Symbols of Life, Rebirth & Renewal (#2sdayPoems)

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#2sDayPoems, Alice Walker, Andrea Cohen, blue bowls, Cherries, Daily Painter, flash fiction, Fourway Books, Furst Not Mine, Graywolf Press, Jane Kenyon, Kathy Wochele, New England, Orion, Poetry Foundation, Southern, women painters, Women writers

Kathy Wochele–“Cherries ” 8×10

Today’s picks are from New England masters, and are poems short in length but long on symbolism–life (blue bowls), rebirth (cherries) and renewal (robin), to name a few.  I also wanted to gift you with a beautiful bit of flash fiction centered around the same symbolism.

BONUS ALERT===> Click Alice Walker’s “My Mother’s Blue Bowl” to read the piece in its entirety.  And be sure to check out more work from Daily Painter Kathy Wochele, whose painting “Cherries” is featured above.

 

THE BLUE BOWL

by Jane Kenyon

Like primitives we buried the cat

with his bowl. Bare-handed

we scraped sand and gravel

back into the hole. It fell with a hiss

and thud on his side,

on his long red fur, the white feathers

that grew between his toes, and his

long, not to say aquiline, nose.

We stood and brushed each other off.

There are sorrows much keener than these.

Silent the rest of the day, we worked,

ate, stared, and slept. It stormed

all night; now it clears, and a robin…

 

FULL TEXT HERE (w/ audio)

from Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2005)

 

CHERRIES

by Andrea Cohen

 

In the minute it took
to fetch the blue bowl

from the kitchen
to pick the just-ripe

cherries, the blackbirds
had come. They picked

the branches clean, ascending
into their own blue bowl.

Lacking wings, I…

 

FULL TEXT HERE
latest collection: Furs Not Mine (Fourway, 2015)

#NationalPoetryMonth’16 Round-up (Day 14)

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#NaPoWriMo, #NationalPoetryMonth, Alice Walker, Apparatus Magazine, Czeslaw Milosz, David Ignataw, Found Poetry Review, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Indiana Humanities, Jane Kenyon, Jen Fitzgerald, Jo Bell, Juan Felips Herrera, Kate Foley, Lagan Press, Leslea Newman, Lyn Hejinian, Mariah Wilson, Marianne Moore, Mary Carroll Hackett, NotaLiteraryJournal, NPM16, Poem a Day, Poet Envy Chain, Poetic Asides, poetry prompts, Public Books, QuillsEdge Press, Tania Runyan, The City Quill, The Rumpus, Winter Tangerine, women poets

DAY FOURTEEN of the best prompts, poems and news from your  #NaPoWriMo/#NPM16/#NaPoMo /#NationalPoetryMonth/#poemaday hashtags.

Best of the Prompts

NaPoWriMo’s “san san Challenge”
NotaLiteraryJournal’s “Tree Names prompt”
Indiana Humanities’ “Memories of a Board Game prompt”
Poetic Asides P-A-D “Time-out prompt”
Poetry School’s “Banned Activities prompt”
Mariah Wilson’s “Caught in a Storm prompt”
QuillsEdge Press’ “If These Windows Could Talk prompt”
Found Poetry’s “First Hand Experience prompt”
Mary Carroll-Hacket’s “Wandering prompt”
Apparatus Mag’s “Let’s Write About Sex prompt”
Imaginary Garden’s “Substitution prompt”
30dpc “Artifact prompt”
Kate Foley’s “Difficult to Love prompt”
Jo Bell’s “Laudation challenge”
Winter Tangerine’s “Words from Another Poem prompt”

Poems I Have Loved (Tweeters’ Shares)

Lesléa Newman “Looking at Her”
Lyn Hejinian “A name trimmed with colored ribbons”
Jane Kenyon “Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks”
David Ignataw “The Bagel”
Czeslaw Milosz “Dedication”
Tania Runyan “The Bee Box”
Alice Walker “If There Was Any Justice” (video)

Miscellaneous

Voices& Visions: Marianne Moore Documentary
Juan Felipe Herrera Named to Second Term as Poet Laureate (NY Times)
Jen Fitzgeralds’s Poetry Mixtape#2: Poets on Poetry& Art (The Rumpus)
A Poetry Envy Chain (Public Books)

**Poets, if you would like to be featured in 2sDay Poems, have your collection reviewed, guest post in the Poetry Lab or blog on any of the Thoughts on Poetry topics, including Foremother Friday or Small Press Interviews, drop me a line at  bonesparkblog@yahoo.com.

Sunday Sentence #8

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Alice Walker, David Abrams, Life Takes Its Own Sweet Time, New Press, poets of color, Sunday Sentence, The World Will Follow Joy, women poets

My weekly contribution to David Abrams’ “Sunday Sentence” project in which participants share the best sentence read during the past week “out of context and without commentary.”

Life takes
its own
sweet time
to configure
just the wound
to stagger us:
so we may never forget
who runs the show
in these territories.

SOURCE:Alice Walker‘s poetry collection The World Will Follow Joy (quote is from poem titled “Life Takes Its Own Sweet Time”)