by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 20, 2023
Rise
There’s brittle soup in her bones.
Her marrow’s been sucked dry
And no one listens, not even Ben
(The night orderly) whose paltry paycheck
Is the trickle-down
From her paltry pension and
A reverse-mortgage that somehow
(She can’t remember details) turns
Her tidy kitchen into Ben’s
Pregnant girlfriend’s gel nails.
She wonders if the girl can cook
And wishes she could will herself
To rise up, scrape her rice-paper skin
From the mechanical bed
To throw open the window,
Unfurl her wings,
Inhale the night
And fly. But even dreams
These days
Take work
And breath
And time she doesn’t have.
— Holly Jahangiri (April 20, 2023)
Today’s Poets
Francine Ringold – 15th poet laureate of the State of Oklahoma. In 1966, Ringold became the editor of Nimrod, the literary magazine of the University of Tulsa, where she earned her Ph.D. Ringold went on to edit Nimrod and teach at the University of Tulsa for nearly 50 years. I was lucky enough to be one of her students – in a playwriting class, not in poetry. I’m not sure how I passed; Fran once said, of dialogue I wrote verbatim from a conversation with my college roommate, “Nobody talks like that.” Little did she know! But in fact, I’m a better poet than I am a playwright, despite her efforts and her kindness in not flunking me. Read more here.
Official Website of Francine Leffler Ringold, Ph.D.: Poems (francineringold.info)
Adrienne Rich – author of numerous collections of poetry, Adrienne Rich wrote poems examining such things as women’s role in society, racism, politics, and war. Read more here.
Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich – Poems | poets.org
April is National Poetry Month. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once. You can see the list of participants – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.
This month, my goal is to:
- Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated – here; and
- Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.
I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.
Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 19, 2023
The Quillfish
The Quillfish looks just like a snake
But eats invertebrates.
Its body looks just like a straw
Puff's briny thirst to slake.
I didn’t promise a good poem every day, did I? Q is hard. I hope the image entertains! Sometimes, Midjourney seems to have an imagination almost as quirky as mine. Sometimes, I feed it my words and it goes, “Huh?” (The poem did not originally have a pufferfish in it at all. But MJ doesn’t seem to understand a fish that looks like a snake that could double as a straw, and balked. It created an interesting bestiary of fantasy creatures, but could not just give me one orange snake-like, straw-like quillfish.) That one, I could probably draw better, myself. But what it did give me made me laugh, so I’ll save my own drawings for Inktober2024!
Todays Poet
Nizar Qabbani – Syrian Diplomat, poet, writer, publisher, lawyer, intellectual. Syria’s national poet. Read more here.
Nizar Qabbani’s poems
April is National Poetry Month. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once. You can see the list of participants – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.
This month, my goal is to:
- Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated – here; and
- Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.
I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.
Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 18, 2023
Prayer
They taught me to pray - "Pray for anything," they said -
"Prayers are always answered. Always.
Just remember this: Sometimes, the answer's 'No.'"
What, then, the difference - whether I pray
To God the Father, or just ask Dad? Is God
That parent a child runs to, full of hope,
When the other has said "No!"? Is God
The stern and angry Wizard of Oz,
Admonishing innocents for wasting His time? Is God
The permissive pony-giver,
Carrying sweet butterscotch in a lint-filled pocket
Full of love, yet fuzzy
With inevitable disappointment?
They taught me to pray for others -
"God bless..." The litany of names went on
Till eyelids sagged
Beneath the gravity and weight of them.
Was there really strength in numbers? How many times
Must God be reminded of Aunt Bonny's cancer;
Or Great-Grandma's aching joints;
Or Billy's third son's failing business
(He's a wastrel, but he has a good heart);
Or Mom's failing memory (Dad's asked her umpteen times
To take the car in for its oil change).
Would my prayer be more effective
If I collected prayer-cards
With signatures from the neighbors?
The didn't work so well with Dad,
When what I wanted was a puppy.
Matthew says we ought to pray in secret - "Your Father knows
What you need before you ask Him." Matthew says
We shouldn't "heap up empty phrases" thinking we'll be heard
For endless words. Even as I child
I heard such things and rolled my eyes:
Two hours in church, and I felt empathy with God.
But if a prayer falls in a closet
And there's no one around to hear it
Does it even make a noise (in Heaven)?
Is God suffering an eternity's forgetfulness
Like Great-Grandpa - wandering inattentive -
Distracted by a billion other short and simple words
That we be told we must repeat our prayers
Ad nauseum? Must we demand God hear our pleas
A hundred thousand times a hundred?
Or will a heart-felt thanks
Expressed in secret silence
For His small and wonderous surprises,
Be enough?
Today’s Poet
Dan Pagis – an Israeli poet, born in Romania. A Holocaust survivor who spent much of his childhood in concentration camps. Read more here. Questions posed in the following lesson plans invite us to think more deeply on poetry – specifically, Pagis’s, but we can consider them a guide to thinking about other poems in the context of human experience, as well.
Dan Pagis’ Poetry (yadvashem.org)
April is National Poetry Month. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once. You can see the list of participants – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.
This month, my goal is to:
- Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated – here; and
- Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.
I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.
Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 17, 2023
Octopus
In my next life
(assuming I get a vote)
I want to come back boneless
An octopus, or a jellyfish
Lithe, clever – yes, clever! –
I already know what it means
To be underestimated,
Dismissed, thought brainless.
I want to come back salt-slick
Sliding, gliding, buoyant,
Weightless. Un-cage-able.
I’d stare a human in the eye
Grasp a wrist, kiss its salt-sweat skin
With tentacled arms, then slip through
The deep blue
Before heaving a sob
For all they lost when they grew legs
And crawled upon the shore.
Author’s Note
I created today’s featured image using Midjourney. The prompt was “an ossuary that looks like an octopus.” The next morning, just out of idle curiosity, I searched Bing – all I typed was, “Do octopus” and the first thing the AI autocomplete suggested was, “…have bones” I screencapped it for proof:
The answer, of course, is no – but how freaky is it that autocomplete suggests that as the first search right after I prompted Midjourney with “octopus” and “ossuary”? Do people really have to ask that? What octopuses do have is a “beak” made of the same material as the exoskeleton of a crab, and it’s pretty powerful. Undigestible. They know this because they’ve found them in the bellies of whales. So an octopus ossuary would, in fact, just be a pile of shell fragments that once served as the octopus’s jaw. According to Animal Hype, this beak is as sharp as a Swiss Army Knife. Don’t stick your fingers near an octopus’s mouth.
Today’s Poets
Mary Oliver – America’s best selling poet. Read more here and watch her talk about poetry and read her poems:
Mary Oliver — Listening to the World – YouTube
‘A Thousand Mornings’ With Poet Mary Oliver – YouTube
Wilfred Owen – one of the leading poets of World War I. An interesting movie, streaming on Netflix, is Benediction (film) – Wikipedia. It is biographical in nature, exploring the life of Siegfried Sassoon. It was Sassoon who encouraged Owen in his ambition to write better poetry. A manuscript copy of Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth containing Sassoon’s handwritten amendments survives as testimony to the extent of his influence and is currently on display at London’s Imperial War Museum. Read more about Wilfred Owen here.
Arms and the Boy by Wilfred Owen | Poetry Foundation
Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen | Poetry Foundation
April is National Poetry Month. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once. You can see the list of participants – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.
This month, my goal is to:
- Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated – here; and
- Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.
I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.
Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 15, 2023
Never Have I Ever
Never have I ever:
Seen the Green Flash at sunset
Held St. Elmo’s Fire in my hand
Swayed with Aurora Borealis, undulating,
Howled at a full moon while singing to the stars above –
But I have seen emerald fire in your eyes
Felt lightning in your kiss,
Swayed to the music of your hips
Inhaled your breath as it
Caressed my tongue, warm and salty,
As like the moon,
I pulled your crashing waves
Against my shore.
— Holly Jahangiri (April 15, 2023)
Today’s Poets
Grace Nichols – a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In December 2021, she was announced as winner of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Read more here.
To My Coral Bones poem – Grace Nichols (best-poems.net)
Praise Song for My Mother poem – Grace Nichols (best-poems.net)
Naomi Shahib Nye – an American poet, editor, songwriter, and novelist. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she began composing her first poetry at the age of six. Read more here.
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye – Poems | Academy of American Poets
April is National Poetry Month. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once. You can see the list of participants – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.
This month, my goal is to:
- Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated – here; and
- Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.
I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.
Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)
