How to use this Page

The assignment for the Poetry Seven this month was to write a poem in the style of ee cummings, taking one of his works as inspiration. Although cummings is one of my favorite poets, and I've blogged about him before (in relation to Frank Cottrell Boyce's fabulous novel, Cosmic) I did a little research anyway. And discovered this:

Between the ages of eight and twenty-two, cummings wrote a poem a day.

Yeah. That.

And here I am, trying to follow in his pen strokes.

First of all, I had a hard time naming what I was attempting to do. What did "in the style of" mean?

imitating?
mimicking?
shadowing?
following?
tracing?

Then one of the Poetry Seven used a word I liked: echoing. Perhaps I could do that. (thanks, Andi!)

---Sara Lewis Holmes, inspired by "in Just-" by ee cummings


One more thing: we also decided to record these poems, as ee often did. Click on the sound file below to hear me read my work aloud.





Other echoes of ee cummings can be found at each of the Poetry Seven's blogs today:

Liz, echoing "i like my body when it is"
Tricia, echoing "silence.is a looking"
Tanita, echoing "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls"
Laura,  echoing "Spring is like a perhaps hand"
Kelly,  echoing "maggie and milly and molly and may"
Andi, echoing "a wind has blown the rain away"

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Katie at the Logonauts.

Add a Comment

http://stuffpoint.com/love/image/39530/

I have posted this poem before, on a quite special occasion since which my Beloved and I have tied the knot yet again in the state of Maryland.  And those pieces of paper we got officializing our marriage are pretty important for many social and political and financial and legal reasons.



But this string of words--that's all they are, which is the miracle--expresses a connection which must touch the inside, human place in everyone who has loved.  Now let that "hollow muscular organ that is the center of the circulatory system" fill up and become your Heart.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
....................................i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

~ e.e. cummings

The heart of Poetry Friday will no doubt overflow with  love this Valentine's Friday at Merely Day by Day with Cathy.

Add a Comment

Once again I have participated in a round of SPARK, which randomly matches artists and writers who exchange inspiration pieces and then produce response pieces over a ten-day period.  I always look forward to the challenge and to "meeting" a fellow artiste, and I've found that many of them are writers as well as painters or photographers or sculptors.  Some people just gotta express themselves!

This time I was working from two inspirations, really.  Recently my dear friend Charles Waters sent me perhaps the best compliment I will ever receive.  Charles wrote that he liked my poems in The Poetry Friday Anthology (nice enough in itself!) and then, "I do believe if e.e. cummings and Emily Dickinson had a baby it would be you."

Oh my.  If ever there was a compliment worth living up to, that's it.  I even began to hope it might somehow actually be true (no offense to my actual earthly parents), and I went and double-checked birth and death dates to see if Emily and Edward might ever have met.  (No.  Emily died eight years before e.e. was born.)  Still, I was wearing Charles's lovely speculation on my head like a crown (that's how good it made me feel) when I received this photo from Jules Rolfe, and so my response poem is all metaphysical and punctuated.

















We Be

the grass is Always bluer—
the sky is Always greener—
the view of (Always) what’s to come
is better: finer: cleaner

@round the bend begins #the end—
We cannot hope to see her—
We set our sights, We claim our right
and many hopes to Be her—

Be all, end all #god and fate—
is she sky or grass or sand?
@round the bend We find the Light
if only Loose it from our hand


~Heidi Mordhorst 2012

Many thanks to Jules for her wonderful Nebraska landscape and to Charles for his generous challenge!

The Round-Up today is with Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup--always a tasty smorgasbord of treats. And next week I'll be your host right here; if you're planning to participate in my Solstice-themed edition of Poetry Friday, feel free to send me your links as early as you like!

Display Comments Add a Comment

When the big ones were little, we got the Child’s Garden of Songs CD (like every other Charlotte Masonish homeschooler in the country), and oh how those small girls of mine adored it. For years it was their most frequently requested music, especially at bedtime–especially in summer. We got the beloved Tasha Tudor-illustrated picture-book-sized edition of Child’s Garden of Verses, too, of course: another CM requisite. My girls liked the book well enough, but it was the CD they cherished, and it’s the CD they still recall with affection, and hum around the house from time to time. Those lovely Celtic-flavored melodies got into my blood, too; that’s the kind of music I love best; it stirs my heart, gives me the shivers.

Now and then I’ll realize suddenly that there are these books and songs that meant the world to us ten, twelve years ago (Amazon informs me I purchased the Tasha Tudor book on April 14, 2000—six years to the day before Rilla was born; gosh, even before Beanie was born; and now I’m a little whelmed by the thought that in some respects, Amazon has a better record of my family history than I do)—important to us years ago, I was saying, but my younger trio don’t know them at all. It happened with Miss Rumphius (heresy!) and it happened with Child’s Garden of Songs.

I realized this a week or two ago and tracked down the CD, and we’ve listened to it every couple of days since. Rilla and Wonderboy are as enchanted by its melodies as their big sisters were. Huck remains somewhat indifferent, but then there aren’t any songs about trucks, are there?

The large book with the Tasha Tudor illustrations has failed to jump out from any of the shelves on which I’d expect it to be residing. All I found was the little Dover paperback edition, print only, no pictures; but Rilla doesn’t care. She sprawled on my bed today, frantically hunting each of the poems during the opening measures of its corresponding song on the CD—pause, Mommy, I can’t find it! oh here it is—and then calmly, almost serenely, singing along, kicking her feet, looking up to identify various instruments in the musical arrangement. Guitar, piano, violin, a fluty thing, those little round things you wear on your fingers, more violin, maracas. It was supposed to be my quiet reading time but I gave up on my book and watched her instead. It was a fancy dress day; she likes her sash tied in a fastidious bow, but she scorns anything that binds or tames her hair. The ragged locks fell over her face as she peered down at the book. Amazon says I purchased the Garden of Songs CD on July 19, 2002. Jane was seven that June. You know, last week.

The other book Rilla wanted today—wanted fiercely, rejecting my offer of the next Brambly Hedge story—was hist whist, the li

Add a Comment

Novelist Harry Crews has passed away. Above, we’ve embedded a YouTube video of the author talking to Dennis Miller about his time in the military, his E.E. Cummings-inspired tattoo and his Scar Lover novel.

He wrote many novels, including The Gospel Singer and A Feast of Snakes, but he also produced an extensive body of nonfiction work. You can explore the novelist’s prolific career at the Henry Crews Bibliography. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Vice Magazine about his work as a writing teacher:

“Well, thank God the University of Florida gave me this deal that every writer needs. I worked with 10 or 12 graduate students a year. They were just young people who thought they wanted to be fiction writers. By and large, they fell in love with the idea of being a fiction writer and then they were introduced to the slave labor of it and they pretty soon decided, “No, I don’t want to do this.” … If you’re going to write a book, you don’t know what you’re looking at. You have to disabuse them of all these ideas they have that they are sure are right but which are almost exclusively, always, all of them, wrong.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Add a Comment

It's taken the best part of a week, but our tree--not a Christmas tree exactly, but an evergreen Yule tree--is finally "quite dressed."  Reading at that link, I found something I didn't know, that the Druids decorated their evergreens with "images of what they wanted the waxing year to bring."  By design, our tree is hung with flora and fauna: many rustic and realistic animals, fruit and flowers, stars and snowflakes, sweet Laplanders and Alpenkinder.  I guess these images from nature are what I'm always wishing for.  (Our tradition of hanging plain little gingerbread men rather confuses the concept, but as I've done it every year since I was born, it's not December without them.)

Tonight the kids pulled a slip from the Solstice countdown calendar which invited them to make a fire in the fireplace (for Duncan), roast marshmallows (for Daisy) and read from our collection of holiday books and poems. We worked our way through toddler favorites (Happy Christmas, Maisy; lifting the flaps is still fun), classics ("The Night Before Christmas") and finally the lovely spangled little tree by e.e. cummings, illustrated by Deborah Kogan Ray. 

[little tree]

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower


who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly


i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid


look...................... the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,


put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy


then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud


and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

by e. e. cummings


Put up your little arms, world.

The rest of Poetry Friday is with Kate Coombs at Book Aunt.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Those zebras are going to have to wait yet another week, because suddenly, after 20 years and two children together, my darling and I decided to tie the knot --you know, officially and publicly, with a license--because who knows how long same-sex marriage will stay legal in D.C., and who knows how long until it's legal in Maryland?  So the big day will take place down in the big city and the ceremony has been hastily cobbled together this week around the theme of  "unconventional"--best expressed by our 8-year-old son's decision to wear a black tuxedo, accessorized with a sombrero.  Really.


Here are words I find appropriate on such a momentous little occasion.  I just read that e. e. cummings was criticized for his failure to grow as a poet, and one reviewer called him "a case of arrested development."  But I'm with Edward Estlin: I say that keeping that beginner's wonder at "the root of the root and the bud of the bud" through decades is what grows the tree called life [called love] so sky high.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
.............................................i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

~ e.e. cummings


Visit Kate for more poetry love at Book Aunt, and think of the Spice Girls (spouse girl + spouse girl = Spice Girls) on Saturday morning!

Display Comments Add a Comment

....and its Spring when the world is mud luscious.


Oh e.e. cummings I love you.

And if you are the sort of genius who remembers this whole poem then to you I will say,

not all lame, queer goat-footed balloon men are ill- intentioned.

by the way, How has Spring found you? or has it found you yet?

amy

Display Comments Add a Comment

Publisher Black Ocean has made an unconventional offer to its most unconventional fans–if you get a tattoo inspired by one of the press’ books, you will receive a lifetime subscription to its titles.

Here’s the deal: “If you’d like to get a tattoo inspired by a Black Ocean title, you too can receive a lifetime subscription and become a Black Oceanographer for life! Just send us a picture of you getting your tattoo (so we know it’s not simply a magic marker), or find one of us in person and expose yourself to us (with fair warning).”

Three readers have already received lifetime subscriptions for tattoos,  including Rebecca H.’s tattoo inspired by “The Center of Worthwhile Things” from The Man Suit (pictured, via). UPDATE: Earlier this year, we found out that Kurt Vonnegut, e.e. cummings, and Shel Silverstein are the most popular literary tattoo inspirations.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Add a Comment

Twilight tattoos are not the only contenders on the literary tattoo playing field. Novelist Justin Taylor and literary agent Eva Talmadge collaborated on a nonfiction compilation of literary tattoos based on their blog, tattoolit.com.

The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide came out this week from Harper Perennial and the trailer is embedded above. We caught up with the authors to talk about how the book came to be.

E = Eva Talmadge
J = Justin Taylor

Q: From your experience, which book/author receives the most tattoo requests?
E: Kurt Vonnegut and e.e. cummings are probably the most popular authors when it comes to literary tattoos.
J: And of course, if we had wanted to we could have done an entire book of just Shakespeare.

Q: Which children’s book illustrations are most popular?
E: Shel Silverstein, by far.

Q: What was the most interesting “story” behind a tattoo?
E: Best story by far is how Jamie Garvey of Gainesville, Florida, came to copy his e.e. cummings tattoo (“how do you like your blue-eyed boy now, mr. death?”) off the one and only Harry Crews.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Add a Comment

I've been a fan of Natalie Merchant since near the beginning, and many of her songs with the band 10,000 Maniacs are in my top 50 of all time (however, do not ask me to list my Top 50 of All Time; I'm nowhere near ready to commit. But "These Are Days" is in the Top Ten). Today I'm finally getting around to enjoying a (March) birthday present from my mother: Natalie's new project, Leave Your Sleep.

Leave Your Sleep is a collection of 26 songs, all of them composed around poems by a wide variety of well- and lesser-known poets including Rachel Field, Jack Prelutsky (the only one still living), Ogden Nash and Eleanor Farjeon. The year-long project "represents parts of a long conversation I've had with daughter during the first six years of her life."

The two CDs come packaged in a fetching small book which includes short biography and a black-and-white portrait of each poet--a treasure trove for anyone who has wondered, like me, why more popular songs aren't set to poems.

Easily my favorite so far is "maggie and milly and molly and may"--lyrics by e. e. cummings, a poet also dear to my heart. Click here to listen to a snippet of this lovely piece that gives, as my own read-alouds often fail to do, a seemingly simple narrative poem all the glow and gravitas in the atmosphere as it has inside us.

maggie and milly and molly and may
~ e. e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Display Comments Add a Comment

This Poetry Friday is dedicated to my brother, John,  a stellar and steadfast father.


by e.e. cummings

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

The rest is here

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Carol's Corner.

Display Comments Add a Comment

A favorite cousin of mine had this snippet of an e.e. cummings poem tattooed on her backside. It says:

bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

(Read the entire poem here.)

This cousin happens to be funny, sweet and smart as heck. (And cool, too.) She teaches at an alternative high school in Colorado with kids who haven't always been valued by society, and she works passionately to instill the love of words in her students. I'm not sure if she encourages them to tattoo literature on their bodies, but hey, here's to creative teaching methods. (What's next, sweetie? War and Peace??)

So here's a big shout-out to you, K!

Display Comments Add a Comment