Tag: poetry

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Poetry Share

April is National Poetry Month and I think we should all celebrate it with aplomb, like the little girl pictured on this year’s National Poetry Month poster.

There are already loads of organized things one can find online for celebrating National Poetry Month, including Poem In Your Pocket Day, whose title I love but whose date I have found impossible to pin down. Let’s all just have a Poetry Share. I hope you’ll join me. Type up, copy, or write out a favorite poem or line, or many different ones, and print them out. Then start spreading them around. Go to a hospital parking lot and stick uplifting poems on windshields. Put a few in your favorite Little Free Library. Stick one into a library book you’re returning. Hand one to a friend or friendly stranger. Leave one on the table at your lunch spot. Chalk a short poem or line on a sidewalk. Email a favorite poem to someone you know or post one on social media. Add a favorite line to the bottom of your email. Wherever you go, spread some joy with poetry. Our troubled world needs it desperately.

If your idea of fun is to be secretive, do that. If you like the thought of handing a favorite poem to friends you see, do that. Maybe you’d take a few to your book club. Perhaps your book club would have a poetry exchange. You could host a poetry party, with collaborative poetry like Folding Poems, magnetic poetry, and poetry party favors. There are endless things to do. We all have words, right? And we can all put them together in fun or interesting ways. Don’t say No, not me. We can all do this. Whatever you choose to do, let’s just spread positivity via poetry this April.

I don’t take credit for this idea. A few years ago, Missouri’s then Poet Laureate asked people to do it all year long. Or maybe just haiku? I forget. I loved the idea at the time, but I never managed to do much. This year, I will.

Poem In Your Pocket Day shares this goal, too–on either April 18th or April 29th, depending where you look. Pinterest offers lots of ideas for it. I love the idea of celebrating poetry, poets, and words all month long, if not always. Sign up to receive a poem every day in your Inbox! Write silly little haikus! Or serious ones. Let’s make a vow to read, write, copy, and share poems this April, during this month meant to elevate poems and poets.

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it” ― Gustave Flaubert

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” ― Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

“Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.” ― Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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Anniversary!

You may not realize it, but for me this letter represents a momentous occasion. This is my 52nd MerryThoughts letter! Thus, I have sent out a letter every single week since this week in 2020. Yes, it is my one year anniversary!! I just happened to wonder the other day how many of these I’d written. Very timely, since it turned out there had been 51! I must have had an inkling. And having looked, I can now celebrate one year of MerryThoughts letters.

My first letter, “Out for a Walk,” can be found here. You might recall that it was about walking with my dog Miles at Grindstone Nature Area. No surprise there. That letter represents a commitment I made on that date, November 18, 2020, to write and send out a letter once a week. My son Peter had suggested the idea, and I loved it! And now look! I’ve done it for a full year. The great thing is that it has been a joy for me to do. Oh, some are easier or more difficult to write, and some weeks I find myself wondering what I could possibly write about. Sometimes there’s a bit of anxiety when I barely manage to finish in time (which, for me, means Monday morning). Still, this writing, this reaching out and connecting with you who read them, has been pure joy. A romance.

I took this photo one year ago this week.

I have said that the letters give me a purpose. Not that I have no purpose otherwise, but it’s another fulfilling thing that I’m doing. I feel lucky that I can do this, lucky that people like you read them, luckier still when people write me back. I am committed to sending one every single week and that in itself feels fulfilling. We are more alive, more connected, and more in the world when we make a pact with ourselves or another person to do a thing, I feel. While I have not liked working for others, in jobs, I do flourish within parameters I set for myself. So on most Sundays I can be found at my computer, happily writing.

When my friend Pam died at 49 of pancreatic cancer, I wanted to do something creative to mark her untimely passing. She was a gifted poet, and I admired and enjoyed poetry, so I decided that I would try to write a poem a day for 49 days. As it turned out, I did it for well over a year. Those poems are all here, too. Some of them made their way onto cards or art. They vary wildly from serious to silly, but I absolutely loved writing them. And my writing flourished within my self-set rule that I write a poem every day. Somehow, the commitment to write gave me freedom.

And I took this photo today, one year later. Similar idea!

So even though I haven’t been great at commitment in some other areas of life (we won’t speak of it), I’m pretty good at dedicating myself to things like this. And I’m here to say that these bargains we make with ourselves can bring with them many gifts. Because of this particular contract, I’ve reconnected with an old friend; corresponded with acquaintances in deeper ways; received lovely praise from many others; developed discipline with my writing (a thing I already loved to do); and been graced with the fulfillment of doing something meaningful every single week for the past year.

What fulfills you? Where do you find meaning?

“Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose – and commit myself to – what is best for me.”― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

“If you don’t write when you don’t have time for it, you won’t write when you do have time for it.” ― Katerina Stoykova Klemer

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems on my here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”