On Vacation

Bye for now!

Poems about kids

Okay, so when I went back to the readwritepoem site (so much fun and cool people) I took their Read Write Poll about what most people write poems about. My top three choices are (1) my kids, (2) objects, (3) nature. I think "myself" is a redundant category --you can't write a poem without exposing/writing about/being yourself. Anyway --

The results surprised me. After you take the poll, they show you how you rank. In case the rankings change before you (whoever you are) get there, here's what the results were when I took the poll. Am I really the only person who writes about my kids? What does that say about us as writers? As mothers? I wish I could find the quote from (I think it was) Julia Alvarez who said of course she writes poems about her family. That's what she spends most of her time doing, that's her material.

The other side of the argument was nicely put by Adrienne Rich (in her book the name of which I will insert here when I get home from work) that poetry is the only place where she doesn't have to take care of her kids. Hence, she chose not to write about them.

Hmmmmmm-------

THE READ WRITE POLL

I most often write poems about (choose as many as three):

Memories (35%, 14 Votes)
Feelings (35%, 14 Votes)
Myself (30%, 12 Votes)
Nature (28%, 11 Votes)
Spirituality (23%, 9 Votes)
Love (20%, 8 Votes)
Strangers / people I don’t know (18%, 7 Votes)
Ideas (15%, 6 Votes)
Fantasies (13%, 5 Votes)
Objects (10%, 4 Votes)
My mother (8%, 3 Votes)
Other family members (5%, 2 Votes)
My father (5%, 2 Votes)
Politics (3%, 1 Votes)
My kids (3%, 1 Votes)
Animals (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 40

Trying Something New

I discovered a poetry blog, readwritepoem, which posts writing prompts and other thought provoking things. I'm considering asking to become a participant, but thought I'd try out this week's prompt to gauge how seriously I could take this -- not a matter of not wanting to for me, but of time.

The prompt was to write an ekphrastic piece on one of the offered paintings by Rick Mobbs. Check out his site, Mine Enemy Grows Older, to see more of his work. The painting I chose is "Standing in the Shadows" and here they are -- his painting and my poem.

Saturday Morning

Jack’s home coughing
Stella’s pushing butterfly in the pool
Somewhere a horse is standing under the wings of an angel

Mom stares with coffee on the porch
Alice keeps face inches from fantasy
Somewhere an angel holds her armpit full of horse for safekeeping

Bob would go without me
Daddy would cover his eyes on the road
Somewhere the angel folds our dream beings beneath her stretch

Somewhere a horse leans out in freedom
Somewhere the red bodies and reddish brown knees
and golden brown edges know their place

In order
blue boulder
white fine equine legs
angel’s crotch
like butter
shadow wonderers in their grey question
line up between that smoke
and where I write
watching

Yeah Kay Ryan!

It makes all my hearts and all their cockles warm and giggling to learn that Kay Ryan, a woman from California, who teaches remedial English in a regular ol' high school, has become our great nation's newest poet laureate. I love her work. I've written hommage poems in her style (see side bar). I have to go home and feed my family, but here's a great poem of hers. And a photo of my tortoise, Armor, to go with it.

Turtle

Who would be a turtle who could help it?

A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,

She can ill afford the chances she must take

In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.

Her track is graceless, like dragging

A packing-case places, and almost any slope

Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,

She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way

To something edible. With everything optimal,

She skirts the ditch which would convert

Her shell into a serving dish. She lives

Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery

Will change her load of pottery to wings.

Her only levity is patience,

The sport of truly chastened things.

From Flamingo Watching Copper Beach Press, 1994

Writing Through Cancer

Today I found a wonderful story in the NY Times about folks with cancer who are writing poetry as a way to deal with it. There are some great comments about some of my favorite poets, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, and I added a comment about Tory Dent -- who's poem Black Milk I posted to my Laundry Songs blog yesterday. I have a friend who's just been diagnosed with breast cancer, a best friend, and I feel so dissoriented by the news. I don't have a place in my life for this information --yet. Writing -- I should give it a try.

Since Kyle's poem talks about growing a prickly pear cactus, I offer two photos.

If you read the NY Times article, you'll find links to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and to another article in the Times about a study showing that newly diagnosed patients who write expressively about their feelings have improved quality of life. There is a beautiful photo of a person reading a journal at the top of that article, which I'd love to post here -- but I don't know the rules about posting other publications photos -- so, you'll have to go to the NYTimes to see for yourself.

One patient wrote: “Don’t get me wrong, cancer isn’t a gift, it just showed me what the gifts in my life are.”