Frost on Daffodils
Stretching sunward, leaves crack frozen soil,
Daffodil blossoms crane their necks and yawn
Unfurling, yellow, in the warmth of dawn
After April’s showers, God’s slumbering creatures toil.
— Holly Jahangiri (April 6, 2023)
Today’s Poets
Robert Frost
– a familiar and well-loved American poet, Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 31 times, and was chosen as Poet Laureat of Vermont twice. Read more here. If you think that you understand Frost’s famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” watch this:
What we’ve gotten wrong about this Robert Frost classic – YouTube
Robert Frost interview + poetry reading (1952) – YouTube
Athena Farrokhzad – a Persian-Swedish poet who the Kenyon Review says “makes palpable the conflict between the expectations of the oppressor and the realities of the oppressed.”
Athena Farrokhzad on Writing and Poetry – YouTube
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!)
Lovely little poem and the wordplay went right over my head! I enjoyed the David Orr interpretation. This is one of the rare instances where pundits can’t just shove their views down our throats. If Robert Frost TELLS us why he wrote this, then that’s that! LOL
Cheers,
Mitch
That’s the interesting thing about writing – poetry, especially. And art. Where does the creator’s will end and the reader’s/viewer’s interpretation of it take over? Is there a point at which the creator can just say, “Oh, hell no, that’s not what I was saying at all, you wet-behind-the-ears grad student trying desperately to sound erudite”? Or “Well, um, I wrote it and that never in a million years would’ve crossed my mind, but honey, you do you… have at it”?
I wish that we could get back to a clear understanding of the difference between fact and opinion and interpretation and absolute, utter bullfeathers. If a reader says to me, “This is what I saw, felt, thought while reading your poem,” who am I to argue? If they proclaim that “The poet shows us that…” or “tells us” or “believes” then I might have a bone to pick, if they’re wrong. And if they then try to interpret my poem in light of what they believe to be true of me, we’re going to have to take it out to the back alley, unless they’re 100% correct and know me THAT well.
It has always bothered me that readers assume a writer of erotica has lived a promiscuous or sexually adventurous life – that they write from first-hand experience – and yet, they never seem to think it about the author of murder mysteries. Why is that?