Thursday, March 30, 2023

Poetry in the Halls, High School edition

Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.
~James Tate


Hi folks! Happy Poetry Friday!

As a gift to celebrate 16 years of blogging, I'm offering a pdf for Poetry in the Halls, High School edition. It features poems by Michelle Heidenrich Barnes, Matsuo Basho, Doraine Bennett, William Blake, William Stanley Braithwaite, Gwendolyn Brooks, Karen Eastlund, Barbara Kingsolver, Michelle Kogan, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Amy Lowell, Bridget Magee, Carl Sandburg, Janice Scully, Edward Shanks, Sara Teasdale, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, E.B. White, and me.

Print out these ledger-sized poems and put them up in your school hallways, library, or other poetry-inviting place! Laminate them if you can :-) They look great mounted on colored construction paper, too!


I coordinated Poetry in the Halls in various elementary, middle, and high schools for a dozen years. One of my daughter Elena's favorite poems is The Orange by Wendy Cope, which she saw in the halls.

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

Making art a priority

Five years ago, the Arts Council set out to produce a threefold definition of art's purpose: to increase people's capacity for life (helping them to "understand, interpret and adapt to the world around them"), to enrich their experience (bringing "colour, beauty, passion and intensity to lives") and to provide a safe site in which they could build their skills, confidence and self-esteem. Other forms of endeavour do some of these things. Only art does all three.
~David Edgar



Hi y'all! Time for Art Thursday. First up, Sarah Green/The Art Assignment with "Should Art Be Publicly Funded?"



Next, Rajiv Surendra Visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art - John Singer Sargent Painting:



The screenshot at the top is from Why Does the Government Pay for Art?

Germans turning 18 to be offered €200 culture pass ‘birthday present’ (joining France, Italy, and Spain)

Monday, March 27, 2023

Dancing down to Earth

Sing like no one’s listening
Love like you’ve never been hurt before
Dance like Sam Rockwell in an otherwise entirely serious movie
~Medlife Crisis


For Music Monday, a song by Australian duo Flight Facilities featuring Sam Rockwell dancing:



Charlie's Angels spoiler warning for this video about Sam Rockwell dancing:



Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Beacons, birdwings, and butter

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Hi y'all! I am on vacation the second half of this week, and it sort of seems like I started early since I didn't post for Music Monday. Here's a non-music video by someone who has totally convinced me to try Julia Child recipes:



I really want to make Crepes Suzette. If you want to watch Jamie struggle, check out the French Jelly Roll.

I saw some Birdwings in an exhibit recently. So eye-catching!

Rajah's Brookes Birdwing
Bernard Dupont
Rajah Brooke's Birdwing (Trogonoptera brookiana albescens)
CheongWeei Gan

I don't have a poem planned for this week! So I just checked to see if there was anything of mine I could share, and there's one that kind of fits because someone got my hopes up that no one, not even a former president, is above the law. Edouard de Laboulaye had the idea for the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France.

First, the arm with the torch was built

In 1865 when the Union held,
in his mind's eye
Edouard de Laboulaye
spotted the light of a beacon
in the hand of a woman in New York
all the way from France

what greater gift
what better friend
than one who calls forth
the truest self
again and again?


Thursday, March 16, 2023

Tuar ceatha

Leprechauns are not twee beings dreamed up by the tourist board, but warriors of legend...Their mission, their life’s work, is to protect the gold. What better way to hide it than to become a joke, a story nobody takes seriously?
~Kathy Bryson


Hi folks! Happy Poetry Friday! How did this week get away from me? I have been working on a printable pdf "Poetry in the Halls" packet for high schools (like the one I made for younger grades in 2019). I'm just not done, though! I don't want to rush.

If you have a poem you think might be great for reading on the way to class, email me at tabatha(at)tabathayeatts(dot)com. I could use something funny.

I did finish this National Poetry Month logo:


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In honor of St Patrick's Day, a poem (from 2019) about a rainbow.


Five things about the rainbow:
by Tabatha Yeatts

1. The rainbow is unconcerned about being person-seen. She will dart out when everyone is still inside, wondering where they left their umbrellas.
2. She hopes that the hill doesn't notice how often she alights near him. Or if he does, that he starts wishing for rain.
3. Though the rainbow's trying not to be obvious with her attentions, she can't help but appreciate how very soft his mossy sections are. The grass IS actually greener on his side.
4. She accidentally blushes a double rainbow when his flowers brush up against her. The people who spot her capture photo evidence of her embarrassment.
5. Maybe other locations would like a warm and dazzling rainbow now and then, but she moves around less and less. She feels lit up here, even when it doesn't rain.

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Laura Purdie Salas has the Poetry Friday round-up at her blog Small Reads for Brighter Days. Thanks, Laura!

Toy theaters

Long before Netflix or video games, these tiny paper theaters served as home entertainment, outlets for imagination crafted for young people but popular with adults, too.
~Wendi Maloney for the Library of Congress, who has dozens


Theaters made of paper for Art Thursday. I love these so much I could go on and on. I saw one with a paper pit orchestra in front...how great is that??

Mon Theatre, a short-lived but prolific twice-monthly magazine, was published in Paris by Albert Mericand. It provided characters and scenes for this large Art Nouveau style theater.
Tiefenschaerfe

Toy theatre with Little Red Riding Hood
Tiefenschaerfe

Schreibers Papiertheater, Bühnenhintergrund
Unknown author

Silhouettes
John Wolff, publisher

Tafel aus "Puppen- und Kasperlspiele", 1925
Franz Wacik - Dorotheum

Der Freischütz
Benno Mitschka


Monday, March 13, 2023

A holiday at sea

The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep
She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep
She filled my life with color, canceled plans, and trashed my car
But none of that was ever who we are
~Brandi Carlile, "The Mother"


For Music Monday, Brandi Carlile:



Thursday, March 9, 2023

Beannacht

The eternal world and the mortal world are not parallel, rather they are fused.
~John O'Donohue


Happy Poetry Friday! How are y'all doing? I had a lovely birthday earlier this week. Thank you for the good wishes :) Next week I am hoping to celebrate the 16th anniversary of starting this blog, assuming I can get myself organized.

Two poems today, starting with a blessing from John O'Donohue. Isn't his voice great?



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

On the Subject of Poetry
by W.S. Merwin

I do not understand the world, Father.
By the millpond at the end of the garden
There is a man who slouches listening
To the wheel revolving in the stream, only
There is no wheel there to revolve.

He sits in the end of March, but he sits also
In the end of the garden; his hands are in
His pockets. It is not expectation
On which he is intent, nor yesterday
To which he listens. It is a wheel turning...

read the rest here

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My Juicy Little Universe has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Heidi!

Miniature knights

All these portrayals we see of knights fighting must be absolute rubbish because knights in armour could literally have only had two or three blows and then they'd have had to sit down to have a cup of tea.
~Mark Strong


For Art Thursday, wee medieval illustrations of knights. For information about medieval manuscript art, check out Smart History (The Center for Public Art History).

Knights in combat
Chroniques de Saint-Denis

Duel of Volker the minstrel and Islan the monk
Unknown author

Detail of the Maastricht Book of Hours
Unknown miniaturist from Liège-Maastricht area, ca. 1300-1325

René d'Anjou Livre des tournois France Provence XVe siècle
Barthélemy d'Eyck

Folio 8 recto from the Aberdeen Bestiary


Monday, March 6, 2023

Your love is my love

I don't tweet, Twitter, email, Facebook, look book, no kind of book. I have a land line phone at my home - that's the only phone I have. If my phone rang every day like everyone else around me, I would lose my mind.
~Patti LaBelle


For Music Monday, Got to Be Real (originally sung by Cheryl Lynn). I prefer to only share the singer's own channel, but you've got to see how joyous Mariah Carey and Patti LaBelle look:





Thursday, March 2, 2023

Fairy stories

In the Irish myth cycles, the land of Tir na nOg is the realm of the Otherworld, the place where the Fae lived and heroes visited on quests. It was a place just outside the realm of man, off to the west, where there was no illness or death or time, but only happiness and beauty.

It is important to note that Tir na nOg was not so much an “afterlife” as it was a an earthly place, a land of eternal youth, that could only be reached by way of magic.
~LearnReligions.com



The most famous story associated with Tir na nOg (Land of Eternal Youth) is that of Oisin and Niamh:
Golden-haired Niamh is the princess of Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth, who dreamt of Oisín and comes to ask him to return to Tír na nÓg. He gladly does, and they marry. After more than 300 years of living together, Oisín, who does not realize how much time has passed, asks to visit Ireland. Niamh, who realizes he will be disappointed, reluctantly agrees, warning him not to touch the ground there. He accidentally does, whereupon he ages three hundred years and dies without seeing Niamh again.

Wishing you could turn over our problems to the fairies and let them handle it? Poet Claire Hermann considers it, thinking about the myth of "the fairy tithe," where every seven years a "fee" must be paid or a penalty will be invoked. What if you wanted the penalty?

A tithe to Hell
by Claire Hermann

Ay at the end of seven years we pay a tiend to hell;
I am sae fair and fu o flesh and feared it be mysel.
—Tam Lin, Child Ballad 39A


I walk alone in the winter field,
and men in camo stomp over to inform me this is private property.
I look up at Orion in the still of midnight,
and the neighbor’s security light comes on.
The forests out east are pulped and pelleted,
and the swamp rises salty over the roots of the cypress,
and we pour exhaust into the mouths of the sky
until it spits back hurricanes and heat waves.
The hills above the ocean char to black.
I am done with petitions and marching.
Let us leave bowls of milk on the steps for the fae.
Let them creep from underground...

read the rest here

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[fiction instead of lies] has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Tanita!

Saffron

Don't wait for that special occasion. Today, tomorrow, and every day are special occasions. Use your saffron. She's worth it, and you're worth it.
~Naz Deravian


For Art Thursday, the lovely and valuable Crocus sativus. (Saffron is the stigma of the crocus.)

زعفران سوپر>نگین ایرانی
photo by Hoorgiss

Saffron Farm, Torbat-e-Heydarieh, Razavi Khorasan, Iran
Safa.daneshvar

Illustration of Crocus sativus - saffron
Author unknown, ca. 1390-1400

Saffron Farm, Torbat-e-Heydarieh, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran
Safa.daneshvar

粵語: 收割
Iraninhk

Saffron recipes from Saveur