A prose poem about a coffee shop and snow

I used to belong to an internet writing group called Poetry Thursday. I was really enjoying it but the owners quit so the group fell apart. On Feb. 15, 2007 we were assigned to write a prose poem. I had no idea what that was, but here is mine about sitting in the coffee shop during an early morning snow.

"Come sit by the fire with me. Sit by the gas flames rising from fake logs. Warm us bright blaze in the dark by the pseudo-bricks as we tip Styrofoam cups with plastic lids, sip black brew browned with cream factory made. Animate brain cells, stir up stiff tongues tropical beans, red and bright when picked by dark hands, traveling on tankers guided by pale hands to bring us warmth and happy thoughts, brown after roasting in mills and bursting to dark beans, trucked by many hands along concrete interstates and asphalt by-ways to loading docks at dark coffee shops. Come sit by the fire with me in the dark, tasting warmth, watching the snow fall on icy lines--pity the bird toes--sending power to heat water piped and purified, dripping hot in the pot held by ethnic hands that fill my cup which warms my nose by the fire where we sit."

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We're back from Ireland

In Ireland green I caught the grippe
while touring onboard a famine ship.
In Waterford it was crystal clear
blogging would be light when I got here.
Bus to Dublin, a Chicago flight--
On to Columbus, to sleep all night.
When I’m back on top, I’ll check my notes,
photos upload and unload my totes.
The reconstructed Dunbrody which carried Irish immigrants to Canada, 1845-1870. Unlike some that were "coffin ships," this carrier had a good captain, and most arrived alive.

The trip, A-C
The trip, D-G
The trip, H-J
The trip, K-M
The trip, N-P
The trip, Q-R
The trip, S-T
The trip, U-Z
The trip, Thirteen things I noticed about Ireland

Poetry Thursday

I can't find that I posted this poem which I wrote in July 2003. It is based on two incidents 57 years apart.

Pet in the Road at 163 and 269
July 27, 2003

You are sleeping tucked away in bed
when I see your pet.
You are dreaming of the beach
as I pass at 6 a.m.

You didn't see her slip out the door
for that one last chase.
You realize she is missing
when no friend is waiting.

You hide your face and hot tears
when the stranger stops to help.
You turn to your big sisters,
but they are all crying too.

You will keep her in your heart
though your arms are empty now.
You will weep years later
as you pass a pet in the road.

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Poetry Thursday--a betrayal of trust

Last week I took a writing class at the Rhein Center here in Lakeside with Patricia Mote. One of our assignments was to write an editorial, poem or song lyrics about a fallen person in public life--a president, sports figure or celebrity. I chose Bob Taft (Robert A. Taft, II), our former two-term governor of Ohio, who by the end of his term was ranked 50th of the 50 governors.

He bears one of the most famous names in American politics--Taft. His Taft fore bearers have included a president, senators, supreme court judges, secretaries of war, as well as state politicians. He left office entangled in an ethics scandal (quite mild by standards of other politicians), and he and his wife went to Africa where he had served in the Peace Corps as a young man. He will be at the University of Dayton this fall.

Poor Bob Taft
by Norma Bruce

Gone are the days when our Taft name was strong and great.
Gone are my state house friends who also met my fate.
Gone from Columbus to far off Tanzania,
Peace Corps memories and far off Tanzania.

I'm going, I'm going, this life is still a draft--
I read the Zogby ethics polling, poor Bob Taft.

Why do I weep so, it can now not be improved,
George Bush is my eleventh cousin once removed,
And I'm the ninth cousin of Richard Bruce Cheney;
Yes, in my family, Vice President Cheney.

I'm going, going, before I get too daft--
I hear the ethics charges tolling poor Bob Taft.

Thursday Thirteen--13 Words for sheep

Feminist librarians say naming (cataloging and classification) is a form of power. Yawn. Librarians always say that about information, i.e., knowledge is control, power, etc. That's why they have such fabulous salaries and get government appointments. Ha. But other professions besides librarians and government bureaucrats also name by gender, role, age, economic value, hierarchy, etc., too. Like sheep farmers. One time I saw a list of 50+ English words for sheep (most of New Zealand and Australian origin where sheep are essential to the economy), only a few of which I remember. Here's a few I found on the Internet . . . plus a poem. Just because I'm a formerly powerful librarian.

Photo by JD Lasica
1) buck - uncastrated male sheep
2) dam - sheep mother
3) ewe - female sheep of breeding age

Two tooth ewes (not pregnant)

4) ram - entire male animal that has reached sexual maturity at around six months
5) wether - male sheep castrated at an early age before secondary sexual characters have developed. A bellwether is a sheep with a bell leading the flock (also called a mob).
6) hogg - a sheep up to the age of one year; one yet to be sheared
7) hoggett - castrated male sheep usually 10 to 14 months old.
8) lamb - young sheep still with its dam (mother) or up to five months of age. Qualified as

ewe lamb or
ram lamb or
Cade lamb - regional term for an orphan lamb

9) shearling - regional term for sheep up to first shearing
10) Gimmer - regional term for a young ewe that has not yet born a lamb.
11) Tegs - regional term for fat lamb in second season
12) Theaves - another regional term for a young ewe up to first lambing.
13) Tups or tips - male sheep, usually an entire breeding male ram
-----------------
My sheep poem
by Norma

Buck, dam,
Ewe, lamb,
Wether, hogg,
Hoggett, ram--

Yearling,
Gimmer,
tups, tegs, tips,
Theaves, shearling--

Waltz Matilda, waltz!*
----------------------
*Waltzing Matilda is Australia's unofficial anthem. The spell check says it has never heard of any of these words.

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Poetry Thursday--Oft in the stilly night

This poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852) was the selection for May 17 in my "A poem a day" book, so I decided to do a little research. It certainly reflects the thoughts and conversations of people my age. That stays consistent over the years. It was put to music and very popular in the 19th century. I haven't written any poetry for awhile, but am reading it.

Oft in the stilly night
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Mem'ry brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears of childhood's* years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm'd and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus in the stilly night
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Mem'ry brings the light
Of other days around me.

When I remember all
The friends, so link'd together,
I've seen around me fall
Like leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus in the stilly night
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Mem'ry brings the light
Of other days around me.*boyhood's was in the original

Moore was a precocious child, publishing his first verses at the age of 11. As a boy he studied French, Italian, and music, and in 1794 he entered Trinity College. Later, by dint of his verses and singing, he became a familiar and well-liked figure in London, where he had gone to study law.

With the first publication of his Melodies, he found himself both rich and a popular hero. Although not a revolutionary, he was a friend of Robert Emmet; and his songs, which were performed for and acclaimed by the English aristocracy, had the effect of arousing sympathy for the Irish nationalist movement.

Influenced in part by Scott's historical novels, Lord Byron's "oriental" tales, and the popularity of the newly translated 1001 Nights, Moore in 1817 published Lalla Rookh, a narrative poem set in the Mideast (or at least an 18th-century Irishman's conception of the Mideast). It was wildly successful, selling out in a matter of days and running through half a dozen editions over the next six months. It quickly became the most translated work of its time. In 1818 Moore published the first of his National Airs, and in that collection appeared the song "Oft in the Stilly Night." Lord Byron was a devoted friend; and after the poet died in Greece, his personal memoirs fell into Moore's possession. In one of the great belletristic tragedies of the Romantic period, Moore and the publisher John Murray decided to burn these priceless pages — probably out of concern for Byron's reputation. Moore later wrote a biography of the poet, which was published with the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (1830). In poor health and his mind failing, Moore died in Wiltshire, England, in 1852. Thomas Moore, Music in the works of James Joyce

Poetry Thursday

"Think of places that most need to see a poem. Think of people who most need to read a poem. Go to those places, to those people and leave your words for them to find." The assignment calls this Guerrilla Poetry. Not my term, but I did pass this one out to a few people and post it on a bulletin board at the coffee shop. Actually, my blog is where I do this. I don't really like the idea of cluttering up public places. It seems a bit pushy.

I wrote this poem while reading about the difficulty of preserving archives, how memory changes over the years, varies from person to person, and is valued depending on who the victors are. The archives themselves can be biased and/or violated, as we learned in the Sandy Berger theft of 9-11 materials from our National Archives, or even by what is selected to be released, printed, digitized and stored within our various levels of government.

Interview with a western journalist
by Norma Bruce

The problem is not
that I know nothing,
but that I know everything.

Now that I've disappeared
into the general population,
it's with the locals I survive.

So when you speak to me of
identity, ethnicity and faction,
who would you have me be?

Unless you've seen your mother raped,
don't talk to me of the evils of
genocide, vengeance or escalation.

Correct your own country's history,
douse your own archives with gasoline,
then we'll talk.

For my past, present and future
I shall burn in Hell,
but at least I'll burn for Croatia.*

*Quote about Croatia from "Archives, documentation and institutions of social memory, essays from the Sawyer Seminar."

Poetry Thursday

Today I am poemless, rhymless, and without meter. I'm seeing nothing in syllables, no images in words, no sound in the rain and wind--except rain and wind. No canto or calligramme. I've locked my muse in the hall closet and she can't get out even by being coy. Not even by slipping Shakespeare or Shelley under the door.

The prompt for this week is, "we want Poetry Thursday participants to be inspired be one another’s work. The idea is that you leave a line from one of your poems in the comments, knowing that other participants might use that line as a jumping-off point for a new poem of their own." This is not that. I participated the last time. For today, I've looked through a thoroughly disappointing February issue of Poetry, a journal I usually devour. None of the poems made much sense--well, Billy Collins' was OK, but you'd expect that from a poet that famous. Therefore, I'm submitting the first line of each poem--thinking this accumulation makes about as much sense as anything else in that issue.

February rolls out its first lines
lifted, fitted, mixed and matched by Norma

If Parmigianino had done it. . .
Having failed for a third time to witness
Starlings’ racket; the straining redbud,
a red-feathered bird on a fence post
cooked by crooked
flames from the burn barrel
in the lost city of gold that was Oroville
I see you in your backyard’s lavender.

If they’re right, the whizkid physicist-theorist think tank guys,
She could be any woman at all.
In this sentimental painting of rustic life
A guitar has moved in across the street
Of course nostalgia Of course brooding
The world is wasted on you. Show us one clear time
You can tell by how he lists
That greasy letter into which my legs entered.

Poetry Thursday #14

Today's challenge has two parts. I think I've met it. I'll keep this at the top of the page, but scroll down for other important topics like the weather, fashion, recipes, and global warming.

Part I: Write a poem to, for, or about a poet.

Part II: Write a letter to a poet and then share it with the Poetry Thursday community on Thursday.

I'm writing about and to Wendy Cope, a popular British author and former teacher, who wrote a very brief poem about giving up smoking.

Oh Wendy Cope,
I sure do hope
you still can write
with such delight
and words so tart,
with poems that smart
and clever rhymes
just for our times.
Dear Ms. Cope,

It's difficult for me to fathom the cigarette addiction. When I go to that smoke-free place called Heaven, who will be left on Earth to nag my son who says he was hooked after that first cigarette? I shake my head because I don't understand how anyone could allow shredded, dried up vegetation burning right under the nose to control his life, health and finances. However, then I read the love poem that you wrote a few weeks after giving up smoking in 1985, and the last phrase said it all,

I haven’t finished yet--
I like you more than I would like
To have a cigarette

and I began to understand. And that's what poetry can do. You wrote, "People who have never been addicted to nicotine don’t understand what an intense love poem it is." Oh, and by the way, Ms. Cope, I also want him to find a love like that. Your poem's a two-fer.*

Thank you for your service,
Norma

*A two-fer is slang meaning "two for one." Sometimes it has no hyphen.

Poetry Thursday #13

This week's challenge is ekphrasis, "a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art." The painting I have chosen for this week’s completely optional idea is "The Marriage License," painted for the June 11, 1955 Saturday Evening Post by Norman Rockwell, who did 322 covers and died in 1978. No one mastered in art the American life, events and values better than he. Now if you are an artist purist and don't think Rockwell be one, check out this painting of a bride by Domenico Ghirlandaio (15th century) and you'll see the same attention to fabrics, hair, position of the faces, locale and eyes gazing into the past.

There is nothing in this painting that isn’t absolutely authentic or essential, from the dangling light bulb repeating the shape of the upper window needed for heat or light, to the rumpled forgotten flag or bunting possibly from WWII that lays unceremoniously atop the book shelves filled with dusty legal volumes, to the bride and groom who knew this was a special occasion requiring the very best clothes. The items in the painting that are completely out-of-step with the 50s, like the stove and spittoon, are critical elements in the story it tells. We all know the hopes and dreams of that couple, because they are us in another time and place, so I've chosen to write about the civil servant slumped in his chair.

At the County Courthouse
by Norma Bruce
March 28, 2007

Dreaming of fishing again, aren't you, old man?
Your rumpled coat and hat hang near by,
just waiting for your escape.

The red geranium blooms in the open window alone,
scrawny but surviving the weather whims,
seeking light and warmth.

Now that the wife has died, the stray kitten
eyeing the cigarette litter on the floor
is your only source of joy.

Your arthritic fingers interlace, worn elbows rest
on the arms of the old wooden chair,
your bones beating the cushion down.

Ah, those weary bones, you squirm and shift,
oh, so tired. Slumped, you're forgetting
the stories, oh, the stories.

Who are these eager people, in sunny yellow cotton
and Sunday suit with hat, signing on for years
of windows, weather, and weariness?

Like the bride on tip toes and her tender groom,
we want their hope and love, so we turn away
from the old man's defeat and pessimism.

Poetry Thursday #12

Today's challenge is: "Write a poem motivated by an image — preferably one that is in the form of a photo you can post with your poem. If you don’t have a picture of it, that’s okay. Tell us about the image in the backstory, which you can post before your poem. Or, if you’re really daring, grab your camera and get out there and capture an image and use it as motivation for a poem."

This was written some time ago. I've enjoyed pulling it out and rereading it, and didn't change a word. It was inspired by a very real yellow rose in a real garden on a July day so hot it was breathless, but with a slight breeze. The rose's participation with the two not-meant-to-be lovers, including its dried and desicated end, is all imagination. Or maybe it's a memory--like the rose, I've forgotten. Lamentations might have been a better book in which to place such a flower, but it had too many syllables. It has fabulous phrases and images of bitter tears if you ever need that for a poem. However, isn't the book of Job closer to the symbol of all that can go wrong, will?
















The last rose
by Norma Bruce
July 1997

Yellow rose in the garden
Blushed peach by her cheeks,
Splashed pale with his white passion.

Yellow rose in the sunlight
Fragrant in their hands,
Waving good-byes to July.

Yellow rose in the clippers
Snipped between kisses,
Pricking her finger crimson.

Yellow rose in the crystal
Filled with his hot tears,
Shedding thorns against the glass.

Yellow rose in the Bible
Faded summer joy,
Pressed between pages of Job.

Poetry Thursday #11

Today's totally optional challenge is to find a word we don't know in the dictionary and write a poem using it without looking up the meaning. I think this is called the "dictionary game." I didn't choose the topic, but did use a dictionary.

Here are some e-words that can cause problems for writers. An elegy is a song of mourning or lament; a eulogy is an oration of praise; an epitaph is a phrase that appears on a grave stone; an epigraph is an engraved inscription or a quotation at the beginning of a literary work; a epithet is a disparaging word or phrase; an epilogue is the conclusion or the final chapter; an epistrophe is the repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases or verses; an epode has a long verse followed by a short one; an epopee is a long poem. I checked several sources for the proper poetic form for an elegy, and the phrase "Here lies. . ." seems to be what they have in common.

I told what little I know about this baby, Alma Fay, in my Monday Memories. She was the daughter of my great grandparents born after they left Tennessee and moved to Illinois and is buried in Plain View Cemetery.

This elegy is for anyone who has lost a baby through miscarriage, abortion, adoption, or death. Maybe you have a grave to visit, maybe not. Perhaps all you have is a dim memory. But someday. . . the graves will open for the Resurrection. Reassembling dust, molecules and DNA, no matter how scattered, is no problem for the designer and creator of the universe.

Elegy for little Alma Fay, August 26, 1908 - October 3, 1908
by Norma Bruce
March 12, 2007


Here lies quietly, baby Alma Fay
with no one to remember
save one sister old and gray,
her name engraved on heart shaped stone,
among the grass and clay.

Here lies peacefully, auntie Alma Fay
with nephews, nieces, cousins,
who lived well and had their say,
a harbinger of the good life
in land so far away.

Here lies listening, precious Alma Fay,
with none left to grieve for her,
these one hundred years or pray,
but God, the Three in One, will call
on Resurrection Day.

Here rises victorious Alma Fay--
the graves are emptied at Plain View.
Praise God! she's flown away.

Poetry Thursday, elegies, Mt. Morris Illinois, gravestones

Poetry Thursday #10

This week’s (completely and totally optional) idea is simply: Red.

I was really stumped. It's not a favorite color. The word makes me think Communist, blood, anger, flag and . . . walls. The walls of our condo when we bought it. High-end, very expensive, Architectural Digest walls. Orange dining room, brown living room and red family room--each with multiple faux glazes, each with matching ceilings. So here's some silliness; just some fun about seeing red.



Decorator Red
by Norma Bruce
March 5, 2007

"Do the walls have to be so red?"
she said.

Decorators, a team,
had a bad color scheme
a bit off the beam,
'twas sometime before
we opened the door.

They’d toned it down with faux,
a touch of gold, just so.
"Why didn’t they know
it reflected pink
in the bathroom sink?"

"The floral drapes are mauve and peach,"
she’d screech.

"Carpet is green and thick,
hearth is a reddish brick.
I just might get sick--
clashes so with red
now hurting my head."

"These walls drive me wacky,"
he mumbled, "By cracky,
Let's paint them khaki."
"Good-bye to the red,"
she agreed and said.

Poetry Thursday #9

This week for Poetry Thursday, we are invited to write about something beautiful without using its name. This feels like it is still in draft stage--changing right up through Wednesday night.


In my unformed thoughts,
in my wildest dreams,
when this mattered
(and it doesn't so much now),
I never expected we’d meet.

You were so distant and aloof,
a prisoner of your past,
corrupt and sinful
(yet charming and alluring),
Did I even want us to meet?

Now that I’ve seen you,
heard your velvet voice,
minor and sad
(but dark eyed and lovely),
I know I’ll never forget us.

Are we allowed to leave a hint? (Очи страстные и прекрасные)

Poetry Thursday #8

This week's (completely and totally optional) idea for Poetry Thursday is this phrase: "the body knows." I'm submitting here a poem I wrote in January. One of the ways (other than aches and pains) that our bodies speak to us is discreetly via a mirror--maybe it's in the bathroom or a department store cubicle, or the quick glance in the rear view mirror as we travel to work, sipping the latte, skipping through and humming along with the radio.

Mirror, mirror on the wall
January 26, 2007
by Norma Bruce

You used to be my friend.
We’d hang out together
for hours of girly talk,
share secrets, giggle over
girdles and bobbi pins,
lipstick, powder and mascara.

You used to wait for me.
Chat in the dressing room,
whispering gossip
at the counter where
we’d go to order
double chocolate cherry cokes.

When did you change?
Sometimes I feel you’ve joined
the witness protection program,
embarrassed to see me.
Now you’re pious and prim--
no longer zealous for my best.

Oh, how I miss you, dear heart!
Your face isn’t clear when I squint,
your motives are obscured.
What did I do to offend?
Can’t we go back to the old days,
make silly faces and stay out late?

Here are two others I wrote this week; if you've got a moment. . .:
The vows
When you're falling in love

Poetry Thursday #7

Truthfully, I have no idea what a prose poem is--today’s assignment for Poetry Thursday. Poetry Previews describes it: "Although the prose poem resembles a short piece of prose, its allegiance to poetry can be seen in the use of rhythms, figures of speech, rhyme, internal rhyme, assonance (repetition of similar vowel sounds), consonance (repetition of similar consonant sounds), and images."

I’ve read a lot of poems that I would rewrite as prose and think them a better use of words and sound, or prose so lovely when read aloud I’d swear there was a poet in there somewhere. So here’s the background for today's poem:

We had a mini-blizzard (really hit northwest and south of Columbus) with snow, then hours of sleet, and then more snow overnight. Most schools and many businesses closed. So going to the coffee shop Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. was a challenge just to back out of my drive-way; it was dark and cold and I had the streets to myself. I drafted this there, and rewrote and revised at home. The more I revised, the less prose-like it became. If you’re not a regular reader here, it’s just about a coffee shop on a snowy day. Now here’s the poem:

Come sit by the fire with me. Sit by the gas flames rising from fake logs. Warm us bright blaze in the dark by the pseudo-bricks as we tip Styrofoam cups with plastic lids, sip black brew browned with cream factory made. Animate brain cells, stir up stiff tongues tropical beans, red and bright when picked by dark hands, traveling on tankers guided by pale hands to bring us warmth and happy thoughts, brown after roasting in mills and bursting to dark beans, trucked by many hands along concrete interstates and asphalt by-ways to loading docks at dark coffee shops. Come sit by the fire with me in the dark, tasting warmth, watching the snow fall on icy lines--pity the bird toes--sending power to heat water piped and purified, dripping hot in the pot held by ethnic hands that fill my cup which warms my nose by the fire where we sit.

And Happy First Birthday, Poetry Thursday.

Poetry Thursday #6

CHANGE is this week's theme in honor of PT's new website. What changes more than women's fashion? Truthfully, my style doesn't change that much, especially with no job to go to. So when I say good-bye to a favorite style or fabric, it is a sad day. Some go to my "vintage closet"--not to wear, but to look at, like a formal my mother made when I was in high school, or my mother-of-the-bride dress from 1993.

This poem is about the last pair of shoulder pads in my closet. Shoulder pads (for women) returned to fashion in the early 1980s after a hiatus of about 30 years. They started small and then became enormous, and gradually disappeared. Now we all have narrow, dainty, child-like shoulders again instead of looking like we suited up for the middle school football team or the soap opera Dynasty.


On removing shoulder pads from a favorite blouse
by Norma Bruce
Feb. 7, 2007

Others told me
(helpful friends)
someday on my own
strength
would I go
to meet the world
tall, strong, confident.

I’d waver; you were silent.

Mirrors told me
(how they lied)
only with your
help
could I climb
the ladder of
greed, success, power.

I’d arrange; you were silent.

Today told me
(glaring lights)
it was now past
time
should I cling
another minute to
padded, shaped, contoured?

Snip and toss; you were silent.


Technorati: Poetry Thursday

Poetry Thursday has moved!

Here's the new site; I'll have to change my template link. So here's this week's challenge: "Given all the changes here at Poetry Thursday, we thought change would be a good topic for this week’s (completely and totally optional) idea." That's something to think about. This might be the time to post my shoulder pads poem.

All I did was attend a different church service today (we have eleven) and was amazed at the changes I saw. Not sure there's anything in that to write about, but change is always with us, isn't it? I've mentioned it before, but "change" is one of the reasons I retired at 60 instead of 65. I was so tired of the constant changes--the reporting line, the staff, the consortia, the committees, the technology. I thought there must be more to life than learning a new software gimmicks that would be gone in 6 months, or the names of student staff who would only stay a quarter. When you're young--like 18-25 or so--the changes dribble like a soft rain and you hardly notice them. Also, you tend to gloss over them thinking it (the changes) are temporary and eventually things will settle down. Doesn't happen. As you age your mind accumulates and stores all these changes and their warranties and instruction manuals are still on your shelves; they become burdensome.

Poetry Thursday #5

Today's assignment--a poem with math terms. Plane geometry in my sophomore year in high school was the only math class I ever liked. So here's the poem.

In geometry class
by Norma Bruce
Feb. 1, 2007

You're the only one I ever loved.
Degenerate and full of sin--
your height, your legs
and references to horizontal.
I so me try.

It wasn't meant to be.
I was too square and plane--
just a double cone
melting under Golden spiral rays.
I some try.

You were one dimensional,
between radical and mean,
with just the line
to touch my obtuse midpoint--
Is o me try.

Before I go on a tangent--
Upon reflection
I no longer flip over your
face or cute little axis.
You are zero to me now.

Poetry Thursday
Poetry
American poetry
geometry

Poetry Thursday #4

Our prompt this week is "Why I love poetry." In 153 words or less. I don't have a "poetry base;" no courses, no publications. But I love it when poetry nails it. Sometimes it's only a line or a phrase, but there's a connection. An ah-ha moment. Yesterday I read a poem about an Irish WWI airman who died in Italy (Yeats). It's today's news almost 90 years ago.

This week I was reading "The Best American Poetry, 2006," guest editor, Billy Collins. On pp. 30-33, there is a poem by Amy Gerstler, "For my niece Sidney, age six." She begins with Margaret Davy in 1542 being boiled to death for poisoning her employer, an item she came across reading the 1910 Encyclopaedia Britannica. She uses it to launch a poem about what simmers in the crock-pot of her head, and moves on to speculate that her untamable, curious niece may someday like Martin Luther nail theses to a door (about which she also read that day in the encyclopedia).

I used to own 7 sets of encyclopedias. My favorite which I still enjoy browsing with a cup of coffee belonged to my grandfather--the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1910 (I also own the 12th and 13th). It's printed on tissue thin paper and bound in black leather which is crumbling a bit on the spines.

In this poem, Gerstler writes about owning 5 sets of encyclopedias. . .

"That's the way I like to start my day;
drinking hot black coffee and reading
the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica.
Its pages are tissue thin and the covers
rub off on your hands in dirt colored
crumbs (the kind a rubber eraser
makes) but the prose voice is all knowing
and incurably sure of itself. . . "

Connect!

Poetry Thursday
Poetry
Amy Gerstler
American poetry