Very bananas

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
~Unknown

Happy Poetry Friday! I've been reading A Whale of a Time (365 children's poems, selected by Lou Peacock), which is where I spotted today's poem. I was already a fan of Wendy Cope and this one is so much fun.

by Ellen Isham Schutt

The Uncertainty of the Poet
by Wendy Cope

I am a poet.
I am very fond of bananas.

I am bananas.
I am very fond of a poet.

I am a poet of bananas.
I am very fond.

A fond poet of ‘I am, I am’ –
Very bananas.

read the rest here

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There is no such thing as a Godforsaken town has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Ruth!

Hong Kong

We long to have a home where civil freedoms are respected, where our children will not be subject to mass surveillance, abuse of human rights, political censorship and mass incarceration.
~Joshua Wong

Saluting the bravery of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong today. I wish I had good news about them, but the long work continues.

Protest artwork referencing Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830)
A Yang for Studio Incendo CC BY 4.0

From 2020:



From a January 3, 2022 article:

Democracy is over in Hong Kong, in other words, and has been for some time now. What Beijing is currently in is a mop-up mode, as it looks to take the vice it has built around the city-state and spin the tightening lever...

Cantopop star and prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Denise Ho was arrested at her home on Wednesday morning by the city’s national security police.

From November 18, 2024: 45 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are sentenced to jail in city’s biggest national security trial

"Among those handed sentences on Tuesday was Joshua Wong, a former student leader and poster child of the city’s once thriving pro-democracy movement, who shouted 'I love Hong Kong' before he left the dock." CNN

The flip side of unfairness is pure grace

Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.
~Alan Alda

Another Wellness Wednesday rerun today!

Here is an excerpt from a blog post by Mari Andrew, talking about her time as a hospital chaplain: "It’s Unfair and It Doesn’t Make Sense":

The way our culture of offering is set up, the whole-hearted feel like they have something of worth to say to the broken-hearted, the denizens of the healthy think they know more than the sick. Around those who are in pain, people suddenly assume the role of expert: “I suggest feeling your feelings. Be grateful for the good in your life.” Why do the perfectly-fine presume they have tools for the suffering? My supervisor reminded me, “The patients are your teachers. You don’t know more than they do. Other way around.”

It was so hard not to offer anything. I’ve been through enough that I know I shouldn’t try to find a bright side, or explain away the pain, or say “I know how you feel,” but it was extremely uncomfortable to sit with someone my age who was dying, or with the family member of someone who just got very bad news. I was in the position of helping them, and I thought that help meant I had to offer something. I had to leave them with a nugget, a mantra, something brilliant to soothe and uplift them.

But it doesn’t work that way.

read the whole thing here

(With thanks to Ariana.)

Knocking upon your door

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.
~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

For Music Monday, a song from me to you. James Taylor:

Two poems by Cassian

[Nina] Cassian travelled to the United States as a visiting professor for creative writing at New York University in 1985. During her stay in America, a friend of hers, Gheorghe Ursu, was arrested and subsequently beaten to death by the Securitate for possessing a diary. The diary contained several of Cassian's poems which satirized the Communist regime and the authorities thought to be inflammatory. Hence, she decided to remain in the US.
~Wikipedia entry on Nina Cassian

Happy Poetry Friday, all! Poems by Romanian poet Nina Cassian today.

Preston and Lucy

Nina Cassian: "I switched to literature for children because it was the only field where metaphors were still allowed, where imagination was tolerated and assonance was permitted." (How bad was it in Romania? "A 2006 commission estimated the number of direct victims of the Communist repression at two million people." But Nina Cassian was still writing secret anti-Communist poems, up until she left.)

Morning Exercises
by Nina Cassian

I wake up and say: I'm through.
It's my first thought at dawn.
What a nice way to start the day
with such a murderous thought.

God, take pity on me
-- is the second thought, and then
I get out of bed
and live as if
nothing had been said.

translated by Brenda Walker and Andrea Deletant

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

A Man
by Nina Cassian

While fighting for his country, he lost an arm
and was suddenly afraid:
'From now on, I shall only be able to do
things by halves.

I shall reap half a harvest.
I shall be able to play either the tune
or the accompaniment on the piano,
but never both parts together.
I shall be able to bang with only one fist
on doors, and worst of all
I shall only be able to half hold
my love close to me.
There will be things I cannot do at all,
applaud for example,
at shows where everyone applauds.'

From that moment on, he set himself to do
everything with twice as much enthusiasm.
And where the arm had been torn away
a wing grew.

translated by Roy MacGregor-Hastie

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

Karen Edmisten has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Karen!

Addendum: An important message from a country with a terrible prime minister:

Shamsia Hassani

Art changes people's minds and people change the world.
~Shamsia Hassani

For Art Thursday, Afghani graffiti artist Shamsia Hassani:

Hassani’s distinctive style of graffiti – featuring a young woman with closed eyes – appeared on many walls in the Afghan capital, a symbol of social change, empowerment and peace. Much of her work has also been erased.

The artists who have fled Afghanistan remain undeterred and have been creating new work, even in the refugee camps. The ArtLords collective continues to create new pieces in exile and hopes soon to put on an exhibition of works by displaced artists.

“The Taliban can whitewash all our work in Kabul, but we will always have our paint and our brush. We will fight back with that,” says Muhajir.
~Richi Kumar for The Guardian

Buy prints
Artful Resistance: How Afghan Women are Wielding Art Against the Taliban

Quote Journal

I decided to repost some Wellness Wednesday posts. We all need to pump up our wellness.

No quotes needed up here today.
~me

Unfolding

Today for Wellness Wednesday, I'm thinking about keeping quote journals. Do you already save quotes or poems that have special meaning for you? Words that you might find solace in, or just thoughts that you want to return to? I started keeping quotes in high school. I still have my first pocket journal around somewhere, and I still remember some of the quotes I chose back then. Here are a few that I've saved more recently:

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
~Rebecca Solnit

Spring has returned.
The Earth is like a child that knows poems.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Ontologically, chocolate raises profoundly disturbing questions: Does not chocolate offer natural revelation of the goodness of the Creator just as chilies disclose a divine sense of humor? Is the human born with an innate longing for chocolate? Does the notion of chocolate preclude the concept of free will?
~David Augsburger

Because you were born into this particular era doesn’t mean it has to be the limit of your experience. Move about in time, go places. Why restrict your circle of acquaintances to only those who occupy the same stage we call the present?
~David McCullough

Our culture is deeply invested in the concepts of inspiration, having big dreams, innate talent, and luck. These four concepts have one thing in common: they require no work. Success in any field requires work. The arts require hours, days, years...
~Julianna Baggott

Pens and their marks

You can be way more creative in a kids’ book. Kids take whatever you tell them as ground-zero. I could say to a kid: “Once upon a time there was a world made entirely out of kites. The people were kites, the trees were kites, and all of the buildings and rivers and mountains were kites too.”

And a kid would be like, “Yes. And then what happened?” No hesitation. That’s priceless.
-Marcus Ewert

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.
~Henry Miller

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
~G.K. Chesterton

English bacteriologist Amalia Fleming spent years working on a problem.
When asked why she refused to quit, she answered, "There is an end even to failures." She did finally figure it out.

Pollinating the Stars by Elena Y

Some resources:
* Free Printable Journal pages
* Wikiquote
* Quote Investigator
* Me, being a little cranky about misattributed quotes (Full disclosure: I don't always check to make sure either. I try to think for a minute about whether it sounds like something the person would say, and if I am hesitant, I look it up.)
* Inspiring Quotes for Art Journaling

Lesson from Mrs. Roback

When all is said and done the only thing you'll have left is your character.
~Vince Gill

I don't know how long I will leave these posts up, but I know there's a community of you who are checking these out so this is for you. Since the election, I keep thinking about an experiment my fourth grade teacher did with our class. It was a rough experiment, not one that would have been done in more recent times (I think?).

In the morning, my teacher told us that kids with a certain eye color would be in charge. They could do whatever they wanted to the other kids. It was stuff along the lines of getting them to sharpen their pencils, tie their shoes, generally being bossy, saying things. I don't remember the details, what exactly was said to me or what I said. I think blue-eyed kids were in charge first. I remember being scared.

Halfway through the day, the teacher had things switch and the brown-eyed kids were in charge. She wanted everyone to have a chance to be afraid. I remember being relieved when it was our turn to be jerks -- she hadn't told us at the beginning that we would be switching, so the kids at the beginning didn't hold back.

My teacher wanted us all to see how it felt and how unfair it was. The people who could do whatever they wanted clearly weren't better than everyone else (although I think she told them that they were when it was their turn to be in charge!). Overall, I thought it was a pretty terrible day.

What I keep thinking about is how much some of the kids enjoyed it.

Black and white together, women and men together...

Made up my mind and I won't turn around
~The Staple Singers

For Music Monday, Bonnie Raitt and Andra Day perform "We Shall Not Be Moved" and "Freedom Highway" to honor Mavis Staples during the Kennedy Center Honors (2016):

Rebecca Solnit

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
~GK Chesterson

Do you read The Guardian? It is pretty great. Here's an excerpt of a piece by Rebecca Solnit, who is also pretty great:

There are other kinds of resistance that mean making your own life and your own mind an independent republic in which the pursuit of truth, human rights, kindness and empathy, the preservation of history and memory, of being an example of someone living by values other than the values – if they deserve such a term – of the cruelty, greed, and dishonesty of Donald Trump and the circle around him. This does not overthrow the regime, but it does mean being someone who has not been conquered by it, and it invites others who have not been or who can throw off the shackles to join you.

Finding community, and building and strengthening relationships, with people you trust and agree with about these moral and political issues is also important; it will strengthen you and give you people to act with when it is time to act.

Whatever the weather

Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.
~Brené Brown

Hello, all. What can I say about this week? I was overly confident that people would walk away from a vindictive criminal but for a surprising number of people, bad behavior is a feature, not a bug. Other folks really believed all the "immigrants, immigrants!" nonsense and some believed, mindboggingly enough, that a person who keeps bankrupting his businesses and has no rational economic policy would do better with the economy.*

I have been thinking about what I can learn from Black Joy:

Black Joy is finding the positive nourishment within self and others that is a safe and healing place. It is a way of resting the body, mind, and spirit in response to the traumatic, devastating and life-altering racialized experiences that Black people continue to encounter. So, bring on the Joy.

Though some of us don't have racialized experiences, we must hold grief and joy at the same time. What choice do we have? One foot in front of the other.

This week's poem:

Whether the weather
Author Unknown

Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not.

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

Merely Day by Day has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Cathy!

Addendum from Waging NonViolence: 10 Things to Do If Trump Wins (Thanks, JoAnn!)

* A quote from Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "In keeping with the power of psychological conditioning through propaganda, millions voted for Republicans because they were led to believe that the economy was terrible, inflation was rampant, and America was going down the drain due to Democratic governance. In reality, as The Economist stated just a few weeks before the election, the American economy was 'bigger and better than ever' and 'the envy of the world.'”

Some people who were convinced by the disinformation will read those quotes from The Economist and say "What do they know?" despite their specialty being, in fact, economies.

Persisting

The art of love is largely the art of persistence.
~Albert Ellis

I had a fashion-related post lined up, but the election made that feel inappropriate so instead we have an expression I've seen around lately: The horrors persist, but so do I. It's vastly disappointing that people would voluntarily choose to bring on the horrors, but here we are. (On Etsy, you can find this saying on everything from stickers to mugs to shirts.)

If you're ready now

I know a place
Ah, ain't nobody cryin'
Ain't nobody worried
Ain't no smiling faces
Lying to the races
~Alvertis Isbell

For Music Monday, I'll Take You There by The Staple Singers, which was ranked #276 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.



The first version I heard, which does feature Mavis Staples, was by BeBe and CeCe Winans:

Trying

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Would you like to send a poem and a gift to a poetry friend by mid-December (or just send a poem) (or just receive a poem or poem and a gift)? We have multiple options for the Holiday Poem Swap 2024! How quickly can you sign up? Registration will be ending Sunday November 3rd! Email me (tabatha at tabathayeatts dot com).

logo by Elena

I've been trying to remain calm while continually praying that our country does not choose misogyny, white supremacy, and fascism. I wish I could feel confident that it was out of the question. What are American values? We're about to find out.

While I go fix myself a soothing cup of tea, here's a warmhearted poem by Sheree Fitch:

Do Your Best Under the Circumstances
Sheree Fitch

There is no land of perfect, child.
There is no sea of ease.
There is no candy apple trail.
There’s broccoli and peas.

There is no suit of armour, child.
There’s arrows and there’s pain.
But when your heart is broken, child...

read the rest here

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Reverie has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Patricia!

Nut-crack night

On November first was Samhain ("summer's end").
~Ruth Edna Kelley

A nutty picture for Art Thursday. What does Halloween have to do with nuts? If you're trying to choose between suitors, apparently Halloween Night is the time to find out who's best. All you need are nuts and a fire. (Details below!)

Still Life with Mice
by Lodewik Susi

A bit of Halloween lore from The Book of Hallowe'en by Ruth Edna Kelley, A. M., originally published in 1919.

In the north of England Hallowe'en was called "nut-crack" and "snap-apple night." It was celebrated by "young people and sweethearts."

A variation of the nut test is, naming two for two lovers before they are put before[Pg 91] the fire to roast. The unfaithful lover's nut cracks and jumps away, the loyal burns with a steady ardent flame to ashes. "Two hazel-nuts I threw into the flame, And to each nut I gave a sweetheart's name. This with the loudest bounce me sore amaz'd, That in a flame of brightest color blaz'd; As blaz'd the nut, so may thy passion grow, For 't was thy nut that did so brightly glow."

Gay: The Spell.

If they jump toward each other, they will be rivals. If one of the nuts has been named for the girl and burns quietly with a lover's nut, they will live happily together. If they are restless, there is trouble ahead.

"These glowing nuts are emblems true Of what in human life we view; The ill-matched couple fret and fume, And thus in strife themselves consume, Or from each other wildly start And with a noise forever part. But see the happy, happy pair Of genuine love and truth sincere; With mutual fondness, while they burn[Pg 92] Still to each other kindly turn: And as the vital sparks decay, Together gently sink away. Till, life's fierce ordeal being past, Their mingled ashes rest at last."

Graydon: On Nuts Burning, Allhallows Eve.

'Cause it felt so good

Just stop and realize just what is true. What else can you do?
Just follow the rules and keep your eyes on the road that's ahead of you.
~Little Feat

For Music Monday, Little Feat. Did I listen to this album a million times when it came out? Why, yes.



Also, Let It Roll
Halloween music

The right conditions

Maples are such sociable trees ... They're always rustling and whispering to you.
~Lucy Maud Montgomery

Happy Poetry Friday! When I was looking for quotes, I also found this delightful one:
I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.
~Leif Enger

It's been very gold today. *happy sigh* I am a fan of October. We have two tree-related poems this week.

letter to my father
by Sara Eddy

I’ve been walking around with a knot
in my belly all week for no reason.
There’s nothing wrong, no big turmoil.

But I feel everything, a web of open nerves
zapping to the tune of every little thing.
We finally had winter this week, after many...

read the rest here

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Whenever you see a tree
By Padma Venkatraman
Think
how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change

read the rest here

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Beyond Literacy Link has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Carol!

Molten

"A singer can shatter glass with the proper high note, he said," "but the simplest way to break glass is simply to drop it on the floor.'"
~Anne Rice

For Art Thursday, Glass Blowers of Murano by Charles Frederic Ulrich. Have you watched the tv series that's a glass blowing competition (I can't remember the name! Arg)? It impressed upon me how dangerous glass blowing can be, although this painting looks very relaxed.

Glass Blowers of Murano
by Charles Frederic Ulrich

Photogravure (by Goupil & Co.) based on the 1886 painting by American artist Charles Frederic Ulrich

Orange-colored day

You’re a part of the season, no more and no less
~Liana Flores

For Music Monday, a song Ariana introduced me to during my visit. Liana Flores:

We can make a house called tomorrow

It's sobering to realize that there's a huge chunk of the U.S. voting population that doesn't think of sexual assault as something horrendous enough to disqualify a presidential candidate.
~Ana Kasparian

by Jogesh Chandra Seal

Happy Poetry Friday! How great is it to have poetry friends who will take up a meaningful challenge with you? Here's a post from 2020 full of poems about hand-marked paper ballots.

Ouch: Voting Machine by Maggie Smith

Lastly, I'm returning to Alberto Rios, who knows what to say:

A House Called Tomorrow
by Alberto Ríos

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are...

read the rest here

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

I'm visiting Ariana and Matthew this week but hope to make the rounds anyway, maybe a little late.

Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Matt!

Noodle Soup

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.
~Francoise Sagan

For Music Monday, Four80East:

Radiant

The meadows are yellow with buttercups, and the birds fly out of the gold.
~George Augustus Moore

photo by William Warby

Happy Poetry Friday! Today's poem is by Wendy Stern, whose poetry has an archive at the Buddhist Poetry Review.

Vision
by Wendy Stern

If all you see is cityness,
Heavy cement, paving stones,
Concretised un-breathing,
Can you still notice out of the far corner of your eye
That solo flying buttercup,
Rooted in the crusty soil,
There between the cracks,
Amid the greyness, the bleakness,
All radiant yellowness?

Life,
No matter what,
Survival,
No matter where.

All radiant yellowness.

Wendy was a Buddhist and poet who lived in Bristol, in the west of England. For many years she was completely bedridden, and her poetry therefore came from an unusual perspective. Writing poetry was Wendy’s passion and her only form of creativity and self-expression. Her work was produced without the capacity to look at text, to write or to use a laptop. Dictating the poems and then editing them aurally took an immense amount of energy and concentration. Wendy passed away on April 8, 2015. -Buddhist Poetry Review

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Jama's Alphabet Soup has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Jama!

Fionn and Áillen

[Áillen] would burn Tara [the seat of the High King of Ireland] to the ground every year at Samhain [Oct 31/Nov 1] with his fiery breath after lulling all the inhabitants to sleep with his music. This only ended with the arrival of Fionn mac Cumhaill, who inhaled the poison from his spear to keep himself awake and slew Áillen.
~The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn

Now that's a hero, right? Inhaled his own poison to stay awake! For Art Thursday, Fionn mac Cumhaill fighting "The Burner" Áillen. According to Irish History.com:

Fionn Mac Cumhaill, born as Demne, was the son of Cumhaill, the leader of the Fianna, and Muirne, the daughter of the druid Tadg mac Nuadat. Fearing for the child’s safety due to Cumhaill’s death in battle and the enmity of his enemies, Muirne entrusted her son to be raised in secrecy by the druidess Bodhmall and the warrior Liath Luachra.

The name Fionn, meaning “fair” or “bright,” was given to Demne after he killed a dangerous supernatural creature known as Aillen mac Midgna, who had terrorized the people of Tara for years. With his newfound fame, Demne adopted the name Fionn Mac Cumhaill, honoring his father and signifying his bright future as a great hero.

Both of these images seem to be from the same book, but they are quite different. I thought the second one was Áillen because it seemed like there was fire coming out of the creature's mouth but maybe not? What do you think?

Fionn fighting Áillen
illustration by Beatrice Elvery in Violet Russell's Heroes of the Dawn (1914)

illustration to a collection of tales from Irish mythology
Beatrice Elvery, 1914

Orla Gartland

La-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la-la
I, I wouldn't trust me either
~Orla Gartland, Backseat Driver

For Music Monday, Irish singer, songwriter, and musician Orla Gartland with "Late to the Party" and "Backseat Driver":

We will be spirals and domes

“And if anyone knows anything about anything,” said Bear to himself, “it’s Owl who knows something about something.”
~Winnie the Pooh

Happy Poetry Friday! Glad you're here. It's National Poetry Day in the U.K. (on Oct 3rd) so huzzah for that!

One morning this week when I walked outside with my dogs, we startled an owl. It flew away but not too far, so I got a good look at it. How thrilled was I? Exceedingly! I told my neighbor, who said he'd seen that owl a couple of times before and he shared this picture:

by Nathan B.

He took this photo out his window! I have been looking for our owl ever since. When I was searching for an owl poem, I found this gorgeous one about starlings. It could make a good mentor poem! What if humans could move like a pod of whales or a caravan of camels? (You can find animal group names here.)

Murmuration
Emily Schulten

If we move with the fluidity of starlings,
like a puddle of clippings in the air that shape-
shifts but never falls hard to the ground,

if we sense enough of each other to know
in which direction to fly away from being
preyed upon, but never from one another,

in swirls and with the unshakable faith
that wherever we turn we will be synchronal,
miming in a language only our bodies

comprehend the intention of our design...

read the rest here

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Please leave your link below!

Welcome to October!

Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.
~Jim Bishop

For Art Thursday, an assortment of Octobers:

October's "bright blue weather," Work Projects Administration Poster Collection 1940
Attributed to Albert M. Bender

Octobre
Eugène Grasset

Late October
John Atkinson Grimshaw

The Carolyn Wells year book of old favorites and new fancies for 1909

Slow, Slow (Run Run)

I got to free my mind
I got to chase my Soul
I got to face myself
I got to find my glow
~A Y Ọ

For Music Monday, A Y Ọ with Slow, Slow (Run Run):

You count sheep — and stop at one

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
~John Steinbeck

Poet’s Insomnia
by Julian Matthews

It is late and you are awake, stricken by Poet’s Insomnia
You count sheep — and stop at one
You wonder how this lone sheep got here
The scene is a green, verdant field,
framed by white picket fences, rolling hills, shining sun

Scratch that—
Why is this field so green and verdant?
Make it windswept, dirty-olive long-grass, patches of burnt umber
Make the fence mottled, termite-infested, rotting like a grounded pirate’s ship
For that matter, why do hills always have to roll?
Make them weathered, fossil-studded, miocene
Forget the sun...

read the rest here

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Live Your Poem has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Irene!

A bird a day

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
~Douglas Adams

Hi folks! For Art Thursday, I wanted to share an art habit I've been doing for about six weeks. It's a habit with no actual goals except enjoying myself. It's low stakes-- I am using a notebook and colored pencils I already had. The brown paper is sometimes frustrating (yellow doesn't show up well) and I don't have a black pencil so I wing it (haha) when I'm drawing black birds. I just wanted to share my practice in case it encourages you to play around with something you get the urge to do. Maybe I'll draw bugs next.

Oktavists

The term oktavist is most precisely used to refer to basses that sing down to contra B flat and lower in a choral setting.
-Oktavism.com

Sliding in late again for Music Monday, with a majestic bit of singing from the PaTRAM Institute Male Choir. "We have no other help" by Boris Ledkovsky:

Arms out like wings

Có chí làm quan, có gan làm giàu.
Vietnamese proverb, Fortune favors the brave.

Sokół antique motorcycle

Happy Poetry Friday! People are sooo interesting, aren't they? I just love hearing stories, everybody's stories. One of my father's cousins was a motorcycle racer, until he lost a foot doing it. Here's a poem by Hoa Nguyen, who says her mother "left home at 15 and joined a circus and became a motorcycle stunt-woman in Vietnam in the early 1960s. She did these amazing things contrary to what her position as a poor woman, born in 1942 in the Mekong Delta, should have been.” (I feel like this poem -- and last week's -- would be good mentor poems to encourage high school students to write about their ancestors...or perhaps historical figures.)


My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962
by Hoa Nguyen

Very loud    a mad frenzy     The wooden
barrel she rode would have roared

(I first wrote “road”)
Left home to join the circus: 15 years old

You enter at the bottom and wind upwards
in spirals    the bike climbing the sides

You enter the barrel on a Peugeot
with automatic tied down handles

I mean the kind that you can peg
so you can ride hands-free

arms out like wings on either side...


read the rest here

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TeacherDance has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Linda!

The beauty of the air

I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house, the boat are located. The beauty of the air where they are, and that's nothing short of impossible.
~Claude Monet

For Art Thursday, Impressionist paintings by Sisley, Corinth, and Pissarro. This quote from Wikipedia kills me:

When Pissarro returned to his home in France after the war [1872], he discovered that of the 1,500 paintings he had done over 20 years, which he was forced to leave behind when he moved to London, only 40 remained. The rest had been damaged or destroyed by the soldiers, who often used them as floor mats outside in the mud to keep their boots clean.

I feel like Pissarro could teach a thing or two about resilience after dealing with that.

The Hay Cart, Montfoucault, 1879
Camille Pissarro

Lady at the Goldfish Basin (1911)
Lovis Corinth

The Terrace at Saint-Germain, Spring, 1875
Alfred Sisley

Rock and roll vocalizations

Our mystical throat singing, special elemental vocals, enchanting sounds of vargan (jaw harp), khomys, morinhur, leather drums will take you to the wild, northern thickets of the Siberian taiga.
~Otyken

For Music Monday, Otyken:

Lanterns in my words

Out of the fire comes firmness, through stress we pass to strength.
~Charles F. Binns

photo by Musahfm

Happy Poetry Friday! Today's poem mixes music, pottery, poetry, defiance, and positivity. It's a lot, but it holds holds holds.

Praise Dave
by Glenis Redmond

Enslaved potter-poet
Edgefield, SC

First time I see a jar rise up,
I be midwifed into life.

Understood how these pots and I be kin
––dismissed to what’s under foot.

I learned to turn and turn––
people the world with pots.

I pour my need into the knead
until forty thousand around me crowd,

but everything I love, I lose
so I want what I mold to hold.

Even my empty pots
be full. One say:

I wonder where is all my relation
Friendship to all and every nation.

There are lanterns in my words––
every story got another story.

Some call me Dave the slave, if that’s all they got,
I say leave the rhymes to me.

When people look at me, a slave be...


read the rest here

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

A vital public good

A vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good - similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society.
~Tom Peters

For Art Thursday, images from the Public Domain Review:

The Circulating Library
George Spratt, ca. 1830

Owl with Two Owlets Sitting on Branch
Henri De Groux, 1895

Study of a Hand with Needle
Henricus Wilhelmus Couwenberg, ca. 1830

The Mansion of the Plates
Katsushika Hokusai, ca. 1830

The Night-Blowing Cereus
Robert John Thornton, 1807

Big Ocean

Right now, the concepts of disability and non-disability are separated, but ultimately, we want to see a world where those boundaries are erased.
~Park Hyun-jin of Big Ocean

For belated Music Monday, Big Ocean, a Korean pop band who is HoH (Hard-of-hearing)/Deaf. I heard about them on my Instagram feed, which thanks to my interest in the Paralympics, is now full of cool people with disabilities. I love that a deaf Kpop band exists.

From an article in The Korea Times by Pyo Kyung-min:

“The three of us have different levels of hearing ability,” Kim says. “During recording, we often struggle to stay on beat because we can’t hear the rhythm of the track clearly. It’s hard to fix this on our own, so we rely on the staff’s hand signals to help us stay in sync.”

“Tuning our voices is also challenging,” Park adds. “We use an app that helps us match our pitch and then we memorise the amount of muscle effort needed to produce each note. It’s not easy to remember the muscle tension required to hit the right notes, so we focus a lot of our training on that.”

...For choreography rehearsals, they use a smartwatch-style metronome that provides pulse feedback through vibration, along with a visual metronome on a monitor that helps maintain rhythm with light cues.

Don't lie awake

Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.
~George MacDonald

This has been Heather Maloney week on the blog. I shared a Maloney performance for Music Monday and I'm sharing her again (a different song) for Poetry Friday... these lyrics are so poetic! Check them out:

Hey, hey baby, I'm your picnic blanket
Give me your crumbs, give me your drips, give me your bugs
Hey, hey baby, I'm your mud-room floor
Give me your street-dust, give me your beach-sand, give me your rain
Hey, hey baby, I'm your nightstand drawer
Give me your secrets, give me your longings, give me a chance
To hold these things

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sell it to the papers. No, and
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna spin em' into stories. And
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna use it as ammunition, no
I just wanna hold...



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Buffy Silverman has the Poetry Friday round-up today. Thanks, Buffy!

Koishikawa tea house

Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept.
~Frances Hardinge

I've been thinking about tea because Elena is having a tea party tomorrow.

Tea house at Koishikawa. The morning after a snowfall
Katsushika Hokusai

P.S. I just finished A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge (who is quoted above). So good! Would love to read more by her.

We are golden

Can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
~Joni Mitchell

Hi y'all! I forgot to post something for Music Monday! Here are Darlingside and Heather Maloney playing "Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell:



As long as we're golden...Curtis Aaron, Velorisa, Jscott 'The Glove' Martin, Ben Goodman, and Louis Nelson playing "Golden" by Jill Scott:

Stronger than an airplane wing

Maybe what we can do when we feel overwhelmed is to start small. Start with what we have loved as kids and see where that leads us.
~Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Happy Poetry Friday! I am thinking about a well-loved bird today...and especially about voting.

One Vote
by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution

My parents are from countries
where mangoes grow wild and bold
and eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.
America loved this bird too and made

it clutch olives and arrows. Some think
if an eaglet falls, the mother will swoop
down to catch it. It won’t. The eagle must fly...

read the rest here

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Chicken Spaghetti has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Susan!

Vynohrad

You cannot eat a cluster of grapes at once, but it is very easy if you eat them one by one.
Jacques Roumain

My parents are having a bumper crop of grapes this year so I brought some back yesterday and hope to make jelly today. I don't really know what I'm doing but am hopeful!

For Art Thursday, grapes:

Bufford's fruit cards, no. 779-5 [grapes]
Bufford

Druer i et Drivhus (Grapes in a Greenhouse), 1903 oil on canvas
Anna Syberg

Bunch of Grapes Quilt in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
photo by Daderot

Porträt einer jungen Frau in einer Weinlaube, 1851
Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Archaeological revival necklace, circa 1880
Castellani
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Crouse Brothers' descriptive catalogue, 1879