Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Denise at Dare to Care for Roundup.
I have been under the weather all week (grrr), but finally feeling a bit better. Alaska feels VERY far away...we had such a great time, but wow isn't illness consuming??
In Reading Life news, I'm always on the lookout for new nonfiction poetry collections, and I've got a fun one for you this week. The City Sings Green & Other Poems About Welcoming Wildlife by Erica Silverman, illus. by Ginnie Hsu, brought to us by the good folks at Clarion Books.
It features poems about the ways humans accommodate certain species, like a possum rope bridge in Busselton, Australia and a lighted tunnel beneath a highway for little blue penguins in Oamaru, New Zealand.
Several of the poems are carried across multiple spreads to nice effect, and there are nonfiction text boxes too. It also includes lots of back matter, including "Children's Books Celebrating City Wildlife," which was missing a few of my favorites (why didn't they ask me??), most notably Sarah Grace Tuttle's Hidden City: Poems of Urban Wildlife. These two titles are already BFF and should totally be presented in tandem.
Some for-grown-up books I've enjoyed lately:
The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan - I know we have a LOT of birder-poets among us, and you will LOVE this book. It features Amy's actual notebook entries and drawings of birds. Absolutely lovely. I was reminded of that marvelous film My Octopus Teacher because Amy goes to the same place every day (her backyard) and she really gets to know the birds and other critters who share that space. Such a great reminder to all of us of the power of a daily practice. We don't necessarily need new and different; sometimes the most powerful way of looking is deeper and deeper into the same.The Collected Poems by Stanley Kunitz
The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden by Stanley Kunitz
How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang (perfect for Emily Henry fans!)
The Things We Leave Unfinished by Rebecca Yarros (dual timelines, romance, and a twist at the end that I never saw coming!)
For this week's ArtSpeak: FOLK ART poem, I am still writing kind of out of season! Today it's an early-spring airing of the quilts piece that caught my imagination...I decided to write the poem as a triolet (which is reliably a way "in" for me when I don't know what else to do). Thanks so much for reading!
Airing the Quilts
After dark, drowsy hours
a welcome resurrection:
now quilts flirt with birds and flowers.
Forget the dark, drowsy hours;
this moment is ours!
Spring is a stitchery of perfection
after dark, drowsy hours.
Welcome, resurrection!
- Irene Latham
