Book Spine Poetry--National Poetry Month

The above photo shows my first Book Spine Poem. I don't know who invented Book Spine Poetry. It's a version of "found" poetry, I suppose, looking at your bookshelf and deciding what titles could go together in what order to make some kind of sense. In any case, it's fun!

Is it real poetry? Hardly ever. Could it become a good poem? Possibly. You never know what phrases might spark an idea, a metaphor, or a line.

Here's another:


Look around your bookshelves and see what you come up with. Post your results in the comments!

For more Book Spine Poetry, see children's poet, Kenn Nesbitt's page.

Hope, Spring, and National Poetry Month

(By William H. Majoros (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The calendar has said "spring" for about 3 weeks, but it seems slow in coming here. We are encouraged by the flocks of robins we see hopping around. Geese and other birds are on the move. Tulip leaves have popped through the earth, and a few green blades of grass are showing through the brown. All of these things spell "hope" for me.

Here's how New England poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) saw it:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.


What signals hope for you?

Sleepy time poem--National Poetry Month

The Fragrance of Sleep

Just bathed
Talc powdered
Fleece swaddled
Milk burbles
Lids fall
Sigh sinks
Into slumber

Poet David L. Harrison sponsors a Word of the Month (WOM) poem on his blog. Each month a new word is chosen, and poets--amateur, professional, and anything in between--post their creations using the word. This month's word is fragrance. My entry is above. Come and join us! There's a section for young poets, too!

(photo & poem copyright Jane Healy, all rights reserved)

National Poetry Month--Spring Willows

(© Copyright Rod Allday and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence, http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1754484)

Spring Willows

Willows shrug off winter
and don yellow just before
springing into a green canopy
over daffodil leaves
shooting through the ground
and weeks ahead of
cottonwood and ash
that still look dead.
Their bare boughs long for
lush willow green
in early spring.
--copyright Jane Heitman Healy, 2013

(photo by doviende Pete, Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/doviende/82719704/)


Where I live, we are still teeter-tottering between winter and spring, though our snow is almost all gone. It's so hopeful to see the willows turn from brown to yellow--new life stirring--and then burst into green well before the other deciduous trees. That's where we are, folks, waiting for green. Here's to spring and to National Poetry Month!

(photo by Neil Turner, Creative Commons, http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilt/4736647/)