I don’t have trouble going to sleep; it’s that I don’t like what I find while I’m there.
—Megan Willome
It’s no secret my childhood was riddled with frightening characters. Not real life ones, thankfully. But the likes of Mister McGregor from Peter Rabbit and the sorcerer in Fantasia could keep me sleeping with one eye open for weeks on end when I was a child. And if I am to be honest, I’ll admit they and their more contemporary counterparts sometimes still do, even now that I’m an adult. My eye doctor will even attest to this, convinced as he is that a certain quality of my cornea is evidence that my left eye doesn’t fully close at night.
Characters like Frankenstein, on the other hand, don’t trouble me much. It’s a difference in monsters, I suppose. In an upcoming segment of Adjustments—the serial novel we’re publishing in our newsletter every week—Will Phillips theorizes to Cameron Julian, over a glass of wine in a closet, about the difference between fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen:
The Grimm boys were all about warty witches in the woods and wolves with grandmothers in their bellies. A little ham-fisted, if you ask me. But Andersen was always more cerebral. Complicated family dynamics, that sort of thing. Fewer monsters, more regular folks with monstrous hearts.
Can we please not talk about Cruella de Vil and that Maleficent person? Horrifying, truly. These are the sort of regular folks with monstrous hearts that tend to take up space in my dreams. Characters of a human sort, with a dreadfully insidious twist, and sometimes supernaturally so.
In this week’s reading from The Joy of Poetry, Megan Willome talks about her own troublesome dreams and considers how poetry might play a part in assuaging them, suggesting that Rudyard Kipling’s “Seal Lullaby” holds a possible key:
This lullaby is full of things that aren’t particularly sleep-inducing. The green water looks black in the dark. There are storms. There are even sharks. Sleep is scary for a lot of children and even, occasionally, adults. I think Kipling has written the best possible lullaby, one that acknowledges the terrors of the night.
My favorite time of the day is the twenty to thirty minutes after the alarm first wakes me, in that sleepy haze of only partial alertness where the thing of which I am most of aware is that I am not yet truly awake. It’s during this time that my mind, largely unfettered, wanders around to places curious and sometimes whimsical, though I’m just awake enough to avoid stumbling into any early-morning encounters with the likes of that wicked queen that was always talking to the mirror. A few times over the last three or four months, it’s been in these moments that a poem has taken shape, an unfinished draft among them that includes reference to worrying about the haiku under the bed.
One of those recent mornings, following a particularly dark dream, I drafted this poem in my head in the pre-waking moments while I burrowed down beneath a soft quilt pulled up to my ears against the early chill:
Train
The nearest three-hole punch
was at my old neighbor’s,
by which I don’t mean former,
but aged, the sort who would keep
such an implement just in case
someone might need it.
And if not for the thick stack
of documents (they required
separating into two
in order to fit
under the lever to bore holes)
I wouldn’t have been running so late
and heard the announcer
through the living room window
warning “Get on the train now, ”
or “twain” as she called it
because of some sort of accent,
European I think.
It’s only now, 16 hours later,
when I remember the dream
at the end of the day (and hope
that I made the train
for wherever I was going)
that I realize my old neighbor
picked up my luggage and hooked
the handles of the brown bag
over my fingers and pushed me
out the door under all those weights
and it might be the first
time I have dreamed of me,
by which I don’t mean the former,
but extant, as one and the same.
The poem accurately recounts the nonsense, and some other not-so-nonsense of the dream, but in such a way that the scene appears more comical than its actual dark events. And while a dream like that might normally shadow me all day, this one let go its grip shortly after the poem made its way to the paper, perhaps in its own way acknowledging (and disarming) the terrors of the night.
Favorite Things
We’re reading Megan’s The Joy of Poetry together in our book club, this week concluding our discussion with chapters 13-18. Here are some of my favorite parts:
It isn’t mine to give.
I can’t coax this bird to my hand
that knows the depth of the river
yet sings of it on land.
—from “The Dipper” by Kathleen Jamie (p. 111)
Many people never make it to a good poem like [The Dipper] because they’ve read too much of the bad stuff and stopped reading poetry altogether. (p. 112)
I leave her poem feeling intrigued, not like I’d been handed a guilt trip on a poetic platter. (p. 113)
We need what I like to call a basket, a concrete image that carries emotional weight without scaring off readers. We need not just any bird but The Dipper. Not just any flower but red poppies. (p. 114)
This is what I know to be true—I live in a body that needs sandwiches, especially during a crisis. (p. 126)
I turned those words into what’s called a “found poem, ” meaning the poet found the words lying around, minding their own business, and stole them. (p. 126)
She needs to dance. Dancing is her ship. Poetry is mine. (p. 128)
I didn’t dream berries. (p. 131)
Allusions can add another layer to a poem. Or they can feel like an unnecessary intrusion. (p. 132)
There are pills to help a person go to sleep and pills to help a person stay asleep. I have not found a pill that bestows good dreams. For that I needed Harry Potter. (p. 133)
Poetry gives you can idea of what to do, or at least the idea that something more can be done. (p. 138)
Now I no longer think about the prose of having good posture. Instead I think about lining up my balcony over my orchestra. (p. 140)
Why poetry? You might as well ask ‘why chocolate?’ (p. 140)
We don’t need poetry. Which is exactly why we need it. (p. 142)
Your Turn
Have you been reading with us? Perhaps in the comments you would share your thoughts from this week’s reading: tell us about a section that stood out or spoke to you, share a “favorite thing, ” or perhaps share a way poetry has served you in crisis or the “terrors of the night.”
The Joy of Poetry Reading Schedule:
May 4: Chapters 1 – 6
May 11: Chapters 7 – 12
May 18: Chapters 13 – 18
We also invite you to explore the ideas in The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save and Make Your Life With Poems beginning on page 148 and consider, at least for the duration of our book club, keeping a poetry journal or signing on a poetry buddy.
Photo by Hanna East, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by LW Lindquist.
___________________
Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry—part memoir, part poetry reflections, part anthology—takes readers on a journey to discovering poetry’s purpose, which is, delightfully, nothing. “Why poetry?” Willome asks. “You might as well ask, why chocolate?” Poetry reflects nothing more and nothing less than the pure joy of living, loving, and being, in all of its confusion and wonder. Willome’s book will gently guide you to read, write, and be a little more human through language’s mystery and joy.
—Tania Runyan, author of How to Read a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem “Introduction to Poetry”
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Laura Brown says
Aside from nursery rhymes and things in “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” I think “Seal Lullaby” was the first poem I ever memorized. It was in my sixth grade English book, and we read it in the first half of the school year, before we’d rearranged the classroom and rotated our desks 90 degrees clockwise so the windows were at our backs instead of on our left side. (Wondering for the first time: Did the teacher do that because spring was coming on and she didn’t want us to daydream out the window? Did SHE want to be able to look outside without turning her head?)
One of my favorite things from this section is also “This is what I know to be true—I live in a body that needs sandwiches, especially during a crisis.” Salvific sandwiches I recall: BLTs, bacon and peanut butter on wheat toast, Coleman’s fish on white bread, open-faced roast beef with brown gravy …
I don’t remember “Poetry gives you can idea of what to do, or at least the idea that something more can be done,” but my goodness, yes. The idea that something more can be done. Which might also be called hope.
Will Willingham says
I loved that line about sandwiches.
I think there is something about the way a poem (whether we are writing or reading it) permits the mind to see something in a new way or turned upside down or even just tilted a tiny bit that gives it this ability to give us “an idea of what to do, or at least the idea that something more can be done.”
Laura (L. L.) Barkat says
I will get back to the book club part of this later, I hope. Suffice it to say that the end of the book was very touching to me in multiple ways, but especially in its irony… one Writer had to leave the world to make way for Joy. Who is that Writer? Or, in other words, who is Charlotte? (Megan? Her mom?) And whoever Charlotte is, it was her departure that made other things possible. So many ways to read it, but one is the tender-sad truth that we mothers don’t fully leave space for our daughters until we are gone. Another way to read it: we writers need to depart from certain things sometimes to make way for joy—in our own art or others’ art. (Okay, I wasn’t going to talk about the book until later, and here I am talking about it! 😉 )
But I came to the comment box, actually, because I couldn’t help sharing a quote from today’s spacious reading (I read almost all day on Wednesdays 🙂 .) I think the why of the quote (or at least the impetus for it) will be clear once you read it:
“In shikantaza, the form of Zen meditation practiced by Dogen, a person’s eyes are neither fully closed nor fully open: they are held in a state of betweenness. A similar gaze, lowered yet present, is called by the Catholic monastics “keeping custody of the eyes.” Neither escape, disregard, or avoidance, this careful balancing of attention’s direction reflects an altered expectation of what is being looked for. The desire of monks and mystics is not unlike that of artists: to perceive the extraordinary within the ordinary by changing not the world but the eyes that look. Within a summoned and hybrid awareness, the inner reaches out to transform the outer, and the outer reaches back to transform the one who sees.”
—Jane Hirshfield, from Ten Windows
Laura Brown says
So how many of us read that and immediately tried it with our own eyes?
Because of the attention to attention, that reminds me of this, from Anne Truitt’s “Daybook”:
“Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.”
Will Willingham says
That is a beautiful quote, Laura.
Donna Falcone says
“we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves.”
Wow. That is an amazing strand of words…. it catches me right in the throat and a little in the corner of each eye. Laura Brown, thank you for sharing this.
Will Willingham says
So I can be reassured that my one-eyed sleeping is actually the means to a unique level of attention. 😉
“Neither escape, disregard, or avoidance, this careful balancing of attention’s direction …”
Donna Falcone says
LOL. 😀
Megan Willome says
Okay, well, that first paragraph of yours, L.L., got me writing about 500 unexpected words. Apparently I can never plumb the depth of “Charlotte’s Web.”
Laura (L.L.) Barkat says
That makes me happy. A circle of reading and writing. 🙂
Christina Hubbard says
This line. “we writers need to depart from certain things sometimes to make way for joy—in our own art or others’ art.” I find this so incredibly true, Laura.
Laura (L.L.) Barkat says
Which makes writing more than a craft: it’s often a journey. (And if it’s not, the writing often reveals that in its flat going-nowhere-ness.)
Donna Falcone says
Yes, me too, Christina and Laura. So true. So true. A hundred million times so true.
It sounds so simple, yes? The thought of just letting go of one thing so that we may grasp another? It isn’t easy, though – no it isn’t easy at all. This is the first time I have seen so clearly the difference between simple and easy in this respect. Someties the most simple acts require herculean discipline…. like holding the eyes unclosed, or like climbing a ladder backwards into poetry. I had that dream once – and I wrote it into a teeny poem/line/phrase…whatever. It felt poetic. What happened next was a choice to shift everything about the way I viewed my situation. So simple, but so hard to do, and so worth every ounce of effort.
Christina Hubbard says
LW, I loved your reflection on dreams and villains. I haven’t ever seen that movie Maleficent for every reason you named! And those words that come between sleep and waking are the words we need to capture or else they slip into oblivion. Love how you snatched them between worlds.
These chapters were heaped with meaning for me. “The Dipper”–“deep questions without pesky answers.” “…intrigued, not like I’ve been handed a guilt trip on a poetic platter.” This is what I’ve always poetry to be. Subtle and bold and burgeoning with a mystery that makes everything clearer somehow.
At Mile 37: “Today is not a day to mourn / though if I say I am not sad I lied.” Isn’t this the way of grief, memory, and joy all wrapped up in a tumbleweed blowing us somewhere we can’t see?
I was laughing out loud at the picture of Cinderella and her step sisters reading poetry over porridge together. Clearly, those ugly sisters never had a lick of meter or true beauty in their narrow-minded lives.
How Megan’s mother chirped and made happy sounds at the beauty shop. Reminds me of my grandmothers and the supreme joy they found from sitting under one of those spaceship dryers. (Grandma Glenda owned one and she was not a hairdresser, by any means).
The driving home with the sunroof open and the moon and spring stars—this is what I do spring through fall. Then the Up-Hill Rosetti poem. I wrote in the margin, “This poem is church for me and the past four years.” It brought up the search for identity, joy, and healing. How do we bring other wayfarers along? So poignant.
“And finding the poetry in the crisis will suggest the path forward.” That says it all for me.
Megan Willome says
Christina, LOVE your note in the margins about “Up-Hill.” Such a small poem, yet big enough to hold in itself the idea of “church.”
Marilyn says
Great insight there, Christina, that margin note!
Donna Falcone says
LL this fascinates me. I’ve also heard the Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, speak of meditating with eyes neither closed or open. I can never quite commit to it – but I will keep trying because of this: “Neither escape, disregard, or avoidance, this careful balancing of attention’s direction reflects an altered expectation of what is being looked for.”
It is a greater act if consciousness, for me anyway, to keep eyes unclosed. How interesting. 🙂 Thank you for sharing that.
Marilyn says
I’m in such good company here, enriched by all your comments the last few weeks, that I feel so…..warmed! Marvelous passage you quoted, L.L. Extremely satisfying scrapbook-worthy poem , L.W. (Does everybody around here go by initials?) 🙂
All I have to contribute to this week’s discussion so far is to admit that after the part where she didn’t cut her hair for 5 years, and then did, I had to stop and have myself a few tears. Good tears.
M.A.Y.
Will Willingham says
Marilyn, that part of the book was worth the pause. 🙂
And thank you, on the poem. I find that poems that follow dreams are some of the most satisfying to write because a dream provides such rich images that my conscious mind would not ever put together.
Megan Willome says
So that’s what I need to do with those dreams—see if they can become poems. I liked yours, LW.
Will Willingham says
Surprisingly, it works. 🙂
Laura Brown says
I should try that with the crazy dreams I’ve been having lately.
Will Willingham says
Here is another that I woke with a couple of months ago, pretty well intact. I’ve fiddled with line endings but not much else.
Doesn’t really mean much, but that sleep-wake state is something:
Lewt Foxe flung
a handful of texts
into the air where
words flew apart
and paired
off in ways that ought
not be repeated
in polite company.
Black birds peck
click-clacking keys,
kick truncated grafs
to the atmosphere
to choke on hyperbole’s
overwrought metaphor
punctuated
by toothless grinning emojis
that lack exacting pixels needed
for a picture’s thousand words
til the glyphs tumble together
in a Wild West sort of way, weeds
roll into a stack of tangled serifs
hoping for a needle in there
somewhere
Megan Willome says
This has echoes of that Adrienne Rich poem from earlier in the week at Every Day Poems, “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve.”
Marilyn says
Chapters 13 and 14 so got to me. “Cried here” I jotted after the last sentence in 14. Poppies. Haircuts. Up-Hill climbs. I read Christina Rossetti’s opening question aloud to my husband. He nodded. Eight words, all the conversation we needed for an evening. We are not complaining-type people. Neither was Christina Rossetti. She was just making an observation, setting it down for me to find and know I wasn’t alone. As Megan has done with this book.
***
A bit of an epiphany for me in Ch. 15, “Poetry of the Crisis.” This also goes along with the dream thread. After a decade of publishing prose (articles), I stopped. I’d sit to write and have nothing to say. Soon after, things started coming to me in phrases only. Very few complete sentences. I’d wake up in the morning and there they’d be, the words for an idea I had, all in snippets of phrase. Some I captured. Some I blogged. A couple of people commented to me about enjoying my “poems.”
“Poems?” I asked. “I’m not writing poems.”
“Well, it sure ain’t prose,” one said.
This went on for a few years and then I slipped back into prose. Megan wrote:
“I’ve known people who, after losing someone, turned to poetry even though they’d never read or written it outside a classroom. Somehow nothing else seemed strong enough to carry their emotions and move then along.” (126)
I think maybe that’s what was going on. I hadn’t lost someone, but I was carrying a grief and didn’t realize it. That whole episode has been a mystery to me since 2009-10, until I read that section.
Will Willingham says
Marilyn, I love what you say about the eight-word “conversation” from Rossetti. Poems give us this, and it is hard to explain how that works if you haven’t experienced it. And to think, someone else, on a different night, in a different place, under different circumstances, can read those same eight words to someone else and find just what they need for that evening also.
So glad to have you here for this little journey together with Megan’s book.
Bethany says
I enjoyed reading your poem, LW. The contrast of the important urgency in the dream, followed by completely forgetting about it until the end of the day, is interesting too.
Megan, I have kept a little log of some of my favorite poems, your idea of keeping a journal full of them is fun. You mentioned loving a poem of Nye’s and ripping it out of a magazine. One of my favorite poems is by her too.
I love your idea about a poetry buddy. What a fun way to spend time with a friend and yes, get to know them and poetry even better.
This book was quite enriching. Thank you for writing it and sharing it with us. Love that fittingly poetic ending: in loss—a remnant of joy.
Will Willingham says
Bethany, a scattering of Nye’s poems are among my favorites as well. There is something about her images…
Sharing poetry with a friend is one of the coolest things. It really gives you a means to communicate with each other in a different way than you have before, and sometimes find space to talk about things you might never have otherwise.
Daniel says
Ms Willome:
I’m new to this site and new to poetry (63 years old). The reason: I just finished “The Joy of Poetry,” a new door to something really new for me. Great read. Loved the format. Oh, and thanks for the tip on where to find this site!
Daniel
michelle ortega says
Welcome! You’ve arrived just on time. 🙂
Will Willingham says
Daniel, welcome. 🙂 You’ll find many of us here came to poetry a little … later. The great thing is that poetry waits for us, and is always ready when we are. So glad you found Megan’s book, and found us here. We hope you’ll stay around. 🙂
Sandra Heska King says
Welcome, Daniel. I’m one of the “poetry baristas” here, and we are so glad to have you join this community. I’ve come late to poetry, too, but I believe the timing was perfect. Check out our virtual cafe and our May menu and let us know how we can serve you. https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/mischief-cafe/
Megan Willome says
Daniel, you’re so welcome! Hope you stick around–there’s lots of great stuff here at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Megan Willome says
Daniel, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you come across the book?
Daniel says
Megan:
Been up the beach without a net. From a CSPAN Book TV interview with Dana Gioia, I went to Amazon in search of an intro to poetry. Looking over the many options, I kept coming back to “JOY” because it seemed to do what I wanted – teach me something about poetry without being a formal textbook. Hence, my comment on the format. Your book is a wonderful intro to poetry because it presents many aspects that go way beyond technique. I thoroughly enjoyed your book for that reason – you and your involvement with poetry covered the bases – and I would recommend it as a textbook that both teaches and inspires newbies like me. So, purchased on Amazon, then, through your book, found Tweetspeak. Oh, also read William Stafford at the beach and wrote four poems…put in my new journal…thanks to you.
Laura (L.L.) Barkat says
Daniel, this makes me happy. So happy 🙂
If you are looking for a next step that is still accessible (and warm and humorous), you might want to take a look at these two titles: https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/book-author/tania-runyan/
In fact, I got a letter from a teacher last night, about the one book (How to Write a Poem), and he attached an anthology of poems that his students wrote as a result of working with the book. I was quieted. We see *a lot* of poems by beginners that are…very beginner-ish. But? Many of these student poems were nothing short of amazing. I just kept sitting there thinking, “It works, far beyond what we hoped. Wow, wow, wow.”
michelle ortega says
I am still sifting through my thoughts after these chapters. My mom went through surgeries, chemo and radiation for breast cancer when I was in my early 20’s~thankfully she’s made it through. But I’ve been thinking a lot about that time as I read your story, Megan. There were few words (family communication dynamic) and definitely no poetry to process, just a few hollers into the cave where my mother retreated, mostly my voice echoing back. Maybe one about it now?
I never saw my mother’s head fully bald, but I was the one who cut her paintbrush thick, black hair off as it was falling out around her.
***
“Beauty Shop.” You captured the intimate right in the middle of the sorrow, the mundane, in the conversation between the nurse’s serving hands and your mother’s humble soul. Pied beauty, indeed.
***
“Dancing is her ship.”
***
I love red poppies dotting any landscape but never knew their symbolism until now. Death and beauty and resilience and sacrifice, and a bike ride, a memory, and a path through grief.
Will Willingham says
Michelle, it seems like you might find a poem about your mother hiding in what you’ve written here. 🙂
I love the sound of that “dancing is her ship” line as well. Can’t put my finger on it, but I love that line. 🙂
michelle ortega says
LW, thank you for that gentle nudge. And Megan, thank you again, just because. 🙂
Haircut
Interrupting chemo’s cruelty
I wield the silver blades which
until now, had simply trimmed bangs,
snipped itchy tags out of shirt collars.
A fine paintbrush of mom’s black hair
in one hand; the other shaken
by tiny vibrations,
each strand liberated
as the scissors close over them
by my will.
Finished, our gazes lock
in the bathroom mirror.
Mother, daughter.
Wordless, standing.
Bethany R. says
Such a vivid image, Michelle:
“A fine paintbrush of mom’s black hair
in one hand; the other shaken”
And I love how you end the piece with two, two-word, two-syllable lines. For me, it emphasizes how this powerful moment is something shared between only these two people. Thanks so much for sharing your poem.
Michelle A Ortega says
Thank you, Bethany! 🙂
Megan Willome says
Oh, Michelle. I can’t even imagine. LW’s right, there may be a poem in your experience. Maybe in that cave imagery.
Emily Conrad says
I’ve so enjoyed reading this book. Life has been a good kind of busy lately, but each time I sat down to read The Joy of Poetry, none of my other to-do’s mattered. It’s been an escape… or more than that, really, because after retreating in the book for a while, I’d emerge with a new appreciation for the poetry that is simmering all around me. Maybe that’s why I liked the line on page 133: “For me, there seems to be a perfect amount of tension needed to write poems. Too little stress, and I’m swimming along, oblivious to beauty and wonder.” So often, I swim along oblivious to beauty and wonder. The Joy of Poetry has helped combat that, and I can tell this is a book I get to reread and reread, noticing new things each time.
Speaking of rereading, I need to pick up Charlotte’s Web again! I read it multiple times as a child, so I was excited to see it discussed, but clearly I missed so much as a child!
I’d never read Seal Lullaby before, but I just love this line: “At rest in the hollows that rustle between.”
I’ve loved this book club! Thanks so much for doing this!
Will Willingham says
Emily, so glad you joined us for this discussion, and the rich observations you’ve had.
Funny that it is true that we do need a certain level of stress (scientists even tell us we need it to survive) to write poems. We’d like to think the opposite, sometimes, that we just need that idyllic calm when odds are good that won’t generate much of the tension we need for a poem. 🙂
Megan Willome says
Emily, I hope you do pick up “Charlotte’s Web” again. I recently heard this endorsement from Tracy Clayton of the podcast “Another Round”:
“It was the first book I ever fell in love with. Could not put it down. It was a really pretty world that somebody else created. I thought, ‘Anybody can do this.’ I can think of a world where spiders talk. It was the first time that I thought, ‘OK, I want to do this. I want to write a book one day that makes somebody feel the way this has made me feel. Charlotte knows my heart.”
Emily Conrad says
Beautiful quote. Yes, I have my own copy coming! I didn’t consider myself a writer the last time I read it (in 5th grade), and I can’t wait to see how differently it reads now.
Marilyn says
Do you think the joy of poetry might be contagious? After a couple of weeks of me interrupting my husband to read bits and pieces of TJOP to him, plus a couple of John Blase poems on car rides, my husband came out with a poem yesterday morning. I put it on my blog. Here it is below. It was prompted by the Parks Dept. blaming the Kentucky Derby for the grass being so high at the neighborhood park – all resources were focused on keep the downtown tourist area in tip-top shape. Derby was a few weeks ago and the grass is still growing like crazy, so out came a poem.
* * *
SUNDAY at PeeWee Park
The dew lays heavy on the PeeWee grass
Rabbits scurry as we pass.
In Lou-Ville and It’s been weeks since mowing,
For this, for sure, the Derby we’re owing.
The horses, the hype all eyes on the Downs,
It’s been weeks since Nyquist captured the crown.
Folks at the Parks Dept have their schedule to keep
The grass around town is nearly waist deep.
Come mow it and bale it all in due course
Then haul it cross town and feed to a horse.
– Walter Yocum
Megan Willome says
That was a true LOL moment. Tell Walter he’s welcome anytime.
Will Willingham says
Imagine a world where political discourse had to be conducted in poems. 😉
Tell Walter he made my day.
Christina Hubbard says
This book has me writing poems in the pockets of my day, about the small and insignificant (which, of course, nothing is, in poetry at least). I scrawled this off earlier to my new poetry buddy today:)
First day of summer vacation
Don’t be fooled by the smile,
Or hand-picked books,
games, and playthings.
“Good job. How cute. Yes, that’s wonderful, darling. Mmm hmmm…now go outside and play—,”
All such nicety is a mother’s ploy
To curl up in an old chair
And be at peace for one damn second
Like a long-haired Persian, (I am Queen.)
My tail will twitch if you come closer.
Touch me and
I will bite your nose in the night.
This book has been such a creative catalyst. Thanks, Megan, for writing out your story and inspiring us all.
Emily Conrad says
Love the poem 🙂 Yes, “creative catalyst” is the perfect phrase for this book!
Will Willingham says
Love that this book has you writing poems, Christina. 🙂
Megan Willome says
I am thrilled beyond reason that you have a poetry buddy! And that you are writing poems in the pockets of your day.
Donna Falcone says
I LOVE THIS LINE: This book has me writing poems in the pockets of my day
😀 😀 😀
Donna Falcone says
LW, this: “Poetry gives you can idea of what to do, or at least the idea that something more can be done. (p. 138)”
I love that you pulled this one out for closer looking.
Dreams do that, too, after all. Give the idea that something more can be done, I mean.
I’m so happy to have wi-fi again! I missed being here in the group! Great book club experience, LW. Thank you so much!
Laura (L.L.) Barkat says
Just popping in to let you all know that Megan is going to be doing a wonderful workshop called The Joyful Partnership of Poetry & Memoir. Starts August 29. I hope some of you decide to join her for the beautiful journey! 🙂
https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2016/07/11/joyful-partnership-poetry-memoir-workshop/