Celebrating National Poetry Month and the Anticipation of Spring

National Poetry Month was established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets.

It was designed to "increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States."

My mom instilled my love of poetry often quoting-- by memory-- from the sonnets of William Shakespeare and John Milton.

After majoring in English at Columbia University where I wrote my Masters Thesis on John Milton's extended poem, Samson Agonistes, I taught poetry and prose at Wisconsin State University, Essex County Community College and  Montclair State University.

Epic poems and dramatic verse included in my survey of Western Literature included The Iliad, The Oresteia, The Aeneid, The Song of Roland, Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost. Biblical verse included The Psalms as well.

Why am I posting poems this month on my twitter page?

First, April is designated as National Poetry Month. So why not create a buzz for poetry?

A seven foot  wall of a snow/ice mixture lines my 

driveway just a few weeks ago in March, 2015

Next, this winter has been long, cruel and has been delaying the onset of spring. (Witness the photo above.)  Spring is officially upon us almost three weeks as of this writing, but you would never know it.

We are enduring cloudy, rainy wintry days with temps barely rising into the 40's.

 T.S. Eliot's opening lines from The Wasteland ring true:

     April is the cruellest month, breeding
     Lilacs out the dead land,  mixing
     Memory and desire, stirring
     Dull roots with spring rain.
     Winter kept us warm, covering
     Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
     A little life with dried tubers. 

So I thought it appropriate to select poems that herald the start of Spring starting with lines from William Wordsworth's Daffodils.

Here is a link to my twitter page to inhale the aroma of Spring from some outstanding poets and noteworthy authors like Albert Camus.

https://twitter.com/rj_schwartz

Enjoy, as I will likewise do -  my posting poems several times weekly.

EARTH DAY REVISITED WITH HAIKU POEMS AND ANSEL ADAMS WHO DIED ON APRIL 22, 1984

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH AND EARTH DAY

TRYING MY HAND AT HAIKU

Signs of awakened Spring
In trees tinged with pink purple hues
Wraith boughs-winter begone.

I have been celebrating National Poetry Month with poems reminding us of our brutal, horrific and long-lasting winter and the long-awaited advent of a dramatic spring. You can find poems and lines by T.S.Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Camus William Wordsworth, Rachel France (Haiku) and by yours truly (Signs of Awakened Spring, Haiku).

Click here to see my Twitter Poetry Selection.

Click here to read my blog introducing National Poetry Month.

So what is a Haiku poem and why did I choose this form?

Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry consisting of three lines of verse. The first line usually has 5 syllables, the second has 7 and the third has 3. The message is strongly visual and concise.

The reason I favor this form of poetic expression is because it is conducive to twitter's maximum of 140 characters including a four color photo . And most important, "brevity is the soul of wit." (Shakespeare's Hamlet )

Why convey a message in over 40,000 lines of verse (the approximate length of Dante's Inferno) when you can convey a strong message in three lines?

Won't your reader be more amenable to reading and understanding your poem, especially with a graphic?

The reason I wrote my above Haiku is simple.

As I was driving in my neighborhood on a recent, rainy and dreary day, an amazing scene caught my attention. I was surrounded by stark skeletal wraith-like arms of trees soaring into the darkened skies.

Lo and behold, right before me were purple pink budding leaves of a magnolia tree 'firing' into life. It was a REBIRTH OF SPRING.

I pulled out my i- phone and quickly captured the scene. The event inspired me to translate this heightened experience into a Haiku. A simple, dramatic, sensual visual event-- instantaneously perceived--became the basis of the Haiku.

So, perhaps my reader will share my sense of wonder and amazement of spring's late--but dramatic- arrival expressed in the Haiku.

Enjoy, the ceaseless cycle of the seasons, especially today Earth Day.

Late Spring:wraith-like boughs 

contrasted with burgeoning pink buds 

Click here for my homage today-- EARTH DAY-- to the poignant photography of the environmentalist and photographer Ansel Adams. He died this day, April 22, in  1984.

Celebrating National Poetry Month: Shakespeare at 400

Title page of First Folio, 1623

Copper engraving of Shakespeare by 

Martin Droeshout (from Wikipedia)

In celebration of the 400 anniversary of the death of  William Shakespeare (April 23, 1616), I salute the Bard of Avon with some of his more memorable quotes: 

"Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
 (Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2:  Spoken by Cassius to Brutus)

                                   "All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
(As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII: Spoken by Jaques)

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although is height be taken."
(From Sonnet 116)

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties, in form, and moving how express
and admirable, in action, how like an angel, in apprehension
how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-
and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not
me-nor woman neither..."
(Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2, Hamlet speaking to Rosencrantz)

For my prior articles celebrating  National Poetry Month, click here.

The best way to appreciate poetry is to listen to you tube readings of famous actors reciting their favorite poems. 

National Poetry Month with Walt Whitman's Elegiac Poem "Oh Captain, My Captain"

Commemorating National Poetry Month, established in 1996,  has been a proud ritual of mine for the past ten years. 

The last 100 days here in America have spelled 'disaster'  as 260,000  federal employees have been laid off.  American businessmen, both large and small have paused their investment strategies due to the uncertanty caused by the erratic and sporadic tarriffs. 

 The global economic system, built on established trade practices, is in turmoil. 

  Economic stagnation is a likely result. 

 Our 'ship of state,'  our new government has been floundering on a turbulent unpredictable sea and I thought it appropriate to turn to Walt Whitman (1819-1892) for inspiration. The poet wrote the verse below just after Abraham Lincoln was assasinated on April 15, 1865 and months before General Robert E. Lee formally concluded it with the surrender of the CSS Shenandoah on November 6, 1865.  

  Our  Civil War claimed the loss of about 700, 000 lives.

   It lasted from its start April 12, 1861 until the last skirmish on November 6, 1865.

   That is a total of 1,669 days, paling the first 100 days of this government. 

   Our  constitution, the time honored fabric of our Union,  was sundered by the secession of eleven Southern states.

   It was metaphorically driven to sea where though pummeled by rough seas (the secession followed by war) was arighted  by the steady hand of its Captain.

  In this powerful reading of Whitman's timeless classic piece, metaphoric language is strong at play.  The severed Union at war with the Confederacy is symbolized by the Ship of State.

Abe Lincoln, Our 16th President, 1809-1865

The Captain, much bewailed and mourned with the shores a-crowding with bugle trills, bouquets and ribboned wreaths as his vessel sails safely into port is our heroic President Lincoln who lies fallen at the helm.

 The Ship is now anchored safe and sound. This is the optimistic message of the verse. 

 It is my fervent hope, that after listening to this reading, all responsible US citizens and our government leaders will be "by the better angels of our nature" (from Lincoln's first inaugural address) come to our  better senses to revitalize our sacred union.

 

Celebrating National Poetry Month: When Springtime breaks in Oregon's Willamette Valley--Poet Samuel L. Simpson

In celebrating National Poetry Month, I must confess that the advent of Spring in Eugene, Oregon is  a spectacular, remarkable and memorable event.

Springtime arrives in Eugene, Oregon:set against

the backdrop of the Pacific Cascades

photo by Mike Wagner

Nestled in the Willamette Valley of Southern Oregon, Eugene is bombarded almost daily with persistent bleary Northwest winter showers from late November onward.

The rains  cease in April and the sudden arrival of spring  transforms the area into a shimmering emerald paradise.

It is for this reason that I chose Samuel L. Simpson's poem, The Beautiful Willamette to celebrate the dramatic arrival of spring

Here are the opening lines of the poem:  

From the Cascades' frozen gorges,
Leaping like a child at play,
Winding, widening through the valley,
Bright Willamette glides away,
Onward ever, 
Lovely river, 
Softly calling to the sea;

Spring's green witchery is weaving
Braid and border for thy side;
Grace forever haunts thy journey,
Beauty dimples on thy tide;
Through the purple gates of morning.... (italics and enlarged type- mine)

The Willamette River runs through Eugene, Oregon, Photo 

Courtesy of Paint Your Landscape, Biking Bliss-Eugene, OR 

The emerald green campus of the University of Oregon, Photo

Courtesy of Paint Your Landscape, Biking Bliss- Eugene, OR

Two Feel Good Stories You Might Have Missed: Extending the limits of living through Meditation Music and Poetry

1. 106 year old Eileen Ash, from Norwich England drinks two glasses of wine daily does Yoga daily  and just recently passed her driving test;  she  drives around in her bright yellow Mini.sports car-- yes, at the ripe 'young' age of 105. Click here for a video celebrating her 106th birthday by flying in an open cockpit Tiger Moth.

    Kudos to Eileen....

Eileen Ash drives a yellow Mini Sports Car 

(Courtesy of the Daily Mail)

                  

      2. An announcement during National Poetry Month: With much gratitude to organizer Relly Coleman.  Yael Stolarsky, Shlicha, and I have been invited to inaugurate the First Connecticut Hebrew Book celebration on Sunday, June 10th, 1-6 PM  as part of the second annual  Israeli Food Festival to be held at Temple Israel in Westport. Besides vendor and demonstrations, there will be 2-3 breakout sessions: one about Hebrew short stories with Susan Boyar, a professional book discussion leader and another about Modern Hebrew poetry and music  that Yael and I will lead.

      In prior years, I have led  three  Modern Israeli Poetry and music discussions at the Stamford JCC with Or Berger, Shaliach, and Yael. sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Fairfield County.

      Here is a podcast link to our last event held at Curley's diner--an event hosted by Poem Alley  and introduced by its leader Ralph Nazareth and , Eleni. Begetis, the poet/owner of Curleys.

http://richardjschwartz.com/rj/pods/CurleyPoetry.MP3

Curley's Diner is alive with Israeli Poetry and Music presented
by R.J. Schwartz and Yael Stolarsky, Shlichah

   
                                         

National Poetry Month: Celebrating Poetry in Motion at Transit Museum at Grand Central

Hundreds of short poems have been displayed on  train stations, subway cars and buses for over 25 years thanks to a collaboration between the Poetry Society of American and the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

This year I highlight the poetry of native american poet Sherman Alexie with this verse from Crazy Horse Speaks:

I wear the color of my skin
like a brown paper bag
wrapped around a bottle.
Sleeping between
the pages of dictionaries
your language cuts
tears holes in my tongue
until I do not have strength
to use the word "love."
What could it mean
in this city where everyone is
Afraid-of-Horses?

Sherman Alexie was born in Spokane, Washington and is a poet, novelist and filmmaker and his works reflect his experience as a native American whose genealogy includes a number of different tribes.  

Sherman Alexie from npr.com

For NPR broadcast interview, click here 

To view my prior articles celebrating the power of poetry click here. 

A Modest Proposal: My 2015 Summer Reading List, Part I

A Modest Proposal:  a partial display of my summer reading 

Here is a short description of why I chose these 22 + books of which only 11 are briefly discussed.  

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (not shown) This is great read told by eight-year old Scout from Maycomb Alabama. She is the daughter of Atticus Finch, a small town lawyer who is unsuccessful at defending a black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman.

2. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This is masterpiece of World War II 'concise' prose which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Read my review for more details.

3. Station Eleven, a novel by Emily St. John Mandel. This is riveting fantastic story that begins with a production of Shakespeare's King Lear in which the lead actor falls victim to heart failure on stage. This event sets the stage for a futuristic scenario in which mankind is 99.9% destroyed by a Russian flu. The play is redeemed by a roving band of Shakespearean actors and symphony musicians managing to survive by their wits, acting and instruments.  

4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This 1925 classic was recently turned into a big, big bucks  Hollywood production (which I did not see). I choose to imbibe the life of the ultra rich through the timeless prose of a master writer.

5. Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader  by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. This book is on my shelf because of a  recent Fast Company Magazine review entitled The Steve Jobs You Didn't Know: Kind, Patient and Human. So let's learn about the other side of Steve that contrasts with the more limited egotistical, brash and greedy character presented in Walter Isaacson's biography.

6. Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A recent  Wall Street Journal Saturday essay  by the author spurred my interest in reading her thesis. She is now a fellow at the Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. (There are 875 Comments about the article)
     The subtitle of the WSJ article reads:  "To defeat the extremists for good, Muslims must reject those aspects of their tradition that prompt some believers to resort to oppression and holy war."

7 Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership by Susan Butler. It is 1943 and World War II is winding down after huge losses of human life by the Russians. Stalin is eager to have the Allies open up the Second Front (the D-Day Invasion) and Roosevelt is keen on getting Stalin, especially, and Churchill to agree on a world peace keeping force open to both small and large nations.
     Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill and their aides meet in Tehran in December, each with his game plan on the table. FDR uses his enormous diplomatic skills, charm and superior bargaining position to overcome Stalin's mistrust and paranoia and Churchill's reluctance to forge the framework for a lasting peace both at Tehran and Yalta in February 1945, just two months before FDR's death.
   This book is  highly recommenced  not only for its engrossing drama, but its beautifully and intricately developed narrative.

8. Strangers in the Bronx: DiMaggio, Mantle and the Changing of the Yankee Guard by Andrew O'Toole  The year is 1951 and the legendary  Yankee Clipper Joe D's last season. On the scene arrives the 19 year old boy wonder slugger, fleet footed Micky Mantle from  Commerce, Oklahoma. The story is enlivened by the many quoted interviews with noted  sports journalists of the day. There are great portraits of Yankee owners Dan Topping, George Weiss as well as the Ole Professor Casey Stengel who led the Bronx Bombers to the second straight World Series win.

9. The Innovators:  How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson. The author, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute introduces us to Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter who was an early computer programmer in the 1840's. He then continues the digital revolution with personality portraits of Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing (subject of the cinematic success The Imitation Game), J.C.R Licklider, Doug Engelbert, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tom Berners-Lee and Larry Page.
   This is a must read for anyone wishing to track what the superhighway of information hath wrought.

10. The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin. My interest in this biography was sparked by  the 'remarkable' biography of JQA's father President John Adams by David Mcullough (2001) and a subsequent tour of The Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Most recently, I published a review of another JQA biography, John Quincy Adams, American Visionary, (click here)  by Fred Kaplan--discussed in a New Yorker Magazine article

   My passion for unearthing the amazing contributions of this family to the growth of our republic from its earliest times is endless. John's son John Quincy was "The Greatest Traveler of His Age."
At age 14,  JQA accompanied the Minister to Russia, Francis Dana who sought Catherine the Great's aid for the American cause. He later became this country's minister to the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia and Great Britain.

 ....and now a 'breath of fresh' air as I digress to discuss some poetry books. My reader may recall that I celebrated National Poetry Month (April) quoting T.S Eliot, William Wordsworth, and Haiku and later William Butler Yeats (click here), as we, in the East Coast were emerging from one of the most brutal winters.  (click here for my postings) 

11. From the New World: Poems 1976-2014 by Jorie Graham. Her honors include winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2012 Forward prize. one of the UK's "most prestigious poetry accolade."  The Poetry Foundation has called her "perhaps the most celebrated poet of the American post-war generation," She teaches English at Harvard where in 1998,she was appointed Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, a chair that dates back to John Quincy Adams, who was appointed as its first recipient in 1805 before his presidency.

  The best introduction to her poems is to hear her public recitals. It is best to hear the rhythms and pauses and hold the images in your mind, however brief. (click here to listen)


Tune in to Summer Reading List, Part II.

  

It's National Poetry Month: Here's succinct verse to celebrate both the lows and highs of life

 The Lingering Pain that Will not go away 

A solitary cry I cannot breathe 

I hear only the silence

 of petals floating at a calm sea

Sudden pain on my chest

Like the weight of 50 bricks

The medics rush to rescue

All I hear are the sounds of silence 

Celestial Love 

Slipstreaming in winter skies 

Two centripetal bodies drawn ever closer

Echoing the harmony of the spheres

-Haiku inspired verse composed in honor of Women’s History Month (3/8/21)

A Summer without end seen through the imagination of Wallace Stevens, Poet

Wallace Stevens, Poet, Insurance Executive (1879-1955)

We are still in the throes of summer this day, the 30th of August 2015.

Though fall is only three weeks away, the temperatures today in lower New England are in the low 90's and more of the same is forecast for the first week in September.

That 'summer's lease hath all too short a date'  seems not in accord with our current weather cycles; yet 'Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines.' (both quotes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18)

So what's going on?

We have emerged from one of the worst winters going back to the blizzard of 1947.

Indeed, the winter of 2015 is one  that no one here in the East will ever forget.

Poets from Shakespeare to T.S. Eliot and William Wordsworth have written paeans to the dramatic entry of spring.  (For my celebration of National Poetry Month and the Anticipation of Spring: click here.)

These poets powerfully recorded  the transition from harsh spring (e.g 'April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out the dead land,' T.S.Eliot) to the sudden appearance of flora ('When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils,' William Wordsworth.)

So I thought it befitting to celebrate summer with some verse from one of my favorite poets, Wallace Stevens, pictured above.

Farm in Oley Valley, Pennsylvania near Reading where Stevens was born.

Stevens writes: 'One of the limits of reality Presents itself in Oley when the hay, 

Baked through long days, is piled in mows.' 
From Wikipedia Oley Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania

Stevens (1879-1955) was a New Englander who attended Harvard and built a career as an executive at a Hartford, Connecticut  insurance company.

When the the dead heat of summer arrives, when the sun beats down daily on our human landscape, when life, as we know and experience it slows down to a crawl--a 'snails pace,'  the sun is magnified into a reigning omnipresent Sun-God.

Truth is illuminated ... by the very light, the very brilliance, the very permanence of the sun.

In 'Credences of Summer' (click here to hear Stevens read the poem) Stevens brings together many images, frozen in time by the relentless heat, that serve to exalt and capture in an iphoto instant image, the majesty and the squalor ('And last year's garden grows salacious weeds') of the universe and the divinity inherent in the Rule of the Sun ("of sapphires flashing from the central sky, As if twelve princes sat before a king.")

The 'author' of summer is not only the active, concerned and caring  choirmaster of '...happiest folk-land, mostly marriage-hymns'  and of '...last choirs, last sounds...Pure rhetoric of a language without  words.'

He can also be seen as a more passive  'inhuman author' who 'does not hear his characters talk,' and who meditates With gold bugs, in blue meadows, late at night.'

The poem ends on a high colorful note;  he sees his characters 'mottled, in the moodiest costumes,

Of blue and yellow, sky and sun, belted
And knotted, sashed and seamed, half pales of red,
Half pales of green, appropriate habit for
The huge decorum, the manner of time,
Part of the mottled mood of summer's whole,

In which the characters speak because they want
To speak, the fat, the roseate characters,
Free, for a moment, from malice and sudden cry,
Complete in a completed scene, speaking
Their parts as in a youthful happiness.

National Poetry Month: To appreciate verse, You must hear and feel its rhythms. A Tribute to Wallace Stevens' "The Idea of Order at Key West"

Wallace Stevens 

In his review of Paul Mariani's recently published biography ("The Whole Harmonium" Simon and Schuster, 2016)  of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955),  New Yorker Magazine critic Peter Schjeldahl exudes awe and admiration for "The Idea of Order at Key West": 

"It may the finest American modern poem....(It gets my vote, with perfectly paced beauty that routinely squeezes tears from me.)"  

Schjledahl could not have said it better.

I dedicated my Columbia University  master's thesis on John Milton's Samson Agonistes with these concluding lines from the poem: 

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,

The maker's rage to order words of the sea,

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, 

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds. 

You must hear Stevens recite the poem in its entirety!!!

The Power of Words, the Awesome Majesty of the Printed Word: An Ode to Celebrate National Poetry Month

An Editor, Diplomat, (Ad) Minister to Current, Recent and Past Alumni and Friends and a Poet, at ❤ 

 Whoever It is your search committee interviews

 

 To Hire

 

 Should be, ONE, above All, with the drive Vision, Enthusiasm and Energy

 to Inspire

 

Your  staff and its many Talented Writers Along with its Advisory Personnel And Gift Planning Officers

 With Fire……