halo etched in the counter's travertine.
And we could share which walls absorb sadness,
       till morning light leans in comforting the contours
of the bed, but chances are you'll learn this
       on your own. There's the cough of the AC kicking on,
and the hiss of the heater turning off, and a crack
       in the plaster by the stairs. You'll study it at times
as metaphor, disaster creeping like the bifurcated lines
       of your palm. But then again, maybe you won't....
Let's go outside.

The doorbell never works when it rains. And the riot
       of white gardenias blooming now is always late.
A black snake burrows through ferns, and a cardinal
       spends days hurling himself against our bare window.
We sayour, but it's your house now. Our beloved dog was buried over there-along with his chew toys and bones. And at night our kids' laughter carries through the courtyard of the home (though they moved out some years ago). And this large oak- what can we say? Old limbs keep falling even when no wind stirs. The tree is gone. We sold because we couldn't chop it down. Still, we hear the woodpecker crazed as the leaves turn brown.

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I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown. As I write this, I am looking out the window at the 110-year-old elm tree that fell on my house. The earth surrounding the tree's base resembles a raised carpet. Sixty-five mile per hour winds toppled it.

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Program of events for the 20th annual Poetry & the Creative Mind gala, presented virtually and held in celebration of the 27th anniversary of National Poetry Month.

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Posts about Poetry written by Ethical ELA

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That turn! (Thanks, Karen Edminston http://karenedmisten.blogspot.com/2023/04/poetry-friday-national-poetry-month.html, for sharing this poem.)

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A Spiral Notebook by Ted Kooser | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

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Poem: "A Spiral Notebook" by Ted Kooser, from Delights & Shadows © Copper Canyon Press. Reprinted with permission.

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I was caught by the way this poem uses space and the use of the colon. (Take a listen to the poet reading his poem and his reflection on writing it.)

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J'ai rapporté du désespoir un panier si petit mon amour, qu'on a pu le tresser en osier.
I brought from despair a basket so small, my love, that it might have been woven of willow.
-Rene Char

the not-yet of a white realm of nothing left

neither for itself nor another

a no-longer already there, along with the arrival of what has been

light and the reverse of light

terror as walking blind along the breaking sea, body in whom I lived

the not-yet of death darkening what it briefly illuminates

an unknown place as between languages

back and forth, breath to breath as a calm

in the surround rises, fireflies in lindens, an ache of pine

you have yourself within you

yourself, you have her, and there is nothing

that cannot be seen

open then to the coming of what comes

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J'ai rapporté du désespoir un panier si petit mon amour, qu'on a pu le tresser en osier.I brought from despair a basket so small, my love, that it might have been woven of willow.

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Over the years, this list of poetic forms for poets has grown from 50 to 86 to 100 and now 168. And I doubt we're anywhere near adding to the list (still have plenty of forms to discuss for future Poetic Form Fridays). This list is a combination of well-established traditional forms, newer types of poems, and even a few fun super new nonce forms.

( Common Poetry Terms.)

Each form listed below has a very brief description to give the vaguest ideas of how it differs from the others in the list, but I advise clicking the link for the name of the form to gain a true understanding of the guidelines for each poetic form. Also, most of those pages include at least one (if not several) example poems to show how to write them.

And with that simple introduction, please enjoy this updated list of poetic forms from abstract to zejel and 160+ more in between. Be sure to check out each form. It might even make a good year-long challenge to write three forms each week of the year.

Here's my list of 168 poetic forms:

(Note: Click on the name of each form to read the full description in the original posts.)

*****
Play with poetic forms!
Poetic forms are fun poetic games, and this digital guide collects more than 100 poetic forms, including more established poetic forms (like sestinas and sonnets) and newer invented forms (like golden shovels and fibs).

Click to continue.

*****

*****
Build an Audience for Your Poetry!
While your focus as a poet will always be on refining your craft, why not cultivate a following along the way? With the multitude of social networking opportunities available today, it's never been easier to connect with other poetry enthusiasts.

Click to continue.

*****

*****

Poem your days away with Robert Lee Brewer's Smash Poetry Journal. This fun poetic guide is loaded with 125 poetry prompts, space to place your poems, and plenty of fun poetic asides.

(Writer's Digest uses affiliate links)

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From abstract poems to villanelles, find a range of poetic forms for poets in this list, including French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Welsh, and contemporary forms! Each listing links to a more comprehensive description of the form along with an example poem using the form.

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A post shared by Kim Stafford (@kimstaffordpoetry)

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Transcript

I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

On occasion, I question whether or not my desires are my desires. Or has my subconscious merely given into the massive amounts of stimuli of our modern age? For example, take this almond milk grande cappuccino with one-pump sugar-free vanilla syrup. Now that it sits on my desk, half-full and cold as a wet day on the beach, I am not convinced I really wanted an espresso drink. Plus, over several days, I guess I had been seeing them everywhere...and that made it feel like a natural need.

Frankly, sometimes I am not even sure my positions on political issues are my own. I feel uber aware, too, of how my participation on various social media platforms set me up as one big canyon of malleable data points. I find that my moods can easily be switched or manipulated by a single post or trending topic. Occasionally, I like to change my profile's location and age, and watch FoxNews just to mess with the algorithms, processes, and classifiers - and to see how it changes my own reaction.

I'm not the first poet to want to turn all of this on its head. A group of experimental poets in the late 20th century called the Language Poets questioned whether or not even daily language could be trusted, whether it adequately conveyed any sense of authentic experience or feelings, because regular language itself had been co-opted by advertising in the interest of selling us goods. And today, of course, our phones, computers, and other screens keep the goods coming 24 hours a day.

Today's deeply relatable poem articulates the frustrations of living in this modern age, how we exist in a vortex of digital information that potentially wipes out any notion of free will. The poem's repetitive performance of longing reminds us that this constant state of dissatisfaction and need distracts us from our deepest desires.
The "I Want" Song by Rachel Richardson "The 'I Want' Song" by Rachel Richardson. Used by permission of the poet.
I just want them to stop emailing. All of them. You. The bots.
I want the kids to stop whining, the floor
to sweep itself, the sun to rise blamelessly
into the sky. In every Disney movie the main character
gets to stop, look into the camera, and howl
her "I Want" song straight into our chests. Once
it's been laid out for all of us to hear, we know
she has to get it. But there's so much that I want-
for the trees not to burn, or at least
notthese trees, not unless they're far away or beneficial to the understory. I want to stop feeling like I'd better buy the fruit now because maybe next year there will be no more fruit, no more water, maybe the crops will burn or wither or be sprayed with the chemical that kills the bees and which studies now show kills the bees' children and children's children two bee-generations after exposure. I want not to think about the expiration of the world. I want to delete my profile, I want pollination of the blossom and the swelling of fruit. I want to stand inside the fog socked in under a crown of redwoods. I want to become the fog.

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I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown. On occasion, I question whether or not my desires are my desires. Or has my subconscious merely given into the massive amounts of stimuli of our modern age? For example, take this almond milk grande cappuccino with one-pump sugar-free vanilla syrup.

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Tell me about your baptism she asked.

I rose out of the water, a caught fish-slippery,
gaping for breath, brand new with righteousness.

I walked down to the frothing whirlpool,
Pastor Lonnie-a white man in a white robe,

extended his hands and helped me down the steps.
The congregation watched as I answered his questions:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Jacuzzi-warm water gurgled and spun
as his white robe spread around my little circumference,

holy creamer. He put his hand on my nose, pinched
my breath. I did not close my eyes as he buried me

under the water-under the water I heard muffled
shouting, under the water I saw Pastor Lonnie's face

ripple in thirds. He tipped my body back, lifted me up
and out from the wet coffin to the defeaning resound

of clapping and yelling from the church. My hair back
to curls, my face like the face of my birth when I was

cut from my mother-terrified and ready to scream.

I was born into this world sideways.
Doctor said,
surgery, to break my face
set it right again
as if breaking were simple.
Wet places my lips have been:
all the boys I've kissed-
so many caves I've licked
saliva & sweat
holy water on my tongue.
I grind my teeth at night
wake to white sand in my mouth:
nocturnal silt, gritty loam.
My jaws pop when I talk
but if I had the surgery, went cosmetic?
Oh, the typewriter in my bones-
yes, I would miss that click/clack the most.

after Carrie Mae Weems's Roaming series Before I knew how to fill my onyx body with slick measures, dip every curve in my skin with dark sway, I needed a picture. Before me stood a long black dress I calledWoman- you stand opaque with your back to me, a statue of witness, the door of Yes- I can Return to the monument of your silhouette to find my longest muscle. We both stare down the ocean to stillness. O, Carrie- what are you trying to tell me here? I've been standing by water my whole damn life trying to get saved.

that earring made me feel so free, so full of beauty-the kind that you might notice. Beauty that could make my shoulders glow. I remember her face, alight with a devious curiosity in the porchlight of the house party-that party in that city which slathered a film over its racism with clean streets and yard signs proclaiming inclusion. That city in that American state which legally excluded Black residents in 1844, which entered the union, big, proud, and white. Does it matter that this woman was not evil, did not send bombs to kill children in a far-off country, did not buy or sell a single slave? Picking up the earring, unwearable until I find another hook on which to hang it from my ear, I remember, again, the words and their cool sting. I'm a white woman, people protect us. Does it matter what I said to invite these words? Does it matter that I did not invite these words? Does it matter that she thought this was a joke, a sign that she was on the "right side," a way to pass a moment under the porchlight? I've been thinking about intention lately, how I'm always asked to consider how good a person is, what they meant versus what they said. I think about the man who called me colored at a hotel in 2019. I think about the n-word out of a white person's mouth. About erasure. I wonder about the road to hell, which, they say, is paved in these same intentions-good. George Zimmerman intended to protect his sidewalk from Trayvon's body, invasively alive. George Washington intended to protect America from Britain's oppression-nevermind those oppressed Black bodies. Yes, I am weaving a rope between George Zimmerman and George Washington. Yes, I am saying it. My country tis of thee, sweet land of white supremacy. When she said it, my face could barely twist into anything but fatigue. I am tired over and over again of being told I am not human enough to matter. The white poet rages against me on Facebook. Maybe he imagines my blood against his ivory tower. Maybe he imagines the many bricks my foremothers and fathers built-LucillePhyllisGwendolynPaulLawrenceLangstonSoniaMayaNikki-tumbling at the flick of his well-educated thumb. Is even my degree a different color, relegated to the back of a bus, a book? The business of poetry so thick with privilege, so smothered in the rust of its old gates-how can you breathe among all that rot? On the news, the man they call president tells us to go back from where we came. I think of all the lost ones thrown over boats, the ones locked away in cages, the ones here, sitting as American as the day is long and still called wrong. The earring says I once was lost when I find it, tells me it can be repaired. It is an earring of the struggle. It wants that ear it once called home, it wants to touch my brown skin and reflect it in its orbiting gold. I look for my pliers, my jewelry kit. The work is always the thing that makes us whole again.

I'm curled into a ball
like a dog
that is cold.

Who will tell me
why I was born,
why this monstrosity
called life.

The telephone rings. I have to give
a poetry reading.

I enter.
A hundred people, a hundred pairs of eyes.
They look, they wait.
I know for what.

I am supposed to tell them
why they were born,
why there is
this monstrosity called life.

There's a voice in the room and what are you noticing. What are the sounds in the room. Is there a bell that says that the dinner is ready to be served. Is there a bird warming up outside that you are noticing. In what ways does that noticing mean anything good. Is this its own performance or part of something else. Are you listening to someone's voice while reading this to yourself. Are you listening to the words that the voice sounds or simply to the sound. What kind of sound are you hearing beyond the voice that's sounding. Do you hear the cars on the road. Do you hear the hum of the fan on the floor. Do you hear anything from the hallway or from the rooms next door. Do you hear the one voice whispering to the other. Do you hear the chairs scraping against the floor. Do you hear a door closing and a latch latching. Do you hear the sound of the breath of the person next to you. Are you noticing your own body as it sits in the chair that may or may not be comfortable. Do you find yourself slowing down, looking up, tracking back.

Are you following words that are sounded and trying to situate yourself in relation to them. Are the words the wallpaper that surround the true activity of someone sitting up straight in front of you and you admire that person's coat or hairstyle or the meal that they have ordered. Do you feel that the words are about you simply because of a pronoun, or is empathy outside of grammar. Are there clues in a text like a hand intimately clasping. Is the skin there complete sensation. Are there two seeds from an orange on the table.

Does the butterfly serve as some kind of analogy, a quasi-splice for reeving new halyards. Are you noticing. Is this an easy space for capturing your attention. Or is the smoke beginning to get to you. Are you noticing a waver in the over of the edge. Are you noticing a cross-current in the waving having and the come on over here of the wave. Do you wish you had eaten a bit more before reading this. Which tree wavers under the weight of the bird. Did you drop this. Have you forgotten the beginning before my interruption. Does the first person pronoun jar unwelcome and unkind or does it reveal a body that is foreign and only good. Do you remember the aphetic elixir of the waver wavering wave. How straight is your spine. How sharp is your tongue. How is the shoulder, soldier.

Is it a large or small crowd. Would you use the word successful to describe a crowd or a poem. Are you sure you're in the right location. Have the birds started to warm up yet. Are the lyrics to their songs like oo la la. Are you frapping for lashing drumheads and mousing hooks. Are you surging a line on a wince, then jamming a bight of the fall into the upper block. Could this be some kind of bid for a recently vacated cabinet position. Do you marry the two lines, laying them into each other. Are you the clove hitch, the slippery hitch, the stunner hitch, struggling with your own personalized orange revolution. Do you tie the shoe clerk's knot, the bow tie, the mermaid's braid, the bell knot. Have your fingers made even the slightest mark or indentation.

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Tell me about your baptism she asked. I rose out of the water, a caught fish-slippery,gaping for breath, brand new with righteousness. I walked down to the frothing whirlpool,Pastor Lonnie-a white man in a white robe, extended his hands and helped me down the steps.The congregation watched as I answered his questions: Yes.

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To Be Brave I Look to the Daffodil by Susan Nguyen

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To Be Brave I Look to the Daffodil by Susan Nguyen

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Transcript

I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I'm not sure anymore what counts as bravery in everyday life. To some, waking every morning and settling into one's routine has the veneer of valor. But bravery is often involuntary and situational, like the men who stepped in to protect two women on a city bus in Oregon from harassment by a white supremacist. For others, bravery is a mindset of fearlessness in all aspects of one's life, with the backdrop being conventionality, where one proceeds to crush expected outcomes.

I live in that between space of Play it safe and Go for it. I mostly proceed with caution but then again, foolishly, I brave activities that put life and limb at risk, like jumping off a cliff into an unknown depth of water. Literally and figuratively. I've never jumped out of an airplane, and I probably would be that guy who'd need to be pushed into a skydive. But I see writing poetry as equally not for the faint of heart.

On occasion, writing poetry requires a level of courage to say what most people might think but are afraid to say out loud. Some call this truth-telling. The pursuit of the unsayable has given us memorable lines in poetry and released us from debilitating silence around topics which we fear; an outcome of shame, exposure, and isolation.

When I wrote about my mother's addiction, I was cautioned by a friend not to play into stereotypes; it was my first brush with respectability politics, as if I needed that! I was afraid of losing my friend's regard and admiration, which is an anxiety I generally suffer. Over the years, I've found courage in the example and light of poets who've spoken candidly about nearly unbearable experiences.

Today's poem finds a symbol of bravery in nature, and teaches us that choosing to act-and facing our dangers-is a matter of persistence we must cultivate in order to grow beyond our fears.
To be brave, I look to the daffodil by Susan Nguyen "To be brave, I look to the daffodil" by Susan Nguyen. Used by permission of the poet.
To be brave, I look to the daffodil.
A stupid flower, I've always thought - too eager
to enter a world not fully thawed. Shrinking
after just one cold night. I surround myself with pluck.
Always one for adventure: running naked
across campus into a stranger's car as rite of passage,
jumping into the freezing bay. Hitchhiking home but
afraid to speak in class. To order in my mother's
tongue, my mother's food. I let the dark take on its own
shapes, unchecked. No, I am not brave, but I like the people
who are. Who never overprepare or let their anxieties
stop them. For whom things always work out.
I'm chasing the high from one novelty to another,
wanting adventure but so unwilling to find it on my own.
Instead, I lose myself in people who live unafraid.
Bravery by osmosis. This might be the truest thing
I say today and it scares me. To admit that on my own,
I was never wild. All this time I thought the daffodil's dropped
petals, the green leaves that remained, marked an ending.
But underground she is rebuilding for next spring.
For when she'll dare, again, to push through the frostbitten
earth. Year after year, it goes on like this.

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854: To be brave, I look to the daffodil

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I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown. I'm not sure anymore what counts as bravery in everyday life. To some, waking every morning and settling into one's routine has the veneer of valor. But bravery is often involuntary and situational, like the men who stepped in to protect two women on a city bus in Oregon from harassment by a white supremacist.

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Of what is gone To know something is

Lost but what You have forgotten what

You long forgot If I am

What survives I am here but I am not

Much of anything at all To be what's left

And all the rest scooped out

And dropped into the sea My flesh

Forming a knot on itself is a habit

Learned from whom A mind reaching back

Into the dark a body releasing itself

Backward into space a faith

I have no prayer in which to keep

Am I home or merely caught

Between two unmarked graves

I'm saying where we live

It's a mistake A compromise

I'm made to make

I'm told come willingly

Halfway across a bridge to where

I'm halfway human Or else

A door bricked over

Behind which all I am

To be shadow cast by shadows cast

By no one's hand And now

Whose fault am I It's said

I stand against the grain

Of natural law A being in chaos

In argument with itself What would it be

To be simply I am here but what of me

That's gone stays gone

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Of what is gone To know something is Lost but what You have forgotten what You long forgot If I am What survives I am here but I am not Much of anything at all To be what's left And all the rest scooped out And dropped into the sea

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I Was Wrong about So Much by Eugenia Leigh

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I Was Wrong about So Much by Eugenia Leigh

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Transcript

I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I'm writing today with a gray and black dog snoring at my feet. When our terrier Finn became a part of our family, I wasn't ready to welcome him. Several weeks after moving to Nashville, I had to return to Vermont to tie up a few loose ends. While I was away, Buzz, our elderly golden retriever, had to be put down-dear Buzz, who gazed at us as if we all walked with a thick nimbus of gold light around our heads. I justified my absence with... flimsy reasoning.

So my wife went to the rescue shelter without telling me. I happened to FaceTime while she was sitting down on the floor with a scraggly four-month-old puppy between her legs. Guess what? Look! Isn't he cute? she said. With my guilt of not being there, and her alone in a new city for at least several more weeks, I couldn't say no.

By the time I arrived back to Nashville, they had a serious bonding thing going. He slept in our bed. Even in the days of Buzz, I avoided turning our bedroom into Noah's ark. I insisted on a dog crate. Thus began a month-long argument between me and my wife. Finn had a habit of digging where I lay as though searching for, I don't know, a bunch of treats sewn into the mattress? His intense burrowing as well as his claws were terrifying. We argued and I won.

But then, one evening, I accidentally did not latch the crate securely, and I woke up the next morning with Finn stretched across my leg, snoozing away. When I stirred, he galloped up and gave me the sloppiest of kisses. When I left the bed to make coffee, he jumped down and walked beside me. For the whole morning, he trailed me like . . . like Buzz used to do. I realized I was holding back my love. I brought my wife a cup of coffee, with Finn, at my feet. I apologized for not welcoming our new pet; told her I was wrong to leave her during the holidays.

Today's poem exquisitely models one of my new and favorite acts of speech, that moment when we hold ourselves accountable for our mishaps and make amends - which feels like taking time to grow.
I Was Wrong about So Much by Eugenia Leigh "I Was Wrong About So Much" by Eugenia Leigh from BIANCA © 2023 Eugenia Leigh. Used by permission of Four Way Books.
About my brain, its wires glitching
like a jellyfish sprite

flashing its apple-red tentacles
above my countless thunderclouds.

About your eyes, not a savior's eyes
but brown as blood. I was wrong

about the God I warped
into a weapon, a garrison.

Wrong about love, too. I thought love
was my mother's soprano tessitura

screaming. I thought love was
a violence. Verdi's requiem,Dies irae. You thought love was love. New millennium emo. February flooding the school below the palms wringing their palms like willows the morning after you rinsed gas station zin from my hair. I'm sorry I chased you for years the way a cowbird tails the cow- not for love of the beast, but for the insects it kicks up. She ditches her eggs in someone else's nests to do this. Kills someone else's young to do this.This possessed. I was.

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I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown. I'm writing today with a gray and black dog snoring at my feet. When our terrier Finn became a part of our family, I wasn't ready to welcome him. Several weeks after moving to Nashville, I had to return to Vermont to tie up a few loose ends.

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Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.

The crunch is the thing, a certain joy in crashing through
living tissue, a memory of Neanderthal days.
   -Edward Bunyard,The Anatomy of Dessert, 1929 Teeth at the skin. Anticipation. Then flesh. Grain on the tongue. Eve's knees ground in the dirt of paradise. Newton watching gravity happen. The history of apples in each starry core, every papery chamber's bright bitter seed. Woody stem an infant tree. William Tell and his lucky arrow. Orchards of the Fertile Crescent. Bushels. Fire blight. Scab and powdery mildew. Cedar apple rust. The apple endures. Born of the wild rose, of crab ancestors. The first pip raised in Kazakhstan. Snow White with poison on her lips. The buried blades of Halloween. Budding and grafting. John Chapman in his tin pot hat. Oh Westward Expansion. Apple pie. American as. Hard cider. Winter banana. Melt-in-the-mouth made sweet by hives of Britain's honeybees: white man's flies. O eat. O eat.

Man-made, bejesus hot, patches of sand turned to glass.
Home of Iron Mountain and McCulloch chainsaws.

London Bridge, disassembled, shipped, reassembled.
The white sturgeon stocked, found dead, some lost,
hiding in the depths of Parker Dam. Fifty year-old
monsters, maybe twenty feet long. Lake named

for the Mojave word for blue. Havasu. Havasu.
What we called the sky on largemouth bass days,

striped bass nights, carp, catfish, crappie, razorback,
turtles, stocked, caught, restocked. I stood waist deep
in that dammed blue, and I was beautiful, a life saver
resting on my young hips, childless, oblivious

to politics, to the life carted in and dumped
into the cauldron I swam through, going under,

gliding along the cool sand like a human fish,
white bikini-ed shark flashing my blind side.
We heard a woman died, face down in the sand,
drunk on a 125 degree day. That night we slept

on dampened sheets, a hotel ice bucket on the
bedside table. We sucked the cubes round, slid

the beveled edges down our thighs and spines,
let them melt to pools in the small caves
below our sternums. While you slept beside me
I thought of that woman, her body one long

third degree burn, sweating and turning
under a largo moon, the TV on: seven dead

from Tylenol, the etched black wedge of the
Vietnam Memorial, the Commodore Computer
unveiled, the first artificial heart, just beginning
to wonder if something might be wrong.

for Richard Pacholski Avoid storms. And retirement parties. You can't trust the sweetnesses your friends will offer, when they really want your office, which they'll redecorate. Beware the still untested pension plan. Keep your keys. Ask for more troops than you think you'll need. Listen more to fools and less to colleagues. Love your youngest child the most, regardless. Back to storms: dress warm, take a friend, don't eat the grass, don't stand near tall trees, and keep the yelling down-the winds won't listen, and no one will see you in the dark. It's too hard to hear you over all the thunder. But you're not Lear, except that we can't stop you from what you've planned to do. In the end, no one leaves the stage in character-we never see the feather, the mirror held to our lips. So don't wait for skies to crack with sun. Feel the storm's sweet sting invade you to the skin, the strange, sore comforts of the wind. Embrace your children's ragged praise and that of friends. Go ahead, take it off, take it all off. Run naked into tempests. Weave flowers into your hair. Bellow at cataracts. If you dare, scream at the gods. Babble as if you thought words could save. Drink rain like cold beer. So much better than making theories. We'd all come with you, laughing, if we could.

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

I was so willing to pull a page out of my notebook, a day, several bright days and live them as if I was only alive, thirsty, timeless, young enough, to do this one more time, to dare to have nothing so much to lose and to feel that potential dying of the self in the light as the only thing I thought that was spiritual, possible and because I had no other way to call that mind, I called it poetry, but it was flesh and time and bread and friends frightened and free enough to want to have another day that way, tear another page.

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Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem. The crunch is the thing, a certain joy in crashing through living tissue, a memory of Neanderthal days. -Edward Bunyard,The Anatomy of Dessert, 1929 Teeth at the skin. Anticipation. Then flesh. Grain on the tongue. Eve's knees ground in the dirt of paradise.

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you many will brother you some of these

loves will bother you some will leave you

one might haunt you hunt you in your

sleep make you weep the tearless kind of

weep the kind of weep that drowns your

organs slowly there are little oars in your body

little boats grab onto them and row and row

someone will tell you no but you won't know

he is right until you have already wrung your

own heart dry your hands dripping knives until

you have already reached your hands into his

body and put them through his heart love is

the only thing that is not an argument

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you many will brother you some of these loves will bother you some will leave you one might haunt you hunt you in your sleep make you weep the tearless kind of weep the kind of weep that drowns your organs slowly there are little oars in your body little

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poetry & the creative mind — a national poetry month gala fundraiser

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poetry & the creative mind — a national poetry month gala fundraiser tickets

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Poetry & the Creative Mind - a National Poetry Month gala fundraiser

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Eventbrite - Academy of American Poets presents Poetry & the Creative Mind - a National Poetry Month gala fundraiser - Wednesday, April 26, 2023 - Find event and registration information.

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Get a poem in your email each day.

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Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today's talented poets each year. Steve Bellin-Oka is the guest editor of November. Read or listen to a Q&A with Bellin-Oka about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2023 guest editors. Support Poem-a-Day.
If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

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Poem-a-Day - Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previousl

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Our friends at the Ohio Poetry Day Association have announced their annual contests! May 15, 2023, is the deadline (postmark) for nearly two dozen contest categories. Categories include humor, formal poems, parody and more. As always, a "Welcome Aboard" category for first-time submitters and an art category to design the cover art for the 2023 Best of Ohio Poetry Day anthology are also open to submissions.

Below is a copy of the submission form, which provides full contest information.

Ohio Poetry Day 2023 will take place in October. Stay up to date on OPD information, including the event date, location, and agenda, by getting your name and address on the OPD mailing list. To do so, contact:
Amy Jo Zook 3520 State Route 56 Mechanicsburg, OH 43044

Checks for all contest fees and purchases should be made payable to: Ohio Poetry Day. For questions, call (937) 834-2666.

Click and download the images below to view them at full size.

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Our friends at the Ohio Poetry Day Association have announced their annual contests! May 15, 2023, is the deadline (postmark) for nearly two dozen contest categories. Categories include humor, formal poems, parody and more. As always, a "Welcome Aboard" category for first-time submitters and an art category to design the cover art for the 2023 Best of Ohio Poetry Day anthology are also open to submissions.

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Where would I be without this round-up each year? Here you'll find a list of bloggers participating in poetry projects this month. It's my go-to reference! Thanks, Jama.

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Happy April and Happy National Poetry Month!
It's time once again to read, write, share, and simply indulge your love for poetry in every way. I'm happy to be back rounding everyone up this year and look forward to checking in with all of you throughout April.

New to National Poetry Month and wondering about ways to celebrate? Visit the NPM webpage at The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) for a cool list of activities, initiatives and resources. You can learn about Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 27), sign up for Poem-a-Day to receive poems in your inbox, and review 30 Ways to Celebrate NPM online, at home, in the classroom, or at readings/events near you. Do as much, or as little, as you please. Just enjoy!

The 2023 poster was designed by Marc Brown, creator of the popular Arthur book and PBS television series. The artwork incorporates an excerpted line from the poem " Carrying" by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. Brown was selected by Scholastic-the global children's publishing, education, and media company-to create the artwork for this year's poster as part of a new National Poetry Month initiative between the publisher and the Academy of American Poets. Request a free copy or download a PDF of the poster

Now, here's a list of what some kidlit bloggers are doing. If you're also celebrating Poetry Month with a special project or blog event, or know of anyone else who is, please leave a comment here or email me: readermail (at) jamakimrattigan (dot) com, so I can add the information to this Roundup. Thanks, and have a beautiful, inspiring, uplifting, productive, and memorable April!
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Hooray, it's Progressive Poem time again! Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche has recruited 30 poets for the eleventh annual Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem. This is a wonderful community writing project where a poem travels daily from blog to blog, with each host adding a new line. Mary Lee Hahn is kicking things off tomorrow with the first line of a child-friendly poem at A(nother) Year of Reading. Here's the full schedule of participating bloggers:

April 1 Mary Lee Hahn, Another Year of Reading

April 2 Heidi Mordhorst, My Juicy Little Universe

April 3 Tabatha, The Opposite of Indifference

April 4 Buffy Silverman

April 5 Rose Cappelli, Imagine the Possibilities

April 6 Donna Smith, Mainely Write

April 7 Margaret Simon, Reflections on the Teche

April 8 Leigh Anne, A Day in the Life

April 9 Linda Mitchell, A Word Edgewise

April 10 Denise Krebs, Dare to Care

April 11 Emma Roller, Penguins and Poems

April 12 Dave Roller, Leap Of Dave

April 13 Irene Latham Live You Poem

April 14 Janice Scully, Salt City Verse

April 15 Jone Rush MacCulloch

April 16 Linda Baie TeacherDance

April 17 Carol Varsalona, Beyond Literacy Link

April 18 Marcie Atkins

April 19 Carol Labuzzetta at The Apples in My Orchard

April 20 Cathy Hutter, Poeturescapes

April 21 Sarah Grace Tuttle at Sarah Grace Tuttle's Blog,

April 22 Marilyn Garcia

April 23 Catherine at Reading to the Core

April 24 Janet Fagal, hosted by Tabatha, The Opposite of Indifference

April 25 Ruth, There is no Such Thing as a God-Forsaken Town

April 26 Patricia J. Franz, Reverie

April 27 Theresa Gaughan, Theresa's Teaching Tidbits

April 28 Karin Fisher-Golton, Still in Awe Blog

April 29 Karen Eastlund, Karen's Got a Blog

April 30 Michelle Kogan Illustration, Painting, and Writing
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Laura Purdie Salas invites everyone to join in on her Digging for Poems Project.

Basically, she's going to write a very short poem each day, based on two things:

a handful of magnetic poetry words

a topic chosen from five words on a game board card

Each day on her Small Reads for Brighter Days blog link, she'll share items 1 and 2. And she'll also share the poem she wrote based on the previous day's items 1 and 2. She hopes educators, students, and other poetry friends will play along and share their poems in the comments.

Here's a video with more details:
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Heidi Mordhorst will be adding kids' poems weekly on Wednesdays to the new WHISPERshout Magazine, publishing poetry and art by kids ages 4-12.
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Laura Shovan is hosting a poetry project at Authors Take Action:

Children's poets and authors are invited to share prompts for the Authors Take Action #ClimatePoemProject. The idea is to provide a month of daily poetry prompts for children and classrooms based on our theme, climate. Those who are interested in participating should email Laura Shovan. https://laurashovan.com/contact/
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Jone Rush MacCulloch is going to be busy this month with a variety of activities, including weekly interviews, daily videos and hosting the Classic Found Poem Palooza. Check it out:

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At her blog Reverie, Patricia J. Franz will be exercising her poetic muscle with a 30 Poems/30 Forms/30 Days challenge. Look for an original poem written in a different poetic form each day of April. Check out her full schedule
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Over at Of Tea and Mermaids, Jena Benton will be sharing a poetry picture book every day during the entire month of April. Wonderful way to learn about new-to-you books!
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There will be some alphabetical fun at TeacherDance!! Linda Baie will be using R is for Rhyme: A Poetry Alphabet by Judy Young and Victor Juhasz (Sleeping Bear Press, 2010), which follows the alphabet with one kind of prompt each day. This is a book Linda occasionally used in the classroom, and now she's looking forward to working through it day by day.
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JoAnn Early Macken will be posting an original poem every day this month at her website blog. Visit often and enjoy!
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Look for Before the Zinnias Bloom: A Month of Cheritas by Mary Lee Hahn of A(nother) Year of Reading. Here's how she describes her project:

"This year, my National Poetry Month project will feature the cherita form. At the website The Cherita, the form is defined thus: 'Cherita is the Malay word for story or tale. A cherita consists of a single stanza of a one-line verse, followed by a two-line verse, and then finishing with a three-line verse...The cherita tells a story.' Like last year, I will be publishing my poems daily at Poetrepository and crossposting here each Friday for Poetry Friday."
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Head on over to where Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is featuring 24 Hours. Here's Amy with all the details:

"This year, for each day of April, I will share a new poem about 1 hour in 1 day in the life of an old barn. I will write 24 hourly poems, 1 for each hour of a spring day, beginning with midnight and ending right before the following midnight. Because April has 30 days, I will write and tuck 6 additional poems into the month, likely 2 at the beginning, 2 in the middle somewhere, and 2 at the end.

I invite you to join me in this project!

To do so, simply:

1. Choose a place or a person, an animal or an object you could imagine writing 30 poems about, someone or something you could imagine following and writing about through an imaginary day.

2. If you wish, download the note taking sheet at The Poem Farm to keep track of poem ideas as you have them through the month. You may do this project on your own, with a friend or two, or with your whole class, each person selecting different hours.

3. Write a new poem each day of April 2023. You might write in order of the hours (I probably will), or you might choose to write your hourly poems in a mixed-up order and place them in order at month's end. If you miss a day, do not worry. Just come on back to your project when you can.

4. Teachers and writers, if you wish to share your 24 HOURS subjects or poems, please do so on social media with the hashtag #24Hours. Teachers, if you have permission from parents and only first names on student poems, I will share their topics and poems here in a Google Slides presentation.
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Spine Poems maven Annette Dauphin Simon will be sharing a spine poem each day on and . These will include poems for kids as well as grown-ups. If you're not familiar with spine poems, or would like to see samples from her excellent book, These are such fun!!
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Here at Alphabet Soup, we'll continue to feature interesting poems and books each Friday during the month. Look for a special Charlotte Brontë Birthday Celebration on Friday, April 21, and an interview with Charles Ghigna about The Father Goose Treasury of Poetry on Friday, April 28.
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Finally, don't forget to check in with April's Poetry Friday hosts to see what other bloggers are sharing in the kidlitosphere each week:

April
7 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
14 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
21 Karen at Karen Edmisten*
28 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
* ♥️ I'll continue to update this Roundup throughout April, so do check back! For your convenience, a link to this Roundup can be found in the sidebar of this blog. Wishing you a thoroughly nourishing, inspiring, productive, interesting, and enlightening Poetry Month! *Copyright © 2023 Jama Rattigan of Jama's Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.

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2023 National Poetry Month Kidlitosphere Events Roundup

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Happy April and Happy National Poetry Month! It's time once again to read, write, share, and simply indulge your love for poetry in every way. I'm happy to be back rounding everyone up this year and look forward to checking in with all of you throughout April.

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National Poetry Month celebration ideas.

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National Poetry Month

Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month is a special occasion that celebrates poets' integral role in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K-12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and-of course-poets, marking poetry's important place in our lives.

In April 2023, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón selected twenty new poems by contemporary poets to be featured in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series as part of a collaboration with the Library of Congress.

Thanks in part to our National Poetry Month partners and sponsors, each April the Academy is able to offer activities, initiatives, and resources so that anyone can join the celebration:

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National Poetry Month was inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry's vital place in our culture.