Author: Katherine

Poetry writer and author

What is poetry,anyway

photo1137

 

http://www.poetry.org/whatis.htm

“What is generally accepted as “great” poetry is debatable in many cases. “Great” poetry usually follows the characteristics listed above, but it is also set apart by its complexity and sophistication. “Great” poetry generally captures images vividly and in an original, refreshing way, while weaving together an intricate combination of elements like theme tension, complex emotion, and profound reflective thought. For examples of what is considered “great” poetry, visit the Pulitzer prize and Nobel prize sections for poetry.

The Greek verb ποιεω [poiéo (= I make or create)], gave rise to three words:ποιητης [poiet?s (= the one who creates)], ποιησις [poíesis (= the act of creation)] and ποιημα [poíema (= the thing created)]. From these we get three English words: poet (the creator), poesy (the creation) and poem (the created). A poet is therefore one who creates and poetry is what the poet creates. The underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon. For example, in Anglo-Saxon a poet is a scop (shaper or maker) and in Scots makar.”

 

 

The history and description of proverbs

IMG_0038

 

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/proverb-poets-glossary

 

’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
You will never plough a field if you only turn it over in your mind. Irish Proverb

Arabic Proverb: An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.

Read more at http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-proverbs.html#bozb62A12bZOdkbo.99

Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes.” English proverb

 

 

 

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

kesome realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster

The sin a child is born to is not hers

The sin a child is born  to is not hers;
For mother’s body’s sacred  with its grace.
The sin a child is born to,it is ours

Yet ,at a baptism will the priest declare:
Out ye demons,leave this infant’s space.
The sin a child is born  to is not hers

 
The infant  naturally speaks in tongues of fire.
The Spirit moves eternal in its trace
The sin a child is born to,it is ours

The path we learn to walk ‘s already there
The rules  and laws were written with no haste
The sin  a child is born to is not hers

A child born now  is marked by Iraq War
A child born now, in paranoia’s traced.
The sin a child is born to,it is ours

Oh,look upon the infant’s holy face
Beatific vision is there  traced
The sin a child is born  to is not hers
The sin a child is born to,it is ours

 

 

 

I have sifted earth

I have walked the silent paths of grief
Sunless,dreary,cold and all alone.
I have slept on beds of winter leaves.

I know that death’s an avaricious thief.
Although my heart weeps and my joy has gone.
I have never felt I was deceived.

I have learned that human life is brief.
I have learned by sorrow we’re undone.
I have sifted earth and what’s beneath.

I felt dark emotions in me seethe
While I have been mocked by glaring sun.
I have learned the geography of grief.

I wait in silence for this life to cease
Or will a fluttering wing make chaos come,
Change my heart and give me a fresh lease?

Unconsoled grief can make us dumb
Into our hearts, we drag the ice that numbs
I have walked the silent paths of grief
I have made my bed on winter leaves.

The Difference Between Lack and Absence by Annie Diamond

Both mean not having, but one means missing too.
Absence can be welcome, but lack implies desire—
the absence of some noise, a lack of you

might be a good example. And it’s true
that lack makes judgment, means that we require
the thing that’s gone (a constant aching, too)

while absence just reports; we can make do
with smaller things; it doesn’t sound so dire.
Who needs the noise? (But I need you.)

Absence lets us start anew,
while lacking keeps us laced to its dark pyre.
Both are not having, but one is missing too,

and wanting nothing more than to undo
whatever sins caused lacking to transpire.
The noise is done, and so, I guess, are you

with me. In verse I struggle to subdue
my restless heart. (The lacking makes me tired.)
Both mean not having; one means missing too—
the absence of some noise, a lack of you.

Annie Diamond is a student at Barnard College, a private women’s liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University. She has also studied abroad at Mansfield College, one of the constituent colleges of Oxford University in England. She recently completed her sophomore year at Barnard College, where she studies English and creative writing. Her work has been published in Apt, Avatar Review, Clockwise Cat, The Columbia Review and The Lyric. She was awarded first prize in The Lyric‘s College Poetry Contest for her villanelle “The Difference Between Lack and Absence.” The same poem later won the Lyric Memorial Prize and was named the best poem to appear in The Lyric for the year 2013. Her favorite writing spot is the Hungarian Pastry Shop on New York City’s 111th Street, and her number one life ambition is to appear on Jeopardy.

“It was my honor and pleasure to judge The Lyric‘s yearly and quarterly awards. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my favorite poem for the year 2013 was written by a college student, Annie Diamond. I believe she has a very bright future.”—Michael R. Burch

Acquainted With The Night by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost’s “Acquainted With The Night” is more of a sonnet than a villanelle, but it is a marvellous poem with a killer opening line that doubles as a killer closing line.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night – Poem by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

Form: Villanelle

Bother me no more

 

 No sight is like the rising of sun
When promises of dreams seem  clear and still
My heart  though sore ,can fancy  love has come
Without hard times and exercise of will.

No morning is without new dawn of hope
When all our conflicts shall be put aside.
Imagination is  far flung in scope,
Never  noting dreams may fraughtly lie.

No love is like my long lost love for you
Once known,once felt,it settles in the heart.
Yet I do believe love can be found anew
But only when the lost  true love  departs.

So bother me no more with reveried bliss.
Go leave me with my  life,though all’s amiss

Joy will return one day

6419415_506e1f1602_m

 Some days are sad and blue

And then we feel lonely too;
Or we cause rifts.

Some days are doldrum days.
Some days are like bad plays.
Not such a gift.

Most days have joyful parts.
Most days we lift our hearts.
They pass all too swift.

Some days love speaks to me.
Some days I feel so free.
I love my craft.

Life is a patterned weave.
Love helps us when we grieve.
Love is a raft.

See how the sun comes back.
See how light fills the gaps..
Some days we laugh.

Weep now and I’ll weep with you.
I have known sorrow too.
Yet sorrow will pass.

Joy is not far away.
Joy will return one day….
With life’s arts and crafts

Chekhov improves your social skills but only if you read him!

 painted-2-my-books-and-home-010
Apparently reading high brow novels increases your empathy and understanding of others more than reading chick lit or nonfiction does.

Please click on “novels”above

Related articles

Choosing Chekhov over chick-lit improves your people skills (telegraph.co.uk)

Scientists recommend Chekhov… (shannonturlington.com)

I like my reading just a little on the Aspergery side* (isteve.blogspot.com)

Researchers advise reading Chekhov to improve social skills (voiceofrussia.com)

Felicitous

 MW Word of the Day : July 5, 2016

Felicitous

Definition

1 : very well suited or expressed : apt

2 : pleasant, delightful

Examples

The warm air and clear, dark skies made for felicitous conditions for the fireworks show.

“Experience has been instructive to Moulder, who has learned that churches have been particularly felicitous spaces. Granted, the general public may associate the music with nightclubs and sensuality, but jazz has deep roots in the church that flowered in the form of works such as John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’….” — Howard Reich, The Chicago Tribune, 3 Mar. 2016

Did You Know?

The adjective felicitous has been a part of our language since the late 18th century, but felicity, the noun meaning “great happiness,” and later, “aptness,” was around even in Middle English (as felicite, a borrowing from Anglo-French). Both words ultimately derive from the Latin adjective felix, meaning “fruitful” or “happy.” The connection between happy and felicitous continues today in that both words can mean “notably fitting, effective, or well adapted.” Happy typically suggests what is effectively or successfully appropriate (as in “a happy choice of words”), and felicitous often implies an aptness that is opportune, telling, or graceful (as in “a felicitous phrase”).

I confess

I love you more than marmalade
I love you more than jam
I love you more than earl grey tea
I love you as you am.

I love you in the living room
I love you in the bed
I love you  in the bus shelter
I love you just instead.

I love you in your underwear
I love you when you’re  dressed
I love you in  that old grey coat
I love  you ,I confess.

A changed letter

When I leave the television on
Without the sound
On the drama channel
I see the same actors
Rotating through their many  roles
The handsome  yet slightly too
So probably evil
The perfect,so good.
In different garments they make a  less rich world
That anyone might imagine.
A changed letter,a meaning leaps.
A scream it’s the adverts  now.
I’m not even looking
Because I knew it all
From the first moment you spoke
But you were him then
Yet I was me.

I call it stranger

The word is  right yet destitute,
Does not fit the sentence
Has no place.
The word is  spoken rarely with no pleasure
Is not welcome where it reaches
Has no anchor.
It has no companions,hence no prosody.
Can’t be knitted;
Has no mooring.
The word is dying. I say it never lived;
Cannot be mentioned,
Creates no order.
The word is made from letters
Yet  they congeal and kill
Ironically ,some call it liver.
I call it stranger.

Yet with your eyes you made a final call

The pattern of your speech is in my ear
Although I do not hear  you speak  out loud
Shall I say ear or is it heart that bears
The form   that  made  your speech have its right sound?

Wherever in myself I find your trace
I long to keep it even when I grieve.
As though, because I do not see your face,
I never wish by sound to be deceived.

And at the end you did not speak at all
Like the baby  while inside its  nest.
Yet with your eyes you made a final call
As contented as a baby   joined to breast.

And so you went, but left your patterns here.
So with  fine prosody, I feel you near

 

Prosody

From google
Prosody
ˈprɒsədi/
noun
noun: prosody; plural noun: prosodies
  1. 1.
    the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry.
    “the translator is not obliged to reproduce the prosody of the original”
    • the theory or study of prosody.
      “a general theory of prosody”
  2. 2.
    the patterns of stress and intonation in a language.
    “the salience of prosody in child language acquisition”
Origin
late 15th century: from Latin prosodia ‘accent of a syllable’, from Greek prosōidia ‘song sung to music, tone of a syllable’, from pros ‘towards’ + ōidē ‘song’.

Learning the sonnet

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/articles/detail/70051
A history and how-to guide to the famous form
BY RACHEL RICHARDSON

The sonnet, one of the oldest, strictest, and most enduring poetic forms, comes from the Italian word sonetto, meaning “little song.” Its origins date to the thirteenth century, to the Italian court. Giacomo de Lentini is credited with its invention, though Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) was its most famous early practitioner. The form was adopted and enthusiastically embraced by the English in the Elizabethan period, most notably byShakespeare, who gave it the structure we commonly think of today: 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter.

Its tight rhyme scheme and metrical regularity emphasize its musicality, but the sonnet is also thought of as the first poetic form that was intended to be read silently, as opposed to performed and shared: it is “the first lyric of self-consciousness, or of the self in conflict,” according to Paul Oppenheimer in The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet (1989). As such, the form consists of two parts, often called the proposition and resolution. Dividing them is the volta, or turn. Thus, a problem or question is often presented in the first section of a sonnet and then, via the pivot made by the turn, resolved or given new perspective in the second.

I haunt my familiar spaces

The shops  look all the same to me.
plastic  human models with no heads
are placed in the windows
showing us how we might look
if we bought the latest fashions.

People walk, by dropping paper and cans
some look at me,most don’t
I’m invisible now ,I’m  a ghost.
I haunt my familiar spaces
the library green and the path by the pond

The phone shops tempt us with larg notices:
Only £39 per month for the best
the latest,the new maps and locations
faster access to email and photos.
Look here I am,another selfie.

The only beauty is a pigeon in the sun
and a black man with gentle,luminous eyes
smiling at me as he sweeps away the paper
tossed down by the blinded people
who jabber beside the coffee shop.

 

 

The pain and value of knowing we do wrong

 

I have been  wondering why the term sin has almost died out in our language and I think  for many of us who were brought up in a very strict version of Christianity it became too painful to think about it.We were made to feel ashamed  of our failures so much so that we abandon the whole idea of sin.We don’t know as children that it is very difficult to live without making mistakes and our emotions run away with us so that we hurt other children….But now looking at the world as it is,maybe it would be better of more adults admitted making dreadful mistakes.And we know  free will may not be as free as we think.But if we accept we do sin then it makes us more tolerant of others around us…If we were perfect it might make us self righteous and judgemental which to me seems a perversion of religion.Yet this is happening  in the world today.

The three hardest acts

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
I feel this is important now,that we don’t see the people who voted the “wrong ” way
as bad,evil,unforgiveable.The only obvious thing is how can people not find out what the EU is until after they vote to leave it?I believe it was really a vote of no confidence in the government..But we all have to live together and also we need to stop the new increase in racism and how people feel they can say anything at all.

Politeness,punctation,division

Politeness is considered archaic
Old men, in their suits, and ties say it
Distinctions are  made,
So life can be played.
And while we live let us not be prosaic..

Punctuation  fills a similar need
Sentences ,syntax ,they plead
Of course we may  lose it
Which, generally, proves it.
Or  sentences  anaemically bleed.

When visitors call   for their tea
Then fruitcake divided  shall be.
We share what we  love
As sun shines from above.
Then five thousand shall eat,we shall see,

Archaic

archaic
ɑːˈkeɪɪk/
adjective
adjective: archaic
  1. very old or old-fashioned.
    “prisons are run on archaic methods”
    Elderly-Peoplesynonyms: obsolete, obsolescent, out of date, anachronistic, old-fashioned, outmoded, behind the times,bygone, antiquated, antique, superannuated, antediluvian, past its prime, having seen better days, olde worlde, old-fangled; More
    antonyms:blogs-9-funny-indian-road-signs new, modern
    • (of a word or a style of language) no longer in everyday use but sometimes used to impart an old-fashioned flavour.
      “a term with a rather archaic ring to it”
    • of an early period of art or culture, especially the 7th–6th centuries BC in Greece.
      “the archaic temple at Corinth”
Origin
mid 19th century: from French archaïque, from Greek arkhaikos, from arkhaios, from arkhē ‘beginning’.

Strange

strange
streɪn(d)ʒ/
adjective
adjective: strange; comparative adjective: stranger; superlative adjective: strangest
  1. 1.
    unusual or surprising; difficult to understand or explain.
    “children have some strange ideas”
    Cameron defends Kelly in school row
    Leader of the Conservative party David Cameron listens to constituents of Reading East talking about the cost of living, in Cafe Giardino, in the Oracle shopping centre, Reading.

    synonyms:

    		 unusual, odd, curious, peculiar, funny, bizarre, weird, uncanny, queer, unexpected,unfamiliar, abnormal, atypical, anomalous, untypical, different, out of the ordinary, out of the way, extraordinary, remarkable, puzzling, mystifying, mysterious, perplexing, baffling,unaccountable, inexplicable, incongruous, uncommon, irregular, singular, deviant, aberrant,freak, freakish, surreal; More
    antonyms: ordinary, usual, normal, conventional
  2. 2.
    not previously visited, seen, or encountered; unfamiliar or alien.
    “she was lost in a strange country”
    synonyms:920mini-08 unfamiliar, unknown, new, alien, previously unencountered

    “when children visit a strange house, they are often a little shy”
    antonyms: familiar
    • archaic
      unaccustomed to or unfamiliar with.
      “I am strange to the work”
  3. 3.
    PHYSICS
    (of a subatomic particle) having a non-zero value for strangeness.
Origin
Middle English: shortening of Old French estrange, from Latin extraneus ‘external, strange’.

Appearances, both natural and contrived  

How gently,sweetly softly flowers pose,
Carnation,orchid ,daffodil and rose.
For their intricate petals form a shield
Yet bees with striped force shall make them yield.
Appearances,both natural and contrived,
Mixed with the wiles of human nature thrive.
As knowing not, we pluck the apple rare
And bite its flesh,with teeth we have to bare.
We too deceive the innocent who pass
Not seeing watchers hid behind the glass.
The windows break,the deep earth quakes;
Seized is the maiden ,he  her virtue takes.
Beneath the surface,force and fierceness thrive.
What fearsome, burning God enjoys our lives?