The sky is stark, the air is cool and still
The black cat’s run, the birds unfold all day
I sit down here and with my dark  heart pray
Ye cast o’ foolish thoughts, you raped my will.
We’ve each enraged the bureaucratic mill.
Oh frigid purse, I never meant to pay!
The sky ‘s a-spark, the air is warm and shrill
The saturnine demoted knelled their way
With this feathered pounce, my sample quill,
I cite the cheque and date it for next May.
Oh, tit for cat, the tiger’s bed ‘s astray.
Yer life is settled by a harlot’s will
The sky ‘s a shark, the air is sharper still.

https://theconversation.com/making-poetry-their-own-the-evolution-of-poetry-education-74671

 

Extract:

In the mid-20th century, it became less important for schools to make citizens or teach English language through memorized lines. Instead, poetry in schools separated into two strands: “serious poetry” and “verse.” Serious poetry was studied; it was officially sanctioned, used to teach literary elements like iambic pentameter, rhymed couplets, metaphor and alliteration. Verse, on the other hand, was unsanctioned – playful, irreverent and sometimes offensive. It was embraced by children for the sake of pleasure and delight.

By the late 20th century, classrooms and curricula began to value the sciences over literary expression and information and technology over art. The study of any poetry – serious or not – became marginalized, seldom occurring except in AP courses preparing students for college literature study.

Poetry in the classroom today

Though the late 20th century saw a decline in the study of poetry in schools, recent decades have seen an upsurge in poetry that is more relevant and more accessible to young people.

For instance, if in the past, schoolchildren learned poems written almost exclusively by white men glorifying a sanitized version of American history, recently students have begun to read poems by poets who represent racial, ethnic, cultural or religious diversity as part of their heritage. This represents a major development in the world of poetry for children.

The alchemist can turn base  metal  gold
The symbol of salvation caught in words,
The holy fires burn acid, ice and cold

We need an aid in  holding firm our souls
Until the  still, small  voice  speaks and is heard
The alchemist can turn base  metal  gold

There is another kind of fire, I have been told
Based on rage and anger and hot words
The holy fires burn acid, ice and cold

Yet as we see our own misdeeds unfold
We see more gently, envy is less stirred
The alchemist can turn base  metal  gold

Noone’s without sin when souls are bared
I and You can bring forth that Love Third
The holy fires burn acid, ice and cold

Can we look on God, what human dares?
Yet  our ordeal by fire is what we share.
The alchemist can turn base  metal  gold
The holy fires burn acid, ice and cold

A lost and cold old cat  sleeps  as I write
Giving  yelps  of  pleasure as he dreams
I welcome such a  presence in the night

I feel less defenceless in daylight
Without a self, the mind rotates its screens
A lost and cold old cat  sleeps  as I write

What gives brazen images their might,
For like old demons, unknown faces  scream?
I welcome  a  beast’s presence in the night

Anxious, we confront a judge and court
Like children pulled from bed to angry blame
Still a  lost, cold cat  sleeps  as I write

When did we commit our crimes of hate?
Are not all us humans somehow lamed?
We welcome  a  kind presence in the night

Sins of hate and envy run like streams
Yet in the midst of blackness,brightness gleams
A lost and cold old cat  sleeps  as I write
I welcome his warm  presence in the night

 

“Most importantly, the example shows that we cannot draw a sharp boundary to distinguish some language as intrinsically poetic.  We can apply our poetic attention to commonplace language, and thereby give that language unexpected depth and importance.  Indeed, poets such as William Carlos Williams purposefully challenge us to extend our sensibilities and find the poetry in everyday language, whenever they construct poems with familiar vocabulary and cadence.

How do we cultivate the poetic imagination?  We must attune ourselves, however we see fit, to the features we notice in a poem, as a prompt to experience its language more deeply.  This search for significance can target any noticeable feature of the poem—regardless of the meaning, if any, the feature might literally encode. We can listen to the sounds and rhythm of the poem. We can feel its syntax and structure. We can even attend to its visual shape and layout before us, as the poet e. e. cummings often invited his readers to do.

However, even when we explore the familiar domains of sound, meter, rhyme and line, we must be prepared to explore the variable and open-ended significance of each observation.  We saw, for example, the different effects of lineation in the Missed Connections poem.  There is no one meaning or effect for parsing lines; for annotating lines; or in juxtaposing the two. What we find in all these cases is just a formal contrast, an echo of further differences, which we can appreciate more deeply only by probing the poem further. This variability underscores the creativity poets and readers bring to their art.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201607/5-reasons-we-tell-people-more-we-should

Ink and tea by Katherine

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/poetry-and-ruthless-caree_n_490451.html

 

“No, writing great poems is not a prerequisite to being a famous poet. It might be a hindrance. Write one great poem and people will say, “Why are all of that poet’s other poems not as good as the great poem?” Write two great poems and they’ll say, “Fluke! Look at these other 1,000 very ordinary poems!” And so on. There’s no pleasing these haters. That is why you must destroy them with your steady success: that ever-spinning blade that cracks the ice. Be cautious before all else! Caution leads to eventual greatness.

How can you become the most important poet in America by tomorrow? It’s not as hard as you think. Poets used to have to pass out poetry-reading flyers by hand, one at a time, or publish poems one at a time in magazines, slowly building a career. But technology has changed all that. Now you can spam every poet in America with every new poem. Start a fan page for yourself and your books on Facebook. Blog about your every thought—they don’t even have to be astute thoughts. Most poets in America have boring office jobs in which they are screwing around on the Internet most of the time. Just mention the names of as many contemporary poets as you can in all your blog posts. You will catch all the self-googlers self-googling. Self-promotion is the only kind of promotion left. Without poetry reviewers to rely on, only you can spread the word about your product. And if you spread it suddenly, relentlessly, brutally, then you’ll have name recognition from here to Hawaii . . . and that’s all you need, because there are two kinds of poets: those you’ve heard of and those you haven’t. Almost all of us fall into the latter category, but not you! If only you take my advice.”
Sylvia Plath,Elizabeth Bishop,W H Auden,Anne Sexton,Shakespeare,Katherine Smith,W B Yeats, James Joyce

It took me 8 hours to do this.

Love thinking about you.

Love,thinking about you.

Love thinking,about you……

Thinking about you,love.

Thinking love about you.

You, thinking about love.

You thinking about love?

You love thinking about….

You about,thinking love?

About you,love,thinking.

About thinking,love you.

About.com,Love Thinking

Love About.com, Thinking

Thinking,love About.com.

Come love,stop thinking.

How come there’s love about?

Think about it

My husband has a rubber face,
He’s a wonder of the human race.
Some men have faces fixed and set;
My husband’s face is not like that.

He imitates our politicians,
Just like Rory Bremner can.
Though he has no wig or hair piece,
He can look like anyone.

Some nights I waken myself laughing
While I am in deep, sound sleep.
I am dreaming of his mobile features,
Contorted to a different shape.

He is skilled at telling jokes.
And he loves a good cartoon.
If I am feeling flu style blueness
He can get me up again.

He has a rather noble visage.
He gets attention he abhors.
In the bar on King’s Cross Station—
I was asked was he a Lord!

He’s a Lord of Fun and Humour.
He’s a Lord at Listening Well.
He’s unique, but so are you,
And all creatures that on earth do dwell

The sea has frozen off the Isle of Wight
So we don’t  need boats to get across
It’s just that there’s a shortage of street lights.

In the day time it’s been very bright
And on a cold,cold sea there is no moss
The sea has frozen off the Isle of Wight

There is a problem on a moonless night
Walking on the sea with thick ground frost
Because there’s a dearth of  yellow neon lights.

And there are no cafes  for a bite
I got a  dreadful feeling,I am lost
The sea has frozen off the Isle of Wight

My wellingtons  have turned a dirty white
Walking free, the fresh  air is a feast
It’s just that there’s a shortage of street lights.

My face with vaseline I have well greased
On a lead I have my wildebeeste
The sea has frozen round the Isle of Wight
Why are there no glaring neon lights.?