Poetry to warm a parent's heart

The Coming Storm (1987) 

by Cirenya

The air is still.

The clouds roll in. Dark, ominous.

Lightning flashes

Against the bronze horizon.

What did Daddy say?

His hand is warm.

Between the flash

And crack…count, yes.

One applepie, Two applepie,

Three applepie, four applepie,

Crack.

It’s nearer now.

“It’s the air separating

Then coming together.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

The wind starts.

It’s chilly.

One applepie, two applepie,

Three applepie,

Crack.

Closer yet.

We’d go in now.

Sit by the window,

Watch it come.

Pounding, bouncing

Off the pane.

Flash, crack.

I’m not afraid.

Daddy’s hand is warm.

Win a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Now available for FREE on Smashwords the first three short short stories from my upcoming collection, Scenes.

Scenes (preview 1)

Additional previews will be posted in the coming weeks.

1 entry for commenting on this blog, 5 entries for a review or post (email me with a link).

Gift card will be awarded once there are 100 entries (or on March 1, whichever is first).

Review - The Rhythm of the Spirit

Sushrut A Badhe has done a marvelous job in this collection of 34 poems about the spiritual and emotional side of life. The poems, while applicable to people of any religious bend, are steeped in the Hindu tradition. However, this reviewer saw the influences of Tao, Christianity, and other religions.

Badhe touches the soul with his poetry, as one would expect from the title. He delves into pain, loss, happiness, and love. These are poems to read when you are sad, and then again when you are happy, to help bring meaning in each time. Emotion and the spirit that pervades our little world are intimately intertwined and Sushrut helps tease them apart just enough for the reader to see them, experience them, and know of the continuity that binds them and us together.

Namaste.

Can You Catch My Flow? - Review

Lidy Wilks writes fresh and multi-leveled poetry. The first poem in her small chapbook, Arrival of the Monarch, starts things off with the veiled analogy of the eponymous butterfly and the poet's own life, as well as a general analogy: fresh and multiple levels.

This short book has many to like: Incense, Follow the Leader, These Boys of Mine are my three favorites. Probably because I've lived the analogies and love her handling of the every day as something unique and exciting.

Highly recommended. Check out the trailer at https://www.facebook.com/CanYouCatchMyFlow.

Moments - Poetry for Everybody

Poetry that is readily understandable finding beauty, wonder, hope, and happiness in the everyday. Approach the anticipation of spring finally returning after the long winter. Experience the joy of boys playing in the mud or the beauty of a new snowfall. Feel the stories of ancient bones and listen to the quiet of the early morning. Hear the reminiscence of the passing of time and see the excitement of each passing scene in a life. These and many more.

Review by: P.S. Rowland on May 01, 2014 :      
When reading a book, did you ever get the feeling the author could see right inside your brain and was putting down your thoughts and not theirs? Author Greg Schroeder, has done just this in this recent gem "Moments". Thank you for the memories you have invoked, the thoughts you have inspired and the memories yet to come as I read your words over and over again!

Author P.S. Rowland of "Lest We Forget Life's Passion"

From Moments:

Infinity

Clear and cold

The winter night sky reaches

To the edge of time

And space.

Brilliant full moon floods

A pale, thin light

But fails to illuminate

The blackness above.

Stars, tiny pinpricks:

Yellow, red, white, blue

Mixed in color and intensity,

Serve as markers through

Distance and time.

Sitting on the hill

Icy wind buffets

Lost in the depths

Of space and time

Lost in the imagining,

Imagining the infinite,

And the possibilities

That grow from it.

The Secret

The Secret
by Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

In other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

Levertov published The Secret in 1964. In it, she has neatly captured both a primary reason for writing poetry and a primary reason for reading poems. She has mystery, hope, loss all wrapped in a simple free verse, both readily understandable and endlessly debatable. The reader is left to read into it a whole lot or nothing, taking the words at face value. The poem can become what the reader wants, a true tribute to the poet.

Do you agree?

Haiku is for Hoopla

I dabble in haiku mostly because I like the focus the fixed structure brings.

This one is appropos as the snow returns for an encore even as the trees bring forth their first leaves:

Crocuses poke through

Stubborn edges of grey snow

Heralding warm days

I tried to capture the immediacy of a summer thunderstorm with this one:

I see it coming

Rain, pelting, pounding, soaking

Run, run to shelter

Here is a parody of the things that make headlines:

Hostess closes down

Panic ensues; Twinkies gone

Epic tragedy

Finally, a straighforward, "life is good" and if its not, it will be:

Limitless blue sky

Shows infinite potential

Reaching improvement

  

These, and 48 more, were published in 52 Haiku, available FREE on Smashwords. See my author interview on HaikuHoopla.

Beauty in the Changes

The Sea

The sea rages and scolds

In its power and fury it holds

A beauty all its own.

Another day, another sea

Tranquil, bejeweled, free

A beauty all its own.

Under the surface of a bay

The fishes in the coral say

It's a beauty all its own.

Down in the very deeps

Lantern fish never sleeps

But there's a beauty all its own.

Foaming breakers at the beach

Driftwood, starfish within reach

Truly, a beauty all its own.

From Observations by Greg Schroeder available at smashwords

A lot of teen novels explore this theme of beauty (or value) intrinsic to a thing. The Pigman by Paul Zindel, Professor Diggins' Dragons by Felice Holman, Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh are classic examples. Some classics also explore this at a level teens can understand well - Mary Mapes Dodge's Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings The Yearling, and Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows for example.

Just a Poem Before I Go

Bonus points to the obscure song reference!

It IS National Poetry Month. All three of these reflect my feelings today as I searched for signs of the spring. Still no buds on the trees but the crocuses are finally bursting forth and there are patches where the grass is starting to grow again, a darker green in the brown-green seas.

Solstice Moon

The moon looms just over the horizon

Bright and huge behind a gauzy mist

Higher, irregular puff balls skid past

Illuminated below in cold white-yellow

Fading to dark gray barely separable

From the inky black zenith sky.

Haiku

Silent sentinels

Watching over white fields

Through the long winter

Sentinels

Talk, black, silent sentinels

Their scores of branches

Reaching into the brightening

Blue-white sky

Coated in a white mantle

From the first wet snowfall.

They bear witness to the bustle

Of a commercial season;

To the commuters cursing,

Sliding on the ice, driving

Too fast for safety

Too slow for their own impatience.

Oak, maple, elm, sycamore

Virtually indistinguishable

From one another,

Shorn of their canopies.

Swaying gently, hosting  a few

Diehard birds singing a cold song.

All through the short days

They will rest and watch

Until the rising sun is warmer;

Its light is brighter;

Then, as the crocuses burst

Will they stir back to glory.

The Cricket in Times Square - Newbery Honor

This story has a lot going on - the main characters are a cricket, a mouse, a cat, a boy, and the boy's parents, quite a cast for a juvenile book. Further the book deals with themes of music, especially classical music, business, homesickness, and gaining acceptance, also quite a diverse chunk.

However, George Selden melds them all together in a very enjoyable and relatively short, story.

The cricket, Chester, finds himself in Times Square having gotten on a train in Connecticut. He is befriended by Tucker, the mouse, and Harry, the cat, and soon, Mario, the boy. Despite some early missteps, he comes to be accepted and brings prosperity to Mario's parents' newsstand. However, Chester misses "the country" and, in the end, his friends help him hop a train for home.

This is an excellent book, most editions have Garth Williams' superlative illustrations. Well recommended.

Today's poem:

Unique

Not like the others
They know,
Some earlier than others.
Once I hid the difference
But why?
I am who I am
Does it matter
What they think?
Once I thought so.
It made me sad.
I let them hurt me
With their words
And deeds.
But I am who I am
And there is nothing
Wrong with me.
So everyone else
Can love me
Or leave me
But I'm ok
Just like I am.

This is part of Conditions by Greg Schroeder. Available at Smashwords.com.

"I wrote this after being in town with a Comicon and watching the young people enjoying themselves and the older people (many of them) being taken aback by the costumes."

Think Out Loud - Spring

Spring seems to have finally arrived in the U.S. East Coast. This after a winter that most people have complained was both long and harsh.

Curiously, at the start of this winter, right after Christmas, I wrote the following:

It Almost Feels Like Winter

It almost feels like winter
The wind howling 'round
The temps rising up to 30
With flurries coming down.

It almost looks like winter
The sun's rays are so weak
Bare trees cast odd shadows
As the clouds passing by do sneak.

It almost feels like winter
You need your gloves and hat
The weatherman speaks of wind chill
Maybe nudge the thermostat.

It almost feels like winter
But in my mind's eye
It holds no candle to the memory
Of winters long gone by.

So little snow, no sledding
Or igloos, forts, snowballs
Perhaps it's all idealized
A figment of mental thralls.

Regardless of its factuality
I miss it all the same
I love the snow in wintertime
Without, it all seems too tame.

But, I agree with "most people" that it ended up to be a comparatively long, harsh winter. In March, desperate to be positive, I wrote this:

Almost Spring

The clouds can’t decide

Thin, fair-weather cirrus,

Low, scudding gray nimbus,

Towering puffs of cumulus,

Following one after the other.

The air can’t decide

Frost one clear sunny morning,

Warm fog the next;

Icy wind one evening,

Calm, almost balmy, the next.

The sun can’t decide

Bright and comfortable

Or thin and distant,

Obscured by overcast

Or burning the overcast away.

But the animals have decided.

The birds twitter merrily,

The squirrels chirp and scold.

Tabby cat begs to go out.

Spring is coming; almost here.

I love the transition, relish the change. I was happy to have winter and am happy to see it go. Here's to spring, to change, and the ever hopeful possibilities they bring.

(both of the above have recently been published in my collection Moments, available on Smashwords.com for all of April for 99 cents.

Happy National Poetry Month!!

I'll use the fact that April is National Poetry Month to be inspired to start blogging again. "Life" was a little too busy in March, especially with the never-ending winter, but it IS time to diversify again and get back to at least some writing.

That said, I am going to try to participate in Think Out Loud, Throwback Thursday, and Feature and Follow each week. Then I am going to try and run a feature each week of one Newbery winner (or should have won - young adult book), one romance novel, and one science-fiction/fantasy novel.

Finally, I will try to post a poem a day. This is all very ambitious, please let me know how I'm doing and send me suggestions for any or all of the above!

Today's poem (from my upcoming collection, Moments to be published in multiple eBook formats through Smashwords.com, April 5):

Spring Sky

Spring has come;

There are buds on the lilacs

The sun no longer is its weak

Winter self.

But the sky, the sky

This spring night

Harkens back to the winter.

Cold air gives a sharpness

The scarcity of clouds

An open vista

To thousands, nay, millions

Of tiny twinkling pinpricks.

Feature and Follow - Epic Spine Poem

I am afraid I am stuck working 12-18 hour shifts so the spine photo is out of the question :-(

But here's a poem made from titles in the spirit!

The Martian Chronicles
Looking for Mr. Right in All the Wrong Places
Onward
Transitions
Finding Prince Charming

 




  

Homage

2013 is now only a "book" of memories. As is popular this time of year, I will pause a moment to remember some things that were lost in 2013. Then read the poem at the end to get a different perspective!

The literary world lost four giants - Tom Clancy, who has defined the military thriller; Elmore Leonard, whose novels had both tough characters and some lighthearted whimsy; Chinua Achebe, one of the first African authors to achieve critical and commercial success; and Doris Lessing whose direct, no-nonsense feminism paved the way for many more. On a more personal favorite, Frederik Pohl also passed away in 2013. His science fiction was part of the wave that popularized the genre in the 1940s and 1950s. I loved reading his "fantastic fiction" as a kid.

New Year’s Day

Just another day

Another sunrise; sunset

Given an artificial importance

Arbitrarily the start;

A new unit of time.

Therefore a day of resolutions,

Of promises and implorations,

Optimism, mostly misplaced,

And good intentions.

Probably better off

Making small changes,

Sticking to them,

At any time, on any day

Instead of this one

Whimsical day.

Undisturbed

Inspired by all the recent discoveries and re-theorizing in the field of hominins.

Undisturbed

Laid carefully down
So very long ago
Holding their secrets
Under the tropical sun.
Laid down in a cave
By a grassy plain
Unearthed in that cave
Now near the desert.
Bones so gently,
Reverently handled.
Asked, in a whisper,
To tell their story.
Aged and dusty
They whisper back
Telling the history
Of humans before.
Before there was writing
Or cities or wheat.
Answering the questions
Fitfully, slowly.
One species or many
From trees or from plains,
What of australopithecines?
Ancient bones
Telling stories
To those who will listen.
To those who can hear
Their whispers.

Review - This is (Not) Your Grandmothers Poetry

This is (Not) Your Grandmothers Poetry by Marshall Armstrong

Marshall writes clearly on a variety of topics, all with an earthy, realistic, and slightly cynical bent. His ideas are clear and the presentation flows smoothly. The reader feels the emotion in the stories and the poems. One feels the sun, smells the dog, and hears the fury of the storm. My personal favorite poem is Real? I feel like that often. My favorite of his short prose works is My Dog Eats Frogs. It is exactly about what it says - the dog's perspective is superbly captured!

Marshall says in his introduction that the title was an attempt to "tell people this is not the kind of poetry you were force fed in high school." That is apt. Dry, hard to understand pentameter is NOT here. The poetry is clear, the prose even clearer and all with a refreshing voice.

This is (Not) Your Grandmothers Poetry is available at Smashwords.com.

About the author:

Marshall Armstrong lives, works, and writes in small town Minnesota. He found he "enjoyed poetry if it wasn't flowery and rhyming." He also found that he could write about anything.

He is happily married with children, grandchildren, and a dog, Sophie, who is both companion and featured in many of his stories and poems.

Find more of Marshall's work and the work he does on his website The Window.

Sales for October!

This is my third book of poetry. It is now available, in multiple ebook formats, on Smashwords for only 99 cents for the month of October.

**** These poems are more than just a collection of words, they are a diorama of life. - Linda Rye

**** Transitions touched my soul. - R. S. Rowland

**** The author is connecting with his audience. - Marshall Armstrong

See the full reviews on Smashwords.


   

Preread (paper) books

For October on Biblio.com:

Over 300 horror titles under $3.99 with FREE shipping!

Over 100 juvenile horror titles under $3.99 with FREE shipping!

Over 600 romantic suspense (Harlequin Intrigue) titles under $3.99 with FREE shipping!

All on our Biblio.com account, FindRomanceToRead.

Guest Review - Transitions

Today, I am very pleased to share Dr. Sheri Lindner's review of my most recent short collection of poetry. I have been privileged to make Dr. Lindner's acquaintance at poetry readings on Long Island.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Schroeder’s book of poems, Transitions, catalogues many types of transitions—those that occur in nature, in the growing up of a child, in the parent-child relationship, and in the shifting perspective of the author.  In each of these types of transitions, Schroeder reflects facets that sometimes stand in opposition to one another.  A poem describing the destructiveness of Storm Sandy is juxtaposed with one detailing the almost unnoticed shift of summer into fall.  Wistfulness of one season’s ending is off-set by eager anticipation of the next season’s appearance.  The  parental desire to protect is counterbalanced by the parental desire for one’s child to be able to bear the knocks that might come his way.  Schroeder’s impulse is always to pull us beyond the focused worries that consume us and out into the world where beauty and significance exist.  He never belittles one over the other, but holds both in tension, understanding that that is the real reflection of our lives.  This is captured most exquisitely in the lines from his poem “Winter Dusk”:  “Grim gray clouds streak by in tatters/a few brown birds snag what matters.”

                                                                         -Sheri Lindner, Ph.D.

                                                                Author of Opening Eden’s Gate

Transitions is available at Smashwords.com for $0.99 for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and many other formats.

Dr. Sheri Lindner, a former teacher of English, is currently a clinical psychologist, and is also a poet and essayist interested in the processes of development and maturation as they are reflected in Biblical stories and children’s literature.  Her writings have appeared in Jewish Currents, The Reconstructionist, Reconstructionism Today, Kerem, Jewish Women's Literary Annual, Poetica, Performance Poets Association Literary Review, Matzoh Ball Soup, Soul-Lit, The Ritual Well, and The New York Times. Dr. Lindner was awarded First Place in the 2013 Nassau County Poet Laureate Society poetry contest for her poem "Return." Opening Eden's Gate is available on Amazon.

Midsummer Poetry Night

If anybody is on Long Island next week...

One from me:

Boys

Springtime and it is raining

Not hard

But enough to be wet

And for the mud to BE

Without being too much.

I run over the wet grass

Then dive

For the dipping frisbee

Skittering along full out

Acquiring a thin skin of mud

A splotch dots my cheek

Just right

A badge of honor without

Needing to taste it

Or wipe any off my face

Hours later, blue from cold

Soaked through

Mom will make me stop

Just inside the front door

To remove all I've gained

I'll smile an inward smile

Shivering

And shed the outward banner

But keep the inner pride

Having done so very well

In the mud and rain there is

Much more,

Than winning and losing the game

A separate score, unmentioned

Total mud and water accumulated

 

Feature and Follow - Spine Poem

I have to admit this is a creative one that has caused me muse a bit. I am a lousy photographer so you'll have to do with just the poem:

A Tale of Two Cities
on one end rules
The Lord of the Flies
and on the other
The Lord of the Rings

The Catcher in the Rye
spews sarcasm at
Wuthering Heights
while lying on
Leaves of Grass

i sit playing
Hunger Games
as neighbors in the
Glass Castle
flip the calendar

to
1984

(Ok so I have a lot of classics and pseudo-classics on my shelf...)