Welcome to Poetry Friday!
Poetry Peeps! Just a reminder that our challenge for the month of July is… the Sedoka. You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on July 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope all of you will join the fun!
Far back in the hoary blogging history of 2007, good friend and professor of Russian linguistics and literature at Grinnell College, Dr. Kelly Herold started Poetry Friday because she felt like there needed to be more poetry – studied, written, critiqued, appreciated – in schools, for children, for teens, and for adults in a way that it wasn’t at that time. Way back then, Kel did the heavy lifting of urging bloggers and teachers to get on board with this whole thing. Through the years, others have taken it in their turn to keep the party going – from librarians and teachers in public schools to bloggers who keep us scheduled and hosting, like Cousin Mary Lee, to Poetry Sisters and Inklings who challenge and include myriad Poetry Peeps. More recently, multiple anthology projects – thank-you, Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong – poetry forms – thanks for all the fibs, Greg Pincus and many others – regular Poetry Swaps – thank you Laura Shovan and Tabatha Yeatts-Lonske – a National Poetry Month Progressive Poem – thank you, Irene Latham (Edit: and thank you, Heidi Mordhorst, for reminding me of that one) – even recipes (!) and Clunker Exchanges – thank you, Linda Mitchell! – have flowered from this fruitful seed. And despite being an irregular regular of Poetry Friday, I just continue to benefit.
My latest benefit is a Krebs Whirly. A Krebs Whirly is a wind toy handmade by one Denise Krebs, and the enclosed photograph which accompanied the poem she sent showed it hanging first in her backyard in the SoCal desert. It made me feel connected upstream in this long forty-ninth State to another poet as this morning I hung it at my backyard in NorCal. Denise’s acrostic on the word ‘community’ was written in response to my 4th of July raccontino. I am especially touched by the lines
…Nod to a new point in America, for
In truth, cruelty will not be the point —
Treasuring a thriving community is.
This thriving community is a treasure – a lagniappe, to use the Cajun French word from my mother’s side of the family. It takes effort to grow a community like this – and gratitude. Join me in saying thanks, won’t you?
There’s A Lot Going On Under the Surface
Since no one sees how
furiously the swan, on lake of glass
with wildly thrashing webby feet can
river journeys pass
in seeming staid serenity — While, I –
no swan, alas —
must “sweat and labor” as they say
like humans of my class…
With wry regard, and polite thanks
I cede to swans a win. I’ll never have the brass
Or sass to fake like that, my friends!
♦
The quiet work that goes unseen, unsung in many ways
Is mortar that enables brick to last, and worth our praise.
It’s Tabatha who is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup today at The Opposite of Indifference. Remember – though the machinery that underpins the things we love might not be glamorous, it’s worth appreciating. Thanks for everything, friends.