Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day--National Poetry Month

Poem in Your Pocket Day, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, encourages us to share poetry. Print off some of your favorite poems and put them in your pocket. When you meet and greet someone today, hand them the poem. Simple! Silly? Maybe, but I did it last year to great results. The poem recipients were really pleased. If you need poem ideas, click the Poem in Your Pocket Day link.

This year I decided to offer a Robert Frost poem that is not as well known as many of his others. I used to give this to the high school seniors I taught back in the day. Since graduation is approaching, and NASA just celebrated the Hubble telescope's 20th birthday, the poem in my pocket will be

Choose Something Like a Star

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
(Click to read the rest.)

Here's a NASA video of images from Hubble about a star's life:


Share some poems from your pocket to someone else's today and let me know the results!

Epic Poetry and the Swedish Chef--National Poetry Month

[This is a public domain image from Kip Wheeler's homepage at Carson-Newman College. Kip Wheeler declared its status thus: "The original image of the Beowulf manuscript comes from the anonymous Anglo-Saxon scribe who wrote the 'Nowell Codex', Cotton Vitellius A.x.v. 129 r. It appears here as reproduced in Julius Zupitza's Beowulf: Autotypes of the Unique Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv. in the British Museum with a Transliteration and Notes. E.E.T.S. O.S. 77. London: Trubner & Co., 1882. This image is public domain."]

Epic poetry, like today's epic novels, sweeps across landscapes and generations. Many epic poems, such as the most famous early English epic, Beowulf, tell of historic heroics, with a dash of myth thrown in. Ordinary people have been drawn to the story for its action adventure, but scholars have poured over it for other reasons. How much is historical? Was it written in the 8th century or later? Who wrote it? Was it told orally before it was written?

What we do know is that Beowulf is a tale of a hero who fights dragon Grendel, Grendel's mother, and an unnamed dragon over the course of his life in ancient Scandinavia. The poetry is not rhymed or metered like modern poetry. It is alliterative, with emphasis on initial word sounds. This is a sample of what the lines look like typeset:

Beowulf and Grendel's Mother
Lines 1357-1382

Hie dygel lond
warigeað, wulfhleoþu, windige næssas,
frecne fengelad, ðær fyrgenstream

under næssa genipu niþer gewiteð,
flod under foldan. Nis þæt feor heonon
milgemearces þæt se mere standeð;
ofer þæm hongiað hrinde bearwas,
wudu wyrtum fæst wæter oferhelmað.

Hear Beowulf in Old English by clicking "audio" toward the bottom of this page.

Something about the way this sounds has always reminded me of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, which, while not epic, is adventurous in its own way.


What do you think? Is the Swedish Chef a descendant of Beowulf?

Chaucer's Middle English Still Sounds Good--National Poetry Month

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/ / CC BY 2.0

Our pear and cherry trees bloom, tulips color lawns, and dormant plants spring to attention. This burst of life reminds me of the first line of Chaucer's "Prologue to the Canterbury Tales":

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower....

That's from the modern English version. Chaucer wrote it in Middle English, which is still recognizable, but takes a little work to translate:

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour...

Take a minute and listen to it as the Middle English scrolls by:



See the Middle English and Modern version side by side here.

[Canterbury tales mural by Ezra Winter. North Reading Room, west wall, Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C. According to the inscription, this mural shows (left to right): "The Miller, in the lead, piping the band out of Southwark; the Host of Tabard Inn; the Knight, followed by his son, the young Squire, on a white palfrey; a Yeoman; the Doctor of Physic; Chaucer, riding with his back to the observer, as he talks to the Lawyer; the Clerk of Oxenford, reading his beloved classics; the Manciple; the Sailor; the Prioress; the Nun; and three priests." (Source: John Y. Cole, On These Walls. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1995, p. 79)]

Which of Chaucer's tales do you remember? Which do you like best? How are the pilgrims' travels like your own?

Happy Birthday, Shakespeare!--National Poetry Month

http://www.flickr.com/photos/landhere/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare! Much of this English poet/playwright's life is a mystery, but he was supposed to have been born on April 23, 1564. Did he write all the plays attributed to him? Had he traveled widely to set his plays accurately in foreign lands? Did he receive an advanced education or was he a prodigy, writing clever lines in his childhood? Most of that we'll never know. Fortunately, his work remains and is held in high esteem through the centuries.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rappensuncle/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Sonnet 60 gives a mature look at aging:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith, being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight
And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of natures truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow;
And yet, to times, in hope, my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Enjoy this student video of Sonnet 116 using Shakespeare's words and a modern twist:


The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, displays manuscripts of Shakespeare's work, holds plays and poetry readings, and performs educational programs.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is building a new theatre in which to perform Shakespeare's plays in his hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon. London built a replica of The Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's plays were produced in Elizabethan times. Shakespeare's work is performed, recited, read, studied, and appreciated around the world. Though he died in 1616, his words live on.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cloudsoup/ / CC BY 2.0

SONNET 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

What are your favorite Shakespeare lines?

Celebrate Earth Day--National Poetry Month

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14684343@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

Celebrate the earth that sustains and nurtures us! Many poets and writers--and people in general--find solace and inspiration in nature. A contemporary poet who writes often about nature is Mary Oliver. Her poem "Such Singing in the Wild Branches" describes the joyful feeling of being one with nature.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinken/ / CC BY 2.0

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a lot about nature and its restorative powers. In "Song of Nature," he lets nature speak for itself:

Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Or granite, marl, and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,--
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What without him is summer's pomp,
Or winter's frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judaean manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o'er kings to rule;--
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;
Seethe, fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33465428@N02/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Children's poet, songwriter, and entertainer, Eric Ode, has a few poems for kids about nature. Here's a link to "Cocoon."

Celebrate Earth Day! What part of nature inspired you today?

Poems Tell a Story--National Poetry Month

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjoselibrary/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Who doesn't love a good story? Stories have been told in poetry form for ages. Many of us first heard poetry as nursery rhymes and songs, and that song connection continues to today. Ballads were especially well known in medieval Britain, and may have been influenced by Beowulf and other earlier works.

Many famous historical events have been immortalized in poetry, such as Paul Revere's ride and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

A song/narrative poem from modern times based on a real event is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot.

The ship sank in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. Canadian troubadour Lightfoot read newspaper and news magazine accounts of the tragedy and released his famous song a year later. His poetic account is mostly true, with a few bits of poetic license to fill in the gaps.

Made-up stories about love and loss make good narrative poetry, too. "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes is a dramatic classic. The ballad "Barbara Allen" has over 92 versions and perhaps as many tunes.

(photo by www.eyehook.com/free/img/dragon_6.gif Creative Commons license 2.5)

Narrative poetry can be just for fun, such as one of my favorites, "The Tale of Custard the Dragon" by Ogden Nash.

What is your favorite story poem?

Happy National Library Week/National Poetry Month

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Everything happens in April! This is National Library Week. I hope you will stop in and give your librarians some kind words. If you've been reading the news, you are aware that these are tough times for libraries, who continue to do more with less, and librarians, who do it more or less cheerfully.

Public and school libraries change lives by finding the right resources at the right time for citizens of all ages and socio-economic groups. Here's an example from one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye:

Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things

She is holding the book close to her body,
carrying it home on the cracked sidewalk,
(continue here and scroll to the bottom and click "listen to reading" to hear Nye read the poem)

4/19/2007 http://specialcollections.lib.msu.edu/ Special Collections Michigan State University Libraries 100 Library East Lansing MI, 48823

Libraries, their human search engines (library staff), and their collections provide answers. The answers may take you where you want to go, or they make take you to unexpected places. See this poem by Jessy Randall:

Going to the Library

In the library there are pathways (click to read the rest of the poem)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Some of us get overwhelmed in libraries--so many books, so little time! William Stafford's "In the Library" captures this feeling:

You are reading a book, and think you know (click to read the rest of the poem)

What's your favorite thing about libraries?