I [HAIKU] NY

 

Wow! It's National Poetry Month!  How'd I miss it?!?  
Hello, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Margaret Atwood.
Urban poetry lover that I am, THIS inspired me to blog again.

Once again the NYTimes nails it by inviting readers to write a haiku about the Big Apple. Five/Seven/Five syllables. 
Evoking nature. 
Quiet. 
Japanese. 
Haiku is my favorite poetry form.

Here are some simple beauties:

morning Q commute
has the best smell of the day:
coffee and shampoo
                     —Vanessa Vichit-Vadakan, 43, Berkeley, Calif.

Riding through the park
no daffodils blooming yet
— but unbuttoned coats.
                  —Sharon Rousseau, 50, Manhattan

“Insufficient fare!”
But, without saying a word,
stranger swipes me in.
                   —Janet Gottlieb, 59, Brooklyn

If the “F” comes now,
I could get there, right on time.
But I’m still in bed.
            —Jill Helene, 34, Manhattan

On the 6 to Spring
two cops help a tourist whose
map is upside down
            —Frances Richey, 63, Manhattan

****Themes were kindness, strangers, 6am, commute, the island, and solitude.  Thus, a few train references. :-)

Breathtaking

This poem is so beautiful, so heartwarming, it literally took my breath away and gave me goosebumps.  

So in these days of summer (summer camp on the brain), and years of motherhood (Dear Daughter, I'm forever humbled), and a lifetime of being a daughter (thank you, Mom), it seemed especially apt to post, share, and save. Flag for Mother's Day 2013.

Poet Billy Collins is a gem.

Simple. Beautiful. True.

If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.


If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.


If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.


If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.


If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.


-Lao Tse

The Secret (a poem by Denise Levertov)

The Secret
by Denise Levertov
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I who don't know the secret wrote the line. They told me (through a third person) they had found it but not what it was not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can't find, and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that a thousand times, till death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all.

there are so many tictoc

Two good friends seem to be posting ee cummings poetry today on their social networking/self-expression sites of choice. There is a bomb scare outside my office window - the street is blocked off at the corner. So I think I'll turn to some poetry, too. Why not, no?

there are so many tictoc

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly

we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.

(So,when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me)

ee cummings

Haiku

Wonderful weekend;
Then, a downpour to sleep by.
It's Monday now.  Sigh.

Love Locked: Passerelle de Léopold Sédar-Senghor

Hundreds (or more?) of padlocks line this pedestrian bridge across the Seine near the Musée d'Orsay.  The tradition is to go there with your sweet, make a promise to each other, lock the padlock to the bridge rail, and throw the key in the Seine.  Apparently the bridge does fill up however, and the locks are periodically cut off and thrown out by municipal workers of the Parti Anti-Romantiques (PAR).

Here is a link to other places to love lock around the world.

Leopold Sédar-Senghor (1906-2001), by the way, was the first President of Senegal.  He was also a poet.

World Poetry Day - March 21

In honor of World Poetry Day, here are some of my favorite poets:

• Mary Oliver, a wonderful poet who captures nature, New England, and love so perfectly (what more can you ask for in a poet? Thoreau?)
• Pablo Neruda, such Latin passion and romanticism, such a Communist, such a Revolutionary - literary and political
• Billy Collins, so wry, so accessible, so simply spectacular, and yet, no less a poet
• Margaret Atwood, better known for her gorgeous novels (I'm a fan, too), this Canadian poet is deep, dark...and beautiful

And a wonderful Collin's poem to better enjoy this great literary art. :-)

Introduction to Poetry 

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

haiku (just for fun)

Winter sun rises.
Bright white sparkling snow dazzles.
Blinded by the light.