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Life on the Deckle Edge

Poetry Friday - Welcome, November - and... Influencers!

(Link in process!) 

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers -- Happy November!  (I know - I can't believe it either....)

 

While away last week during my annual crazy stretch of author school visits in the Atlanta area, I got to catch up with a dear and wonderful author friend of mine. A couple of years ago, I think it was, she introduced me to the term "influencer" re. social media.  Her very creative daughter, a young mom, was working at home as an Instagram influencer.  (If I understand it right, some folks with an artistic eye and savvy business sense - and with lots of follwers - are compensated by companies for featuring their products in enticing lifestyle shots.)

 

I've heard the phrase quite a lot since that conversation, also because I have a 20-something-year-old daughter myself who follows a couple of these accounts.

 

Influence is a term and idea we could discuss over coffee or tea, and I think we'd have to refill the cups more than once. As we turn the corner toward the end of this year and the beginning of a new one - an election year - I've been pondering getting more involved than I usually do. (At least after the holiday glitter and dust settle. I've now switched gears into 'happily frenzied mode' with my art business for the next several weeks.)  

 

Anyway, I've been given the contact information for a local person helping with the South Carolina campaign effort for a presidential candidate I admire, and I hope to reach out and be a tad useful in the new year.  

 

Election Day for this year is this coming Tuesday, Nov. 5.  Hence, my sharing the little magnet above (the gloss is still drying), made with a commemorative US postage stamp issued in 1968 - "Register & Vote."  I am in love with the typeface on this stamp, and that glorious weathervane eagle.  Probably some glass cab jewelry and bookmarks will happen, too.... ;0)

 

Here's a short poem for pondering, written by 19th-Century theologian and hymn writer Frederick William Faber, found in one of the delightful Victorian books in my studio stash, Golden Thoughts on Mother, Home and Heaven from Poetic and Prose Literature of All Ages and All Lands (Gotta love those Victorian titles!), New York:  E. B. Treat, 1879.

 

 

Power of Influence

 

by F. W. Faber

 

Our many deeds, the thoughts that we have thought, 

They go out from us thronging every hour;

And in them all is folded up a power

That on the earth doth move them to and fro;

And mighty are the marvels they have wrought,

In hearts we know not, and may never know.

 

 

Poetry Friday is ALWAYS a good influence on me!  So is today's host. For the Roundup, move thyself over to The Opposite of Indifference, where the ever-creative and ever-thoughtful Tabatha always inspires. 

 

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Poetry Friday - A Little 'Grave' Poetry...



Greetings, Poetry (& Halloween) Lovers!

 

To celebrate this particular season of the year (my favorite), I thought a little 'grave' poetry was in order.  So here is something by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894):

 

 

Requiem
 
Under the wide and starry sky,
    Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
    And I laid me down with a will.

 

This be the verse you grave for me:
    Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
    And the hunter home from the hill.

 

 

Lilting and lovely for a weighty subject, isn't it? (Learn more about RLS here.)

 

This poem was penned in 1890, and our dear poet requested it be inscribed on his tombstone.  On December 3, 1894, Stevenson collapsed and died, possibly suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. Born in Edinburgh, he had traveled quite a bit and had moved his family to Samoa four or five years before his death.  He is buried in a tomb at Mt. Vaea, where he had built a beautiful estate, and the poem is indeed inscribed there.  

  

At this online site of the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum there, you can peek into the rooms of the mansion he built (restored after storm damage in the 1990s), enjoy the lush vistas, and see the tomb upon which those lines above are inscribed. 

 

[Photo/studio aside...  Every day or two this month I've been posting "October Offerings" on my artsylettersgifts Instagram, - & would love some more followers!  The bookmark featured with Stevenson's poem above includes a snippet of a Victorian illustration from 1869, when our poet would have been 19 years old. :0)  ]

 

And speaking of beautiful people with South Pacific connections, our one and only Jama is rounding up Poetry Friday this week at Jama's Alphabet Soup!  I'm sure Mr. Cornelius is helping. I recently purchased her Hawai'ian story, THE WOMAN IN THE MOON, simply because I didn't have it, and I love folktales!  Here's a link to Jama's Amazon page in case you need a copy of DUMPLING SOUP or TRUMAN'S ANT FARM.  Jama's writing in any form is timeless!

 

Note: After our 35th Furman reunion this weekend (!)  I'll be frolicking/working hard just north of Atlanta doing author school visits for Cobb EMC/Gas South's Literacy Week. So this post will still be up next Friday.  The host for Poetry Friday NEXT week will be the lovely Karen Edmisten.  I hope to catch up on my own Poetry Friday rounding/reading during downtime in the hotel next week! :0) 

Thanks for coming by. 

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Poetry Friday - 'Coupla Recent HSA Haiku

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!

 

This week I'm in with a couple of recent published haiku, both from the Haiku Society of America, The Members' Anthology for 2019 and the hot-off-the-press Autumn issue of Frogpond.  I thought both covers were particularly striking, so they are pictured above.  Frogpond features cover art by Gretchn Targee, and the Anthology cover features a photo by John L. Matthews.  (I like the Anthology's title this year, too - A Moment's Longing.)

 

Both are full of great poems!  I'm honored as always to have my haiku included. 

 

  

 

sorting darks and lights

my love note

in his pocket

 

 

©Robyn Hood Black.  All rights reserved.  

Haiku Society of America's Membership Anthology, A Moment's Longing, 2019

 

 

 

hatchlings -

beyond orange tape

the sea

 

 

©Robyn Hood Black.  All rights reserved.  

Frogpond, Vol. 42.3, Fall 2019

 

 

 

About those sea turtles, our area had a record number of nests this year - welcome news! Nests appeared early, and a Kemp's ridley sea turtle was spotted early in the season on Hilton Head Island. That species is the most endangered type of sea turtle, according to National Geographic. 

 

Right after we returned from evacuating for Hurricane Dorian last month, I was at Publix and saw a fellow shopper wearing a Hunting Island (State Park) volunteer tee shirt.  I asked her about any damage to the beach.  She had been out there that morning and said a few turtle nests had been lost.  While that is sad news, I'm glad there were so many hatchlings able to make their way before the storm grazed our coast. 

 

Here's a link to some videos of babies hatching on Hunting Island this season.  I'm grateful to all the volunteers who protect those nests! 

 

To swim around in more poetry, point your flippers over toward Reading to the Core, where the wonderful Catherine has our Roundup this week. 

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Poetry Friday - Head to Cheriee's!

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  Thanks for all the PF love for my post last week - I appreciated every word. This week I'm burning way too much midnight oil with First Friday downtown on tap as well as travel this weekend. Please go make welcome Cheriee at Library Matters upon her first time hosting the Roundup!  She's got a poet to introduce you to, too.  Thanks, Cheriee!

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