Excursion

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

For Art Thursday, Excursion on the Bosphorus by Symeon Savvidis (1859-1927):

Toxic positivity

While we’re focused on fixing the problem and getting the person out of a negative space, sometimes all the person really wants or needs is to be heard, accepted and validated.
~Morgan Greene

I'm a fundamentally positive person, and I believe that optimism is helpful. So I am pro-positivity, but I definitely believe that some positivity is disrespectful and unhelpful. You can be toxically positive to yourself by not giving yourself room to have negative feelings, but my focus today is the way people do it to each other. I think I used to do this, to be honest. Maybe not the worst of it, but I can always find a silver lining, and that isn't always helpful!

* Everything Happens, a podcast by incurable optimist Kate Bowler (author of Everything Happens For A Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved)
* (Warning, tissue alert: Kate's TED talk)
* Do you want comfort or solutions?
* An article about threading the needle between complaining and toxic positivity
* I'm not knocking healthy positivity!

April

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.
~James Dickey

Some recent photos...the blossoms in bloom, Ariana and Preston, and the tree in our backyard that was hit by lightning.

Sunny Days

The nights are dark but then they pass
~The Weepies

Ariana made a playlist for "vaccine joy" -- upbeat songs to listen to after your second dose (or your first, if you've gotten the Johnson & Johnson shot). For Music Monday, here's Song #5 on the playlist. The Weepies:

NPM II: Poetry Friday is Here!

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.
~Rita Mae Brown

Happy Poetry Friday! Thanks for coming!

I have some wonderful bilingual poems to share, plus an invitation to join the Summer Poem Swap, and Mister Linky to collect your links.

My Poetry Month project is short dual language poems, inspired by my Duolingo studies of Scottish Gaelic and French.

Last week, I had cool poems from Diane Mayr, Laura Shovan, Tanita Davis, and Jone McCullough (Tanita's and Jone's were in the comments...I will do an extra round-up of comment poems later). This week, we have Janet Clare Fagal and Laura Purdie Salas.

Home
by Janet Clare Fagal
For Charles Egita and Lee Bennett Hopkins

Home is where the heart is
the art is
the flowers, the gardens
the poems
the memories
the books.

And all that love in every nook.

Maison

La maison est où le coeur est
l'art est
les fleurs, les jardins
les poèmes
les souvenirs
les livres.

Et tout l'amour dans chaque recoin.

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Laura Purdie Salas wrote a fun book called Snowman-Cold=Puddle: Spring Equations (2019). For NPM, she's writing poetic equations every day. She translated one into Spanish for us:

Janet was inspired by Laura's equation poems to write one, too:

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Here's mine for this week. It's in Spanish, which I studied briefly back in the day. I studied Latin for two years, French for four, and Spanish for a summer in Guatemala.

I've harvested some words
from the tree of my heart,
take what you want:
love, joy, yours, mine

He cosechado algunas palabras
del árbol de mi corazón,
toma lo que quieras:
amor, alegria, tuyo, mio

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Let's talk about the Summer Poem Swap. Would you like to send a poem to a Poetry Friday friend and receive one in return? Join the Summer Poem Swap! You can write anywhere from 1-5 poems. Just let me know how many you want to do and whether you would like to email the poems or mail them. Write me at tabatha(at)tabathayeatts(dot)com by April 30th.

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Time to round up the links!

I and the Village

All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.
~Marc Chagall

Just one painting for Art Thursday: I and the Village by Marc Chagall (1911)

One more quote from the artist:

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

Tukituki Te Manawa

He waka eke noa
A canoe which we are all in with no exception
~Māori proverb

For Music Monday, Tukituki Te Manawa by New Zealand's Drax Project (translated/interpreted into Te Reo Māori by Sir Timoti Kāretu and Hinewehi Mohi):

NPM I: All kinds of weather

Sometimes I wish that I was the weather, you'd bring me up in conversation forever. And when it rained, I'd be the talk of the day.
~John Mayer

Happy April and International Poetry Month! I am embarking on a month of short poems in two languages, as I mentioned last week. I started studying Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo in January. It was a real struggle to get my brain to accept the quirks of Scottish Gaelic ("bh" makes a "v" sound? "mh" also has a "v" sound?)

But I kept going, and it seemed like it unlocked the "foreign language" part of my brain because French words that I knew from years ago popped back up. In a fit of folly, I added French to my Duolingo studies. It seemed possible (probable?) that taking two languages at once would totally confuse me, but it hasn't yet.

As I mentioned before, I invite all of you to send me your short dual language poems. I am delighted that Diane Mayr and Laura Shovan are sharing their works with us today!

Diane Mayr's poem about dogs cuts a little too close to the bone :-)

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AIMSIR GHARBH (ROUGH WEATHER)
by Tabatha Yeatts

Innis dhomh,
Cò ris a tha do speur coltach an-dràsta?

A bheil e ceòthach, a bheil e dorcha -
Am faic thu leis an dealanach?

Tha e sgòthach an seo.

Tell me,
What is your sky like right now?

Is it misty, is it dark --
Can you see by the lightning?

It is cloudy here.

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Two poems by Laura Shovan, with translations by Joseph Spring and Zhang Wanruo

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A Year of Reading has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Mary Lee!

Thistles

The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?
~Henry Ward Beecher

I'll be sharing a Scottish Gaelic poem for Poetry Friday, among others, so might as well share Scotland's national flower for Art Thursday. The motto that goes with the prickly plant is "“Nemo me impune lacessit”, which is “No one harms me without punishment” (or “Wha daurs meddle wi me.”)

A Knight as a Scotch Thistle, 1899
from A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden

Coupe Daum, Musée de l'école de Nancy

Bodiaki
by Jan Stanisławski

Detail of lithography plate The Plant
by Anton Seder (1850–1916)

Boar, mastiff, thistle, raspberries, lily, moths and insects
by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1607-1677, engraver

Table Le Rhin, 1889
par Émile Gallé

Extrait de : Les fleurs animées