Random Acts of Poetry
October 17, 2008 · Print This Article
Marcus here. It’s Friday. And there’s something about Fridays that makes me want to celebrate with good words. Maybe it’s the promise of the weekend—two whole days to be with my family. To spend time with with my wife or be a pirate with my kids. Or get in my kayak and paddle down the Guadalupe. (Ah, the joy of fall and winter in Texas.)
So I started thinking, maybe other people feel good on Fridays too. Maybe they’d like a small way to celebrate. (Over on GoodWordEditing.com, I’ve sometimes used this as an excuse for Poetry Friday —though I’m on sabbatical there right now.)
I know that every day is a day for good words, for snippets of poetic language or outright poems, but Friday’s a good excuse to indulge. So we’re going to try a celebration experiment here at High Calling Blogs. Random Acts of Poetry, on Fridays. Small celebrations of beautiful language wherever we’ve managed to find it on the network— snippets of poetic prose, or outright poems.
We hope we can celebrate like this every Friday, but beauty is sometimes elusive. Anyway, that’s why I’m calling this an experiment. We’ll see how it goes.
For today, here’s an outright poem we found at L.L. Barkat’s blog Love Notes to Yahweh. She wrote it in thanksgiving for her baby niece Summer Rain who survived against all odds…
Homecoming
From birth, long months
you had lain triple broken
hearted, needle pricked,
wired, ravaged by fire
of fever and untold pain. Still.
Just yesterday you quietly came,
a blue cloud of promise o’er rise
of hill— late summer rain.
Very lovely, Mark.
Random acts of poetry. I like it.
I love the poem.
I love poetry and I think this is a wonderful idea! I hope the experiment works
Brag on Texas if you must, but this weekend I rode past amber grasses and grasses blushing a darker cranberry, brilliant green fields cast against the fire of changing maples. One hundred and fifty miles of healing landscape, to comfort me on the way to see my niece come home. It was breathtaking.
And she, she! Who could believe this child was so lately frail, bruised, wired, shrunken beyond recognition. She was soft, smooth skinned, chubby-cheeked, smiling. A gift surpassing all.
yes, l.l. yes!!!!!
marcus … random acts of poetry? of course! it’s everywhere.
I love this idea…I used to write poetry but have not for years. I got to the point where I felt like I could only write poetry when I was miserable, and (praise the Lord!) I have not been miserable in quite some time….introspective, perhaps, but not miserable.
Random acts of poetry…like small snapshots of grace. I like this idea! Your beautiful words about your niece are like a balm, maybe I could learn to write poetry in Joy after all?
I love to read what others have written in their beautiful blogs, that much I know. What a wonderful idea!
Erica, thank you for your encouragement. At least, I took it as encouragement.
I think poetry is well-suited to capture any intense emotion or experience. From joy to sorrow, anger to bubble-over amusement. And it asks us to get to the very heart of these emotions and experiences, because it is a small space.
In a small space, we must choose the very best images, the knives that cut or the balms that soothe. So, yes, I think you could write poetry in joy. Mostly I would hope you might get back to writing poetry no matter what the emotion.
Will you share some soon? If so, stop by and let us know you’ve shared it! : )
i would like to call to your attention an act of poetry…
go and see at
http://ajourneythroughhisgarden.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-house.html
L.L…..yes, encouragement! It’s my own shortcomings, my own broken history, that cause me to associate writing poetry with pain… I think in my own life I just shut the door on writing poetry because it was such a part of a darker chapter in my life, which isn’t a good thing…it leaves a piece of me missing in a way. Reading the amazing poetry on other blogs through this thread has reminded me of that.
That’s the beauty of poetry, exactly as you said… it captures a moment of emotion with words in a way that no other medium does. I enjoy reading other people’s poetry for that reason…I guess I just doubt my own ability to do that, does that make sense? I am excited to try to write poetry again, I think it will be a healing process that I was unaware I needed.
Thank you!
For you to find that missing piece. Turn it over in the light. Feel the edges, smooth or sharp. Put it in the hands of others. That thought delights me.
Love the idea of poetry Fridays. I’ve long admired poets and their knack for saying in a few short words what would take me pages. I’ve tried my hand at it, but poetry isn’t a strength of mine. I never could get the right words to rhyme. Except for just now, I guess.
I love poetry. I devote many posts on my blog to snippets from great poets interspersed with my own photography. Recently I have found the courage to start sharing my own words and it has been such a wonderful release to me, I would love to share. Check me out in any one of the following posts;
http://prairieprologue.blogspot.com/2008/10/encore-after-dusk.html
http://prairieprologue.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-lady-of-evening.html
or;
http://prairieprologue.blogspot.com/2008/09/call-of-fall.html
[...] happy poetry today? I still remember Erica’s question from our first Random Acts of Poetry. She said, “Maybe I could learn to write poetry in Joy after all?” Poetry, we learned later [...]