We have seen kindness in action during the last several weeks. My 16-year-old grand girl, Gracee AKA Grace AKA Amazing Grace, was in a serious car accident in June. I’ve been in Michigan (I forgot to mention where I actually was in the below video) since then to help in her recovery. While here, I’ve […]
Commit Poetry: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Since I turned 70 earlier in the year, I’ve had to accept I’m way, way past midlife. But some say that 70 is the new 40 (or is it 50?), and my own midsummer night’s dream is one of looking and feeling young(er) for lots of years. So I’ve started walking again–at least two miles […]
Commit Poetry: Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon
Tweetspeak Poetry has formed a “By Heart” Community, and we are memorizing a poem each month. For December it was “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon. Having lived for years in the country and walked the roads in the evenings, I can see these images and hear the night sounds–though a chafing instead of a […]
Anna Akhmatova and Friends
When Anatoly Nayman recounts his first meeting with the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, he describes her gesture of hospitality. The woman who had let me into the flat brought in a saucer on which lay a lonely boiled carrot, which had been peeled perfunctorily and had already dried up somewhat. Perhaps such was her diet, perhaps it […]
Commit Poetry: Tapping on the Walls
What about tapping on the walls? Imagine a 5 x 5 square numbered 1 to 5 horizontally along the top and vertically down the left side. Picture the letters of the alphabet running in order across each row with the letters C and K occupying the same space on the first row in the […]
Commit Poetry: Romeo and Juliet – Masks and Divisions
We are sitting at the edge of Michigan’s own slice of the Caribbean—Torch Lake. The water is teal, sometimes turquoise. A handful of children are making little crayfish corrals of sand, circled and fortified by rocks, catching the creatures first with a net and pail. As for us, we’re fortified with turkey sandwiches and bottles of […]
Commit Poetry: The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats
Wow. It’s been so long since I’ve posted here, I was automatically logged out and had to go dig up my password. I’ve been seriously tied up with other stuff and have let the blog languish–but I see my Instagram stories are still posting down there on the right, so there’s that. Anyway, a […]
Commit Poetry: Committing Romeo (and other stuff)
Here we go again. I swear—I can’t seem to resist a good dare, especially during National Poetry Month and Tweetspeak’s “Year of Shakespeare.” This time, it’s to memorize three sections of Romeo and Juliet. Why these particular three sections? Why not ones I’m already familiar with like . . . Like what? Follow me to Tweetspeak […]
Commit Poetry: Ozymandias, Breaking Bad, and a Duck
I read a Facebook post on January 11 of this year announcing that it was the 200th anniversary of the day The Examiner published Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias.” Ozzy who? I had to look up the pronunciation. Several folks say Ah-zee-mahn-dee-us. Others say Ah-zee-man-dee-us. But some say to fit the meter of the sonnet, the name […]
Commit Poetry: Edgar Guest – and My Uncle Edgar
For Edgar Gilmore with congratulations and the best wishes always of another Edgar. Sincerely, Edgar A. Guest June 17, 1939 That’s the inscription inside Edgar A. Guest says: It Can Be Done, a book I found when we were packing up to move. I called my dad the other day. “Who was Edgar Gilmore?” He didn’t know. […]
