I love this year’s National Poetry Month poster!  Do you?  I still have last year’s (need to get some nice poster frames for the new study, I think).  This one features the lines “We make a dwelling in the evening air, / In which being there together is enough.” from Wallace Stevens’s poem “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour.”

I’m still thinking about how I will celebrate NPM this year.  Do you have any plans?

Burns Day (poet Robert Burns, b. January 25, 1759) is as good as any to return to blogging after my moving-induced hiatus.  (And thanks for reading through my archives while I was offline!)  Most years Brandon and I remember too late, but this year we’re on the ball.  Perhaps we’re just looking for excuses to celebrate in our new house?

The house, by the way, is coming along.  We took possession just over a month ago, immediately remodeled the only bathroom, moved in on January 1, painted the front bedroom to work as our study/library, updated some wiring, and have been busy doing all the little things you do to unpack and make a new space your own.  We still have lots of work to do—a complete kitchen remodel in the next few years is becoming apparent—but are trying to take it one room at a time.  And the fact that I’m writing this in “my” corner of the study, enjoying a cheery new Pottery Barn rug and keeping an eye on the birdfeeder outside one window and the snowflakes curling over the porch railing out the other window means HOME is coming to fruition!

But for now, back to Robert Burns.  Our fascination with him is partly our Scottish backgrounds (more than a few generations ago), partly his apparent disgust for one of Brandon’s ancestors (Patrick Wodrow, son of Robert—who, like Brandon, was a church historian—mentioned in “The Twa Herds”), and partly a simple appreciation for all poets.  We also like to celebrate Emily Dickinson’s birthday on December 10, but there seem to be a lot more poetry-lovers who come out of the woodwork for Rabbie!  We will not be having haggis for dinner tonight (despite our friend Sam’s hearty recommendations!) but we will gladly lift a finger or two of Scotch while reading a few selections.  I found some cool resources at the Burns Country website, including recipes and a guide to hosting a Burns Supper.

Are you an observer of Burns day?  Leave a comment and let me know how you celebrate.  Now that I’m settling in again, I’m looking forward to making the blog rounds and catching up with all of you!

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I’ve been featuring a poem here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in April.  To cap off these posts, I return to Billy Collins, who reminded us, as we started the month, how to read poetry.  Any reflections on our final selection?

“Schoolsville”
from Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins

Glancing over my shoulder at the past,
I realize the number of students I have taught
is enough to populate a small town.

I can see it nestled in a paper landscape,
chalk dust flurrying down in winter,
nights dark as a blackboard.

The population ages but never graduates.
On hot afternoons they sweat the final in the park
and when it’s cold they shiver around stoves
reading disorganized essays out loud.
A bell rings on the hour and everybody zigzags
into the streets with their books.

I forgot all their last names first and their
first names last in alphabetical order.
But the boy who always had his hand up
is an alderman and owns the haberdashery.
The girl who signed her papers in lipstick
leans against the drugstore, smoking,
brushing her hair like a machine.

Their grades are sewn into their clothes
like references to Hawthorne.
The A’s stroll along with other A’s.
The D’s honk whenever they pass another D.

All the creative-writing students recline
on the courthouse lawn and play the lute.
Wherever they go, they form a big circle.

Needless to say, I am the mayor.
I live in the white colonial at Maple and Main.
I rarely leave the house.  The car deflates
in the driveway. Vines twirl around the porch swing.

Once in a while a student knocks on the door
with a term paper fifteen years late
or a question about Yeats or double-spacing.
And sometimes one will appear in a windowpane
to watch me lecturing the wallpaper,
quizzing the chandelier, reprimanding the air.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I’ll feature a poem here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in April.  Any reflections on today’s selection?

“Pied Beauty”
from Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works

Glory be to God for dappled things–
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;
      And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                 Praise Him.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I’ll feature a poem here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in April. Any reflections on today’s selection?

“Working Overtime at Bryant Chapel AME”
from The Definition of Place by Randall Horton
 
At 1:00 PM before church lets out
Reverend Jamar bellows a deep groan,
folds over, raises his large frame
with baritone belts of Amazing Grace.

There is a certain verbosity
in how a blind man suspends us;
it is like he can peep through mud,
and visualize dry land.

In the second pew, my sister and I
watch him sway a stoic congregation
of old fruit hats holding brown hymnals,
their arms stretched to a plastic Jesus.

Elderly men in the steward’s corner
provide yes suh! and preach it Rev!
Guiding a sea of believers to that
crescendo where they are sanctified.

Sunlight from stained windows
blinds our eyes with flashes of revelation
until Sister Ola body jerks down the aisle
like a macrame doll on an elastic tether.

Tears rain from mascara-smeared eyes;
she grits, pulls God’s breath,
knocks over the attendance banner–
Ms. Julia commences to hum miry clay.

Smith & Gaston fans windmill nonstop,
sweat trickles down faces full of brimstone;
somebody faints, scripture grows longer
against a chorus of low tenor nightingales.

In-between moans, collection plates circulate
in Usher Board #3 third Sunday’s name.
Everybody digs deep for the new building fund
and soon-to-be Headstart program.

At precisely 1:45 PM, my sister and I
surrender any chance of an early release
as pastor discovers the hedge of his pulpit,
reaches out and extends an invitation to Christ.