POETRY FRIDAY

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

It's the last Poetry Friday of 2012

and I'm honored to host 

from cold and snowy Denver.

Seems like it should be a time 

for deep profundity

or great levity

or the reviewing of resolutions.

Leave your poems, (deeply profound or otherwise) 

in the comments 

and I will round them up periodically 

throughout the day tomorrow.

"Questions Before Dark"

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you?  Are the corners
sharper or rounded off?  Did you
live with death?  Make decisions
that quieted?  Find one clear word
that fit? 

Jeanne Lohmann

Read the rest of the poem here.

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 Mary Lee needs people to sign up to host the Poetry Friday Roundup in June 2013.  You can sign up here.

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Just spent a couple of hours compiling the morning's offerings. What gifts people have brought to us.

This time of year brings many celebrations of family and traditions…

·      Tara celebrates her season of family traditions with Mary Oliver’s “Poem of the One World.”

And Mary Oliver fans can read "I Asked Percy How I Should Live My Life" at Miss Erin's blog. 

·      Fellow Denverite Linda captures a joyful Christmas moment with her granddaughter at Teacherdance.

·      Elaine Magliaro dedicates her original poem, “Things to Do if You are a Book” to her granddaughter

·      At Inside the Dog, Steve Peterson honors his grandfather with an original poem, “The Measure of a Life.”

·      Margaret is writing a series of poems in response to Christmas cards her father has created for the last nine years. I loved “Out of Egypt” during Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life on Tuesday. Today Margaret gifts us with a triolet, “Songs of Angels.”

·      Matt Forest Esenwine honors his wife with a special poem and provides blog readers with some information about the history of haiku and tanka.

·      Joy bakes up a fortune cookie haiku, and a challenge to try writing one of your own.

Lori Ann Grover has an original holiday haiku here.

·      Margaret is writing a series of poems in response to Christmas cards her father has created for the last nine years. I loved “Out of Egypt” during Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life on Tuesday. Today Margaret gifts us with a triolet, “Songs of Angels.”

·      At Bald Ego, Charles Ghigna brings us not one, not two, not three, but seven original poems from his boyhood in the South. The vivid detail in these poems reminds me of Don Graves’ BASEBALL, SNAKES, AND SUMMER SQUASH, which is one of my favorite books to use to draw poetry from children and adults.

Today’s postings also brought lots of poetry “gifts.”

·      Laura Shovan is gifting 44 lucky people with postcard poems for her 44^th birthday in February. Today, she gifts all of us with “Speedway.”

·      At “The Opposite of Indifference,” Tabatha Yeatts shares both sweet and serious. Her “sweet” is a gift poem written for Tabatha by Robin Hood Black. The serious is sobering news about the plight of journalists around the world in 2012.

·      Robin Hood Black stopped by to say she has been buried in family, and is only sharing her poetry gift to Tabatha Yeatts.

·      At The Write Sisters, Diane Mayr gifts Mary Lee with an original birthday poem. 

Violet Nesdoly gifted children's author with "Wear a Scarf," a poem all you fashionistas out there will definitely want to read. 

·  Jone is gifting people with poetry books for her 26 Acts of Kindness. I don’t have 26 books, but I could definitely give away 26 poems. Hmmmm.

There are several gorgeous images from nature…

·   Matt Goodfellow journeys all the way from the UK to share two original poems, “Midnight Hare” and  “The Hill. Matt’s words evoke images of mystical, dark, evenings.

·   And more images from the natural world in Steve Withrow’s “Taunton River in December. ” Steve’s words make it easy to imagine the sound of those hungry geese honking for handouts.

And of course there are wishes, hopes, and dreams for the New Year…

·  At Growing Wild, Liz Steinglass shares an original New Year’s Poem, “This New Year.”

·   Mary Lee features Linda Pastan’s “Clock.” When I finish the first iteration of the roundup, I’ll be heading out to visit a friend and her new baby in the hospital. The friend is actually a young woman I have mentored since she was in second grade. She is now 22! Yikes!

·  At Drift Record, Julie Larios brings us “Blessed Illusion,” a perfect wish for the New Year.

·   At Bildingsroman, Little Willow posted D.H. Lawrence’s poignant, “A Passing Bell.”

·   At  Kurious Kitty’s Kurio Kabinet, Diane Mayr sends out the old year with Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Where Go the Boats?” Diane rings in the New Year with a haiku postcard exchange to celebrate  the coming of the New Year at Random Noodling. 

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Friday evening (9:30 MST)
OK, I think I've got everyone (if I left anyone out, it was totally unintentional, just email me and I will fix it!), it's been a pretty quiet Poetry Friday. Think I'll end tonight's festivities with a found poem from Parker J. Palmer.

What if we spent 2013 

focusing more 

on our shared human condition 

than on our differences? 

What if we cultivated 

the capacity 

to feel for each other's losses 

and developed a deeper awareness 

of our mutual mortality? 

Surely we'd want to spend more time 

working with others 

to bring a better, 

more beautiful 

world

 into being...  

Parker J. Palmer