Category: Literature

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Journey Through Reading

I feel deep gratitude for the seeds of my sprouting love of poetry from an early age. A Child’s Garden of Verses (received as Christmas gifts in both 1971 and 1972) by Robert Louis Stevenson and Childcraft Volume 1 Poems and Rhymes are the books of poetry that made me love poems so much that I hid in my closet with a flashlight to read them. I had a sleeping bag and pillow set up much like a tent or secret fort, and that was my poetry hideout. A cozy nook, away from the noise of the house and the cares of the world.

Here is a Shadorma (3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable pattern) using a selection of words from some of my favorite childhood poems.

Windy Verse

lion-like

usher of the month

windy roars

fiercest storms

step into this poetry~

it’s a real word storm!

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On the Day I Was Born – July 8

During the last week of June, I had the amazing privilege of traveling to Portland, Oregon to visit the archives of the poet William Stafford at Lewis and Clark College as part of The Stafford Challenge Poetry Conference. I learned that people often ask to see the actual hand-written notes and poems that he wrote on the day they were born, and so I did the same.

Archive Haiku

William Stafford:

I visited his archives …

my birthdate writing:


Here is my best transcription of this page from his handwritten notes on the yellow pages in the photos that follow, below.

8 July

We thought leaves waited, without
winds. But their work flourished, then.
Lost as leaves are, in the fall, each
has all its guarantee: sun, air wind.
I take the fall.

Maybe someone found all this language
the world brings. Not a snake but a stream
through the air, or maybe little waves
nothing holds — anyone in this town fear
news the ants work on? News peeled off
the yellow car that left here this morning; news
trotted among sounds, under the bridge. I felt
the snake across my feet in the bus. And watched
the conductor act calm, as required by the state.
The fox I stole gnawed : inside my coat. Men
act so free: “No fox I stole has ever bitten
me.”

Forsaken liberal, I stamped the curb:
every cause I ever found

has had my vote. Now the animals
prefer their keepers to the kept or freed.


8 July 1966

Seasons mark the brain: a shaft
of spring has always hurt what winter
held. I see beyond the plate and
feel the foxes well. No angel, no
prophet rides with me, but animals.
Keepers are enough too and they live well;
To feed that fox I commit to walk through hell.

every day
Lizards and liberals both low and

adaptable, come back to their holes and love it there.

Such great song scared the birds;

they tiptoe – winged away

Pascal fell through a million windows,
a little kid too smart to be saved by
stupidity.

Though the handwriting is challenging to decipher and does leave some questions, I hang on the first two lines:

We thought leaves waited, without
winds. But their work flourished, then.

Yes, these periods of waiting often seem frustrating, challenging, and even pointless at times. Some days we feel we are merely holding on. But we wait, knowing our work is flourishing. Knowing that the best is yet to come.

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Homeless in Portland: Outside the Zone

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Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon

I was in Portland, Oregon at the first annual Stafford Challenge Poetry Conference, and I’m not sure how one can feel exhilarated and exhausted at the same time, but I did. The days of writing held such magic here in the Pacific Northwest. From Powell’s City of Books to Lewis and Clark College to the Willamette River and the 30th floor of the Portland City Grill, I’ve breathed the air of artists everywhere.

This is a city of literature, visual art, music and dance. Have you ever been immersed in a city so filled with the unexpected?

But one humanitarian challenge is the homeless population here. All these years I’ve walked past, minded my business, tried not to look. But something has tugged at my heartstrings on this trip, and I’m rethinking my stance. Something must change.

Outside the Zone in Portland, Oregon

oh my ~ he was there/ on the street / outside Powell’s City of Books in Portland /this young man/

locking his white-blue eyes with mine/ pleading / Excuse me, Ma’am? / as I walked past/

outside the zone/a few blocks later it smacked my heart wide open/ this is someone’s child/ a mother’s baby boy/ and I? I have neglected this soul / a disco ball of fragmented pieces/ reflection’ll do that/

refracting in pieces that scatter and haunt my being as I walk on/ ripped apart / outside the zone/ wanting even now to return to hear his story/ a sermon of life there on the street/ giving more than he requests/ listen: he has a story/ we all have a story/

this poem knows regret can do a 180/ change a line like an edit/ a tide of change/ one small act of knowing someone/ asking their story/ seeing, listening, validating humanity/ on a concrete city sidewalk/ where someone needs a human outside the zone/ to enter the zone and see them, hear them, understand them

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Summer Travel Companion for the Open Write

Leilya Pitre of Louisiana is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the June Open Write. She asks us to write a poem about the person we would choose to ask to go traveling with us this summer if we could take someone. I’ve been awaiting the release of Lauren Hough’s Monster of a Land for months. She takes a Travels with Charley journey, modern day, with her dog, Woody Guthrie. So instead of pre-ordering, I waited to buy the book at Powell’s City of Books in Portland. This bookstore is an entire city block and when you’re waiting on a book about a monster of a land, it makes sense to buy it in the monster of all bookstores.

Let’s Go, Lauren Hough!

a Steinbeck-like is Lauren Hough
an author I would ask to go
to join my summer travel band
to see this Monster of a Land!

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Watercolor Welcome: Lemon

Confession time. I was trying my best to wait to read the book I chose to read for Sally Donnelly’s Summer Reading Club, 44 Poems on Being With Each Other by Padraig O’Tuama, but I have not been successful at all. A new book of poetry, for me, is a lot like that bag of M&Ms I try to hide from myself but that won’t quit calling my name until I give in and devour the whole thing. Forbidden M&Ms are like words of poetry – – I can’t quit until the last word in the bag is gone.

And so I have read, savored, pondered, written, and I haven’t gained all the pounds of the chocolate, but I’ve consumed all the delicious indulgence of the page. There’s no sense in feeling the guilt of reading the whole thing early ~ I read it and my clothes still fit, so I’ll celebrate the power of poetry to bring joy and inspire new writing.

I’ve been watercolor painting on weekends, and I decided to take Wendy Cope’s classic poem The Orange on page 224 in the book and allow it to inspire a poem and painting of a lemon, using Cope’s same iambic beat and stanza form. Already, I’m wondering what each poem in this book can inspire in art forms: photography, collage, jewelry design, mosaic, and a million other creative possibilities. I am re-reading already. A huge thanks to Sally Donnelly for inviting us to be part of a kindred gathering of readers.

The Lemon

while camping, I painted a lemon

its colors all citrus-y yellow

curious campers came calling

waving and smiling warm hellos

and that lemon, it brought conversations

of campfires and families and fun

once strangers, now neighbors chit-chatting

on sunshine-y site 301

the “ap-peel” was really surprising

my painting was not all that zesty

but colorful palettes paint friendships

I love my new lemon-y besties

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A Cento Poem

It’s hard to believe that after today, students in our school system have only 12 days left until summer. The time crunch of finishing out this year has us all scrambling to wrap up the loose ends of one school year and pick up the new ones for next year – – I feel pulled in two different directions, but as I told my husband years ago when he couldn’t figure out why I was so moody at the beginning and end of a school year, “Circle August and May on your calendar, and remember that those are the months I’ll be slightly frustrated about most everything.”

I have a few more Centos I was working on in March that I had left unfinished and have now completed, and this one today is from Sophie Diener’s collection Someone Somewhere Maybe. I wrote this one for three dear friends who are moving on to new chapters in their lives next year, and I couldn’t be happier for them after the year they’ve had. For C, A, and S. One of the most wonderful places on earth has changed, and they are ready for better days.

Burning Bridges

I think I need to remind myself

I hope that you are happy

I will explain my anger:

a bridge that’s been burned.

Taken from: Birthdays; Hope You’re Happy; When I Lay Down the Pen; Seasons

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Sally Donnelly’s Book Club and Watercolor Haiku Weekends: Potted Cactus

I’m already dreaming of a summer of reading and all the books on my TBR list – – and I will begin with a collection of poetry. Sally Donnelly, a long-time writing buddy from Two Writing Teachers whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting on more than one occasion in person at the National Council of Teachers of English Convention, is hosting a Summer Reading Club. You can check out her invitation to participate and her directions to her Padlet here, introducing her selections Dictionary for a Better World by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other, an anthology curated by Padraig O’Tuama. I have had the opportunity of deeply engaging in Dictionary for a Better World a few years ago, so on Wednesday of last week while I was in Atlanta on a personal day to see the musical Six, I treated myself to the guilty pleasure of leisurely browsing a bookstore, where I picked up a copy of 44 Poems on Being With Each Other.

Yesterday, Wildflower Watercolor Week started, and I’m taking a class online to learn more about watercolor techniques. After March bloggers at Slice of Life shared their love of Emily Lex watercolor books when Leigh Anne Eck asked what everyone would bring to a party where technology was not allowed, it brought back memories of strolling through Woodstock, Vermont and seeing one of those themed watercolor books after NCTE was held in Boston a couple of years ago. Slicers resurrected that memory with their love of watercolor books. I picked up an off-brand at Hobby Lobby and shared a couple of my paintings with Glenda Funk, who then found a watercolor class on Facebook and encouraged me to sign up. So I did, and I look forward to learning new techniques from a real person, not a step-by-step book. On weekends throughout March, (and today) as we travel here and there, I’ll be painting and sharing Haiku Watercolors – the semi-good, the bad, and the ugly.

Here’s one of my daughters’ favorites, along with a haiku that mentions one of my favorite poetry collections I’ve read lately: Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan.

Cactus Coddiwomple

I read about you ~

Instructions for Traveling

West ~ Take me with you!

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A May Cento: Lucille Clifton

After an unseasonably chilly weekend with some misty drizzle and some sunshine while we were out gallivanting in Indian Springs State Park in Flovilla, Georgia and having shrimp and gouda grits at Yahola Creek for the Kentucky Derby party, we are back to the weekday work routine of a mundane Monday. I can’t help considering the similarities of the Derby for a horse to the impending retirement of everyday people everywhere, looking forward to grazing in the green pasture without running the race in all the trained and prescribed ways of riders jockeying them into position, running the never-ending course to finish first in their own Golden Tempo.

I was thrilled to see history made Saturday with the first female trainer of a Kentucky Derby winner wearing the color of the day – the hope for the run for the roses of red – as she tearfully approached the ring and took her place in the annals of time, celebrating her moment as the hearts of all women everywhere cheered her from the stands and living rooms throughout this great country and all around the world. Ada Limon’s famous poem How to Triumph Like a Girl is not lost on a day like this, the poem itself inspired by the running of the horses when the poet lived in Kentucky.

Ears up, girls, ears up! – Ada Limon

And for today, here is another favorite female poet – Lucille Clifton – whose poetry I’ve used to create a cento like those I wrote in March, using a line from different poems to form an entirely new one.

Wild Country

live where you can

be the one that understands

it is home and you know it

but listen

it is wild country here

there will be no peace

listening for the bang of the end

Taken from poems in this order: eyes; defending my tongue; ways you are not like Oedipus; to my friend, Jerina; eve thinking; lucifer understanding at last; the beginning of the end of the world

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Kid Lit Progressive Poem

Yesterday, April 28, our KidLit Progressive Poem for 2026 was complete. Tabatha Yeatts added the starting and final lines, and also drew our map for the journey through the poem this month. As April comes to a close, we celebrate National Poetry Month and all the places it has taken us and will continue to take us. Tomorrow I will resume VerseLove blog posts and will delay by one day, but for today, come celebrate The Land of Poetry and take time to explore all of the poets who contributed lines to this poem…..

because there is no

place I’d rather be than The

Land of Poetry

Map by Tabatha Yeatts

The Land of Poetry

On my first trip to the Land of Poetry,
I saw anthologies of every color, tall as buildings.
A world of words, wonder on wings, waiting just for me!
Birding for words shimmering, flecked in golden gilding,

binoculars ready, I toured boulevards and side streets
exploring vibrant verses, verses so honest and tender,
feathery lyrics, bright flitting avian athletes
soaring ‘cross pages in rhythmic splendor.

In the Land of Poetry, I am the conductor
seeking oodles of poems that tug at my heart–
a musical medley of sound and structure
An open mic in Frost Forest! Wonder who’ll take part?

There’s a pause in the program; no one takes the stage.
The trees quiver, the audience looks up. Raven lands,
singing Earth’s message of the sage.
“Poetry in motion will be forevermore, from forests to sands.”

“Scatter,” she croaked. “Beyond Wilde Pond, to each and every beach.”
Meek Dove mustered courage and sang, “Instill humanity with compassion & peace.
Let Thackeray’s middle name, from this thicket, hearts reach!”
Her gentle coo-ooo-ooos reverberate, soft as fleece.

Words dart, dimple—Do I dare warble what’s in my soul?
I’ve inhaled inspiration…yes, I’ll risk my refrain.
I fly to the mic, chanting “Tadpole, mole and oriole!
Come all living beings from water, land, air; come high and low terrains!

Come, living your poems, hearts open, ablaze,
Sing out your noise, adding to our forest-filling chorus!”
Together. Empowered. Our choir conveys,
“Why poetry? Words transform and restore us!”


April 1 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 2 Cathy Stenquist at A Little Bit of This and That
April 3 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 6 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 7 Ruth Hersey at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
April 8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 9 Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
April 10 Janet Clare Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
April 11 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 12 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 13 Linda Mitchell at Another Word Edgewise
April 14 Jone Rush MacCulloch
April 15 Joyce Uglow at Storied Ink
April 16 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
April 17 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 18 Michele Kogan at More Art for All
April 19 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 20 Buffy Silverman
April 21 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
April 22 Karen Edmisten
April 23 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
April 24 Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 25 Tanita Davis at Fiction, instead of Lies
April 26 Sharon Roy at Pedaling Poet
April 27 Tracey Kiff-Judson at Tangles and Tails
April 28 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference

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VerseLove Day 26: Poetic Cartography

Clayton Moon of Thomaston, Georgia is our host today for the 26th day of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, inspiring us to write poems as cartographers capturing the essence of place through the five senses. You can read his full prompt here.

Hands holding steaming coffee cup on porch railing with sunrise over rolling hills and mist
Enjoying a hot cup of coffee on a rustic porch overlooking a misty sunrise landscape.

Sipping Home

come sit by me

on my front porch

first light rouses, groggy

from the dark of night

into the glorious morning skies

over rolling hills

winking at morning songbirds

praising their Maker

in the misty morning breeze

even as wildfires rage

come sit beside me

raise your coffee to your lips

take the lid off

breathe deeply

in /out/ in/ out

because just like any place

you must take it all in

to experience the rich flavor ~

hear its drip

taste its roasted bean

smell its trademark aroma

feel its piping warmth

see its dark awakenings

against the light of the eastern sky

come sit with me

let’s sip home

together