—Joyce Odam, Sacramento
—Joyce Odam
How can one live here and not weep,
And why are we
Many poets have come after,
—Joyce Odam
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THE NEW WORLD
—Joyce Odam
It was the hollow world we entered
with our dream of entering—
with our knowledge of being there.
It was the far room at the end
with its wavering wall
that held firm for our entrance.
And then, the vast potential—:
we could paint everything with our minds:
mountains, sky, earth, our own seas;
we could invent eternity.
How eager we were,
pouring over imagined blueprints.
Oh, the birds we created—
the marvelous jungles and cities,
children of no cruelty.
The weather was divided
into seasons with no extremes.
We balanced everything
to perfection . . . and then,
we left it there . . . slipped out of our world
before it knew of us.
—Joyce Odam
Our thanks to Joyce Odam for her usual wonderful poetry/pics fare today. We've had some "silence" poems lately: Joyce's "Nature of Being" with its Rumi quote, and Jeanine Stevens' "One Square Inch of Silence" in last Friday's post. So we'll take their cue, and make our Seed of the Week "One Square Inch of Silence". The busy season is starting; remember to carve some silence out for yourself.
By the way, if you want to access past posts and have forgotten how, just go to the end of the daily post (the cream column on the left side of the blog) and click on "Older Posts", then scroll down to the day you want. Seven days will be there; if you need more, click "Older Posts" again. OR—you can scroll 'way down in the blue box on the right side of the blog (the skinny one under the skinny green box) and go to Medusa's Rap Sheet; you can find every day of posts that way, too.
Another way to access individual poets/poems is with the white search bar at the very top left-hand corner of the blog. If you type in "Jeanine Stevens", for example, you'll see her lovely photogenic face. Then, if you scroll down, you can see all the poems she's posted with us. (You might have to click on "Next Posts" at the bottom of the cream column to see more of them.)
Speaking of poetry seeds, I just discovered the many prompts on one of the Writer's Digest blogs: go to www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides for a passel of 'em! Laura Davis (www.lauradavis.net/prompts) also has weekly prompts. The Guardian used to have monthly "workshops", but they seem to have stopped that in 2011. Anybody know of any other "public" prompt sites?
Oh—and we have a new photo album on Medusa's Facebook page: the first of Katy Brown's powwow pix from her trip to Michigan. Check it out!
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Today's LittleNip:
FURTHERMORE—
There is always more.
Distance is not far.
There are no maps.
The world travels itself—
after and after and after.
We float in a dream.
Sky follows.
The night is full of light.
Moon-light—spreading wide
into thinness. How far can
that be? We can see back
to where we are—in memory.
—Joyce Odam
(first pub. in Poets' Forum Magazine)
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—Medusa