Poetry quote of the Day: Ted Hughes

“Because it is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside the head and express something — perhaps not much, just something — of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are, from the momentary effect of the barometer to the force that created men distinct from trees. Something of the inaudible music that moves us along in our bodies from moment to moment like water in a river. Something of the spirit of the snowflake in the water of the river. Something of the duplicity and the relativity and the merely fleeting quality of all this. Something of the almighty importance of it and something of the utter meaninglessness. And when words can manage something of this, and manage it in a moment, of time, and in that same moment, make out of it all the vital signature of a human being — not of an atom, or of a geometrical diagram, or of a heap of lenses — but a human being, we call it poetry." ---Ted Hughes

Thanks to 7-Impossible Things Before Breakfast, who first posted this quote, and to Jules, who reminded me of it.

This post is part of my Poetry Quote a Day series for National Poetry Month.

Poetry Friday and Shakespeare's Poetry Quote of the Day

“The truest poetry is the most feigning;
and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry
may be said, as lovers, they do feign.” ---William Shakespeare, As You Like It, (III.iii.15–17).

What I love most about As You Like It is all the feigning. The pretending. The role-playing. The deception. And yet, despite all that, the truth about love is never clearer. Here's Rosalind and Celia after Rosalind has feigned her way (disguised as a boy) through a mind-twisting duel of words with Orlando:


CELIA

    You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate:
    we must have your doublet and hose plucked over your
    head, and show the world what the bird hath done to
    her own nest.

ROSALIND

    O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou
    didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But
    it cannot be sounded: my affection hath an unknown
    bottom, like the bay of Portugal.

CELIA

    Or rather, bottomless, that as fast as you pour
    affection in, it runs out.

ROSALIND

    No, that same wicked bastard of Venus that was begot
    of thought, conceived of spleen and born of madness,
    that blind rascally boy that abuses every one's eyes
    because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I
    am in love. I'll tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out
    of the sight of Orlando: I'll go find a shadow and
    sigh till he come.




I'll go find a shadow and sigh . . .  and again we're back to the feigned (shadow) . . . isn't Shakespeare the best at casting light on love?

Poetry Friday is hosted this Shakespeare's birthday by Anastasia at Picture Book of the Day.

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Madeleine L'Engle (and an early Poem in my Pocket for Poetry Friday from Julie Larios)

(This post is also my Poetry Friday contribution. Happy early PF!)

Today's quote, the last of the month, comes from Madeleine L'Engle's book, Walking On Water. Here she's talking about the creative act, and she makes it clear before this excerpt that she's talking about all artists: the painters, the dancers, the musicians, the actors, the novelists, the poets . . .

"The artist, like the child, is a good believer. The depth and strength of the belief is reflected in the the work; if the artist does not believe, then no one else will; no amount of technique will make the responder see truth in something the artist knows to be phony."

Amen to that, and thank you all for indulging me in this month-long search for poetry quotes that embodied that "depth and strength of belief."  You can find all the quotes by clicking through my April archives in the sidebar, or by searching on the tag, Quotes. 

Today is also Poem in Your Pocket day, and I'm carrying Julie Larios's poem, What Bee Did. The wordplay in it delights me, and I'm glad to have it buzzing in my pocket. As I mentioned yesterday, I picked this poem before I realized that Julie had written it.  Julie is a regular participant in Poetry Fridays and blogs at The Drift Record, one of my favorite places to be inspired. The Madeleine L'Engle quote helps me understand why this poem works --- I believe in the Bee, in all his incarnations. And it doesn't hurt that I adore the line about belief in it. (You'll have to click through to find it.) 

The poem begins like this . . .

What Bee Did

by Julie Larios

Bee not only buzzed.
When swatted at, Bee deviled,
Bee smirched. And when fuddled,
like many of us, Bee labored, Bee reaved.
He behaved as well as any Bee can have.

Read the rest here. 

This post marks the end of my Poetry Quote a Day series for National Poetry Month.

Poetry Friday is hosted by Maya Ganesan at Allegro.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Rita Dove

"Poetry is a kind of dance already. Technically, there's the play of contemporary speech against the bass-line of the iambic, but there's also the expression of desire that is continually restrained by the limits of the page, the breath, the very architecture of the language--just as dance is limited by the capabilities of our physical bodies as well as by gravity. 

A dancer toils in order to skim the surface of the floor, she develops muscles most of us don't even know we have; but the goal is to appear weightless. A poet struggles to render into words that which is unsayable--the ineffable, that which is deeper than language--in the hopes that whatever words make the final cut will, in turn, strike the reader speechless."

                          ---Rita Dove, as interviewed by Robert McDowell at poets.org

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Quote of the Day: John Keats

"In Poetry I have a few Axioms. 

1st. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity—it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance—

2nd. Its touches of Beauty should never be half way thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him—shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the Luxury of twilight—but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it—and this leads me on to another axiom. 

That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all." 

                                                               ---John Keats

Thanks to Jules at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast for pointing me to this quote, which can be found on Knopf's Poem-A-Day web site.

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Friday: Only Love Can Do That

“I don’t believe poetry should be a solitary intellectual adventure. It should be a relationship with people, it should forge a connection. Good poetry does not belong to the poet.” ---Dolores Kendrick, D.C. Poet Laureate, in this interview with the Washington Post

I've been gone from this blog for almost three months now, and it's not because I was on "a solitary intellectual adventure" (although I've been revising a YA novel.) It had mostly to do with three successive moves in the family---or what we have dubbed The Summer of the U-Haul Truck. Which has ended happily with two children in new digs and my husband and I now living in a row house with its own library.

(This picture is pre-books.
Now it's full, every inch of it.)

Still, after a three-month break, it's hard to re-engage with blogging without thinking about why I'm doing it. It's a question authors get asked a lot: Why do you write? (Yes, blogging is writing.) At this past weekend's National Book Festival (to which I walked, thanks to our new location) I heard Gary Schmidt say he writes because a book may be the only companion a child has. He visited a prison where six locked doors separated the kids from the outside world, where the inmates were allowed no personal possessions, and yet, they had been able to read his book and could talk to him about it. One child said he identified with the dog in the story---because he himself would never be able to have one.

Me, Gary Schmidt, and Sondy Eklund
at the National Book Festival

Which brings me back again to the quote above, about poetry not belonging to the poet. Or, as Gary Schmidt might say, books don't belong to the author---they go where they are needed. And yet, it's the age of personal vocalizing. Blogs enable us to catcall, cheer, kvetch, croon, and crystalize our every thought. So does this blog, in fact, belong to me, in a way my poems or my novels don't?

In answer, I overheard last night a cell phone conversation at 2:00am. We sleep with our windows open, and the bay window in our bedroom amplifies sound from the sidewalk below. Usually, it's remarkably quiet---the first morning in the new house, we were awakened in this great city by a noisy. . . bird.  But last night, Mr. Angry Man crept into my sleep, gradually wakening me as he and his phone walked into my hearing zone, until I surfaced to this loud bellow: "I texted you yesterday that I WAS FINE!!!" I could even hear the unintelligible but anguished reply of his cell phone friend before he passed out of range.

So, dear friends, I am fine. This blog is fine. I do write almost all of it as a solitary adventure. I have no routine. No set mission. No way to permanently hold onto the posts or poems that I put out there.

But I don't think I want to do it without a connection with you. You are the only reason I write.

So welcome to Poetry Friday.  Please leave your links in the comments below and I'll round them up.

In lieu of a poem, I'd like to contribute these words from Martin Luther King, whose speech was often poetic. They can be found on his new memorial, which is now open to the public---and is a very long walk from my home, and yet on the day of the National Book Festival, we did that too. Because we could.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; Only light can do that

Hate cannot drive out hate; Only love can do that.

Please read Sondy's wonderful writeup of Gary Schmidt's talk and the rest of the National Book Festival.

Poetry Friday Connections:

Poet Charles Ghigna summons us with an original poem, "Drum Beats," at his new blog, FATHER GOOSE.

Robyn embarked on a walk with "binoculars and optimism," and comes back with The Birds by Linda Pastan.

Teacher Dance collects poems of goodbye for her students, and she shares a lovely one in her post, Endings Hold Mixed Emotions.

At Gathering Books, another teacher celebrates former students through the poetry of their father in The Ties That Bind.

Jone is trumpeting the Cybils Poetry Team today. Huzzah, Poetry! And as Jone says, don't forget that Cybils nominations open tomorrow, October 1st. 

Diane brings a whole basket of poetry links for us: an original poem at Random Noodling, "The Oleo Kid" at Kids of the Homefront Army, a poem by Gail Mazur at Kurious Kitty and a quote by Joan Giroux.Kurious K's Kwotes'.

At The Poem Farm, Amy is thinking about time and things we "used to do." She reminds me of why I have my old Raggedy Ann doll in my writing office. 

Julie Larios at The Drift Record wants us to meet two geniuses. She has videos about Kay Ryan and A.E. Stallings, two poets who received MacArthur Foundation grants this week. (Bonus: the word "hokum" is used.)  Plus she has enticed me with her call for Poetry Advocates for Children and Young Adults. Visit "Poetry at Play" and spread the word.

Pentimento is tending to Blake's illustrated poem, The Sick Rose.

Jeff Barger reveals how walking sticks, luna moths, and ladybugs can rock multiplication problems in his STEM/Poetry Friday post, Multiply on Fly.   

Mary Lee at A Year of Reading always has fantastic poetry to share, and today it's a glorious Linda Pastan poem about fall. Go and roll the word "pumpkin" off your tongue.

Love is in the air at Laura Purdie Salas's blog, but with an amusing twist: love poems from one animal to another by the ever-creative  Marilyn Singer. Plus, Laura has her usual (and always unintimidating) invitation to join her in creating 15 Words or Less poems.

Karen Edmisten dips into The Writer's Almanac for her poetry selection today, a pithy bit of wisdom called September Visitors.

Can I quote Maria Horvath on her blog post today? She says Carl Sandburg explains what love was, is, and shall be. A spectacular poem that I'm clipping straight into my poetry common book. 

Rice on your sock? Poems from the "purple cursive of her veins"?  How to Tell If a Korean Woman Loves You by Christy NaMee Eriksen, a glorious find by Tabatha Yeatts.  

Ha! J. Patrick Lewis is always clever, and his poem, One Cow, Two Moos, is that and more. (Be prepared to groan a bit at the pun.) Thanks to Debbie Diller for sharing it. 

On the Stenhouse Blog, Maine teacher/author, Anne Tommaso explores why "Poetry demands you return when you are different." Dang. An exploding kind of thought if there ever was one.

If you've never read Mary Oliver, let this post hit you between the eyes: Joyce Ray gives us Oliver at her finest. 

Liz Garton Scanlon knows how to ease you past a dry spell. Today, you can linger with her and savor Nothing by Ken Mikolowski.

Poetry can take on anything. Even Animal Fights. Thanks, Anastasia Suen for another STEM/Poetry Friday mashup.


I feel a swearing fit coming on after reading Jama's post, "Manners" by Kim Addonizio. But I promise not to take it out in the Clorox aisle at Safeway.

So it turns out Julie Larios (above) was right about POETRY AT PLAY---it's fabulous. You'll be a regular subscriber/cheerleader/greatbighonkingfan after this post about master poet David McCord.

Andi Sibley at the wrung sponge reviews At the Sea Floor Cafe. More science and poetry!

Heidi Mordhorst is joining us with a poem from "the trenches of 7th grade" (hoo-boy, those can be deep!)  and news about the release of the p*tag digital poetry anthology.

Gregory K, you had me at fried: Things I Saw Fried at the Fair Thing I want most to taste fried? One of those chewy orange circus peanuts. Or possibly popcorn. Can popcorn be re-fried?

Elaine Magliaro is "Saving Summer" at Blue Rose Girls and talking furniture, reclaiming a room, and grandbabies at Wild Rose Reader. Cute baby alert!

I'm one of those stab-able morning people. (I'm even worse after coffee and a run.)  So thanks, JoAnn Early Macken, for We Are the Early Risers. Wade in, morning lovers, wade in.

Sally Ito at PaperTigers shares a book her daughter loved (the best kind!): The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base.

For all those who have gotten sidetracked while pursuing the muse: Not the Poem I Wanted to Write by David Elzey.  How true it is, David.

Carlie celebrates webs which "bloom with bursts of silver thread" in her original poem.  Lovely indeed.

Ah, our "bootless cries." What to do when consumed by them? Ruth has Shakespeare's answer in Sonnet XXIX.

Judy is musing on "these seamstresses’ chalks and golden needles" in Galway Kinnel's poem, The Shroud.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Dennis O'Driscoll

"In Emily Dickinson's much-cited touchstone for a poem, she feels 'physically as if the top of my head were taken off.' A.E. Housman applies a bristling skin test to poetry, another famous example of a physical criterion for the efficacy of a poem. Goosebumps and decapitation are not the whole story, though. The physical aspect is the one that's easiest to be sure about - it registers on your pulse rate, after all, and is the one that's least embarrassing to talk about. But the deepest reactions to a great poem will - pace Emily Dickinson - actually be over the top. 

I know I am in the grip of a true poem when I can hardly bear to read it calmly at first, so all-embracing and far-reaching is its instantaneous effect on me. I realise I am about to meet with psychic turbulence..."

---Irish poet Dennis O'Driscoll, as interviewed at Ready, Steady, Book

With thanks to J. Patrick Lewis, who recommended Driscoll's book, Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry, to me.

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Hugo Williams

"There is more, not less intensity in plainness, because simple stuff operates without the safety net of the poetical"---Hugo Williams, Strong Words, 2000, as compiled by Dennis O'Driscoll in Quote Poet Unquote

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. It's a simple thing: take a poem; put it in your pocket. See what happens.

I'll be carrying Marie Ponsot's "One is One," which I'll share with you on Poetry Friday tomorrow. What will you carry?

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Friday: Poetry Is. . .

In keeping with my "quotes about poetry" theme for the month, I'm pleased to share this poem by J. Patrick Lewis, who gives us fifteen exquisite and highly quotable definitions of poetry.

Which one speaks to you?


Poetry Is…

the tunnel at the end of the light.
an anagram for “Yo, esprit!”
commotion in the left field stanzas.
the great flywheel of metaphor.
prose, bent out of shape.
the idiom of the djinns.
experience’s armor against oblivion.
the midwife at the birth of the alphabet.
perfect verbs hunting elusive nouns.
an antidote for the adjective-itis bug.
a factual-to-fanciful metric converter.
words on a busman’s holiday.
a ladder to the castle in the air.
a blind date with enchantment.
the sound of silence…amplified.

----J. Patrick Lewis, all rights reserved

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Paper Tigers.

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Sherman Alexie

"A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language"— Sherman Alexie, as interviewed in the Iowa Review

This quote explains why I'm a big fan of both Alexie and Shakespeare: neither poet is afraid to make you laugh. (Here's a professor who apparently agrees with me.)

Furthermore, in a satisfyingly serendipitous moment, I just googled "Alexie" and "Shakespeare," to see if anyone else had mentioned the two online in the same breath--- and found out that Sherman Alexie is accepting his 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award at the Folger Shakespeare Library here in D.C. on May 8th.

P.S. If you want more quotes from Alexie, I also saw this at his website:

"A new book, Conversations with Sherman Alexie, edited by Nancy Peterson, includes interviews - ranging from 1993 to 2007- that feature Alexie speaking candidly about the ideas and themes behind poetry collections, short story collections, novels, and screenplays."

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Friday: Jack Spicer

Photo from My Life Size Labyrinths

Poetry Quote of the Day:

"One ought, everyday at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if possible, speak a few reasonable words." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Here's one good poem for the day.  I stumbled upon it, fell in love with the first line, and jumped right in.  Leave your "few reasonable (or unreasonable) words" in the comments.  

BTW, I've walked a labyrinth. Have you?

"Any fool can get into an ocean"

by Jack Spicer

Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What's true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor's seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem

the rest here

For more chances to "hear a little song, read a good poem" and perhaps "speak a few reasonable words," visit the Poetry Friday roundup,  hosted today by Becky at blbooks.  

This post is part of my Poetry Quote a Day series for National Poetry Month.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Thomas Hardy

"My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own."----Thomas Hardy, as quoted in Walking on Alligators, A Book of Meditations for Writers.

Walking on Alligators is filled with quotes like this, and daily intentions such as "Today, I'll release something surprising into my writing."  It would be a great book to take along on a retreat, which I mention because Linda Urban is compiling a list of such books.  Won't that be a handy resource? Go add your own favorites.

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Billy Collins

 "I try to presume that no one is interested in me." ---poet Billy Collins, as interviewed by Joel Whitney at poets.org 

Ha! Now I know why I love Collins's work so much. The whole interview is wonderful.

I do believe poetry should point to something outside yourself. As should all works of art. Even blog posts.

Which is why I'm sending you to GuysLitWire today. They are rocking the world and "Making a Difference, One Book at a Time - the Guys Lit Wire & Operation Teen Book Drop Event for Navajo & Apache Teens"

I defy you to find a better way live out Billy Collins words than to be interested in someone else today.

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Kay Ryan and Getting Ready for "Poem in your Pocket" Day

Tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket day. I'm telling you now so you have time to seek out a poem and tuck it away. Here's the one I carried last year.

 This year, I have a new one, chosen from the Poem in Your Pocket anthology, put out by The Academy of American Poets, with a foreward from U.S. Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan. Here's what she says about a poem vs. money in your pocket:

"A poem in your pocket is different. The whole way it works is different. In a way, you can't spend a poem even if you want to. As opposed to money---which seems intent upon getting out of your pocket as though it were a feral animal---a poem settles in. When I say "pocket" here, I mean "mind." A poem settles into your mind." ---Kay Ryan

Tomorrow, I'll tell you which poem from the anthology I chose to carry.  But here's a wild moment of poetic serendipity:  When I read the poem, I didn't look at the poet's name until after I felt that ping! gonna choose THIS ONE moment. And then I realized I knew the poet! Until tomorrow. . . ready your poems and pockets . . .

P.S.  Poets. org has linked to several poems about pockets for PIYP Day, including one fabulous excerpt from my friend Liz's book, A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes.  Print it out and carry it if you want some happiness close at hand. 

This post is part of my Poetry Quote a Day series for National Poetry Month.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Ursula K. Le Guin

"As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achive perception, and compassion, and hope." ---Ursula K. Le Guin, poet and author

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Poetry Friday: A Commonplace Book

A week or so ago, I frivolously declared my New Year's resolution to be "eat more cupcakes."

I'm not backpedaling on that. However, since I didn't record my cupcake consumption in 2009, it will be difficult to prove that I've eaten more cupcakes by the end of 2010.  So, in addition to this resolution, I'm also adding:

Keep a Commonplace Book.

Which will be easy, since I already do. You may remember that I blogged about it once and posted a picture:




What is a commonplace book? Simply a journal in which you stash poems, quotes, and generally anything else you wish to hold close. According to Poets.org, people have been doing this since the Renaissance.  Also courtesy of Poets.org is this Jonathan Swift quote, which I'm going to print out and paste it in my commonplace book:


"A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that 'great wits have short memories:' and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation.

There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there."

--from "A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet"

I'm so relieved that "great wits have short memories." I'm going to use this as my standard excuse next time I forget your name two seconds after you tell it to me.

Anyhow, my resolution is to keep adding to my commonplace book, and to start a new one. My daughter gave me a planner for 2010, one of those lovely Moleskin ones, and instead of using it to plan, I'm going to use it to record one commonplace thing about each day of 2010. Not an essay, not a paragraph, just the few words I can squeeze into the rectangle allotted each day. Because part of being a writer is observing the commonplace.

Today's entry: My oversized coffee mug, heavy as a cereal bowl, presses into my cupped palm. The weight of it is comforting.

I invite you to join me. If you need an actual journal to begin, and don't want to use a datebook, consider this creation available on etsy which has a love poem by Tennyson on the cover.

I'm clipping the poem framed on its cover to post here:

Spring (from The Window)

by Alfred Tennyson

Birds' love and birds' song
Flying here and there,
Birds' song and birds' love
And you with gold for hair!
Birds' song and birds' love
Passing with the weather,
Men's song and men's love,
To love once and forever.

Men's love and birds' love,
And women's love and men's!
And you my wren with a crown of gold,
You my queen of the wrens!
You the queen of the wrens —
We'll be birds of a feather,
I'll be King of the Queen of the wrens,
And all in a nest together.


P.S. I love thinking of a commonplace book as a nest.

Poetry Friday is hosted  by Great Kid Books, which is featuring the Cybils Poetry finalists today.

Poetry Friday (and Quote of the Day): Jane Hirshfield

A quote . . .

"It's a personal act which reaches outward to everyone because we're not alone. We live in a huge net and web of being, human and non-human and we have obligations towards it but the only way to fulfill them is by doing it from the inside. Not from the head, not from what we're told to do, but to discover for ourselves what needs doing and then start doing it."  ---Jane Hirshfield, as interviewed on Speaking Freely

and a poem . . .

A Hand
by Jane Hirshfield

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb. Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins. A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body. Nor is the hand 

The rest here

Poetry Friday is hosted today at Carol's Corner.
This post is part of my Poetry Quote a Day series for National Poetry Month.

Poetry quote of the Day: Favorite Poem Project

Today's quote comes from a young reader of poetry, responding to the E.E. Cummings poem,"somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond."

"I have read this poem so many times that the spine of the book is broken and always turns to its page. Today I gave that book away to the first person that I have ever truly and sincerely loved. I gave her the book because there is no gift I could give her that would be more honest. This poem has shaped who I am. It has been a long journey, but Cummings's poem set my heart on a course to find love, and I have arrived, only to truly understand the poem for the first time."

---Scott Nesbit, 18  (as quoted in Poems to Read, an anthology for the Favorite Poem Project.)

This post is part of my Poetry Quote a Day series for National Poetry Month.

Poetry Quote of the Day: Marianne Moore

One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it.

 ~Marianne Moore

This post is part of my Poetry Quote of the Day series for National Poetry Month.

Poetry quote of the Day: Avivah Zornberg

Today's quote was not originally offered as a definition of poetry, but I'm taking the personal liberty of making it one.  And asking: do you have a quote that wasn't about poetry, per se, but works wonderfully when you put it in that light?

“Truth is shattered into a thousand pieces when God throws it down to earth.”

-from the blog, SOF Observed, which attributes this quote to "Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, citing a kernel of midrash from her new book, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious."

This post is part of my Poetry Quote a Day series for National Poetry Month.