Skip to main content

Inside This Pencil



“Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught

they’re hiding” W. S. Merwin

I’ve enjoyed blogging this month about poetry.  It is a nice respite from my usual form, and I hope you have enjoyed our attempts at penning verses.
To end this jaunt, you might browse your public library or a bookstore.  Find the kind of poetry that speaks to you and add to your library. 
Buy a journal, something fun and inviting, and emulate the poems you enjoy, stretching your creative muscle and drafting a few poems.
Read a poem or a Psalm from the Bible.  Use them for meditation before the start of each day. Journal using words, phrases, verses that call to you.
Introduce poetry to those around you. Besides those I referenced in my April 9, 2018 blog, try Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky or Ogden Nash for the younger people in your life.
To explore the male or female point of view, read Judith Viorst, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or Emily Dickenson; or Pablo Neruda, Billy Collins, or Robert Frost.
For the crafter in you, refer to George Ella Lyon, Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge, Georgia Heard, or Dunning and Stafford. Their suggestions are enlightening.
There are so many books out there, waiting for you to discover them and add them to your library. Enjoy what is crouching inside your pencil, waiting to be spoken, and try your hand at poetry. Best of luck.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Breastday to Me!

I gave myself a very special birthday present this year – I had surgery. Before you think it was to increase, decrease, or “lift” something, let me tell you it was not cosmetic (though I could probably use a few nips and tucks at my age; the infinite number of creams I buy OTC are not working their promised magic). About four or five months ago, I discovered a hard lump about the size of a large marble in my left armpit.  I had been feeling small pangs of pain in my left chest for several months, but I figured it was just my turn to dance with heart disease.  Everyone in my immediate family is diabetic and suffers from strokes or heart attacks, so I thought – here we go; my turn. I was going to tell my internist about the pangs during my next visit, so imagine my surprise when I discovered the lump. The Drama Queen in me immediately manifested herself – cancer, I thought.  I have cancer. I searched some more and found that the texture on the left side of my left breast felt diffe
9 comments
Read more

Dating Challenged

I stink at dating – always have.   I sputter.   I hyperventilate.   I fail miserably every time. I blame a pathetically underdeveloped gene that got little use before I married in my early twenties, then atrophied, gathering dust and rust, until I became single again in my fifties.   I decided to use this defect to my advantage when I needed to do some investigative reporting a few years back.   While on a newspaper writing assignment on Boomer-aged dating, I sacrificed my dignity and my vanity for the sake of the story (and I got several). Thank goodness, HoneyBunch saved me from all this when we married.  (He comes up with the best dates.) I’ve decided I will “show you mine if you show me yours.”   I will swap dating horror stories with you, but you have to promise to play along. The trick here is to tell about your worst date in 25 words or less.   You must keep it clean and you cannot name names. Our little contest will run only this week and before my next blogger posting.   Me
8 comments
Read more

The Girl Who Eats Canned Spinach

I went to a Catholic elementary school run by strict Belgian nuns, and we could not leave the cafeteria until we ate everything served on our food tray. Once a week, they served warmed, canned spinach with our meal. The spinach tasted nothing like the way my grandmother made it, but I ate it. I gulped it down in three or four bites and it amazed my table mates. I told them we ate it at home so I was used to the taste. Now, my real problem began the day I ate the spinach off my friends’ trays so we could go play outside. As soon as the nun monitoring the cafeteria turned her back, my friends ate something off my tray I didn’t want, and I ate their serving of spinach. I only did it for two of my table mates, but the word spread.   On the next Spinach Day, kids followed me to my table.   I was suddenly very popular, and as soon as the nun marched off to the other end of the cafeteria, my friends and an army of others who only knew me as The Girl Who Eats Spinach, begged me to take
8 comments
Read more