verses that sing

Love’s tenderest touch, your gentle words reveal
Caress my soul. sweet poet, with your verse
Write dulcet lullabies which make me feel
Secure, like infants held at breast to nurse

Turn tears of sadness into peaceful streams
Make whispered breezes whisk my strife away
Put passion in my fantasized daydreams
Paint troubles in to flowery bouquet
Your words are like a song, please sing to me
Sweet poet, how I love your poetry

Written by Logan Ray Grant on 12/21/20 for Jeanne in the mountains

while there’s still time…

illustrator: Demelsa Haughton

About William Stanley Merwin born this day , Sept 30th in 1927:

Merwin eventually moved to Hawaii and set about restoring a former pineapple plantation on Maui to its original rain-forest state, a painstaking and years long process.
He said: “I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time.”
On writing, Merwin insists on regular practice. He said: “I’ve found that the best thing for me is to insist that some part of the day — and for me, it’s the morning until about two in the afternoon — be dedicated to writing. I go into my room and shut the door, and that’s that. You have to make exceptions, of course, but you just stick to it, and then it becomes a habit, and I think it’s a valuable one. If you’re waiting for lightning to strike a stump, you’re going to sit there for the rest of your life.”
He died in March 2019 at the age of 91.

Definition #243 Poetry

John and Owen in 1979

Poetry stops you,

lifts you up on huge shoulders,

and sets you down,

a creator.

Children’s poetry weighs less.

Definition: 108 Poetry and Science

Doctor DeLoca and Daughter

Anton Chekhov considered himself a doctor foremost and a writer by hobby.

There are a great number of medical doctors who also wrote fiction and poetry, among them 19th-century American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sherlock Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Robert Seymour Bridges, who is the only physician to have been Poet Laureate of England.

American writer Walker Percy was a medical doctor, and Michael Crichton completed medical school before he became a full-time writer.

Doctor Arturo Vivante wrote more than 70 stories for The New Yorker magazine.

Mystery writer Robin Cook is a physician and author of the best-selling thrillers Coma (1977) and Mutation (1989).

Dr. Abraham Verghese took a break from hospitals to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the early 1990s; he returned to medicine and now teaches and practices at Stanford, where he has a secret unmarked writing office on campus.

Definition #90 Poetry

 “I love poetry that feels as it thinks.” That’s Dorianne Laux, born in Augusta, Maine (1952)

She grew up poor in San Diego, barely making it through school. Her stepfather abused her throughout her childhood and teenage years, and through it all she wrote poems. She said: “I wouldn’t have gotten through that without a friend. If I hadn’t been able to talk with myself, with respect, as a whole human being, who had a mind and heart and desires, a goodness, a desire to be good — you know, all of those things,

 She didn’t think she would ever make a living from poetry, but she started giving readings and publishing poems, and published her first book, Awake (1990). She said: “You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. That was not something I thought would ever happen.” She wrote four more books of poetry, including What We Carry (1994) and The Book of Men (2011).

And, “Any good poem is asking you simply to slow down.”

Definition #65 Poetry

Thomas Lux

It’s the birthday of Thomas Lux , born in Northampton, Massachusetts (1946).

He’s known for his surreal, funny poems with titles like

“Commercial Leech Farming Today,”

“Traveling Exhibition of Torture Instruments,”

“The Oxymoron Sisters,” and

“Walt Whitman’s Brain Dropped on Laboratory Floor.”

His books of poetry include Memory’s Handgrenade (1972), The Blind Swimmer: Selected Early Poems 1970-1975 (1996), God Particles (2008), and most recently Child Made of Sand (2012).

He describes contemporary American poetry as

“Burgeoning,

chaotic,

many, many good poets,

a growing cultural profile,

a healthy, squawking, boisterous, fractious, inclusive, tradition and

(true) innovation marrying or colliding.”

Poetry

Some People Think

that poetry should be adorned
or complicated

I’m not so sure
I think I’ll take

the simple statement
in plain speech compressed to brevity

I think that will do
all I want to do.

“Some People Think” by James Laughlin from The Collected Poems of James Laughlin. © New Directions, 2014. Reprinted with permission.

What does the baby poet know?

Can I grasp the snowflakes?

What is poetry?
But the grabbing of snowflakes
As they blow… bye and bye.

riddle#9 What is Poetry?

Buttercup Close-up

It’s the buttercup petals licking their lips;
The licorice candy and lemonade sips.

CHILDREN PERFORM POETRY

Ken, Joy and I gathered for a second time. My iPhone shares with you: