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

 

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)

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  Um, who turned on August? One of my dear teacher friends just welcomed new students on Thursday.  Cheers and loving vibes to all of you teachers and librarians getting a new school year off the ground.

 

Speaking of soaring... butterflies.  (Well, Simone Biles, too, but - butterflies.) I've been enjoying the pictures Mary Lee Hahn has been posting of new Swallowtail butterflies she's shepherded into first flight from their chrysalis stage.  Check out her curious.appreciative Instagram page here.

 

Last weekend my hubby and I, with our young post-elbow-surgery Keeshond, Rookie, stretched out Jeff's birthday week at a little airbnb cottage between Asheville and Black Mountain, NC. Next to the house was a large and lovingly tended pollinator garden.  It was a bit wild, and though I didn't see many butterflies, it was literally buzzing with other winged creatures such as bees and smaller wingy-stingy flyers. Here's to coneflowers and black-eyed susans!

 

This week, even though I'm not terribly good at keeping up with Facebook, I stumbled upon a poem that has stuck with me.  It was written by Edward Cody Huddleston, a poet, Haiku Society of America member, and radio professional in Georgia.  I have noticed that whenever I happen upon one of Cody's haiku, it is likely to have garnered some impressive award from near or far. I can't keep up with his accolades, but I'm a big fan.  Here's why:

 

her new name
the crack in the chrysalis
widens

 

©Edward Cody Huddleston

 

This poem received an award in the New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition.  Congratulations, Cody, and thank you for letting me share your poem!

 

Click here for Cody's Haikupedia bio.  

 

Now, flutter on over to see the ever-productive and thoughtful Laura Purdie Salas (she has a new book just out!), graciously hosting our Roundup this week. 

Quick Wave!  I've been in and out of town again this week, but Poetry Friday doesn't take vacation... Go see Marcie Flinchum Atkins for a wonderful post and for all the links!

See you nest week....

Helloooo - After hosting all the delightful posts last week, I didn't have my Poetry Friday act together this week to make a new post myself.  (Just lots of family busy-ness and summer days running togther....)  But be sure to row on over to Reflections on the Teche, where Margaret offers up a praise poem sure to slow your breathing and lift your spirits. Thanks, Margaret!

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers! Bonjour, Mes Amis! Welcome to the Poetry Friday Roundup, where you can peruse a grand assortment of poetry posts across a variety of wonderful blogs. Newcomer or veteran, feel free to add your own link and topic in the comments, and I'll round up the posts old-school today. (We have a couple of rounds of family visiting; I will be dipping in and out here as the day goes along!)

 

Perhaps you're a fan of grand slam tennis as I am, and your eyes have been turned to London for Wimbledon this fortnight. (Finals are this weekend.) Soon our attention will drift to Paris, where the Games of the Summer Olympics begin July 26. The Paralympic Games begin August 28.  

 

The River Seine will be the focus of many athletes and countless spectators and tourists in coming weeks. From National Geographic, I learned that this river had (has?) an ancient Celtic goddess, Sequana.  I found some lovely lines about the river quoted by Elaine Sciolino in a 2019 article on a site called Literary Hub. She is the author of a book called The Seine – The River that Made Paris (Norton).  She shares this beautiful poetic passage:

 

She goes to the sea
Passing through Paris. . . .
And . . .  walks between the quays
In her beautiful green dress
And her golden lights.

 

–Jacques Prévert, "Chanson de la Seine"

 

Jacques Prévert  was a celebrated French poet and screenwriter who lived from 1900-1977.

 

I'm adding more items to the French corner of my Etsy shop in celebration of the Olympics.  Lately I've returned to an old love from my childhood, wax seals.

 

Any other fans of Victoria Magazine, dear readers?  I've been a devotee forever. The January/February 2024 issue featured odes to correspondence, including a feature on Kathryn Hastings, who takes correspondence to a new artistic level (and offers wax seal products for sale).  I might have succumbed to purchasing one of Victoria's lovely books, The Art of Correspondence.  The photography is gorgeous, of course!

 

I've also discovered a wonderful supplier called Letterseals.com, which features lots of irresistible items and waxes, including vegan options and sticks from a company in Scotland, Waterstons, which has been creating sealing waxes the same way for 300 years. And on Etsy, I happened upon a small business in Seattle which has made letter seals products since 1998 – BeeImpressed.

 

Vintage brass stamps from Etsy and Ebay have made their way to my doorstep.

 

I altered a wax seal that came with an order and used it inside a little book I made last week for an online workshop.  I know there are many mixed media artists among us; if that means you and you don't know of him already, I highly recommend Seth Apter as an instructor and curator of many enticing items in his online shop. (When I started my artsyletters business more than a decade ago, I stumbled upon his books and videos.)

 

Last year, I participated in Seth's "Mixed Media Mechanics" monthly workshop series.  And a couple of weeks ago, I created along with "Double Jointed" – a simple bookmaking class.  Six hours flew by! (Here's my Instagram post  (@artsylettersgifts) featuring the book, which took me a couple more days to finish.)

 

My apologies if any of these links cause a dent in your wallet, as they have in mine!  Too good not to share.  But hey – Poetry Friday is free!  Thank you for sharing your wondrous poetic adventures with the world this week.  I look forward to sealing this post with their goodness.

 

[Thanks to you Early Birds who left links when I put up my placeholder post Thursday night... I'll get the Roundup list together ASAP!]

 

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Laura Purdie Salas starts us off with a journey!  Join Laura and illustrator Kayla Harren on a fun-filled, yummy promotional trip to Duluth, Minnesota for Oskar's Voyage. (Looks like Oskar had a blast!) Then enjoy one of Laura's original poetryaction poems, "We Sleep,"  in response to the book, Sweet Dreamers.

 

Love is in the air over at Karen Edmisten's place - she offers a gorgeous 10-line poem with all kinds of surprises, "You and I," by Jonathan Potter.

 

At The Opposite of Indifference, Tabatha shares an ethereal textile-themed cento stitched together by Elinor Ann Walker, "Dew Dresses." (PS - Only a "half-birthday" for me... but the baby grand just turned two, the pup just turned one, and Jeff's birthday is in a couple of weeks! ;0)  )

 

Denise at Dare to Care checks in from her travels with a thoughtful and ultimately encouraging poem, "I Don't Know."

 

Over at Teaching Authors, April is celebrating that amazing group's 15th blogiversary!  (Cue the confetti!)  Go, Teaching Authors.  You're still  "blooming in the blogisphere/post by post, year by year."

 

Lots of talk about different kinds of intelligence these days - human vs. artificial.  Mary Lee offers her mindful, poetic take on the topic at A(nother) Year of Reading.

 

The world-weary among us (isn't that just about all of us these days?) will find a refreshing pause with a classic William Stafford poem, "You Reading This, Be Ready," over at TeacherDance today.  Thank you, Linda, for bringing out this treasure at a perfect time.

 

The OH-so-creative Michelle Kogan is spinning lots of colorful plates herself, but lucky for us, she took time to share a wonderful plein-air pen-and-ink drawing and a summery haiku that will leave you smiling with appreciation! Good medicine, both. :0)

 

 When Irene Latham lives her own poem and tells you it has "grapes and angels and a turtle in it," you can't resist clicking over.  See?  Yep.  (It has some magic in it, too.)

 

At There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town, Ruth reminds us that school will start soon enough, but there's still time for delighful summertime imaginings with Frank Asch's poem, "Sunflakes."

 

Inspired by a line from Naomi Shihab Nye's "Kindness," Margaret at Reflections on the Teche has a breathtaking poem about grief and sorrow, with some light in it.  The title, "You Must Know," was borrowed from the line.

 

So, one thing I didn't know was that "I Don't Know" was a prompt/theme... offered by Ruth (see above!) for Spiritual Thursday.  I am definitely out of the loop and sleep-deprived lately. ;0) Patricia J. Franz has some musings (so specific and lovely!), photographs, and her own poetic considerations of "I Don't Know" - prayer as well as poem. 

 

Last week's Poetry Friday host and one of the world's finest humans Jan kindly links her post from last week at bookseed studio - it's still watermelon time!  And some of us were too busy eating watermelon elsewhere to be able to savor recent Poetry Friday picnics, so we appreciate it.  ;0) Thanks, Jan!!

 

In Carol's original poem, "What I Didn't Know," at Beyond Literacy Link (another in the Spiritual Thursday theme), she conveys a harrowing medical experience following what she thought would be a simple outpatient surgery. Even in the midst of her very real struggle, she still somehow found a way to let the light in, and to share it with us.

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers! 

 

It's been a while since I shared an Issa poems from David G. Lanoue's amazing treasure house of thousands of Issa poems he has translated (up to more than 12,000 now....)

 

So here are a few to welcome summer, and you can find details about these, and many more summer poems, here. (Just put any term you are interested in into the search box.  I found these with "summer.")

 

Haiku by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)

 

 

meeting at the fence--
an early summer rain
streams down

 

 

answering prayers
for the grasses...
summer heat

 

 

amid scented cedars
a bush warbler's song...
new summer robes

 

 

making the lawn
a sit-down teahouse...
summer trees

 

 

short summer night--
a deer pokes her face
through the hedge

 

 

All poems translated by David G. Lanoue and used with permission.  Learn more about David here. 

 

Wishing you and yours a fantabulous start to summer.  My blog will be taking a wee break for June as we have several trips planned, plus elbow surgery for the pup, who turns 1 at the end of the month. Our first little trip is to celebrate our Baby Grand's SECOND birthday - how did that happen so fast?! We have a wedding anniversay in June, too - number 40! (Yes, we were babes when we got married - Ha!)

 

I'll see you in a few weeks (and look forward to hosting in July). Be sure to start your first weekend in June off with all the poetic goodness hosted by the oh-so-talented Janice at Salt City Verse. She's highlighting Carol Labuzzetta's new anthology!

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  As we enter the Memorial Day weekend, my thoughts turn to the grandfather I never met.  He died four years before I was born.  I blogged about him before, I'm sure, and know I used this picture, though I can't put my finger on that post at the moment! 

 

John Hollingsworth Conditt was born in 1900, though he lied about his age to join the Army in World War I in 1917.  (Official records say either 1898 or 1899.) Both of his parents died in 1917; I'm guessing from the influenza pandemic? He was a fiesty one, a drinker and a fighter in his youth, as my mother Nita remembers being told.  From my forays through family trees and on Ancestry.com, his line of folks seems to be the most livelly and interesting in the family, on both his mother's and father's sides!  But I digress. 

 

He was wounded in France, was sent back and patched up, and returned to the fight.  Then he went with the Army to China for a bit.

 

My mother also told me once that after he returned home to Arkansas, he saw my grandmother working in a field and told his buddy, "I'm going to marry her."  And, he did!  Outside on the street, evidently, as her father had some sort of objection.  

 

He was reserved and devoted to his family.  In my living room I have a wooden box with maps pasted on the inside, something he made for my mother to put her doll in.  They were dirt poor tenant farmers, but they could make and make do like nobody's business. My grandmother bore six children, losing one as an infant and another at the age of four.  Times were hard.  My mother was the baby. 

 

She said her daddy never talked about the war.  As I was researching a few years ago, I discovered on his "Headstone Application for Military Veterans" that someone had written in "Silver Star" and "Purple Heart" in red pencil.  Looking at a few more of these types of applications, it looks like red marks were made by the government staff members who reviewed the applications.  Though he got himself into a bit of trouble during his service, my mother recalls, he was honorably discharged in 1922. In World War I, the award was called the "Citation Star" - the Silver Star was retroactively awarded to those recipients.  I only recently discovered that on his actual grave marker, it does say "SS" and "PH"!  The Silver Star is awarded for "gallentry in action" and is the third highest award for combat valor.

 

I've only seen one giant list online of majojr mililtary award recipients and didn't see his name listed (though a very close name attributed to WWII), but the list said the absence of a name should not be interpreted to mean one's family member did not receive the Silver Star.  So it's still a bit of a mystery, one I might have to hire a professional to help track down if possible.

 

My mother says she doesn't remember her father smiling.  Times were certainly different.  And those who came back from the front lines 100 years ago didn't have the resources we have available today.  (My psychiatrist hubby worked for 10 years with Marines and members of the Navy before starting his current job.)

 

Thanks for reading this family ramble.  I'm sharing two poems, a famous one associated with WWI, and an older one with a couple of similar images but NOT about war.  

 

Deep gratitude to everyone who wears or has worn a uniform, and to their families, especially those whose grief will be especially keen this weekend. 

 

 

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae

(1872 – 1918)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie
        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: 
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high. 
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
        In Flanders fields.

 

 

This one was written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who died a decade before John McCrae was born. I wish peace like this for all who face any kind of battle.

 

 

Out in the Fields

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(1806–1861)

The little cares that fretted me
   I lost them yesterday,
Among the fields above the sea,
   Among the winds at play,
Among the lowing of the herds,
   The rustling of the trees,
Among the singing of the birds,
   The humming of the bees.

 

The foolish fears of what might happen.
   I cast them all away
Among the clover-scented grass,
   Among the new-mown hay,
Among the husking of the corn,
  Where drowsy poppies nod
Where ill thoughts die and good are born--
  Out in the fields with God.

 

This Just In - My mother read the post and offered a few more details that tugged at my heart:

 

"Flanders Fields" always brings tears and memories of Poppies which Daddy loved and respected. He always made sure we each had a red poppy to wear on National Poppy Day, which is the Friday before Memorial Day....TODAY! He always donated $10.00 to The American Legion to help provide Poppies which were given to people to wear. We kids gave him our 'savings' to help. $10.00 was a lot of money! ... I know we sometimes would donate and wear a poppy when you were young...American Legion members would be on street corners or in front of stores. Do you remember?

   

I do seem to remember those little red poppies, with paper-covered wires to wrap around a button or such I think. 

 

Thanks again for reading along.  Start your long weekend off with all kinds of poetry (and art) at More Art 4 All with Michelle (& blow out a birthday streamer in her honor!).

 

Quick wave from the Where-Did-the-Week-Go Dept.... Well, I'm not sure, but Patricia knows.  She's been up to SOME good and she's also rounding up this week at https://patriciajfranz.com/blog-poetry-friday-is-here/ - Go plant your roots for a bit!