Tag Archives: poet

Aug3

(Luck I.)

Posted on August 3, 2024 by beth

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this very moving page popped up on my screen recently

proof once again

that one person’s simple act

can have a huge impact on another

often without them ever knowing.

profound and quiet kindness

yes.

—

source credit: Luck (I), by Joy Sullivan

Joy lives in Portland, Oregon and is a poet and educator. She has a masters degree in poetry and served as the poet-in-residence for the Wexner Center for the Arts. She also leads live transformative writing workshops for individuals who have experienced trauma and has guest-lectured in classrooms from Stanford to Florida State University.

Joy’s work is a part of The San Marcos Writing Project and is one of over 200 writing project sites in the country devoted to developing teacher leaders that improve the writing and learning of all students.

csusm.edu/education/outreach/smwp.html

Feb25

private.

Posted on February 25, 2024 by beth

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is it really, though?

what would stop anyone from just walking around the sign,

unsure of where the private part begins and ends?

or to test the boundaries?

—

“there is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.”

*George Eliot, Felix Holt: The Radical 1866

*Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, (who changed her name because she wanted her writing to be taken seriously), was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and widely recognized as one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, the Radical, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda.

Mar21

listen, earth sings.

Posted on March 21, 2023 by beth

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May be an image of flower, nature and body of water

Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France

“Spring has returned again.

The Earth is like a child

that knows poems by heart;

so many poems, so many verses,

patient toil winning her prizes at last.

Strict, the old teacher.

We loved the whiteness in the old

gentleman’s beard,

its bright snow.

Now when we ask what the green,

what the blue is,

Earth knows the answer,

has learned it.

She knows.

Earth, you’re on holiday,

lucky one: play now!

Play with us children!

We’ll try to catch you.

Glad, joyous Earth!

The gladdest must win.

Every lesson the old teacher

taught her,

all that is printed in roots

and laborious stems:

now she sings it!

Listen, Earth sings.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke

—

“The inspiration for this sonnet came from

a visit to Ronda, in southern Spain, in the

winter of 1912-13. Rilke had overheard a

group of schoolchildren singing in the Convent

of Santo Domingo, accompanied only by a

triangle and tambourine. He didn’t know what

their song meant, but the light-hearted

animation of their singing is reflected in the

cadences of the second and third stanzas.”

—

on international poetry day

Apr23

wondrous.

Posted on April 23, 2021 by beth

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thank you sarah freligh, for your beautiful poem

in this national poetry month and every month.

Jan3

lovely.

Posted on January 3, 2021 by beth

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Nov16

in praise of ironing.

Posted on November 16, 2019 by beth

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Poetry is pure white.
It emerges from water covered with drops,
is wrinkled, all in a heap.
It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,
has to be ironed out, the sea’s whiteness;
and the hands keep moving, moving,
the holy surfaces are smoothed out,
and that is how things are accomplished.
Every day, hands are creating the world,
fire is married to steel,
and canvas, linen, and cotton come back
from the skirmishings of the laundries,
and out of light a dove is born –
pure innocence returns out of the swirl.