TSS: Sharing Poetry With You/Giveaway

Do check out the International Giveaway of Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran and Cup Cake Earrings
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Every Sunday, I aim to share poetry with you which had had some impact on me. I am Calling it Sharing Poetry With You. As I didn't have a button for it and also don't know how to make one, I requested Violet Crush as well as Veens to make one for me. Both were kind enough to do that for me. Here I am posting both the buttons.

Made by Violet Crush 

Made by Veens

Feel free to use either. I love them both!

I have been reading the book of poems, Clamor by Elyse Fenton. She wrote some of  those when her husband was deployed as a medic in Baghdad, Today I share here the title poem. 

Clamor by Elyse  Fenton

Staking fencing along the border of the spring
garden I want suddenly to say something about
this word that means sound and soundlessness
at once.  The deafening metal of my hammer strikes
wood, a tuning fork tuning my ears to a register
I’m too deaf to understand.  Across the yard

each petal dithers from the far pear one white
cheek at a time like one blade of snow into
the next until the yard looks like the sound
of a television screen tuned last night to late-
night static. White as a page or a field where
I often go to find the promise of evidence of you

or your unit’s safe return. But instead of foot-
prints in the frosted static there’s only late-
turned-early news and the newest image of a war
that can’t be finished or won. And because last
night I turned away from the television’s promise
of you I’m still away.  I’ve staked myself

deep to the unrung ground, hammer humming
in my hand, the screen’s aborted stop-time still
turning over in my head: a white twist of rag
pinned in the bloody center of a civilian’s chest,
a sign we know just enough to know it means
surrender, there in the place a falling petal’s heart would be.


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The waiting, the longing and also the futilty of a war that no one can win. This poem speaks to me at many levels. 

What do YOU think?

TSS: Sharing Poetry With You

Every Sunday, I aim to share poetry with you which had had some impact on me. I am Calling it Sharing Poetry With You. As I didn't have a button for it and also don't know how to make one, I requested Violet Crush as well as Veens to make one for me. Both were kind enough to do that for me. Here I am posting both the buttons.

Made by Violet Crush 

Made by Veens

Feel free to use either. I love them both!




Today I share here the following:

Saddest Poem by Pablo Neruda

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her. 

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

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I think all of us have felt like this at some point of our lives. Love we lost. But it stays forever in our heart and mind. That sense of loss lingers on....

Tell me what you felt after reading this poem. And feel free to share your favourite poet/poetry with me.

Sunday Salon: Sharing Poetry With You

Every Sunday, I aim to share poetry with you which had had some impact on me. I am Calling it Sharing Poetry With You. As I didn't have a button for it and also don't know how to make one, I requested Violet Crush as well as Veens to make one for me. Both were kind enough to do that for me. Here I am posting both the buttons.

Made by Violet Crush 

Made by Veens

Feel free to use either. I love them both!

Now back to poetry. Today I share something, which I think will touch a chord with all of us in some way or the other.


Some Different Kinda Books, from Black Wings & Blind Angels, by Sapphire

I
She asks why we always
read books about black people.
(I spare her the news she is black.)
She wants something different.
Her own book is written in pencil.
She painstakingly goes back & corrects
the misspelled words.
We write each day.
Each day the words look like
a retarded hand from Mars
wrote them.
Each day she asks me how
do you spell: didn't, tomorrow, done
husband, son, learning, went, gone . . .
I can't think of all the words she can’t spell.
It’s easier to think of what she can spell:
MY NAME IS CARMEN LOPEZ.
I am sorry I was out teacher.
My husband was sick.
You know I never miss school.
In that other program
I wasn't learning nothing.
Here, I'm learning so I come.
What's wrong with my husband?
I don't know. He's in the hospital. He's real sick
I was almost out the room
when I hear the nurse ask him,
Do you do drugs?
He say yes.
I say what!
I don’t know nuthin' 'bout no drugs.
I'm going off in the hospital.
He's sick.
I'm mad.
Nobody tells you nuthin'!
I didn't hear that nurse
I wouldn't know
nuthin'.
Huh?
Condoms? No, teacher.
He's my husband.
I never been with another man.

II
I think he got AIDS
he still don't tell me.
I did teacher. I tried
to read the chart at the hospital
but I couldn't figure out those words.
Doctor don't say, he say privacy.
The nurse tell me.
She's Puerto Rican. She say your husband
got AIDS.
I go off in the hospital.
Nobody tells me nuthin'.
He come home.
He say it's not true,
he's fine.
He's so skinny without his clothes
he try to hide hisself nekkid
don't want me to look.
I say you got to use
one of those things.
He say nuthin's wrong.
with him.

III
He stop sayin' that.
Now he just say he's gonna die
all the time
all the time
dying.
I say STOP that talk,
the doctor say you could
live a long time
my sister-in-law say,
he got it so you got it
it's like that.
I say, I don't got it,
my kids don't got it either.
Teacher, I need a letter for welfare
that I'm coming to school
on a regular basis.

IV
He's in P.R.,
before that he started messing around
again.
Over the Christmas holidays
he died.
That's where I was at
in P.R.
I'm fine. Yeah, I'm sure teacher.
What do I wanna do teacher?
I just wanna read some different
kinda books.

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The questions she asks are so relevant. This poem has a whole range of emotions and we are with her all through it. It speaks of literacy, it speaks of learning and it speaks of knowledge. All are different yet related. 
What are your thoughts about the poem? 

And do feel free your favourite poetry with us. If you like, I will post that for you here!

Sunday Salon: Sharing Poetry With You

I am making Sharing Poetry With You, a Sunday feature here. I will post a poem, which has made an impact on me in the past few days. All are welcome to post their thoughts in the comment section. And also any poem, they have liked. If any one wishes, I will post any poem they wish for others too read. However, do give due credit to the poet.

I am no good at creating buttons. Would appreciate it if someone helped me with that.

Today I share a poem from Early Light (1985). by W. S. Di Piero   

In Our Room 

On the strip between the lakes
I look for some trace of you
in everything that moves.
At the tip of its wake, a coot's
bone bill points through
the leaves' sponged-ink shade,
slate feathers splitting the air;
the water quivers, bright
as your bath-drenched hair
shaking off silvered bits.
A tern pulls up, tilting
through the spreading light,
then drops beak and body fast.
Two dark swifts dip past
swamp oaks like brown
twilight in our room, blinds
barring your face, while your lips
closed on some dream sound,
some word I didn't catch,
a wood-duck's straight-seamed wedge,
a cowbird shuddering from
the lake on loose bent wings.

As you can see, it is a love poem, a tactile one at that. The imagery speaks to me. And also touches me. Not just in my thoughts but literally. 

What do YOU think of it? Can you think of any other tactile love poetry?

Sunday Salon: Start of a weekly feature Sharing Poetry With You

As most are aware, I love poetry. I also have a poetry blog, rooted, where I post my own poetry. When I read a poetry book, I post reviews on both my blogs. But I don't really post poetry that I have read and liked. I am thinking of making Sharing Poetry With You, a Sunday feature here. I will post a poem, which has made an impact on me in the past few days. All are welcome to post their thoughts in the comment section. And also any poem, they have liked. If any one wishes, I will post any poem they wish for others too read. However, do give due credit to the poet.

I am no good at creating buttons. Would appreciate it if someone helped me with that.

Today, I start with a poem by Mary Oliver.

Invitation from Mary Oliver's Red Bird

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude—
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life

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This poem tells me to stop and pause from our so-called busy lives. We need to behave silly and foolish, in order to appreciate the finer things. Each little gesture means something. It might lead to something bigger. Or maybe give us the joy, pure joy, that we all need.

What does it say to you? Say one word or many words....your choice..!!