I keep looking at your list of poetry books and wondering what I should read to expand my poetry mind. Since I write for kids, I tend to read within that genre, exceptions being Mary Oliver.
Well, I can always make recommendations of things to look for. Have you read Hope Anita Smith's THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES from Holt? One of the best YA poetry books I've read in a long while.
I have the second Sonya Sones waiting back in Madrid, and getting closer to the top of the pile...
Have you read much Nancy Willard? she writes some amazing stuff. And I love her book about writing, TELLING TIME, which opens with the ssay "How Poetry Came into the World and Why God Doesn't Write It". I want to be Nancy Willard when I grow up!
Meanwhile, email me your mailing address and I'll send you something. You don't have to like it! but it is a way of exposing yourself to poetry you wouldn't otherwise pick up. That's why I bought a lot of these, either because they were under my impulse threshhold at a tag sale or something.
Also, years ago, I had put up signs when I decided not to enroll in an MFA program, asking if people had unwanted poetry books and volunteering to come take them away, in an effort to read widely instead of the more formal study.
(My guess is, although I haven't read much by her, that if you like Mary Oliver you might also like some Ellen Bryant Voigt. Maybe moreso Jane Kenyon.)
Okay, I feel like a dork but I can't find an email address for you or a way to respond to this via email. Anyway, if you want to email me your email addy, I'll send you my mailing address. stb95123@yahoo.com
I've never read Nancy Willard at all. I'll have to check her out. Hope Anita Smith's THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES was good but I LOVE Sonya Sones.
Surprise me - I need to broaden my mind. And thanks for sharing.
Do look for Willard. Here's a poem of hers I had already typed for someone else:
How to Stuff a Pepper With Rice by Nancy Willard
Now, said the cook, I will teach you how to stuff a pepper with rice.
Take your pepper green, and gently, for peppers are shy. No matter which side you approach, it is always the backside. Perched on green buttocks, the pepper sleeps. In its silk tights, it dreams of somersaults and parsley, of the days when the sexes were one.
Slash open the sleeve as if you were cutting a paper lantern, and enter a moon, spilled like a melon, a fever of pearls, a conversation of glaciers. It is a temple built to the worship of morning light.
I have sat under the great globe of seeds on the roof of that chamber, too dazzled to gather the taste I came for. I have taken the pepper in hand, smooth and blind, a runt in the rich evolution of roses and ferns. You say I have not yet taught you
to stuff a pepper? Cooking takes time.
Next time we'll consider the rice.
###
Knopf recently brought out her collected poetry, SWIMMING LESSONS.
And Harcourt published in trade paperback TELLING TIME, her book of essays on writing and storytelling, which is really excellent.
There is also A NANCY WILLARD READER from University of New England/Breadloaf, which has essays, stories, and poems by her, a miscellany that's nto a bad starter course on Willard. :-)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-09-27 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-27 01:07 am (UTC)I have the second Sonya Sones waiting back in Madrid, and getting closer to the top of the pile...
Have you read much Nancy Willard? she writes some amazing stuff. And I love her book about writing, TELLING TIME, which opens with the ssay "How Poetry Came into the World and Why God Doesn't Write It". I want to be Nancy Willard when I grow up!
Meanwhile, email me your mailing address and I'll send you something. You don't have to like it! but it is a way of exposing yourself to poetry you wouldn't otherwise pick up. That's why I bought a lot of these, either because they were under my impulse threshhold at a tag sale or something.
Also, years ago, I had put up signs when I decided not to enroll in an MFA program, asking if people had unwanted poetry books and volunteering to come take them away, in an effort to read widely instead of the more formal study.
(My guess is, although I haven't read much by her, that if you like Mary Oliver you might also like some Ellen Bryant Voigt. Maybe moreso Jane Kenyon.)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-29 03:02 am (UTC)stb95123@yahoo.com
I've never read Nancy Willard at all. I'll have to check her out. Hope Anita Smith's THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES was good but I LOVE Sonya Sones.
Surprise me - I need to broaden my mind. And thanks for sharing.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-29 12:12 pm (UTC)How to Stuff a Pepper With Rice
by Nancy Willard
Now, said the cook, I will teach you
how to stuff a pepper with rice.
Take your pepper green, and gently,
for peppers are shy. No matter which side
you approach, it is always the backside.
Perched on green buttocks, the pepper sleeps.
In its silk tights, it dreams
of somersaults and parsley,
of the days when the sexes were one.
Slash open the sleeve
as if you were cutting a paper lantern,
and enter a moon, spilled like a melon,
a fever of pearls,
a conversation of glaciers.
It is a temple built to the worship
of morning light.
I have sat under the great globe
of seeds on the roof of that chamber,
too dazzled to gather the taste I came for.
I have taken the pepper in hand,
smooth and blind, a runt in the rich
evolution of roses and ferns.
You say I have not yet taught you
to stuff a pepper?
Cooking takes time.
Next time we'll consider the rice.
###
Knopf recently brought out her collected poetry, SWIMMING LESSONS.
And Harcourt published in trade paperback TELLING TIME, her book of essays on writing and storytelling, which is really excellent.
There is also A NANCY WILLARD READER from University of New England/Breadloaf, which has essays, stories, and poems by her, a miscellany that's nto a bad starter course on Willard. :-)