by Kat | Apr 24, 2025 | General, Poetry
Greetings everyone and Happy Thursday!
Today is the last Thursday of National Poetry Month, sigh. It is truly my favorite month of the year and I so enjoy the influx of poetry that appears all over during the month!
Today we are all sharing a poem from a very prolific poet, Adrienne Rich, and I was fortunate that my library had a copy of her Collected Poems: 1950-2012… yes, sixty-two years of poetry! The book quickly filled up with “tags” on poems that resonated with me and I wondered how I had never read any of her poetry before Kym had suggested her to be our focus poet.
Despite dozens of poems I really loved, one poem kept calling to me… and I have read it so many times since I first read it. Perhaps I took note of it because in another lifetime, I had the amazing opportunity to learn how to use a planetary projector when I was in middle school. Yes, my middle school (which had a different name in 1972) had a planetarium in it! I know… it astonishes me even today! I have always been fascinated by the night sky… I mean there is nothing like being able to find the North Star and the Big Dipper, and the comfort of Orion spread across the night sky watching over my late night meander with Frankie for his “last trip out” before bed. But after reading this poem, I realized I needed to add Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and the Pleiades to my repertoire!
Today I am sharing Adrienne Rich’s Planetarium, which was originally published in 1971.
Planetarium
by Adrienne Rich
Thinking of Caroline Herschel, 1750–1848,
astronomer,
sister of William; and others.
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
An eye,
‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus
I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so involuted
that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me. And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
1968
Planetarium © Adrienne Rich. Originally published in The Will to Change, 1971. Republished in Collected Poems: 1950–2012.
You can find more information about Adrienne Rich here.
Thank you so much for “coming along” with us for National Poetry Month! Stop by Bonny’s blog and see what Kym, Sarah, and Vera have shared today!
Now for a bit of housekeeping. Today is a “get away” day for me. As I said Monday, there will be a post to collect us all together to share our word updates, but I won’t be posting until we get back from Erie. See you all back here in May!
Header photo by Eren Arıcı
by Kat | Apr 17, 2025 | General, Poetry
Welcome to the Third Thursday of National Poetry Month and I am again joining Bonny, Kym, Sarah, and Vera! Today is all about aging! Which for me has some days with lots of reminders and others with hardly any at all… but I think my most worrisome part of aging is memory!
And yes, it is a thing that I am noting as I repeat what my beloved Nana did regularly… run through a list of names before settling on the “right” one. Sigh. I am thankful that Billy Collins has written a poem about this phenomena because he makes me feel seen and even find a bit of humor in the situation!
Forgetfulness
by Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
“Forgetfulness” from Questions about Angels, by Billy Collins, © 1999.
If you want to learn more about Billy Collins, you can find information here and his website here.
I hope this poem brought a smile to your face as, perhaps, you nodded along with it. And please stop by and see all the poems Bonny has gathered today!
Header Photo by Pixabay
by Kat | Apr 10, 2025 | General, Poetry
Hello and Happy Poem In Your Pocket Day!
I am joining Bonny again today to share a poem with you all!
I love little poems that can fit in your pocket… there for when you need them! I have a “pocket” in my planner that holds little poems… and a zippered pocket in my purse that has a collection as well.
After all, you never know when you will need a poem!
Billy Collins is my go-to poet for small poems. He has a book, Musical Tables: Poems, that is full of perfect little poems! My selection today is from that book. And it is even more appropriate because right now a gentle rain is falling outside… and while I did not hear any frogs or peepers… by the end of the month I will be hearing them and Billy is right that frogs do need a bit of an exaltation!
An Exaltation of Frogs
by Billy Collins
I know it’s supposed to be larks,
but their full-throated croaking
early this rainy morning
after a night of more rain
is lifting me slightly off the floor.
An Exaltation of Frogs © Billy Collins from Musical Tables, 2022.
You can read more about Billy Collins here or on his website here.
Make sure you visit Bonny and see all the poems for your pockets today!
Header photo by Jeffry S.S.
by Kat | Apr 3, 2025 | General, Poetry
Welcome to National Poetry Month!
And once again, I am joining with Kym, Bonny, Sarah, and sending a huge welcome to Vera who is joining us this year! We will all be sharing some poetry on Thursday’s this month!
This week our focus is on poems that bring hope (because we all could use an extra ration of hope these day, right?)
My choice to share today comes from a Pennsylvanian poet, Barbara Crooker. Lots of her poems are filled with hope, but the one I have chosen is Promise. It was especially meaning for me this week as those first little dandelions began to bloom in my backyard!
Promise
by Barbara Crooker
This day is an open road
stretching out before you.
Roll down the windows.
Step into your life, as if it were a fast car.
Even in industrial parks,
trees are covered with white blossoms,
festive as brides, and the air is soft
as a well-washed shirt on your arms.
The grass has turned implausibly green.
Tomorrow, the world will begin again,
another fresh start. The blue sky stretches,
shakes out its tent of light. Even dandelions glitter
in the lawn, a handful of golden change.
Promise © 2005 Barbara Crooker.
You can read more about Barbara here on her website.
Make sure you visit Bonny today to find a bit more hope for your day!
And that is it for me this week! I will be back on Monday!
Header photo by photokip.com
by Kat | Apr 25, 2024 | General, Poetry
Welcome to my favorite day of National Poetry Month — Poem In Your Pocket Day!
Every April I like to add a new book to my Poetry Library… and this year, dear Ada Limón had the perfect collection with perfect timing! You Are Here Poetry in the Natural World was published April 2! I have been reading through it with delight! It is full of beautiful poems!
The poem I have selected for you to tuck away in your pocket is one written by Ilya Kaminsky, a Ukrainian-American poet. The poem might change the way you look at rain… it certainly did for me! (And I needed a bit of a rain-itude adjustment with the wet April we have had!)
Letters
by Ilya Kaminsky
Rain has eaten 1/4 of me
yet I believe
against all evidence
these raindrops
are my letters of recommendation
here is a man worth falling on.
Letters by Ilya Kaminsky, published in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World © Milkweed Editions and the Library of Congress © 2024.
Stop and see what Kym, Bonny, and Sarah have for your pocket today! I am heading off to Erie in 3, 2…
See you all back here in May!
