Hello to you and good-bye to April (and to Poetry Month). In Chicago April has been days of sun and spring temperatures as well as days of snow (and rain and rain that became snow). Embodying the contradictory emotions and weathers of April are these two poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. They also show how poetry can be about divergent subjects. Spring poems often celebrate rebirth and joy but not these two poems. Hope you are celebrating Spring in your own way. I’ll … [Read more...]
Prompts and ponies
Hey there -- it's Poetry Month! Are you looking for inspiration? Consider these sites that will help if you have writer's block. Karen Craigo's Better View of the Moon has been featuring prompts all month; when it is not Poetry Month, Karen writes about other topics of interest to writers. Marty McConnell's Fierce Voice, which features specific prompts throughout the year. Sign up for the mailing list and inspiration will be sent right to your mailbox. If you are … [Read more...]
April 1: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Daffodil
It's April Fools Day (so beware) and it's the first day of Poetry Month. To commemorate the two, I have mashed up two well-known poems (William Wordworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird) with some of my own words to create a daffy poem. Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Daffodil I After the gray snow melts, The only moving thing: A host of daffodils. II I was of two minds, Wandering … [Read more...]
T. S. Eliot
April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, T. S. Eliot, from The Wasteland … [Read more...]