RIP Adrienne Rich

Last week, American poet Adrienne Rich died at 82 of complications from rheumatoid arthritis. She is one of the first feminists I remember reading, and the poem I remember reading first was this one:

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Poetry: Spread the Word

My good friend Greg Pincus, whose poetry blog GottaBook was one of the first I ever followed, has a great new project where he is bringing poetry into schools. I've supported him, and I'm hoping others will do the same. Check it out:

Kick-off of National Poetry Month

It's officially National Poetry Month and I'm observing it by visiting 30 Poets/30 Days, a celebration of children's poetry, where there will be a previously unpublished poem on the site daily, by some of the greats of children's poetry.

Today's offering is by one of my all-time favorite poets, children's or otherwise, Jack Prelutsky, and it made me giggle. Enjoy Poetry Month!

30 Poets/30 Days

My friend Greg over at Gotta Book is doing a really great thing for National Poetry Month. He's hosting something called 30 Poets/30 Days, a celebration of children's poetry. Every day in April, he will be posting a previously unpublished poem by a different poet. I'm thrilled to have this new way to celebrate National Poetry Month!

Some really wonderful poets are participating. Here's a list, in alphabetical order:

Arnold Adoff, Jaime Adoff, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Douglas Florian, Betsy Franco, Kristine O'Connell George, Charles Ghigna, Nikki Giovanni, Joan Bransfield Graham, Nikki Grimes, Mary Ann Hoberman, Lee Bennett Hopkins, X. J. Kennedy, Julie Larios, J. Patrick Lewis, Pat Mora, Kenn Nesbitt, Linda Sue Park, Ann Whitford Paul, Gregory K. Pincus, Jack Prelutsky, Adam Rex, Jon Scieszka, Joyce Sidman, Marilyn Singer, April Halprin Wayland, Janet Wong, and Jane Yolen.

One of my favorite poets, Jack Prelutsky (former Children's Poet Laureate), kicks the whole thing off on April 1 with a new poem, "A Little Poem for Poetry Month".

Sounds like just the thing for poetry month!

Poetry reading--Mark Strand

Last night I went to a poetry reading by Mark Strand, one of America's great living poets. Full disclosure: I'm a friend of a close relative of his, so while it is unusual for me to attend a poetry reading, it is not unusual for me to attend one of his.

The reading was held at the UCLA Hammer Museum, where the house was packed, and the poet remarked to me that he had read at UCLA, for this same reading series, as a young poet some forty years ago. Now that's a reading series!

I was a little bit of a poetry-phobe before attending one of Strand's readings many years ago. But his readings--funny, moving, intelligent, always entertaining--made me eager to listen to poetry read aloud, which is the best way to experience it, if you you ask me.

Last night he read "Shooting Whales", a poem I hadn't heard him read before, and which he said was based on a true story. It can be found on this site. He also read My Mother On An Evening in Late Summer, and one of my favorites, The Continuous Life. Enjoy!

Farewell, John Updike

Writer John Updike died on January 27th, of lung cancer.  I was a fan of his Rabbit books, and loved The Witches of Eastwick.  Here is a recent poem of his that is due to be released in a collection called "Endpoint and Other Poems":

Requiem

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
'Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise - depths unplumbable!

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
'I thought he died a while ago.'

For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

National Poetry Month

As all my book-blogging friends know, April is not only the cruelest month, it is also National Poetry Month.

Like he did last year, my friend Greg is making a herculean effort to write a poem a day. He's posting his daily poems at his poetic blog, Gotta Book. And they're always funny!

Melanie at The Indextrious Reader has been posting about poetry this month. I've particularly enjoyed her choices!

Kate at Kate's Book Blog has a poetry challenge for the month--check it out! She says: The challenge is simply to post about poetry at least once in the month of April. The post could be a review of a collection of poetry, a broader meditation on the work of a favourite poet, or a detailed analysis of a single poem. Simply posting a poem doesn't count unless you go on to say something about that poem. The idea is to dare to be critical (as in analytical, not necessarily negative) and venture an opinion.

In Poetry News...

Charles Simic was just named the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States! Woot! Love his work!

Here's an article from Reuters. Here's one in The Guardian.

Check him out at Poets.org. You can read several of his poems there.

I also like his 1990 Pulitzer Prize winning The World Doesn't End

A riff on...

...the title of my last post. It often feels true for me, being the mother of three fairly small children who are always coming down with some virus or other, that “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Or, as Robert Burns actually wrote in his poem “To a Mouse”:

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley.

Which, like the accent of many a Scots relative of mine, is unintelligible. Until you get a translation, that is.

When I looked this poem up, just to make sure that the old adage actually existed somewhere, I found this site with a translation of the poem, which is attributed to a book by George Wilkie, entitled Understanding Robert Burns: Verse, Explanation and Glossary. It's so much nicer to read Burns's work with a convenient glossary opposite every stanza.

“To a Mouse” is actually quite a bittersweet poem, written “on turning her (the mouse) up in her nest, with the plough, November, 1785.

And there’s one really nice paragraph that needs no translation, where he apologizes to the mouse for mankind’s behavior:

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I never really posted last month for Poetry Month, so here it is, better late than never--which is another adage altogether (and attributed to John Heywood, who seems to have collected all the best “Proverbes” in the 15th century, including “Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake?” and "Better one byrde in hand than ten in the wood.")