Poetry Month-Azaleas

Here's a post for the last day of poetry month—a poem in English and Korean. Five years ago I was invited to Korea and spent a wonderful week there. Before I went, I met with David McCann of Harvard University (brother of a colleague from the Children's Museum) and he shared with me his knowledge and experience of Korea and their great love of poetry and literature. This is a famously popular poem in Korea and I made it into a little book to distribute there. The photo was taken at Maudslay State Park in Newburyport.

Here's the poem in English:

When you go away, Sick of seeing me, I shall let you go gently, no words.

From Mount Yak in Yongbyon, An armful of azaleas I shall gather and scatter on your path.

Step by step away, On the flowers lying before you, Tread softly, deeply, and go

When you go away, Sick of seeing me, though I die; No, I shall shed not a tear.


poem by Kim Sowol, translation by David R. McCann

Studio Sunday-May Day Books

I'm going to be making some of my little May Day books to give away. I've put the materials I need in a large shoe box so I can carry them easily and assemble the books anywhere in the house. May Day is Tuesday. If you want to make a book, check out this post which has directions and a pdf to print.

This is part of my Emily Dickinson Series. This image was created from a photograph of chive blossoms. I was picking herbs earlier this morning. The buds are full and round and just ready to come into flower. Here is the complete poem (number 338):

I know that He exists.
Somewhere -- in Silence --
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

'Tis an instant's play.
'Tis a fond Ambush --
Just to make Bliss
Earn her own surprise!

But -- should the play
Prove piercing earnest --
Should the glee -- glaze --
In Death's -- stiff -- stare --

Would not the fun
Look too expensive!
Would not the jest --
Have crawled too far!

May Day Book to Make and Share

Every year when we gather on the banks of Charles River in the early morning hours to celebrate May Day, my favorite part is the singing of the Padstow May Song. Here's a little book with the chorus of the song for you to make. Start by downloading the May Book Book PDF.

You'll need:

* Print of the pdf with the pages. You can either print it on stiff paper or card stock or print on regular weight paper and glue it to something heavier.
* Scissors
* Hole punch
* 2 Buttons (I prefer one with a shank for the front and one with holes for the back)
* Twist tie from bread or a piece of wire
* Several pieces of ribbon (optional)
* Colored pencils or markers to color in the ribbons and flowers (optional)

Make the book:
1. Cut out the pages. There are seven plus a Happy May Day which you can use for a title if you'd like to put the book in a little box.

2. Punch a hole in each page at the circle.

3. Thread the twist tie through the front button and pull so that the ends are even.

4. Stack the pages together, insert the ends of the twist tie into the holes, and pull them through from the back. The words are on the printed sheet in case you need help with the order of the pages.

5. Pull apart the twist ties a little so that the button is anchored in the front and won't slip back out.

6. If you are using ribbons, fold them in half, wrap them under and around the button, and tie a knot under the button.

7. Thread a twist tie end into two holes of the button and pull so that the button is firmly anchored. I prefer to use a button with holes for the back but you can also use one similar to the front.

8. Twist the ends together several times to secure the button. Trim off any extra.

Display it in your home or office, add it to a May basket for a friend, or present it in a leftover jewelry box. It is a beautiful reminder of the life unfolding and unfurling outside and the connection among people that we need to foster and cherish. "Now let us unite."

Poetry Month-Newspaper Blackout Poem

Austin Kleon is the creator of the book Newspaper Blackout. He starts with a page from the New York Times and blacks out words until he arrives at a poem from the words that stay behind. He describes himself as "a writer, artist, author, and speaker obsessed with the art of communicating with pictures and words, together."

And here's his instructions on making your own black out poem:

How to make a Newspaper Blackout Poem:

Grab a newspaper.
Grab a marker.
Find an article.
Cross out words, leaving behind the ones you like.
Pretty soon you’ll have a poem.

You can find out more at austinkleon.com.

By the way, I'm counting this as a Book Arts Tuesday as well.

Poetry Month-Richard Hoffman at Mass Poetry

Richard Hoffman spoke at the Mass Poetry Festival in Salem on Saturday, April 21. I wasn't in the audience but I was moved when I read his remarks online.

And so, “The State of Poetry.” Looking out at this room full of people, I’d say that the state of poetry, the interest in poetry, is pretty healthy. The fact that we are here at a three day poetry festival speaks for itself. And so I really want to talk about poetry, not “the poetry business.” I warned Jennifer that I would do this. I hope you will also indulge me, because the fact is that I am the wrong person to give any advice about a career in poetry. I am not a successful poet, at least not in the usual sense. Like most poets, my books are published by a small press, seldom reviewed, and never in those few publications that seem to matter. You won’t find my work in anthologies or in discussions of contemporary poetry. This is not a complaint, only a way of offering you my credentials for NOT talking about a career in poetry: I don’t have one.

But I have a life that is largely made of poetry, of the poetry of others, both the dead and the living, and the poetry I try to write. I would not exchange that life, that ongoing education, that continual growth, for anything. Poetry returns to me the things I know and have forgotten, and among those things there dwells the deepest and oldest and least distorted version of myself: that consciousness that first looked for the right words, the right nouns, verbs, adjectives — the right sounds — to make sense of the world.

Continue reading his remarks on his blog, Mnemosyne's Memes.

Poetry Month-20th Century Poets Stamps

I like my postal experience to be complete—buying the stamps at the window (and making the postal clerk show me every choice), addressing envelopes at home, and then walking across the street to the mailbox or going to the post office. Unfortunately my local post office is trying to drive me to web for the purchasing of stamps when they give me a choice of flags or flags. I'm going to try to get them in person and if that fails, I'll be going to the USPS website.

Here's what the website says about the stamps:

Ten great poets are honored on this Twentieth-Century Poets (Forever®) stamp sheet, including several who served as United States Poet Laureate. The many awards won by this illustrious group — Elizabeth Bishop, Joseph Brodsky, Gwendolyn Brooks, E. E. Cummings, Robert Hayden, Denise Levertov, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams — include numerous Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and honorary degrees.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) polished her poems to gleaming perfection, displaying the precise observation, intellectual strength, and understated humor that continue to win readers. Her poems walk the line between the marvelous and the ordinary and other contradictions.

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) was an exile from the Soviet Union who became the first foreign-born poet to be appointed Poet Laureate of the United States. Although he embraced the country he came to call home, many of his poems resonate with loneliness and loss.

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), another former U.S. Poet Laureate, is best remembered for distinctive, lyrical portraits of urban life. A master of traditional poetic forms, she also experimented with free verse, jazz and blues poetry, and colloquial language.

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) expertly manipulated the rules of grammar, punctuation, rhyme, and meter to create poems that resembled modernist paintings. His works transformed notions of what a poem can do and delighted readers of all ages.

The poems of Robert Hayden (1913-1980) reflect his brilliant craftsmanship, his historical conscience, and his gift for storytelling. Many of his works render aspects of the black American experience with unforgettable vividness; others are more personal.

Denise Levertov (1923-1997) hoped her poetry would inspire change. Weaving together public and private, active and contemplative, she perfected an organic form of poetry that explored the political and social world through the intimate experiences and perceptions of the individual.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) probed the conflict between self and outward appearance. Her complex body of work includes deftly imagined poems about marriage and motherhood, gender and power, death and resurrection, and the sweet, enjoyable moments of everyday life.

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) created intimate, introspective poems distinguished by lyricism and a sensual use of imagery. Best known for his poems about the natural world, he was profoundly influenced by the events of his childhood and mined his past for the themes and subjects of his writing.

The work of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) presents a luxurious banquet of language and meaning. Many of his poems — some highly comic, others somber and spare — explore the relationship between consciousness and reality.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a doctor who typed out his poems between seeing patients. His work showed readers the extraordinary in the commonplace — a broken bottle, a red wheelbarrow left out in the rain — in deliberately plain language.

Art director and stamp designer Derry Noyes selected the photographs used in the stamp art. The photograph of Elizabeth Bishop was taken in Key West, Florida, by Josef Breitenbach. The photograph of Joseph Brodsky was taken in New York City by Nancy Crampton. The photograph of Gwendolyn Brooks was taken in Chicago in 1987 by Jon Randolph.

The photograph of E. E. Cummings was taken in 1935 by Edward Weston. The photograph of Robert Hayden was taken around 1975 by Timothy D. Franklin. The photograph of Denise Levertov was taken by Rollie McKenna. The photograph of Sylvia Plath was also taken by Rollie McKenna.

The photograph of Theodore Roethke was taken in London, England. The photograph of Wallace Stevens was taken by Sylvia Salmi. The photograph of William Carlos Williams was taken in the 1940s.

The sheet's verso includes an excerpt from one poem by each of the poets featured on the sheet.

Studio Sunday-Getting Ready for the South Common Haiku Event

Here is South Common Haiku lettered on brown paper for a sandwich board sign for today's event. After it dries, I'll trim it. I'm packing up the materials—string, hole punches, scissors, velcro coins, bone folders, and haiku cards. It will be a true community effort—attendees will read the poems and bind the books.

Poetry Month-Marge Piercy Poem

For me, the joy of being an artist is always in the work and the difficulties are in integrating that work into the rest of the world. I am doing a lot of thinking about it and hopefully soon some writing but in the meantime, I have this poem by Marge Piercy.

For the young who want to

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and somebody else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

Poetry Month-Mud

My favorite poem as a child from my favorite book.

Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People

I LOVE this book written by Monica Brown and illustrated by Julie Paschkis. It's a beautiful story of poet Pablo Neruda's life for children and every page is a visual delight and a source of inspiration and contemplation.

Here's how the book begins:

Once there was a little boy named Neftali, who loved wild things wildly and quiet things quietly. From the moment he could talk, Neftali surrounded himself with words that whirled and swirled, just like the river that ran near his home in Chile.

And here are some of the beautiful pages:

John and Jane: A Love Story

Sometimes a mother just has to talk about her kids. Here's a short film my daughter made for the Salem State Campus MovieFest. It's a great program. Students are given a camera and a laptop with editing software and a week to make a movie.

Poetry Month-Spring & Longfellow

It's such a hard day to be in the studio working—flowers to be savored and smelled, the garden earth calling to be tended, breezes to be felt. Here's a temporary compromise: spring words from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow written indoors and placed and photographed out.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: A Maine Historical Society Web Site

Last year's post about a book of poems for children, Sharing the Seasons, where I found these lines from Longfellow

Poetry Month-Abecedarian Gallery Celebrates with Jan Owen

Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, CO is celebrating Poetry Month with the work of Jan Owen. Here's what owner Alicia Bailey has to say about Jan's work:

Maine artist and musician Jan Owen works with poetic form; combining words with her own sense of rhythm. Captivated by the gestures found in handwritten letters, she often works with texts written by others. More than marks made on specific surfaces, Owen’s work integrates surface with mark. To this end she often works on translucent materials that are layered, such as in Silence of the Night, Brush Palimpsest or Binary Code.

Not only is the material used for these works translucent (Hollytek) it is lightweight and has an ephemeral quality. Whether hanging, as the scroll books do, or presented in bound book form, when these works are on display, the slightest breeze causes a lovely shift in the relationship of the uppermost layer to the partially obscured layers underneath.

Jan also integrates mark with surface by using materials woven back into the surface. For her series of hanging accordion books, she weaves with Tyvek to which she has hand-applied surface colors. Using other paste-paper techniques, this rich surface then holds the words of a variety of poets (one reason I am so taken with these works is that she uses words by poets I resonate with – Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Rilke, John Muir, Thoreau and Whitman.) Rather than presenting one poets entire text, she often weaves and layers words from these different sources and presents a new way of interpreting her selections.

Abecedarian blog post on Jan Owen

Jan Owen's website

Poetry Month-Concord Hymn

Way back when, when I moved to Massachusetts from New Jersey, I discovered new holidays including Patriot's Day which celebrates the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Growing up in New Jersey, our grade school history lessons were locally focused—Washington Crossing the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton, Molly Pitcher giving water to the wounded at the Battle of Monmouth, and Tempe Wick's house in Morristown. For my kids here in Massachusetts, it was all about Lexington and Concord. Once the war moved south, it moved out of the picture. I've always thought it would be interesting to attend the annual reenactment but have always been daunted by the early hour. Better to read Emerson's Concord Hymn later in the day.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those spirits dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Studio Sunday-Awaiting Boxes

Three community bookmaking projects are awaiting the next step. First (above) will be preparing the books from the fourth grade students at the Molin School in Newburyport for the Poetry Fence that will be installed in front of the Newburyport Public Library a week from tomorrow. Three other Newburyport Literary Festival volunteers will be joining me on Tuesday to thread them for hanging.

Above are bins with the books from Lowell Women's Week. My original thought was to bind them all into one long book (method yet to be determined) but there are so many that I think there will be four separate books in boxes for the LWW Archives at the Lowell Center for History. The smaller box below contains the books from the Maudslay installation last fall. As they will be the model for the LWW books, they will be bound first. I had expected that task would be long done but...

Poetry Month-Wordsworth's Daffodils

Thanks to my facebook friend, Amy Rhilinger Librarian, for an alert to this from The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1802 that William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, happened upon a profusion of daffodils along the banks of the nine-mile-long Ullswater Lake. Dorothy wrote down a detailed description of the daffodils that helped inspire Wordsworth to write the famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" five years later. It begins:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

and continues:

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


I now have another woman from the past to read about—Dorothy Wordsworth. I'm going to start with The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life by Frances Wilson. Here's a review by Dwight Garner from the New York Times.

Poetry Month-Song of Innocence

Th earlier post about the book with a passage from William Blake reminded me that I done a few calligraphy pieces of his poems in the past. The introduction to Songs of Innocence seems perfect for a beautiful April day.

I believe I may have written the background "Songs of Innocence" with a reed pen inspired by the line "And I made a rural pen." I was a big fan of these sweeping descenders and used them whenever I thought it would be appropriate. And sometimes when it wasn't. Looking at it now, it looks kind of congested and I question what I was thinking in the way I wrote William Blake but adding the attribution is always tricky. I always added it at the end and sometimes too quickly, followed by a "Why did I do that?"

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again."
So I piped: he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer."
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read."
So he vanished from my sight,
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

Here's William Blake's page of the introduction:

You can view all the poems here.

Poetry Month-Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye was on the News Hour last night reading her poetry and talking about her work. Here she is reading two of her poems:

Watch Naomi Shihab Nye Reads Two Poems on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

And here she is talking about teaching poetry and about what poetry can mean in our world:

Watch Extended Interview: Naomi Shihab Nye on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

And here is her page at the Poetry Foundation.

Poetry Month-A William Blake Excerpt

Several weeks ago my daughter was given a collection of scarves, earrings, and pins which we enjoyed sorting through—finding ones we liked, ones that would make good gifts, and ones to pass along to a local charity shop. And of course I am always looking at everything as possible material for handmade books. I got the idea that some of the post and hanging earrings would work as the binding of the fan books. Today I got around to making a sample as I prepare for the Fan Book Gathering of Gifts Workshop on Saturday.

The pages of the book were cut to match the shape of the earring from cereal boxes and covered first with images from a catalog and then with tracing vellum with the words of a poem excerpt by William Blake written with a flair marker. The backs were covered with brown grocery bag paper. Holes were punched with a punch that makes tiny holes and the pages threaded onto the earring.