Joy

 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:

1. Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated – here; and
2. 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!)

• In Praise of the Non-Breaking Space
• Hunger and Longing
• Gratitude
• Frost
• Ekphrastic
• Deep It Lies
• Censure
• Bridges: Bravery and Bereavement
• April is the Cruelest Month