poetry

The Faces of Whitman

/ Janna Hill / 7 Comments

Okay kiddos we’re in the homestretch (or the dying throws) of 2014’s National Poetry Month.
It’s Monday and I’m hungover running late so you all can talk amongst yourselves. Or you can talk to yourselves as long as you speak softly.
Today’s poet is Walt Whitman, a man of many faces. His self-published Leaves of Grass (as you may already know but humor me) was the feature of this year’s NPM poster. I’d like to say I had a hand in that. 😉

DSC_0001 (1024x658)

Courte$y of Academy of American Poets. Hopefully you took advantage of this freebie.
Leaves of Grass is another bit of art that can be obtained without co$t here.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

From Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”

 

 

 

Sunday Morning Sidewalk

/ Janna Hill / 2 Comments

sunday morning sidewalk (2) (1280x684)

“Ramblin’ Jack’s one of those people whose whole life was music. He’s like William Blake and Bob Dylan and other people who just believed and lived for whatever poetry they could come up with. That’s probably the thing I was trying to be.”

“Ramblin’ Jack’s one of those people whose whole life was music. He’s like William Blake and Bob Dylan and other people who just believed and lived for whatever poetry they could come up with. That’s probably the thing I was trying to be.”
Maybe you’ve never heard of Ramblin’ Jack but surely you’ll recognize the man who I just parroted. He’s not just any old poet/songwriter/singer/actor/ Rhodes Scholar he is the most interesting creature in the universe! That’s right, the above quote is from Kris Kristofferson and he totally kicks the Dos Equis man’s arse- hands down. And I love Dos Equis.

He traded a Rhodes scholarship and made his own roads. Some might argue he wasted his gifts but I believe he chose a path that allowed him to share those gifts with the world. How many stuffy ole geniuses does the world need anyway?

It’s still NPM so I’ll try not to turn this into the life and times of Kris Kristofferson. It would take years to cover that. We could talk for a month of Sundays about his material alone. Speaking of Sundays here is what I still refer to as Sunday Morning Sidewalk.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An’ I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An’ stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

I’d smoked my brain the night before,
On cigarettes and songs I’d been pickin’.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid,
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking.
Then I crossed the empty street,
‘n caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken.
And it took me back to somethin’,
That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way.

On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.

In the park I saw a daddy,
With a laughin’ little girl who he was swingin’.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to the song they were singin’.
Then I headed back for home,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’.
And it echoed through the canyons,
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.

On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.

 

A Poem & A Picture (Day 4)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

I happened up on this gem at TLS. If you have a moment to read their gentle dissection you’ll be glad you did. You’ll also be glad I spared you the [colorful] picture that inspired Once Upon A Dead Gull. 😉

The Seagull

By Stanley Moss

When I was a child, before I knew the word
for a snowstorm, before I remember
a tree or a field,
I saw an endless grey slate afternoon coming,
I knew a bird singing in the sun
was the same as a dog barking in the dark.
A pigeon in a blizzard fluttered
against a kitchen window,
– my first clear memory of terror,
I kept secret, my intimations
I kept secret.
This winter I hung a grey and white stuffed
felt seagull from the cord of my window shade,
a reminder of good times by the sea,
of Chekhov and impossible love.
I took comfort from the gull, the graceful shape
sometimes lifted a wing in the drafty room.
Once when I looked at the gull I saw
through the window a living seagull glide
toward me then disappear, – what a rush of life!
I remember its hereness,
while inside the room
the senseless symbol
little more than a bedroom slipper
dangled on a string.
Beyond argument, my oldest emotion
hangs like a gull in the distant sky.
Eyes behind bars of mud and salt
see some dark thing below,
– my roof under the sea.
Only the sky is taken for granted.

A Poem & A Picture (Day 1)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

Hold your horses you little whipper-snappers. We’re not done yet.

It is still National Poetry Month and we are going to see this thing through!  I know some of you don’t really love poetry and there are others who think it’s too far over their head. That’s cool.  It may be wrong but it can still be cool. Then (you see me shaking my finger at you because you know who you are) there are a few of you who just want to play hooky and hang out in smoke filled bars until the end of April.  Well if that’s your attitude you can just order me a pomegranate martini by gosh!

This week we’re gonna mix it up a little. Not the drinks silly. For the next five days [if the good lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise] I’m going to pick a photo I’ve taken and find a poem to go with it. Oh this is going to be sooo fun!

 

I wonder if words can breathe life into a photograph? If so does it make the picture worth more than a thousand words? Let’s see.

Iris

by David St. John
There is a train inside this iris:
You think I’m crazy, & like to say boyish
& outrageous things. No, there is
A train inside this iris.
It’s a child’s finger bearded in black banners.
A single window like a child’s nail,
A darkened porthole lit by the white, angular face
Of an old woman, or perhaps the boy beside her in the stuffy,
Hot compartment. Her hair is silver, & sweeps
Back off her forehead, onto her cold and bruised shoulders.
The prairies fail along Chicago. Past the five
Lakes. Into the black woods of her New York; & as I bend
Close above the iris, I see the train
Drive deep into the damp heart of its stem, & the gravel
Of the garden path
Cracks under my feet as I walk this long corridor
Of elms, arched
Like the ceiling of a French railway pier where a boy
With pale curls holding
A fresh iris is waving goodbye to a grandmother, gazing
A long time
Into the flower, as if he were looking some great

Distance, or down an empty garden path & he believes a man
Is walking toward him, working
Dull shears in one hand; & now believe me: The train
Is gone. The old woman is dead, & the boy. The iris curls,
On its stalk, in the shade
Of those elms: Where something like the icy & bitter fragrance
In the wake of a woman who’s just swept past you on her way
Home
& you remain.

When Lust Looks Like Love

/ Janna Hill / 6 Comments

Joseph Rudyard Kipling
30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936

Kipling-wikimedia commons
Once upon a time hit and run sex was sooo romantic.

Rudy was too sophisticated for a one night stand but give him a sensuous landscape in the hills of India and lust looks a lot like love.Jakko Hill by Michael Gomes May 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 
A Ballade of Jakko Hill

One moment bid the horses wait,
Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and straight
You climbed a year ago with me.
Love came upon us suddenly
And loosed — an idle hour to kill —
A headless, armless armory
That smote us both on Jakko Hill.

Ah Heaven! we would wait and wait
Through Time and to Eternity!
Ah Heaven! we could conquer Fate
With more than Godlike constancy
I cut the date upon a tree —
Here stand the clumsy figures still:
“10-7-85, A.D.”
Damp with the mist of Jakko Hill.

What came of high resolve and great,
And until Death fidelity!
Whose horse is waiting at your gate?
Whose ‘rickshaw-wheels ride over me?
No Saint’s, I swear; and — let me see
To-night what names your programme fill —
We drift asunder merrily,
As drifts the mist on Jakko Hill.

L’ENVOI.
Princess, behold our ancient state
Has clean departed; and we see
‘Twas Idleness we took for Fate
That bound light bonds on you and me.
Amen! Here ends the comedy
Where it began in all good will;
Since Love and Leave together flee
As driven mist on Jakko Hill!

Emily’s Simplicity

/ Janna Hill / 4 Comments

Emily Dickinson

(December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886)
Today I thought I’d visit the modest rhymes and musings of sweet Emily Dickinson but then I changed my mind.

Not that I don’t adore Emily’s simplicity – we were like best friends for a long time. Did you know if she hadn’t died of kidney disease or heart failure she would have been 184 years old next month? We were going to go skydiving…

Okay, back to earth and the late Emily Dickinson.

Instead of sharing the standard fluffy stuff of hopes and dreams and sugary illusions of death she is known for I decided to show her darker side with this letter and poem to her sister in law Susan Huntington Dickinson.

I heard if you invert Em’s photo you’ll see that she actually has horns. [gasp! yikes! yee gads it’s true!]

She lived and died in Massachusetts ya know.

THE LETTER

Tuesday morning – [1854]
Sue – you can go or stay – There is but one alternative – We differ often lately, and this must be the last.
You need not fear to leave me lest I should be alone, for I often part with things I fancy I have loved, – sometimes to the grave, and sometimes to an oblivion rather bitterer than death – thus my heart bleeds so frequently that I shant mind the hemorrhage, and I can only add an agony to several previous ones, and at the end of day remark – a bubble burst!
Such incidents would grieve me when I was but a child, and perhaps I could have wept when little feet hard by mine, stood still in the coffin, but eyes grow dry sometimes, and hearts get crisp and cinder, and had as lief burn.
Sue – I have lived by this.
It is the lingering emblem of the Heaven I once dreamed, and though if this is taken, I shall remain alone, and though in that last day, the Jesus Christ you love, remark he does not know me – there is a darker spirit will not disown its child.
Few have been given me, and if I love them so, that for idolatry, they are removed from me – I simply murmur gone, and the billow dies away into the boundless blue, and no one knows but me, that one went down today. We have walked very pleasantly – Perhaps this is the point at which our paths diverge – then pass on singing Sue, and up the distant hill I journey on.

I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing –
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears –
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.

Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown –
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.

Fast in a safer hand
Held in a truer Land
Are mine –
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart
They’re thine.

In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
each little discord here
Removed.

Then will I not repine,
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.

E –

 * * *

For more information on the life of Emily Dickinson check out the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Mark Your Books (April is National Poetry Month)

/ Janna Hill / 5 Comments

 

IV+PPP BookmarkMark your calendars and your books because… [drum roll]

April is National Poetry Month!

Last years celebration was fun and I already have several hundred   in mind for this year. If you have one you’d like to share or see dissected let me know.

Dead or alive – no poet is off limits.

😉 🙂 😀

 

 

 

 

 

Not Quite Macabre

/ Janna Hill / 23 Comments

In response to the weekly photo challenge: Eerie

Give no heed to the Sasquatch and ignore the Chupacabra for they are plainly seen.

But be watchful of the light and mindful of the shade for there are dreadful things in between.

Switched at Birth & Writing for Children

/ Janna Hill / 14 Comments

Have you considered writing for children?

 

That is a question I have heard more than once and the answer is always yes. Yes indeed I have considered it but considering is a far cry from accomplishing.

I wrote a poem last year for my grandson when our fancy goldfish died because (as I explained to him) this sort of thing gets the creative juices flowing and writing can be very therapeutic.

Shubunkin

(From Interior Verse PLUS Pose Prose & Poems)

Little shubunkin all silver and pumpkin

with calico dotted on scales

You streak through the water

no teeter or totter fanning your cute tiny tale

You race and you turn but the water don’t churn

never so much as a swish

I’ll miss you shubunkin, your dashin’ and dunkin’

but oh what a sweet taco dish

I thought he would find it entertaining instead he cried and said “that’s not funny Nana and I don’t feel better.” Oops, my bad.

This same grandson loves the Skippyjon books by Judith Schachner so when he had finished mourning the goldfish he asked, “Can you write something like Skippyjon Jones and make him be a pirate?” I of course wanted to rectify the damage I had done so I quickly penned him another little poem.

Skippy Red

(From Short Stories& Such)

In the house where he lived void of laughter and kisses

In the room where he smoked and the little dog pisses

Where the ghost of a bloke stirs a foul reminiscence

Lies the frame of a maimed Skippy Red

…

Go down, go down poor Skippy Red

Alas, alas no water to tread

No ropes, no planks, no breaking of bread

In your world of endless abysses

…

Go on, go on let sleeping dogs lie

A new crib for you, twas a good day to die

Hoist a fresh cup, here’s spit in your eye

Abaddon is better off dead

…

Farewell, farewell Skippy Red

Well… Dang it!! I struck out again! Being scolded by a seven year old for saying piss is a shameful experience but at least he didn’t cry.

I wanted to impress him with my literary accomplishments be a good grandmother so I scribbled a few more verses. Judging from the look on his face each one was worse than the one before so after a few hours I untied him. He rubbed his little wrists, shook his head and walked away. At that point I had to be honest with myself and admit …

My grandson may have been switched at birth.