Tomorrow I start back up my month of Poetry Conversations but for today the sun is shining and the birds are singing and though we’re headed into Autumn here in Brazil, spring is in the air. Get outside and enjoy the poetry of Spring! Here’s an original poem to inspire you:

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Air Show

A gathering of sparrows

            swift

       in each

            flit

                   and

            dive,

chase,

            arrive,

then chase again

bumping cross open sky,

a

            free-

     for-

                 all

wing-powered air show

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—Kristy Dempsey (all rights reserved)

I’ll take a break each weekend from my Poetry Conversations and try to share an original poem.

Today’s is a bit of silliness for your Saturday, part of a WIP tentatively titled ALL IN THE FAMILY. Imagine the typical family get-together when something spider-ish goes oh-so-wrong:

Spider on the Loose

Aunt Alma’s on the table
My spider’s on the loose
My mom’s not pouring gravy
My dad’s not carving goose

Aunt Alma’s on the table
She’s pitching quite a fit
How will we eat our meal unless
she gets down off of it?

“Oh my, oh dear, I’ll faint I fear,
if you don’t find him soon.”
Aunt Alma’s on the table and
she says she’s gonna swoon.

Aunt Alma’s on the table
It’s time to fill our plates
Search all the nooks and crannies
While everybody waits

I’ve scanned each spot, the food is hot
I’ll find him when I’m able
Can’t we just have dinner with
Aunt Alma on the table?

—Kristy Dempsey (all rights reserved)

Sometime in the last year three different things happened. Our dog (Camo) died. I read Daniel Groves’ poem "A Dog’s Life". And I got back in touch with my high school friend, Lucy, via the wonders of Facebook. Lucy and I went to high school together for two years until I was transferred to another school and I remembered her as smart and funny, and a sincere and loyal friend. There was this party we went to once . . . well, we’ll just leave that in the past.

"A Dog’s Life" is such a clever but most-heartbreaking poem. Apostrophe Cast had this to say about Groves’ poetry:

A Dog’s Life

By Daniel Groves

A stay of execution: one last day,
your day, old Everydog, then, as they say,
or as we say (a new trick to avoid
finalities implicit in destroyed),
you have to be put down, orput to sleep—
the very dog who, once, would fight to keep
from putting down, despite our shouts, a shoe

Read the rest here.

Lucy was a journalist in Atlanta for 10 years. She’s no stranger to words so I hoped she’d be game to join me in my Poetry Month madness. And she was! Her interaction with me over "A Dog’s Life" demonstrates some tips for all of us in how to read poetry. Here, I’ll let Lucy tell it:

your day, old Everydog, then, as they say,

or as we say (a new trick to avoid

finalities implicit in destroyed),

you have to be put down, or put to sleep—

I had to read it again, and then it was only when I read it the third time, out loud, that I found more of the richness. And I came away enjoying it even more. Finally, the resignation and sadness rang through, the finality and also the author’s struggle to almost create his own sort of "stay" from feeling the finality of losing his friend.

Did you catch that? "It was only when I read it the third time, OUT LOUD, that I found more of the richness." How many times has that been true with me, too, when I read poetry! And oh my, I didn’t even catch that the author’s struggle to create his own sort of "stay", trying to hold on a bit to his friend through the writing of this poem. That’s rich, isn’t it?

Lucy went on:

I think my favorite lines:

My God, tomorrow’s ride . . . Well, here we are,

right now. You stare at me and wag your tail.

It’s that feeling that he’s trying to live "in the now", as they say, as savor the last little bit of time left. Yet, he can’t escape the eventuality of death.

Ahh. Thank you so much, Lucy, for sharing your thoughts with me about "A Dog’s Life."

Lucy said she doesn’t read poetry consistently but that she owns a first edition of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s "The Harp Weaver and other Poems" that she bought at a book fair in high school. She called it "one of [her] little treasures."

Isn’t that lovely?

I have the best friends. Seriously. That they would indulge my love for poetry and be willing for me to send them a poem to discuss, well, isn’t that just a mark of a good friend? Especially if it’s not something we tend to discuss in our day-to-day lives.

Here in Brazil, my friend Jo B. is my go-to girl for encouragement and perspective. We enjoy each others’ company and have a comfortable friendship where neither of us feel like we have to have all the right answers.

One of our favorite topics (within the context of the drama of our lives) is hope, where it comes from, how we hold onto it, how we can help one another find it. An obvious choice would have been Emily Dickinson’s Hope is the Thing with Feathers. But I chose De Produndis because I wanted a poem that really captured this distant yet present nature of hope we seem to struggle in life.

De Profundis

by Christina Rossetti

Oh why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.

For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.

Jo’s initial response was, "I feel so stupid talking about stars, the moon and feelings….. I love concrete things, that I can touch and feel." ( I really wanted to edit out the "stupid" from Jo’s sentence. She’s anything but. She is intelligent and vibrant and clever and sincere. I didn’t change it because I really wanted you to get her honest initial feeling about the poem.)

She went on to say:

"But I have been and am touched at times by nature that’s close, like a loud, terrible thunder storm that I can hear and see but am inside my apartment, safe; or a rough ocean, so big, scary, powerful, that you can stand close to but are safe. They don’t leave me unsettled or scared – I feel comfortable with my weakness, humbled in their presence, like everything is under someone’s control."

And all I could say in response to that was, "WOW."

About this verse:

Oh why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.

Jo had this to say:

"I can relate – as it regards to hope. I often find myself as a result of difficult circumstances in my life or the life of those I love, feeling so far away from hope, life, meaning, etc. (God). I feel so alone and I feel that if I reach out, like Rossetti mentioned, talking to someone, asking for help, I’ll just be disappointed because how can anyone really understand what is going on with me, who really cares? Like her, reaching out in the last stanza – I would be disappointed because that alone "reaching" to the unreachable isn’t going to give you anything."

I think Jo gets exactly what Rossetti was getting at. Hope seems unreachable, out there floating in the heavens and we just catch at it. It’s hard to hold on to.

Jo echoes this in her last statement to me:

"

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The fact is that I can relate to Christina in that the light/hope doesn’t stay long with me, most everything around me reminds me that I am insignificant and one in billions, easily overwhelmed."

My personal favorite verse is:

I would not care to reach the moon,
One round monotonous of change;
Yet even she repeats her tune
Beyond my range.

Isn’t that "round monotonous of change" quite an image? For me, Rossetti seems to be saying, "I can’t even grasp the lowest of the heavens, the part that remains on its same course around me. It’s beyond me. And I wouldn’t even want to if I could. It’s too monotonous. I want the sun’s far-flailing train." For me it’s clear that Rossetti believes her hope lies elsewhere, in the one who built heaven "so far" and set earth "so remote." And yet she just catches at it.

So perhaps our feelings about hope are much like our feelings about poetry. Most of us feel like we just catch at its meaning, grasping pieces of its truth.

And I think that’s enough.

For my first day of "Poem Conversations" to celebrate National Poetry Month, I asked my mom if I could send her a poem, and she’d send me her thoughts. She agreed.

Truthfully, I don’t consider my mom a poetry dolt. One of my earliest memories comes from when I was around three years old and my mom was in college. She took me with her one day to English class. I remember nothing about the class, except that everyone but me was quiet and listening to this person at the front talk about a poem or a story, or something I didn’t understand. WORDS, it was words. It was almost like church. People were reverent. (Or maybe they were asleep, but I was three. It seemed like church.) (And Mom, if it wasn’t actually an English class, don’t tell me. I like thinking it was that early exposure that primed the pump for me to become a writer, and I’m pretty sure it was an English class even if you don’t remember it as such.)

Anyway, my mom loves to read fiction. She just doesn’t read that much poetry, unless it’s mine. (I’m willing to bet the money in my purse that if you asked her who her favorite poet is, she’d either say me or Carl Sandburg, and she probably hasn’t read Carl Sandburg in 20 years.)

I didn’t want to throw her a curve ball so I chose Mary Oliver, one of the more accessible contemporary poets. I couldn’t recall the exact poem I wanted to share but I knew there was something about coins in a purse. My mom used to periodically clean out her purse and whichever child guessed closest to the correct amount of change she found "won" the change. The poem, When Death Comes, has little to do with my memory of our guessing game, but as soon as I found it, I knew it was the one I wanted to share with Mom.

Here’s a bit for you:

When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

You can must read the rest here.

My mom said her favorite part was:

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

Hmm. To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised that was her favorite part. My mom is a dreamer, just like me. I took her more for the type to hone in on these lines found later in the poem . . .

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.

. . . you know, all that live life to the fullest, dream big dreams hubris she has passed on to my heart from hers.
But no, it was the part about the cottage of darkness that drew her in.

Full of surprises, that woman.

She explained herself:

I can remember as a child being fearful of death; afraid that I would die and leave Mama or afraid that she would die and leave me. However, now, with so many loved ones having already died, I am looking forward to "what it’s going to be like." The wonder of it excites me now.

I guess for someone who has embraced life to the fullest, it’s not that difficult to embrace the thought of death. That’s my mom.

I just got a second note from her (evidence the poem stuck with her and she’s still mulling over it. Hooray for poetry that sticks!)

She said:

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I also loved this part.

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

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I hope (and pray) that when I am gone . . . I haven’t simply visited this world without leaving pieces of me behind.

Not to worry, Mom. There are pieces of you — who you are, who you’ve shaped us to be — that will outlive us both.

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I can hardly contain myself. Tomorrow begins National Poetry Month.

A whole Nation celebrating poetry. For thirty whole days.

Okay, let’s be realistic. Does the whole nation know about this? Or this? Have they even seen this?

Perhaps not. How many of us are actually reading poetry anyway? (Well, not how many of us here at LJ. Of course not. I’m preaching to the choir here.)

What is it about the word Poetry that strikes fear in the heart of the average American? Are we afraid we won’t understand it? Or maybe we’re afraid we’ll MISunderstand it and look like a fool?

Can we do something about that? Can we get the people who don’t think they like poetry to read it? Maybe. If we try. So for Poetry Month this year, I’m sending one poem a day to one carefully chosen person a day. My list isn’t complete but I’ll choose a person with whom I have a relationship and then choose a poem I think they would enjoy . . . even if they don’t think they’d enjoy poetry. For me this year, it’s all about engaging with people over poetry, and not with the usual suspects.

Call it my own personal poetry crusade. I’ll share some of the poems here. And I’ll let you know what the response is. 🙂

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I told you all the other week that my husband showed up at home with a dog, right? A stray from the university that had been hanging around the snack bar and begging food to make it in this world. Well, after a trip to the vet and a few tests, she’s been given a clean bill of health and has been with us for the last couple of weeks. She’s happy and healthy and just tail-wagging glad to have a family.

And she’s already made friends. 🙂

A hardcover. In my very own hands!

lurban shared it the other day. It’s been on my Facebook. Penguin Putnam favorited it on their You tube page. So it’s out there and if you haven’t seen it yet, I want you to. And if you’ve already seen it, I hope you’re not tired of it and are willing to indulge me, because I don’t think I’m going to get tired of it. Ever. 🙂

The book trailer for my soon-to-be-out-there picture book with Philomel, illustrated by Christopher Denise, edited by Patricia Gauch:

lurban and I had a little convo the other day about picture book illustrations and she’s dishing over here. She also shares a link/preview to something exciting and dear to my heart. Thought you might want to check it out for yourself …