Chillin' in the car

You can't help but wonder to yourself
How would it be with someone else?
Just keep in mind, every storm ends in time --
Love is forever, stay together
~ Michael Garvin and Tom Shapiro

More music from the cds in my car. How stressed can you be while you're listening to this?

Making Mistakes

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
~Napoléon Bonaparte

photo by Paula Bailey

I can't remember the context, but I heard a while ago that everybody makes a mistake every hour. This idea intrigued me, so I think about it sometimes. They can't all be significant mistakes, you know? There must be a big variety. Pondering that inspired today's poem:

What Goes Wrong?
by Tabatha Yeatts

Mistakes flower
Every hour.

Ice cream, dropped.
Joke, flopped.

Tire, flatted.
Jump, splatted.

Directions, lost.
Guidance, tossed.

Trousers, muddied.
Quiz, unstudied.

Pencil, broken.
Care, unspoken.

Team, beaten.
Homework, eaten.

Laundry, pink.
Armor, chink.

**********

Jone is the Poetry Friday host today.

Finch

It seemed I was always looking for the right medium to express myself in and I feel that I have found it.
~Mister Finch

When I saw Mister Finch's textile creatures, I was both fascinated and charmed. They appeal to me in a tactile way and also to my love of story. There are many stories here...

Sending a thank you to Finch for allowing me to share these!

Moths on Books
by Mister Finch

Mushrooms
by Mister Finch

Grey Squirrel
by Mister Finch

Black Spider with Poppies
by Mister Finch

Snails
by Mister Finch

Moth Circle
by Mister Finch

Swan
by Mister Finch

Moon
by Mister Finch

Fish
by Mister Finch

Mister Finch: Living in a Fairytale World

Music Everywhere

Isn't it amazing how art can time travel? Someone can compose a song in say, 1824 in Austria, and the work can travel through time and space to move me today. Author Kristin Cashore says, "I have this problem wherein once the ninth starts playing, I need to listen through to the end. It doesn't matter what other thing I was supposed to be doing; now I'm listening to Beethoven's ninth." Beethoven himself couldn't hear the ninth when he was composing it. So there he was, really off in his own world, creating something that would speak to people far away, many years later. Isn't that magical?





Contribute to the Kinshasa Symphony
Landfillharmonic, the movie

I'll ride with you to the moon

I love my apron
But I ain't your mama!
~Little Red Wagon

This Music Monday, we have a song for relaxing and one that's more for waking up.




Links:
Audra Mae
Bluey Robinson
Jackie D. Williams
Jeremy Passion

P.S. Yes, I know, Bluey Robinson, Jeremy Passion again! I was hoping you wouldn't notice.

Where I Find Poems

Arts education aids students in skills needed in the workplace: flexibility, the ability to solve problems and communicate, the ability to learn new skills, to be creative and innovative, and to strive for excellence.
~Joseph M. Calahan, Xerox

Reflections star, Wolfsville Elementary School

The Arts and Sciences, essential to the prosperity of the State and to the ornament of human life, have a primary claim to the encouragement of every lover of his country and mankind.
~George Washington

I've talked about the PTA Reflections program a number of times before (here, here, here). The poem I'm sharing today was written by my daughter, then 17, for the Reflections competition literature category. The theme was "The Magic of a Moment."

Where I find poems
by Ariana Yeatts-Lonske

At day break,
The blushing sun paints haiku
On my front yard
With shades of morning dew

On the way to work,
The man on the corner of 47th and 5th
Holds up a sign that reads
STARVING VETERAN. GOD BLESS.
But if I squint a little,
The words rearrange themselves into
A quatrain about loss and solitude

As I call a cab,
I am pelted with afternoon sonnets
That glisten on the slick street
And soak through my dress shirt,
Clamoring for a paper home

At my niece’s 5th birthday party,
I pluck a sestina about dreams
From behind her ear
As she explains to me that
She is going to be a butterfly
When she grows up

At night,
The stars knock on my window,
Showing me how they’ve abandoned
Their constellations
To spell out
this

****************

I decided to help with Reflections again this year, despite what I said at Christmastime. My husband talked me into it, actually! I will only have one school to work on this time, so that will help. (Someone might ask whether Ariana won anything with her poem...she did! She was thrilled!)

You can find the Poetry Friday round-up at Reading to the Core.

Anton Seder

Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild.
~Dante Alighieri

Work by German Art Nouveau artist and professor Anton Seder (1850–1916) today:

Sunflowers, Strawberry, Lizard
by Anton Seder

Pussy Willow
by Anton Seder

Sea Life
by Anton Seder

Thistles
by Anton Seder

Antlers, Wreaths
by Anton Seder

Root Vegetables
by Anton Seder

Spring Flowers
by Anton Seder

Lilies
by Anton Seder

For the Love of Flutes

"King Frederick of Prussia thought that it was 'unkingly' of his son to play the flute and read poetry, so he did everything he could think of to prevent him from doing so, including executing the prince's best friend in his presence. After Old Fred's death, Young Fred continued to play the flute, with composer Johann Quantz as his teacher and flutemaker. His people considered him such a success as king--engaging in such artsy endeavors as starting the Berlin opera--that he became known as King Frederick The Great."
--Russell Scott, paraphrasing historian Robert Scott and writer Kathy Russell

For Music Monday, we are looking at flutemaker John Lunn's work:

inspired by Tolkien's The Hobbit

Then he paints the tree

Trees and sunsets today, art and friendship.

Windows and Palm Trees by Paul Klee

An excerpt of The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House
By Howard Nemerov
in memory of the painters Paul Klee
and Paul Terence Feeley

...He views the tree,
The great tree standing in the garden, say,
As thrusting downward its vast spread and weight,
Growing its green height from the dark watered earth,
And as suspended weightless in the sky,
Haled forth and held up by the hair of its head.
He follows through the flowing of the forms
From the divisions of the trunk out to
The veinings of the leaf, and the leaf’s fall.
His pencil meditates the many in the one
After the method in the confluence of rivers,
The running of ravines on mountainsides,
And in the deltas of the nerves; he sees
How things must be continuous with themselves
As with whole worlds that they themselves are not,
In order that they may be so transformed.
He stands where the eternity of thought
Opens upon perspective time and space;
He watches mind become incarnate; then
          He paints the tree.

read the rest here.

**********

from Six Prayers
By Ralph Salisbury

Spirit of the Sunset West
may gray clouds
hiding friends from me
glow
like yours
that we grope
toward each other through
a vivid rose.

**********

You can find the Poetry Friday round-up at Author Amok.

Let's Take a Walk

The beauty is in the walking -- we are betrayed by destinations.
~Gwyn Thomas

Walking is one of my favorite things to do, especially in nice weather. It's been a little rough taking our puppy out this winter, and there's still ice on our regular walking paths, but I can see gentler weather coming.

Here's one more quote about today's topic: “[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.”
~Elizabeth von Arnim

Light and surf
Kenny Louie

Walking on the Edge
by Hamed Saber

Walking it alone
by Lance Shields

The morning walk
by Walter Duncan

Man walking on a bridge
by Pedro Ribeiro Simões

Man walking to the sky
by Jonathan Borofsky
photo by Maseltov

Dame mit Sonnenschirm
by Adolf Liebscher

Walking on the Cotswold Hills
by David McDermott

Brownout, Orange, and a Winner

Before we listen to our Music Monday songs, we have an announcement! The winner of Herbs for Common Ailments: How to Make and Use Herbal Remedies for Home Health Care by Rosemary Gladstar is:

Matt Forrest Esenwine!
I will be mailing that to you this week, Matt. Thank you to everyone who entered! I am happy to chat about herbs with you even if you didn't win.

And now we have songs by Brownout and Mandolin Orange:

Laughing Like A Birthday Cake

A poem about the Spanish painter Goya today. (I included a Goya self-portrait in this post and a drawing that I hope wasn't a self-portrait here.)


excerpt of Candle Hat
by Billy Collins

...He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

You can read the rest here.

Poetry Monster wanted to stop by:

You can find cool literary t-shirts, including ones about Poetry Monster's friend Walt Whitman, here.

Robyn Campbell has the Poetry Friday round-up.

Theodor Kittelsen

Alas, though he was loved by the Norwegian people, the established art critics and publishers failed to thoroughly appreciate his work. Theodor Kittelsen died famous but utterly poor, and it was only after his death that he was awarded an artist´s salary by the state, the money being paid out to his widow, Inga Kristine (born Dahl) and their 9 children.
~The Art of TH Kittelsen

Illustrasjon til folkeeventyret Fugl Dam
by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914)

The Princess picking Lice from the Troll
by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914)

Pesta on the Stairs
by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914)

Per gynt i dovregubbens hall
by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914)

The Sea Troll
by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914)

Op under Fjeldet toner en Lur
by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914)

Soria Moria
by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914)

Woodpecker
by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914)

Marches, Bells, Weddings, Poets, Peasants, Anvils, Chimes...

Music rhythms are mathematical patterns. When you hear a song and your body starts moving with it, your body is doing math. The kids in their parents' garage practicing to be a band may not realize it, but they're also practicing math.
~Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Sharing a song that one of my kids performed recently and another that she is still rehearsing. The former, "Instant Concert," contains bits of 30 songs. Before my daughter's band played "Instant Concert," the conductor said she would give a free cd to anyone who could name all 30 songs. I don't think anyone won it!


Tchaikovsky Research says: "The [Slavonic] March was commissioned by the director of the Russian Musical Society, Nikolay Rubinstein, for a concert in aid of victims of the conflict between Serbia and Turkey. Tchaikovsky received the request around 20 September 1876, and the completed full score is dated 25 September." 5 days!!!