Jeanne Poland's Poetry Blog
20 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in Poetry
What family gems I am graced with!!!
Jeanne’s Photo Stream for your viewing pleasure
The musician playing in the sound track is AMR DIAB. He comes from Egypt, and performs his song, “Nour El Ain” (The Mind’s Eye). The song blends Arabic Music with Gypsie King’s style rumba and flamenco.
The photos of family and friends can be found in my Blurb Books which you can preview for free at Blurb.com (Books by Jeanne Poland)
Enjoy the rhythm of the moments!
20 Jul 2016 1 Comment
in Poetry, Sheep Looking Out Tags: Here in the Psalm, Karolina Kuchatski, point of view, Sally Fisher, Sheep Looking Out
illustrator: Karolina Kucharski
Here In The Psalm
by Sally Fisher
I am a sheep
and I like it
because the grass
I lie down in
feels good and the still
waters are restful and right
there if I’m thirsty
and though some valleys
are very chilly there is a long
rod that prods me so I
direct my hooves
the right way
though today
I’m trying hard
to sit at a table
because it’s expected
required really
and my enemies—
it turns out I have enemies—
are watching me eat and
spill my drink
but I don’t worry because
all my enemies do
is watch and I know
I’m safe if I will
just do my best
as I sit on this chair
that wobbles a bit
in the grass
on the side of a hill.
“Here In The Psalm” by Sally Fisher from Good Question. © Bright Hills Press, 2016.
Try rewriting a psalm from the fish’s point of view!
Here in the Psalm (2)
I am a goldfish
and I l like it
because the bowl
I swim in
is cool and clear
and the sights
are friendly and homey
and food
drifts down
to sustain me
and though some humans
have no scales
their big eyes glow like mine
and the enemy cat
is mostly polite
as my fins
swirl me round
out of harms way
as I munch greens
and balance my
flippers underneath
the canopy of
the sunlit living room.
19 Jul 2016 1 Comment
in Hobbit's Habits, Poetry Tags: gardens, getting up late, good plain food, hairy feet, Hobbit's Habits, iPhone 6+, mushrooms, staying home, to bed late
Photo by Jeanne (iPhone6+)
Hobbit’s Habits:
loves gardens,
mushrooms,
good plain food,
going to bed late,
getting up late,
not traveling,
hairy feet.
18 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in Poetry
Quietly, each day, Bob Boy enjoys his time at the Highlands, Providence, RI
Bob at the Highlands
The Highlands
nurtures fragile memories;
stimulates appetites
for succulent food;
cleans your room;
keeps a quiet
sunny glow about;
tenderly respects
individual preferences.
What more is needed?
Moving to music:
flourished calligraphy!
18 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in Poetry, Soft Edges Tags: Elizabeth Gilbert, experience blurs the edges, Julie Rowan Zoch, opens us for new discoveries, Soft Edges
illustrator: Julie Rowan Zoch
experience blurs
the edges-opens us for
new discoveries
Elizabeth Gilbert
has encouraging words for people who come to writing later in life: “Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it’s not something where — if you missed it by age 19 — you’re finished. It’s never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world — at any age. At least try.”
17 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in Poetry
Oh dear FrizzText, you press my buttons!
17 Jul 2016 1 Comment
in Jack of all trades: Master of Each, Poetry Tags: boxing, Critics warned me, develop multi-talents, Erle Stanley Gardner, Jack of all trades: Master of Each, Luis LevyLima, many philosophies, radiant on the spectrum
illustration: Luis Levy Lima
Critics warned me I would be master of none if I studied at 5 colleges, developed multi-talents, explored the world.
Instead I mastered many philosophies each brilliantly radiant on the spectrum, sequentially.
Erle Stanley Gardner born in Malden, Massachusetts (1889). He earned money through high school by participating in illegal boxing matches. He went on to Valparaiso University to study law, but after only a month, he got kicked out for boxing. So he studied law on his own, and he passed the California bar exam when he was 21. He went to his swearing-in ceremony after a boxing match, and said that he was probably the only attorney in the state to be sworn in with two black eyes
He liked working as a lawyer, but it wasn’t enough to keep him busy, so he started writing detective fiction for pulp magazines. In 1933, he published The Case of the Velvet Claws, his first novel featuring detective and defense attorney Perry Mason, who always pulled through and won cases for the underdogs. Gardner wrote more than 80 Perry Mason novels, and his books have sold more than 300 million copies.
He said: “I still have vivid recollections of putting in day after day of trying a case in front of a jury, which is one of the most exhausting activities I know about, dashing up to the law library after court had adjourned to spend three or four hours looking up law points with which I could trap my adversary the next day, then going home, grabbing a glass of milk with an egg in it, dashing upstairs to my study, ripping the cover off my typewriter, noticing it was 11:30 p.m. and settling down with grim determination to get a plot for a story. Along about 3 in the morning I would have completed my daily stint of a 4,000-word minimum and would crawl into bed.”
16 Jul 2016 1 Comment
in Poetry, The Song of the House Wren Tags: listen carefully to the father bird, Mary Oliver, on our front porch, perches the song-ful bird, The Song of the House Wren, To Be Human is to sing your own song
on our front porch
in the apple tree
on the bird-house roof
perches this song-ful bird
She occupies the whole front of the townhouse!
Mary Oliver:
“To Be Human Is to Sing Your Own Song.”
Everything I can think of that my parents
thought or did I don’t think and I don’t do.
I opened windows, they shut them. I pulled
open the curtains, they shut them. If you
get my drift. Of course there were some
similarities – they wanted to be happy
and the weren’t. I wanted to be Shelley and I
wasn’t. I don’t mean I didn’t have to avoid
imitation, the gloom was pretty heavy. But
then, for me, there was the forest, where
they didn’t exist. And the fields. Where I
learned about birds and other sweet tidbits
of existence. The song sparrow, for example.
In the song sparrow’s nest the nestlings,
those who would sing eventually, must listen
careful to the father bird as he sings
and make their own song in imitation of his.
I don’t know if any other bird does this (in
nature’s way has to do this). But I know a
child doesn’t have to. Doesn’t have to.
Doesn’t have to. And I didn’t.
So much wisdom and tenderness, so much resistance and surrender simultaneously, so much awareness that in the second half of our lives there is more room for grace within ourselves and those we love than we ever imagined.
15 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in Poetry, Transcendentalism Tags: baby play/bull stance, Elizabeth Rose Stanton, equal creation, intuitive calf, male/female, Transcendentalism
illustrator: Elizabeth Rose Stanton
intuitive calf
equal creation male/female
baby play/bull stance
14 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in Poetry, Songs That Lift Tags: Kelly Helm's Malamute, Songs That Lift, songs that poke fun at you, This Land is Your Land, Woodie Guthrie
Kelly Helm’s Malamute
Woody Guthrie once said: “I hate a song that makes you think that you’re not any good. […] Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling. I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.
Favorite song:
This Land Is Your Land
Written because he got tired of singing God Bless America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeMLaQTwIgU
The Vibrant Channeled Creator 