Stanza Saturday (10)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

"Remembering"

By Matthew Shenoda

From: Somewhere Else

The mason came

from Pharaoh's garden

preparing to erect a tomb,

calling upon grace

he cleansed his hands

and whispered:

From this place

I will shape

the memories of inevitable generations

                              &

in this place will they be remembered.

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^

Stanza Saturday (9)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

"Hades to Persephone"

By Arnold Asrelsky

From Pantheon and Other Poems

Yes, my brothers made the better bargain.

Zeus wove his words and I was caught again

He to peaks and wide sky and the other

to sea-roads where the seal and porpoise play.

The dim one to the darkness he deserved,

and armies of pale twittering ghosts.

They had Lethe, at least, and knew no loss.

Who could abide the dark stale air?  The dead

only, so mole took his black chariot

to Sicily to see again the sun.

Oh, that hot sun on my flesh, the warm air

in my lungs, flowery fields, grass beneath,

and in their midst, the fairest of all, you.

Field, flower, sun, all faded into you.

Should I have said, "Oh fair, lovely maiden,

I am lord of death: come to my kingdom,

be my sun and field and flower forever;

I will make you the queen of the shadows

of corpses"? No talker I, ever, less then.

Yes, I ravished you, but first you did me.

And when I pressed you to me, and you scorched

me like the sun, hot body against mine,

no words in my strangled throat but whimpers,

no thought in an empty head but the feel

of you, of you shuddering against me.

My heart, pounding as if it would burst,

opened a road to Hades and took you,

a terrified, shrieking child pressed against

a wall to escape the loathsome one who

had done this, and stung me, unaccustomed,

into honeyed words to soothe, make my suit,

and did, oh, miracle, did--and you sat

at this table we sit at now. I cut

the pomegranate you at first refused,

and each day cut again, refused again.

One day you looked into my sad face;

I saw, like a sun in this dark, dead land,

the hint of  pity in your eyes, and my tears

wet my cheek. And when I took your small hand

in mind, it did not move. And now you smile

as you did then, at last, and shyly took

the seeds, and now tears again on my cheek

as you draw my head to your breast, and I,

having told you the tale you love to hear,

embrace and lift you again from this table. 

Tomorrow to my sister and glad earth,

but tonight to our couch, my queen, my love.

My influence for this poem definitely stems from what I'm currently reading.  I have the perfect image to match the poem, but I think it should be shared here.

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^

Stanza Saturday (8)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

 "Endless Grasses"

By Jessie Haas

From Hoofprints: Horse Poems

We are galloping this sea of grass,

Sunrise to sunset, sunrise to sunset.

No sound but our breath,

No sound by our galloping.

No sound but the wind, and the tall grass shhhing.

The sky is broad and blue and endless.

Endless are the grasses.

We crossed new land where none had been before,

Land from the sea, land between the seas.

Now on and on the grass stretches.

On stretch the herds.

Mammoth and reindeer, bison and rhino,

And horses.

Our hooves beat the earth-drum.

Our voices speak.

Doe to her fawn.

Cow to her calf.

Mare to her foal.

What poem would you like to share today?

Special Side Dish: Be sure to check out the giveaway for Maria Snyder's Inside Out at I Just Wanna Sit Here and Read!

Stanza Saturday (7)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

"After Apple-Picking"

By Robert Frost

From: The Poetry of Robert Frost - The Collected Poems

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there maybe two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^

Stanza Saturday (6)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

A Poem

By Emily Dickinson

From For Love of Her

These are the days when Birds come back -

A very few - a Bird or two -

To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume

The old - old sophistries of June - 

A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee - 

Almost thy plausibility

Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear -

And softly thro' the altered air

Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh Sacrament of summer days,

Oh Last Communion in the Haze -

Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake -

Thy consecrated bread to take

And thine immortal wine!

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^

Stanza Saturday (5)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

"The Snowy Morning"
By Basho
From Classic Haiku: An Anthology of Poems by Basho and His Followers


Ah! on the snowy morning, 
We gaze even at horses.


In Japanese:


"Yuki no Asa"

                                      Uma wo sae

Nagamuru yuki no

                                                                                 Ashita kana

I really love this commercial and thought it appropriate for today's Haiku.

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^

Stanza Saturday (4)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

"The Making of a Unicorn"

By Jane Yolen

From Here There Be Unicorns

Take this bone, this ivory,

This slender pyramid, this spear,

This walking stick, this cornucopia,

This twisted instrument of fear,

This mammoth tusk, this pearly thorn,

This mythic spike, this maiden's bier,

This denticle, this rib of time,

This alabaster harrow--here

We start the beast, we give it name,

That world will never be the same.

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^

Stanza Saturday (3)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

"The Snow King"

By Rita Dove

From: Selected Poems

In a far far land where men are men

And women are sun and sky,

The snow king paces. And light throws

A gold patina on the white spaces

Where sparrows lie frozen in hallways.

And he weeps for the sparrows, their clumped feathers:

Where is the summer that lasts forever,

The night as soft as antelope eyes?

The snow king roams the lime-filled spaces,

His cracked heart a slow fire, a garnet.

I find this poem a bit ironic since in my state, summer does seem to last forever.  It doesn't seem a place that the snow king would frequent, though his visits do happen on occasion.  Also, we have an abundance of sparrows here.

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^

Stanza Saturday (2)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly post to share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is recommended by a friend at work who follows my blog.

"Sasquatch"

By Timothy Kercher

From Fringe Magazine

Set up the yard with boxwood shrubs
& butterfly bushes. Don’t mow the grass.

Take down your fence if you have one.

Make sure your lawn chairs are set

to recline. Try to make yourself

approachable as you design your yard.

Be subtle enough in movement that dogs

don’t bark, that stray cats rub

against your pant leg and purr.

Make it so your presence puts a polar bear

to sleep. Be as quiet as a colony

of ants. Be the lawn

chair in your yard. Be the shrub. Be the bush

or butterfly and don’t make a sound.

Don’t be frightened at the size

of its feet. Don’t snap a photo.

Don’t move an inch. Be the grass.

Be the air and the breeze. When you feel

you’ve done all you can,

be a shadow, be what it’s like to hide behind

what’s already hidden. When you’ve done this,

when you think you are truly ready, stop thinking,

and right at this point—become what

trusts itself enough to be seen.

What poem would you like to share today? ^_^

Stanza Saturday (1)

Stanza Saturday is a new weekly meme where we share poetry from either a home collection or from the library.  Find a book of poems, any poet will do, and open up to a random page and post the first poem you see.  If the poem is rather lengthy, feel free to post just the first stanza and be sure to include the poem's title, the book's title, and the poet. ^_^

This week's poem is:

"Before the Rain"
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
From Random House Treasury of Year-Round Poems


We knew it would rain, for all the morn
   A spirit on slender ropes of mist
Was lowering its golden buckets down
   Into the vapory amethyst.

Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens--
   Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers,
Dipping the jewels out of the sea,
   To sprinkle them over the land in showers.

We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
   The white of their leaves, the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now
   Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!

What poem or stanza do you want to share today? ^_^

A Question for my Wonderful Readers

In the library, everyone has two sections of the collection to shelf-read, basically go through and make sure all the books are in proper order and neatly placed on the shelves.  One of my sections includes the poetry books, and it just looks as though they haven't been touched since we opened last year.  So my thought is how would my fine readers feel about a "Stanza Saturday?"  I would select a random poetry book from the shelf, open the book, and share the first poem or stanza depending on length.  And I invite all of you to do the same if you're a lover of poetry. ^_^  It can be any type of poetry whether sonnet or haiku or even an epic poem's stanza.  Let me know your thoughts and tell me who your favorite poet is!  Btw, one of my favorite poets is Basho as shown below.

What do y'all think about a "Stanza Saturday" weekly posting?