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Is that a poem in your pocket?

Hello Friends —

Tomorrow, Thursday April 26, is officially Poem in Your Pocket Day, brought to you by the Academy of American Poets — the same folks who bring you National Poetry Month, www.poets.org, and today’s subject line.

Poem in Your Pocket Day makes for an excellent excuse to spread the joy of Poetry Month to even more people! If you’ve never done it before, handing out poems on the street is very fun and rewarding. At first people will think you’re trying to hand them some promotional flyer they’ll then have to go to the trouble of finding a recycling bin for, but then they become pleasantly surprised to discover you’re giving them a little gift that asks nothing in return.

You can find today’s poem and other pocket-prone poems for your own Poem in Your Pocket Day celebration in print-your-own-at-home PDF format here. And here’s the best part: no one really knows, nor does it particularly matter, which day is actually Poem in Your Pocket Day — you can hand out poems to strangers any day, particularly any day in April.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

“Dust of Snow” by Robert Frost was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 16, 2007 and Poem-a-Day April 4, 2010.
Poet Robert Frost was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 30, 2008.

Poem-a-Day April 24: O frabjous day!

O Frabjous Day, Friends!

As many of you know, I am of the opinion that the poem “Jabberwocky” ought to be read, aloud, at least once a year. Today my former co-workers sent me a video of themselves doing just that — thank you, Watershed; I’m really touched (miss you all! ::sniff::). There is even a Watershed custom board game featuring “Jabberwocky!”

You too can experience the Calloohity for yourselves: I challenge you to read “Jabberwocky” aloud to someone else today.

If you shy away from this challenge because you don’t know what half of the words mean, I refer you to Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

With every poem, a reader in a sense chooses what you mean each of the poet’s words to mean. Reading “Jabberwocky,” especially out loud, simply requires you to make your choices of meaning more conscious acts. Reading aloud is a form of translation — you are translating the written “Jabberwocky” into a spoken “Jabberwocky.” Keith Lim has also compiled a lovely collection of translations of “Jabberwocky” — into languages ranging from Spanish and Japanese to C++ and Klingon.

Callay!
Ellen

Jabberwocky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 19, 2010 and Poem-a-Day April 8, 2007 — and for a Watershed Tues@2 staff meeting every April since the company’s founding in 2007.

Poem-a-Day April 23: fearful bravery

Hello Friends —
So there’s this poet William Shakespeare (you might’ve heard of him — it’s his birthday today) who favored a literary technique called oxymoron for its ability to convey paradoxes in the human condition. “Fearful bravery” is an example of an oxymoron. A paradox it illustrates is that without fear, there is no bravery — for in order to be brave, we must have something worth fearing to be brave in the face of or overcome.
Enjoy.
Ellen

CAESAR:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.—

Poem-a-Day April 22: Earth took of earth

Hello Friends —
For Earth Day this year: A poem from the earth to the earth, written in Old English circa 1000, author unknown. For me, the echo of a biblical “dust to dust” in this poem emphasizes the impossibility of clearly delineating a distinction between humans and the planet we inhabit.
Enjoy.
Ellen

Earth Took of Earth

Earth took of earth earth with ill;
Earth other earth gave earth with a will.
Earth laid earth in the earth stock-still:
Then earth in earth had of earth its fill.

***

Erthe Toc of Erthe

Erthe toc of erthe erthe wyth woh,
erthe other erthe to the earthe droh,
erthe leyde erthe in erthene throh,
tho hevede erthe of erthe erthe ynoh.

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2008; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2011.

Poem-a-Day April 21: 3,500 dead birds

Hello Friends —
Sometimes a story takes roost in a writer. Its unspokeness occupies a space in you, even in your sleep. The story keeps reminding you that it can’t tell itself, like a bird can’t speak English. For me, that feeling is what today’s poem by Jim Harrison is about.
Enjoy.
Ellen

Birds Again

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosted within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

A large quantity of dead birds also featured prominently in Poem-a-Day April 24, 2011.

Poem-a-Day April 20: concrete island

Hello Friends —

Many of you may recall sometime in elementary or middle school writing a poem about the weather in the shape of a raindrop — your teacher probably gave you this exercise to teach you what poetry is. But think about this: humans invented rhyme and meter to make stories easier to memorize and re-tell orally, long before the written word. For an art form that originated as strictly spoken, that little elementary school raindrop poem is arguably a pretty radical departure — taking the poetic form all the way to its other extreme: an arrangement of words on the page so visual that it cannot be conveyed out loud; it requires the physical page.

You can think of today’s poem as a grown-up version of that popular visual poetic form, the concrete poem. “Manhattan” by Howard Horowitz first appeared in The New York Times on August 30, 1997. For those of you not familiar with this island covered largely in concrete, the content of Horowitz’s words corresponds to their location — so, for example, the unicorn tapestries in the Cloisters are located at the northern most tip of Manhattan Island, just as they are located at the northernmost tip of Horowitz’s page.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-Day April 19, 2009 is another example of a concrete poem.

Poem-a-Day April 18: The days are beautiful.

Hello Friends —

My friend Kate’s birthday is September 11, and it is a beautiful birthday.

It’s been her birthday her whole life. One day in her teens, it became something else, to everyone else. But it’s still her birthday. It’s still a day. And days are vast — they contain so much, and so much that is beautiful.

I need an un-cursing, a de-jinxing, a filtering down to the beautiful — I need this poem today. I just couldn’t find another that would do. So with apologies to Kate, and to anyone else for whom this is a repeat, Ann Lauterbach‘s hum:

Hum

The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.

I know what days are.
The other is weather.

I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.

Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.

I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.

Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.

The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.

Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.

The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.

The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.

The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.

The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.

The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.

The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.

What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.

The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.

The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?

Here is the hate
That does not travel.

Here is the robe
That smells of the night

Here are the words
Retired to their books

Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings

Here is the bridge
Over the water

Here is the place
Where the sun came up

Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.

Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.

“Hum” by Ann Lauterbach was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 17, 2007 and Poem-a-Day April 21, 2009.

Poem-a-Day April 17: fire, doves, river-water

The Hour and What Is Dead

Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking
through bare rooms over my head,
opening and closing doors.
What could he be looking for in an empty house?
What could he possibly need there in heaven?
Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches?
His love for me feels like spilled water
running back to its vessel.

At this hour, what is dead is restless
and what is living is burning.

Someone tell him he should sleep now.

My father keeps a light on by our bed
and readies for our journey.
He mends ten holes in the knees
of five pairs of boy’s pants.
His love for me is like sewing:
various colors and too much thread,
the stitches uneven. But the needle pierces
clean through with each stroke of his hand.

At this hour, what is dead is worried
and what is living is fugitive.

Someone tell him he should sleep now.

God, that old furnace, keeps talking
with his mouth of teeth,
a beard stained at feasts, and his breath
of gasoline, airplane, human ash.
His love for me feels like fire,
feels like doves, feels like river-water.

At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind
and helpless. While the Lord lives.

Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone.
I’ve had enough of his love
that feels like burning and flight and running away.

By Li-Young Lee from The City In Which I Love You (1990)

Poet Li-Young Lee was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 14, 2011 and Poem-a-Day April 28, 2008.

Poem-a-Day April 16: David Bowie wins Pulitzer

Hello Friends —

So here’s a nice 40th birthday present: a Pulitzer Prize.

It’s official: At long last, a Pulitzer has been awarded to a poetry collection named after a David Bowie song. One of my favorite lines from Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars: Poems is, “A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies.” — but I’m not lying to you:

Life on Mars: Poems really is named for a Bowie song.
The collection really was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
And the announcement really was made on April 16, 2012, the poet’s 40th birthday.

I find this delightfully poetic. So, in celebration, an excerpt for you from sections 2 and 3 of Smith’s “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” (a poem titled after a line in a much later Bowie song, “Sound and Vision”).

Happy Birthday, Tracy K. Smith!
Enjoy, everyone.
— Ellen

DON’T YOU WONDER, SOMETIMES?

2.

He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That’s Bowie
For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play
Within a play, he’s trademarked twice. The hours

Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out,
Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.
But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.

Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives
Before take-off, before we find ourselves
Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts
For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky
Like migratory souls.

3.

Bowie is among us. Right here
In New York City. In a baseball cap
And expensive jeans. Ducking into
A deli. Flashing all those teeth
At the doorman on his way back up.
Or he’s hailing a taxi on Lafayette
As the sky clouds over at dusk.
He’s in no rush. Doesn’t feel
The way you’d think he feels.
Doesn’t strut or gloat. Tells jokes.

I’ve lived here all these years
And never seen him. Like not knowing
A comet from a shooting star.
But I’ll bet he burns bright,
Dragging a tail of white-hot matter
The way some of us track tissue
Back from the toilet stall. He’s got
The whole world under his foot . . .