Howdy! My week got crazy and a post did not materialize. But, our good friend Jone has the Roundup today, and she's offering sneak peeks into the NEW Pomelo Books title, HOP TO IT (which I'm delighted to have a poem in myself.) AND - Jone has a sparkly new website. Enjoy!
Life on the Deckle Edge
Poetry Friday - September Snippets from The Illuminated Book of Days
September 17, 2020
Greetings, Poetry Lovers!
First - my heart breaks and prays for so many in the throes of fires and floods this week. And so many other challenges. Hopes for healing, rebuilding, peace.
--
Here in the Lowcountry, we have had just the faintest hint of a breeze foreshadowing Fall - well, between the rain bands on the outer edges of Sally. Cooler temps are promised for the next week or so.
I have a book I love to turn to with the turning of the seasons. I've shared excerpts from it before... and I think some of you have it, too? The Illuminated Book of Days, edited by Kay and Marshall Lee, with illustrations by (sigh) Kate Greenaway and Eugene Grasset (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979).
It's lovely, fun, and nostalgic, with tidbits of poetry and lore and historical gems for each month.
Here are a few lines and verses featured in its September pages:
September blow soft
Till the fruit's in the loft.
*********
There is harmony
In Autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which thro' the Summer is not heard or seen.
Shelley
*********
Fruit gathered too timely will taste of the wood,
will shrink and be bitter, and seldom prove good.
So fruit that is shaken, or beat off a tree,
with bruising and falling, soon faultie will be.
*********
And, my favorite...
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
Shelley
***
Now, follow those falling leaves over to Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme, where Matt has a pile of poems to jump in for this week's Roundup. Thanks for hosting, Matt!
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Poetry Friday: Farewell, Summer! Victorian "Sea Song"
September 10, 2020
Ocean photo by Ginnie Hinkle.
Greetings, Poetry Lovers!
September is cantering on, and I can hardly believe Summer is already a look over one's shoulder. Folks like my son's girlfriend's family are making the most of a last trip to the beach. With all the heaviness this year, I thought a lighter poem might be in order as we wave farewell to Summer.
Here's a Victorian poem from DAISIES & DARLINGS (Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske and Company), an illustrated volume gifted to me by our friend and former neighbor, Linda. (Thanks, Linda!) The year penciled inside is 1898.
A SEA-SONG
by
Ellen Soule Carhart
Mattie and Margery, Frankie and Fred,
Shaping with shovel and tiny hand
Wonderful castles and loaves of bread
Out of the shining sand, --
Finding a beauty-stone, spying a shell,
Running to lay it on mother's knee, --
Full of a joy that no song can tell,
Play by the sounding sea.
Tremulous flood-tide of sunset light
Bathes the glad earth and the ocean too;
Purple and rosy and amber light
Melt into heights of blue.
Ships, flaunting plumes of radiant mist --
Ships, with their sails drenched in golden glow, --
Pleasure-boats white that the sun has kissed,
Phantom-like, come and go.
Music of laughter; rustle of wing;
Sweep of a sea-gull ove the waves;
Echoes of carols the mermaids sing
Rise from their ocean caves.
Come, little children, the song is sung;
Fair is the picture it leaves with me, --
Lives so tender and hearts so young,
Glad with the old, old sea!
(If my online sleuthing yielded correct results, the poet was once Dean of Women at Northwestern University, wrote many short stories and poems, and died in 1924 at the age of 82.)
Thanks for making waves over here today! Now, hum your way over to Whispers from the Ridge, where Kiesha is graciously hosting today and sharing two wonderful poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).
Poetry Friday: "We as Women" Suffrage Movement Poem (& Etsy workshop plug)
September 3, 2020
Greetings, Poetry Lovers! Just thought with the current state of current affairs, it wouldn't hurt to keep nodding back to those fiesty, courageous suffragettes during this season of celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment.
I usually share the first part of longer older poems, linking to the rest. But today I just had to share the last part of this one by by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). Best known for her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," she also published two poetry collections, including Suffrage Songs and Verses (The Charlton Company, 1911).
From "We As Women"
...
But wait, warm-hearted sisters–
Not quite so fast, so far.
Tell me how we are going to lift a thing
Any higher than we are!
We are going to "purify politics,"
And to "elevate the press."
We enter the foul paths of the world
To sweeten and cleanse and bless.
To hear the high things we are going to do,
And the horrors of man we tell,
One would think, "We, as women," were angels,
And our brothers were fiends of hell.
We, that were born of one mother,
And reared in the self-same place,
In the school and the church together,
We of one blood, one race!
Now then, all forward together!
But remember, every one,
That 'tis not by feminine innocence
The work of the world is done.
The world needs strength and courage,
And wisdom to help and feed–
When, "We, as women" bring these to man,
We shall lift the world indeed.
To read the whole poem with its proper, full, first half - click here.
And, the completely unrelated and blatantly shameless promotional picture below those ancestral sisters marching in 1913? That's me, just getting the word out that I'm offering three online workshops this September after participating in trainings to be an "Etsy U" instructor. If you or someone you know has an Etsy shop and might be interested in some Etsy-generated tips, march on over to artsyletters.com, where you'll find more info and registration links.
But, of course, FIRST -- March your way to Beyond Literacy Link, where the ever forward-thinking Carol has our Roundup this week, and selections of soul-nourishing art and poetry. Thank you, Carol!