Holly Jahangiri | A More Positive Perspective

Lucid Dreaming

by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 13, 2023

Lucid Dreaming

He wants to learn how lucid dreaming works,
As if it were a magic trick that could be taught.
But I have always welcomed things that lurk
Beneath the surface of a conscious thought.

It feels like cowardice to wake within a dream –
Manipulating characters and plot,
Defanging monsters. Frightful though they seem,
Pulse-racing, layered lessons can’t be fought.

Once upon a dream, I thought I saw him –
He moved his lips, as if in prayer, to speak
I could not hear; I could not move a limb,
“I cannot give the answers that you seek.”

Unthinking I reached out a hand to him;
I dreamt a dream and dragged him deep within.

— Holly Jahangiri (4/3/2023)

Todays Poets

Today, instead of highlighting poets themselves, I will share with you a multitude of poems on lucidity and dreaming.

Don’t Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve by Adam… | Poetry Foundation

10 of the Best Poems about Dreams and Dreaming – Interesting Literature

Lucid dreams Poems – Modern Award-winning Lucid dreams Poetry : All Poetry

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!)

Knead

by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 12, 2023

Bowls of Bread and Bombs

Mrs. Crandall's fingers knead
A rising loaf, an earthy sourdough
Her hearty lentil soup, simmering,
Waits to fill.

Two boys run through her kitchen - 
Wild, innocent imagination
Evanescent in the blink 
Of mother's eye.

Airplanes scream above them - 
And Mrs. Crandall, pious, 
Full of grace, lifts prayerful hands
In the dark.

"Scurry now, take cover!" They dive beneath
The kitchen table, holding bowls of bread, 
Gouged out by Mrs. Crandall's
Fingernails.

She feels their faces in the dark
Tastes their tears, reassures herself
And them, with lentils - candlelit
By falling bombs.

Smoke spirals from the rubble mingle
With scents of blood and sourdough - 
And savory soup, warm comfort 
None can taste.

— Holly Jahangiri (April 12, 2023)

Author’s note: Today’s poem was inspired by the April 1 – 13 prompts at Poets Northwest. Thanks to Karen M. for providing them.

Today’s Poet

Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes – an English poet, killed in action during WWII. Read more here.

Sidney Keyes – Poems by the Famous Poet – All Poetry

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!)

Joy

by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 11, 2023

Joy

Joy bubbles up - fresh water from a cool well
Springs from the fertile earth to swell nascent
Seeds of satisfaction, warmth, contentment.

Joy leaps a fountain from the heart - it frolics,
As a hart in sun-dappled woods, alert;
Young and strong, passions awakened.

Joy suffuses parched, cracked places
Quenches the thirst of the dull, dry ground
Renews the aging heart in Spring.

— Holly Jahangiri (April 11, 2023)

Author's Note: Today's featured image is a collaboration with Midjourney. I fed it the entirety of today's poem; it gave me this marvelous image of childhood joy! Sometimes, AI isn't so bad.

Sometimes.

Today's Poets

Edward Smyth Jones - it's hard to imagine anyone more determined to attend Harvard than Jones. "Arriving travel-worn, friendless, moneyless, hungry, he was preparing to bivouac on the Harvard campus his first night in the University city, when, being misunderstood, and not believed, he was apprehended as a vagabond and thrown into jail." It was there that he wrote the poem, "Harvard Square." Read more here.

Harvard Square by Edward Smyth Jones (poetry.com)

The African-American poet who travelled 1,200 miles to Harvard, only to be thrown in jail | Aeon Videos

June Millicent Jordan - was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist who explored themes like gender, race, immigration, and representation in her work. Jordan used Black English in her writing and poetry, considering it an important outlet for expressing Black culture. She was inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in 2019. Read more here.

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!)

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In Praise of the Non-Breaking Space

by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 10, 2023

Ode to the Non-Breaking Space

It should have been a simple thing to do: 
     Type ampersand, then N and B S P —
         A semicolon seals the deal: &nbsp; — but no!
That entity is lost (it's "disappeared") when switching tabs
     As if an unseen hand has swept it all away.

I picture it: "Let's make it 'easy,'" 
      thought the Devs. "We know that poets can't write code,
         So let's just duplicate a <pre> and call it 'Verse'
We'll coax them (force them) to the hated block, at last."
      It's clear, from that, they knew there was a need.

But why not just retain the entity
      From Classic tab-to-tab already there? 
          And so, I cracked the block
And saw the <pre> not knowing whether I
     Should groan...     Or laugh.

So doing both, at last, I modified the CSS 
     (Like desktop publishers of old)
           Triumphant, "disappeared" their relic Courier font
In favor of my own.
    It really shouldn't be this hard, you know?

Today's Poets

Not all code is poetry, that's for sure. Today's poem was born out of yesterday's frustration. There is an 11+ year old bug in WordPress - oft complained of but never solved, wherein HTML code entered in the Classic Editor's Text tab is wiped away on switching to the Visual tab. Not all HTML code, else the Text tab would have no reason for being, at all. But simple little things like non-breaking spaces at the front of a line, as used by poets, sometimes. Or in code! Oh, yes, there is a "code block" or tag - there's the <pre> tag. But that, by default, formats text in Courier - not in the post's default font. "Use the block editor and insert the Verse block!" is a solution, apparently - but you know what that is? Verse is simply <pre> styled with a class="wp-verse-block". And I suppose one could use the block editor, insert Verse block, and manually style the damned thing.

Or do what I finally ended up doing, once I "peeked under the hood" and saw that Verse was just <pre> - add CSS to style <pre class="poem"> or <pre class="wp-verse-block"> (I did the former, since the latter takes longer to type) and have done with it - because unlike standard HTML entity codes for non-breaking spaces and such, a <pre> tag doesn't get stripped out when switching from Text tab to Visual tab.

WordPress devs, why you gotta make this so hard? And why have you ignored the issue - brought up often enough in Support and in GitHub and elsewhere - for over 11 years? How hard can it possibly be to render standard HTML?

No, not all code is poetry. But in honor of the cross-over genre of "Code poetry - Wikipedia," today's featured poets are not drawn from an alphabetically-ordered list. I wonder if there's any poetry to be found in a sort routine?

Black Perl - Wikipedia

School for Poetic Computation - Wikipedia

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. There's still time to sign up - registration ends April 9. 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!)

Hunger and Longing

by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 8, 2023

Hunger

This Hunger-hole you cannot fill,
Though Craving bids you try.
You cannot bend it to your will; 
It simply leaves you, by and by.

It goes by other names, you know:
Desire, Envy, Lust - 
A fire burns, deep down below
And stoke its flames, you must.

For only when it's satisfied,
Will Craving take its leave; 
And only when it's undenied
Will Hunger be appeased.

—Holly Jahangiri

Today’s Poets

Edward Hirsch – a best-selling American poet, educator, and critic, author of numerous books of poetry and books on poetry. Read more here.

Gabriel a Poem – Edward Hirsch (an excerpt from Hirsch’s elegy for his son)

Thomas Hardy – an english poet and writer. He wrote an elegiac poems for his first wife, from whom he had been estranged some 20 years, upon her death. Read more here.

Your Last Drive poem – Thomas Hardy (best-poems.net)

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. There’s still time to sign up – registration ends April 9. 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!)