Jeanne Poland's Poetry Blog
14 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in Family Tags: Albert Einstein, emerge on daughter's face, freckles on Mom's cheeks, Jeanne and Quenby, pink with daughter's blushes, relative, space-time continuum, speed of light
Jeanne and Quenby
1975
Freckles on Mom’s cheeks
emerge on baby’s face: pink
with daughter’s blushes!
Albert Einstein:
The only universal constant is the speed of light, which never changes under any circumstances.
his Special Theory of Relativity,
which states that absolute space and absolute time don’t exist; they are relative to each other, and should be represented as “space-time.”
13 Mar 2015 1 Comment
in Family Tags: afroes, cheese smiles, Friday the 13th, frown-ies, smoshes, where the wild things are, winter coats
In 1978
Where the wild things are!
Afros- “cheese smiles”-wild
winter coats: frown-ies, bushes
on Friday’s smoshes!
12 Mar 2015 1 Comment
in Family Tags: baggy oldtrousers, Edward Albee, flyway of dreams, in a cottage, Interesting, limited palette, out in the cold, predictable blues, swallows in Autumn, Ted Kooser, wet rocks
Jeanne 2007
Edward Albee
“If you’re willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.”
A Person of Limited Palette
by Ted Kooser
I would love to have lived out my years
in a cottage a few blocks from the sea,
and to have spent my mornings painting
out in the cold, wet rocks, to be known
as “a local artist,” a pleasant old man
who “paints passably well, in a traditional
manner,” though a person of limited
talent, of limited palette: earth tones
and predictable blues, snap-brim cloth cap
and cardigan, baggy old trousers
and comfortable shoes, but none of this
shall come to pass, for every day
the possibilities grow fewer, like swallows
in autumn. If you should come looking
for me, you’ll find me here, in Nebraska,
thirty miles south of the broad Platte River,
right under the flyway of dreams.
“A Person of Limited Palette” by Ted Kooser from Splitting an Order. © Copper Canyon Press, 2014. Reprinted with permission.
10 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in Family Tags: beyond, beyond it, David Rabe, follow it, Frank Packlick, idea, image I start, old artists never die, sentence, their work lives on and on
Old artists never die…their work lives on and on…
Jeanne and Frank Packlick
2009
David Rabe said:
“I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start.
I don’t know anything beyond it.
I follow it.”
09 Mar 2015 2 Comments
in Family Tags: enough, grateful, Joy Willaims, never enough, shadows, stories, writers
John, Jeanne, Quenby, Owen
1977
“Writers end up writing stories
—or rather, stories’ shadows
—and they’re grateful if they can,
but it is not enough.
Nothing the writer can do is ever enough”
—Joy Williams
08 Mar 2015 1 Comment
in Family Tags: between the breaths, blossoming breaths, Don, echoing eeriness, pace, pheeew!, space, watercolor of Jeanne
Watercolor of Jeanne 1988
The year I met Don
Pace is the space
betweenthebeats
e c h o i n g e e r i n e s s
blossoming breaths.
Pheeew!
Jeanne Poland
07 Mar 2015 2 Comments
in Family Tags: a woman walks beside him, another winter endured, ballerina, her heart springs, Jeanne and Paul at Quenby's Wedding, Louise Gluck, remember, Robert Frost, weary of each other, whirl in place
Jeanne and Paul
at Quenby’s Wedding
2007
Frost said poetry could make you “remember what you didn’t know you knew.”
The Couple in the Park
by Louise Glück
A man walks alone in the park and beside him a woman walks, also alone.
How does one know? It is as though a line exists between them, like a line on
a playing field. And yet, in a photograph they might appear a married cou-
ple, weary of each other and of the many winters they have endured togeth-
er. At another time, they might be strangers about to meet by accident. She
drops her book; stooping to pick it up, she touches, by accident, his hand and
her heart springs open like a child’s music box. And out of the box comes
a little ballerina made of wood. I have created this, the man thinks; though
she can only whirl in place, still she is a dancer of some kind, not simply a
block of wood. This must explain the puzzling music coming from the trees.
“The Couple in the Park” by Louise Glück from Faithful and Virtuous Night. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Reprinted with permission.
06 Mar 2015 2 Comments
in Family Tags: a field of snow, blink on, boy who is half swan, Dean Young, heaven, peacock feather, plastered with dew, walk through dandelions, wash your face
Quenby’s Backyard Baptism 1975
The Invention of Heaven
by Dean Young
The mind becomes a field of snow
but then the snow melts and dandelions
blink on and you can walk through them,
your trousers plastered with dew.
They’re all waiting for you but first
here’s a booth where you can win
a peacock feather for bursting a balloon,
a man in huge stripes shouting about
a boy who is half swan, the biggest
pig in the world. Then you will pass
tractors pulling other tractors,
trees snagged with bright wrappers
and then you will come to a river
and then you will wash your face.
“The Invention of Heaven” by Dean Young, from First Course in Turbulence. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999. Reprinted with permission of the author.
05 Mar 2015 1 Comment
in Family Tags: Colum McCann, definition, high and low, lovely, quartet, slap the music down, song ofNYC, transported, vivacious, Whitman
Got the quartet together in 1978
Colum McCann
He said, “I wanted it to be a Whitmanesque song of the city, with everything in there – high and low, rich and poor, black, white, and Hispanic. Hungry, exhausted, filthy, vivacious, everything this lovely city is. I wanted to catch some of that music and slap it down on the page so that even those who have never been to New York can be temporarily transported there.”
04 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in Family Tags: definition, fear, Franklin DelanoRoosevelt, Jeanne and Quenby, laugh at fear, Only thing we have to fear is fear itself
Laugh at fear; its tail is courage
1975
Jeanne and Quenby
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The Vibrant Channeled Creator 