Robyn Hood Black - children's author, poet, artist

  Greetings, Friends & Poetry Lovers - For the third Poetry Friday in a row, I'm afraid instead of poetry I just have a personal update from my phone. Whew, what couple weeks it's been. The Helene update is that the region is still reeling in the aftermath, but Greenville County (SC) is making progress. Schools opened here again on Wednesday. County trucks have picked up 40,000 metric tons of debris as of a couple days ago, and they'll continue until Oct. 31. There are still huge stacks on our little road. We still don't have internet/WiFi in our part of the county, those of us who have Spectrum anyway. More folks are getting power back. Our Seth & Ginnie up in the Asheville area have been volunteering a lot & are still waiting on power. I hope they get it soon, as nighttime temperatures are taking a big dip.

 

 I have a personal Milton update too, as my family is spread out over Central Florida. (I grew up in Orlando.) I didn't sleep much Wednesday night; they certainly didn't! But everyone in our family is okay. Lots of downed trees and power outages.  My niece's family is hoping their lake stays in its banks in coming days.  My brother Mike & his partner Scott live in St. Pete. They left their home to ride out the storm in a hotel there with an elevation of about 50 feet. They lost power, as expected, but then the 100-plus-mile-an-hour winds blew through the lobby doors and blew water through the window seal and air conditioner into their room, soaking the carpet on that side. An edge of the roof hung down and banged against their window. Then the city shut off all water at midnight because of a line break. I'm sure it's a night they won't forget any time soon. But they are good and their house didn't sustain major damage, though water did come up to the doorstep as evidenced by the water line. 

Continued prayers for all who have been affected by these devastating storms. I love October, and I'm used to a sleepless night or two each year during hurricane season, but this year for us has been another level. Stay safe & dry and go enjoy all the Poetry Friday goodness at Jama's Alphabet Soup! 

Greetings, Friends & Poetry Lovers. Trying to post from my phone. I just have an update this week. We did end up in the direct path of Helene as the storm hit the Southern Appalachians. We had dozens of trees down here, and about 15 cut up and cleared out by our wonderful neighbor and his formidable crew and big equipment. We've gotten to know our neighbors better. Who knew I'd be dragging out our hurricane box here instead of at the coast? We lost power overnight Thursday, which means water for us, too, since we're on a well. We were all safe inside and accounted for; our son & future daughter-in-law came here from the Asheville area to ride it out. (They've been in Charlotte a few days this week.)  We were beyond grateful here to get power restored Wed. night, and I hope more and more folks can say that each day. So many crews are working hard. In Upstate SC, the death tolll from Helene has now exceeded that from Hugo in 1989. We're about a dozen miles from the NC line, and I'm sure you've seen the apocalyptic-looking images of flooding. We've been a bit cut off from news, but it's overwhelming. Seth & Ginnie aren't sure when they can get back to their home north of Asheville in a lovely small town, but they did eventually hear from neighbors that the houses are standing. They are driving to Asheville Friday to distribute supplies they've bought through a Go Fund Me a friend set up. Thanks for all the care & concern via social media; please keep prayers and support coming for those whose lives have been upended. Helicopters have been going back and forth overhead all week, and I imagine that will continue for a while. I hope to get back to Poetry Friday soon; not sure when we'll have internet/WiFi. Please go see Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference for this week's Roundup. XO, Robyn (PS - The inner city church where Seth is one of the pastors is Haywood Street Congregation if you'd like to look up and/or support. I believe it's haywoodstreet.org but if I leave this attempt to post I'll lose it. Just discovered that. Thanks!)

Greetings as I post this late Thursday eve; I was SO planning on having a real post this week.  Alas, the pup (well, almost 15 months old now) had some complications after neutering last week that still require lots of TLC and another week in a cone, and then Helene came on the scene.  All my family as well as some friends (including our Jan!) are in Florida.  It's been a busy day of checking in.

And here in the lower Appalachians, we've had a stalled front that was already causing excessive rain, and which then tapped into the Gulf energy and sucked it up like a straw.  Rivers are already exceeding their banks. Our son and future daughter-in-law came down from the higher hills north of Asheville to ride this out with us here in the SC Upstate. So we're all under Tropical Storm Warnings (!) and Flood Warnings.  Schools in areas around us in Georgia, SC, and NC are closed. 

Not sure we'll have power into tomorrow, so let me send wishes for safety to all, and you'll find the Roundup this week with our wonderful Irene.  (Here's hoping the storm is not causing too much trouble in Alabama.)  She's got a peek into a new book she and Charles are launching next week, THE MISTAKES THAT MADE US.

Happy Poetry Friday - I've had my hands full with caring for Rookie, who had the dreaded neuter surgery on Wednesday.  (Vets recommend waiting until dogs are older now, unlike the way it was last time we had male pups. It's better to wait until their skeletons have fully developed.  But I'm discovering it's rougher on THEM - even though it's the responsible and right thing to do, of course.) But Linda Baie's hands have been busy crafting a beautiful poem welcoming Fall, and a lovely host post.  Check it out here at TeacherDance.

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers! I don't have a poem this week, but I have the gorgeous cover of a new book of poems coming in the Spring from Candlewick.  IF I COULD CHOOSE A BEST DAY: POEMS OF POSSIBILITY is a project that began to bloom from "poetic forever friends" (and I&C Construction Company duo) Irene Latham and Charles Waters several years ago.  It features uplifting collage and painted mosaic illustrations by Olivia Sua.  (Click here for her website.)

 

I'm honored to have a poem in this collection, and can't wait to see this beautiful book!

 

I'm also looking forward to reading all the poems. Here's the list of the 31 poets:

 

Lacresha Berry * Robyn Hood Black * JaNay Brown-Wood * Joseph Bruchac * Siv Cedering * Emily Dickinson * Rebecca Kai Dotlich * Nikki Grimes * Jolene Gutiérrez * Georgia Heard * Anna Grossnickle Hines * Irene Latham * Renée M. LaTulippe * Nancy Tupper Ling * Sylvia Liu * Rebekah Lowell * Vikram Madan * Guadalupe García McCall * Lilian Moore * Eric Ode * Bob Raczka * Lisa Rogers * Sydell Rosenberg * Laura Purdie Salas * Janice Scully * Teresa Owens Smith * Gabi Snyder * Sarah Grace Tuttle * Amy Ludwig VanDerwater * Charles Waters * Janet Wong

 

Here's the Amazon link, the Bookshop.org link, and the Barnes & Noble link.  

 

I plan to savor this book when it comes out; it's sure to open the vistas of imagination. And I bet I'll end up giving it as a gift a LOT.

 

Congratulations to Irene & Charles, and to Olivia Sua, and all the Candlewick team.  If we've waited a several years, I guess we can wait a few more months!  It comes out March 1, 2025.

 

Speaking of someone who ignites imaginations, please soar over to My Juicy Little Universe where the amazing Heidi is our host this week.  Thanks, Heidi!

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers - September has arrived, and in the South, school is in full swing. 

 

And we are already trying to process another school shooting.  Another horrific, senseless tragedy which has cut lives short and traumatized a community. 

 

When we lived in North Georgia, Jeff & I  helped with our kids' church youth group and hosted a weekly high school bible study get-together at our house.  One of our regulars was a fun, accomplished, kind, talented young man, an Eagle Scout, who ended up marrying his high school sweetheart (another fun, accomplished, kind and talented young lady in our group). He is now a teacher.  He teaches at Apalachee High School in Winder.  We've gone a few years without seeing them, but we texted Wednesday night.  He had posted early in the day that he and his students were safe.

 

One of our daughter's former co-workers, a teacher, has a brother who teaches at that school. Our son-in-law works with someone whose good friend is a coach there.  

 

We are all connected.  We are praying for the Apalachee High School community, for the families whose lives have been shattered. 

 

Nothing will change until we stop valuing easy access to military-style assault weapons more than we value the lives of our children. 

 

voting booth

every one

is Superman

 

Robyn Hood Black

 

Here are a couple of links if you'd like to explore more on the subject.   The Brady Campaign has been working on gun violence prevention issues for decades, and here's a link to Sandy Hook Promise. 

 

The very talented Buffy Silverman has our Roundup this week - thanks, Buffy!

I got a bit busy in artsyletters-land this week and didn't conjure up a post, but please go visit Susan at Chicken Spaghetti for this week's Roundup! See you next week, when it will be - gulp! - September!

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  Did you catch the blue moon earlier this week?

 

Our Southeast Region of the Haiku Society of America had a "blue moon" themed chiisai kukai (a little contest, basically), with our fearless leader and wickedly talented poet Michael Henry Lee as judge.  He selected five poems to feature on the region's Facebook page (& in the HSA newsletter), and I'm delighted to share mine was one of them.  The poems are listed in the order he received them.  Hence, mine is last, because - you know that's how I roll most of the time. (Insert shrug emoji here.)

 

Here's my haiku:

 

blue moon
the tang
of wild muscadines

Robyn Hood Black

 

and here's the Facebook link to all of them.  

 

This poem came to be because I'd had the poem prompt on my mind for a few days without any bursts of inspiration.  Then on a walk with our dog one day, I closed the back yard gate to notice that the muscadine vines at the edge of the woods, which had held a few green orbs earlier in the summer, now had even fewer blue ones! (I'm sure there were more that our woodland friends got before I paid attention.)  I found a few more muscadines on the path in our woodsy front yard, too. 

 

I suppose the visual ideas of a "blue" moon and the purply blue grapes clicked into place and I soon had the two images for my poem.  I washed a couple of the grapes and ate them, enjoying the wild kick to their sweetness - and, the rest of the poem got in line. Pondering the haiku later, I realized the "tang" was a fun word to have chosen because I am of a certain age, and I grew up in Central Florida, where we would run outside to watch rockets go up from the Cape. Anybody else remember drinking Tang, the powdery orange drink of astronauts?? (Here's a reminder.) I still recall how it tasted! 

 

Finally, in a blatent bit of self promotion and only related by a hint of moondust, I've had records (the old vinyl kind) on my mind as well.  Just the words "Blue Moon" make the old song start playing in my head.  (Here's a version by Billie Holiday. And one by Nat King Cole.)  Where am I going with all this?

 

I recently found the most wonderful kitschy plastic record charms offered by a fellow Etsy seller.  My dad was in radio when I was young, and I still have some albums around here and one of those vintage-y looking Crosby turntables.  Its plastic components aren't quite as nice as the old players.  Anyway, I ordered a bunch of the miniature records and thought it would be fun to pair them with vintage Swarovski black crystal connectors for earrings.  (Here they are in my Esy shop.)  The charms were made in Japan in the 1960s.  (I was made in the USA in the 1960s.) There are four different paper labels on the tiny records, and one is another Nat King Cole song, Autumn Leaves.  That reminds me that the couple of mornings we've had in the 50s and 60s here this week are winks at what's to come, as we turn from Summer to Fall in just a few weeks. 

 

Time to set my haiku antennae to another change of seasons!

 

Rose is paying attention to the seasons, too, this week - catch her great Roundup post over at Imagine the Possibilities.  Thanks for hosting, Rose!

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  Did you catch the Perseids Meteor Shower? Alas, I did not.  Cloudy here in recent days and I didn't stay up past midnight (though I often do). ;0) But I've had the night sky on my RADAR this week lately for a poetic reason.  Our Haiku Society of America region has another little contest going on, which I entered at the last minute, and we were supposed to consider the theme, "blue moon." I'm anxious to read what folks came up with!

 

Hence, the fun illustration above, and the appeal of this quirky old poem I hadn't read before.  I found it in THE POETRY BOOK - 5, a 1920s educational book from a series by Rand McNally & Company.

 

 

GOING TOO FAR

 

by Mildred Howells (painter and poet, 1873-1966)

 

A woman who lived in Holland, of old,

Polished her brass till it shone like gold.

She washed her pig after all his meals

In spite of his energetic squeals.

She scrubbed her doorstep into the ground,

And the children's faces, pink and round,

She washed so hard that in several cases

She polished their features off their faces - 

Which gave them an odd appearance, though

She thought they were really neater so!

Then her passion for cleaning quickly grew,

And she scrubbed and polished the village through,

Until to the rage of all the people,

She cleaned the weather-vane off the steeple.

As she looked at the sky one summer's night

She thought that the stars shone out less bright;

And she said with a sigh, "If I were there,

I'd rub them up till the world should stare."

That night a storm began to brew,

And a wind from the ocean blew and blew

Till, when she came to her door next day

It whisked her up, and blew her away - 

Up and up in the air so high

That she vanished, at last, in the stormy sky.

Since then it's said that each twinkling star

And the big white moon, shine brighter far.

But the neighbors shake their heads in fear

She may rub so hard they will disappear!

 

I could use a smidge of her cleaning skills, though I'd leave all facial features intact.

 

Take "a walk in the woods" (you'll see) over to Janice's Salt City Verse for this week's Roundup. Thanks for hosting, Janice!

Happy Poetry Friday - I've got a houseful this weekend, so I'm only in with a quick wave and a sign post pointing to Nix The Comfort Zone, where lovely Molly has the Roundup.  Thanks, Molly! :0)