As Spring gives way to Summer’s radiant glow
That warms the world in melting heat
We lose our sense of Winter’s coming snow.
Spring’s fledglings, fawns, and kits all grow
The calf gives up its mother’s teat
As Spring gives way to Summer’s radiant glow
Content with grassy fields, the cattle graze and low
Newly shorn, sheep softly bleat
We lose our sense of Winter’s coming snow.
At Winter’s end, we bid the darkness “Go!”
And soon, its icy chill retreats
As Spring gives way to Summer’s radiant glow
At last, all Fall to the conquering foe –
In stunning self-deceit
We lose our sense of Winter’s coming snow.
Smiling, we pretend we do not know
What end must come, when life’s complete.
As Spring gives way to Summer’s radiant glow
We lose our sense of Winter’s coming snow.
— Holly Jahangiri
Today’s Poet
Paul Verlaine – a French poet of the 19th century whose poem, Chanson d’automne, was used in WW II.
In preparation for Operation Overlord, the BBC‘s Radio Londres had signaled to the French Resistance with the opening lines of the 1866 Verlaine poem “Chanson d’Automne” were to indicate the start of D-Day operations under the command of the Special Operations Executive. The first three lines of the poem, “Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l’automne” (“Long sobs of autumn violins”), would mean that Operation Overlord was to start within two weeks. These lines were broadcast on 1 June 1944. The next set of lines, “Blessent mon coeur / d’une langueur / monotone” (“wound my heart with a monotonous languor”), meant that it would start within 48 hours and that the resistance should begin sabotage operations, especially on the French railroad system; these lines were broadcast on 5 June at 23:15.[3][4][5][6]
It is time for the letter “V” – and I would be remiss if I failed to mention the villainous Villanelle. Do note that it was a mistake to think it a fixed form; originally, villanelle merely meant a country dance. It might as well have been the Paradelle.
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!)
Anger is the Queen of Misrule
Until she's denied -
Shoved aside -
Diminished,
Like a distressing damsel
Overcome, but not becalmed.
Impotent Rage, dark
Grief will serve
Her only companions.
Locked in her stoic tower cell -
Stubbornly, she swallows the key,
Eats her feelings,
Thinking their power
Usurped. Denial
Her warden; Contentment
Her lady's maid.
Joy pours through open windows
Drenching cold stone
In golden sunfire.
Anger would draw the curtains,
If she could. Hang tapestries
Against the dawning light.
She smothers Hope
Lets it languish
Drowning, in a tub
Of gray and tepid water.
Persistent Joy flashes warm:
Pink, orange, and yellow roses
Cast at the Queen's bare feet
Before the purpling dusk.
Joy launches an assault -
Demands white bedsheets;
Till Anger, laughing
Surrenders, at last
To happy Dreams.
Unfeeling
Dammed up for half a life,
Denied, so many salty drops
Uncried refuse to flow.
They called her cold -
Unfeeling. Unaware
The faintly beating heart
Still beat within
Though dried up, brittle
As her mother's fragile
Skin; a parchment
Page unwritten
Waiting to be placed
Upon an empty shelf
Forgotten
As the feelings
Of a hollow vessel.
Today’s Poet
Wislawa Szymborska – a Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”
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!)
Mayhaps the ash-faced Ethel Wynn,
Given yogh-urt, instead of her gin,
Spluttered, outraged, and cried,
"This, I cannot abide -
"Ol' Thorn's hand on my bum yet again!"
A sweet-faced Tironian boy bᵹ
Would have liked to be named &
But their fans couldn't say it
So they chose to belay it
Lest all of their ᵹigs should be banned.
Thanks to Bing for providing a brief reference to some “famous limerick writers.” Hillaire Belloc wrote some of my childhood favorites.
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!)
Hard to be a moderate moderator
Hard to gauge the scale
In a super-sized sociopathic
Algorithm-driven
Hate-heated, bot-based
Boiler room;
Just another passing platform
Soft-swooshing, hot-air-hissing
Rusty, rattling
Fraught follow-trains
Crashing - Who doesn't love
A good train wreck?
Powerful loco motives
Crazy-clattering
Off rusted,
Busted rails.
Todays Poet
Sonia Sanchez – an American poet, writer, and professor. Sanchez was a leading writer in the Black Arts Movement who has written numerous books of poetry, short stories, critical essays, plays, and children’s books. 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!)
A challenge, a dare — a call to dedicated writing and commitment
You can call yourself anything you like, of course. I daresay you’d take some exception to my calling myself a brain surgeon, but so long as I don’t open your skull — only suggest, slyly, that I might — who’s to stop me playing pretend?
Any craft requires dedication: effort, practice, a willingness to learn from one’s mistakes (God save us, each and all, from dilettantish brain surgeons!) Humility, if you will. It is a long way from, “I have an interest in neuroscience and anatomy,” to “Do you trust me to use a saw to open your skull, and probe your gray matter with a knife?”
Dabblers
You may laugh and think me mean to suggest that one or two seventeen-syllable verses does not a “poet” make, but rather, a dabbler in poetry. There is nothing wrong with dabbling in poetry, or writing, or art, or photography, or music, or dance! There would be no poets, no writers, no great masters of the arts, and no ballet without there first being dabblers. Don’t look to knock me off my pedestal — I am a dabbler, too.
Not when it comes to some forms of writing. When you have spent the better part of forty years practicing and being paid well to do a thing, perhaps then you can be forgiven for claiming, “I am a writer.” Because by then, it really is a core part of your identity, and it has kept a roof over your head and played some part in providing food for your family’s table. But there is no shame in being “an engineer and mother who dabbles in writing,” or a “retired schoolteacher and grandmother who dabbles in poetry.” There is no shame in that at all.
But there is a question: Do you want to be a poet? By that, I mean, do you want to put “Poet” after your name? Do you dream of overhearing someone say, “Oh, the poet?” when your name is mentioned in conversation? Could you see it written on your tombstone? If the answer is “yes,” then you must also cry out, “YES!” when asked, “Are you enthusiastically willing to do the work?”
If not, then look elsewhere for your vocations – I crochet, as a hobby, but I don’t have this kind of dedication to fiber arts. I don’t even have an Etsy shop. I have barely made one sweater than kinda-sorta fits. Don’t puff out your chest and proclaim, “I am a poet!” merely because you are able to count out seventeen syllables to write Haiku.
Poets who are truly dedicated to Haiku will not take offense; there is an art to Haiku, and some have devoted lifetimes to mastering this single form of poetry. When people lay wreathes on your grave, more than 200 years after you are gone, because your poetry is as enduring as that of Yosa Buson, you will have “made it” as a poet and a writer of Haiku.
Are you bothered by what I’m saying? Or are you energized — challenged — eager to learn, practice, and maybe move from dabbler to poet? Are you undaunted?
Good. Because this challenge is for you, the nascent poet — the dabbler, the enthusiast, the playful poetential poet. Let the others spend their effort and energy on writing me hate mail — you come and take my challenge:
Become A Poet
Learn About Forms & Terms of Art
Go learn more about the various forms and terms of art that poets use. You will find the most common, useful, and important ones here, at Poetry Foundation, and bookmark this page — you’ll be returning to it many times:
Whether you aspire to be a poet or just enjoy reading and listening to poetry, go listen to A. Z. Foreman read poetry, old and new, in its original languages, dialects, and accents.
Rhyming verse seems to be losing popularity, if you judge by the submissions guidelines of many contemporary journals. For decades, it has been derided as doggerel or greeting-card verse. But is it? I ran an informal poll on several sites, about a year ago, and among readers who bothered to respond, it was the resounding favorite. If you enjoy rhyme, then by all means write rhyming verse!
That said, I’d avoid sing-songy, simplistic rhyming verse unless writing specifically for children. But there are many traditional types of formal verse that require rhyme – explore them. Try them on for fit. Sometimes, the restrictions of form, meter, and rhyme force your brain to work harder as you strive to think creatively within a strict framework.
Buy or bookmark a rhyming dictionary or two. This is a special sort of dictionary that categorizes words by the sound of their endings, and the number of syllables in the word. A few examples:
Another thing to avoid is “slant rhymes” — words that don’t quite rhyme — especially when it’s obvious that you’ve given up and resorted to forcing the words to fit a particular rhyme scheme. Now and then, you can make a close-but-not-quite rhyme work, but more often than not, it’s the hallmark of an amateur who isn’t trying hard enough. It feels like cheating. Consider different word choices, but if you must reach for the rhyme, see if you can do it without it being jarring to the reader’s ear. Read:
Some people are blessed with an innate sense of rhythm. Some of us had to endure hours of remedial rhythm training and still struggle to clap on the downbeat at rock concerts.
When I was very little, my parents enrolled me in ballet lessons. I imagine they hoped it would make me more graceful; I hoped it would lead to pointe shoes and sequined tutus and the ability to fly. Neither of these things happened. Instead, we discovered that I had no natural rhythm. For this crime, I was sentenced to hours of listening to “Baby, Take a Bow,” and instructed to look into a mirror while clapping on the downbeat. It did not cure me.
Meter in poetry is nothing more than the natural rhythms of language – the pattern of stressed (accented) and unstressed (unaccented) syllables in the words we choose. Any good dictionary can confirm for you the proper pronunciation of a word and on which syllable the downbeat, or accent, is placed.
But beware of rigid adherence to “rules.” Conversation does not strictly follow any particular “beat.” It is said that Shakespeare wrote much of his work, including sonnets and plays, in iambic pentameter because it closely mimics the patterns of English speech. And that’s true, but had he doggedly stuck to iambic pentameter, without any variation, his work would quickly lull us to sleep.
But there is an art to dancing with words. And, now and then, there’s an art to knowing when to do it with your two left feet tied together. Linguistics and Music Theory can only take you so far; at some point, you also have to trust your intuition. Just remember that when weaving a dream, you want to avoid putting the dreamer into a dreamless sleep or startling the dreamer awake.
For the real challenge, now: Go back to the link in the #1, and beginning from A — Abecedarian — and devote one day to each term. Write a poem that demonstrates it and your understanding of it. Work at it until it “clicks.” Some will be much easier than others. Cover two in a day, if you like. Keep a journal or a blog, and keep notes on what you learned, how difficult it was, and what insights you gained from the exercise. Not all of the terms listed here are forms — on the days when you run across a term like “rhyme” or “meter,” simply write a poem that relies on rhyme, or meter, and discuss that in your journal entry. There are 275 terms listed at Poetry Foundation. This means you can take most weekends off, if you like, and still finish in a year. Or take your time. There is absolutely no rush at all.
Bonus challenge: Commit to submitting your poem to a poetry journal or other publication within the month, or to gathering enough of your own poems to publish a chapbook within the year. If you don’t know where to start, sign up for an account at Submittable, go to the Discover tab, and search for calls for poetry.
If you take on this challenge, no one dare raise an eyebrow if you call yourself “Poet.” I cannot guarantee that a year’s daily practice will make you a “great poet.” It probably won’t. It certainly hasn’t made me one – yet. But you can puff out your chest and proudly declare that you are a “poet,” and I will nod and say, “Yes, absolutely — now, keep at it, because the day we stop learning and growing, we can call ourselves dead poets.”
Amazon links (amzn.to, when you hover over them), added for your convenience, are affiliate links. If you buy using them, I may earn a few pennies and it will not cost you extra. But as always, you have choices, and if you choose not to use my links, I’d urge you to support your local brick and mortar, independent bookstores.
Holly Jahangiri is VP and Program Chair at Poets Northwest, which meets in Houston, TX. Her poetry appears online and in print. Holly is the author of Trockle; A Puppy, Not a Guppy; and A New Leaf for Lyle. She draws inspiration from her family, from her own childhood adventures (some of which only happened in her overactive imagination), and from readers both young and young at heart.
Choose whatever option makes you happy. That's all that matters to me!
Manage consent
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
_GRECAPTCHA
5 months 27 days
Google Recaptcha service sets this cookie to identify bots to protect the website against malicious spam attacks.
apbct_cookies_test
never
CleanTalk sets this cookie to prevent spam on comments and forms and act as a complete anti-spam solution and firewall for the site.
apbct_headless
never
Cleantalk set this cookie to detect spam and improve the website's security.
apbct_page_hits
never
CleanTalk sets this cookie to prevent spam on comments and forms and act as a complete anti-spam solution and firewall for the site.
apbct_prev_referer
never
Functional cookie placed by CleanTalk Spam Protect to store referring IDs and prevent unauthorized spam from being sent from the website.
apbct_timestamp
never
CleanTalk sets this cookie to prevent spam on comments and forms and act as a complete anti-spam solution and firewall for the site.
apbct_urls
never
CleanTalk Spam Protect sets this cookie to prevent spam on our comments and forms and acts as a complete anti-spam solution and firewall for this site.
apbct_visible_fields
never
CleanTalk sets this cookie to prevent spam on the site's comments/forms, and to act as a complete anti-spam solution and firewall for the site.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement
1 year
Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie records the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
CookieLawInfoConsent
1 year
CookieYes sets this cookie to record the default button state of the corresponding category and the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie.
ct_has_scrolled
never
CleanTalk sets this cookie to store dynamic variables from the browser.
ct_pointer_data
never
CleanTalk sets this cookie to prevent spam on the site's comments/forms, and to act as a complete anti-spam solution and firewall for the site.
ct_timezone
never
CleanTalk–Used to prevent spam on our comments and forms and acts as a complete anti-spam solution and firewall for this site.
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Cookie
Duration
Description
MUID
1 year 24 days
Bing sets this cookie to recognise unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. This cookie is used for advertising, site analytics, and other operations.
