Poetry Month bids farewell...

Happy Saturday. I have totally fallen off the wagon for Poetry Month. Sigh. I do hope the poetry I did share you did enjoy. I encourage you all to take time to read poetry as much as you can. It is a balm for the soul to me and inspires my imagination.

Here are few of my poems. I like to write short, free form poetry.

7:20
Fluffy fast moving gray clouds
pale streaks of blue
hint of purple streaking through
twilight time


My Sweet

Sweet little boy
with warm hand
curly full hair
lean on my shoulder
feel the sweet love
between mommy and son

Lorrie and Joyce (for my aunts who passed away)
Clouds form in a shape
of an illuminated door
I see two little girls
hand in hand
they turn in unison
and look back
wave goodbye for now

Wishing you all a wonderful poetry filled Saturday. Come back tomorrow for May Day here.

Found Poetry

Happy Wednesday, my friends. Last week was busy with finishing my taxes, getting Jake registered for Kindergarten and other family things to do which is why I missed a whole week here.

I am sharing one of my favorite ways of writing poetry. It is called found poetry. Basically, you piece together poetry from anywhere you like: books, movies, plays, lyrics, signs, prayers, etc. It is also a great exercise when you get stuck with your writing and need to prime the well.This found poem comes from one of my favorite books: Persuasion by Jane Austen. It is called I wish. Hope you all enjoy.




I wish (words by Jane Austen, word arrangement by Michelle Swan Graham)

I wish you be
Blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty
Be of Good Heart
Elegance, sweetness and beauty always
good companions in your life
Compliments from former foes
Let the sweets begin
Feel unshackled and free
Revel in joy,senseless joy
May you know overpowering happiness

Samuel Taylor Coleridge and I

I feel a particular kinship with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One of my besties, Neo, has been transfixed by his poem The Ancient Mariner since I met him. Little did I know, years later I would setting on my own ocean voyage with Neo and Samuel. About two years ago, I had the pleasure and the challenge to direct Neo in a faithful adaptation of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Even now, when I watch movies or tv, I find allusions to this unique long poem.

When I was reading poetry to share with all of you. I found this gem. It is a fragment. His most famous fragment is Kubla Khan. When I read this, I could see and hear echoes of words and flavor of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. As we are getting close to the Full Pink Moon on this Friday. This poem seems appropriate. Enjoy.



Fragment 6: The Moon, how definite its orb! by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Moon, how definite its orb!
Yet gaze again, and with a steady gaze—
'Tis there indeed,—but where is it not?—
It is suffused o'er all the sapphire Heaven,
Trees, herbage, snake-like stream, unwrinkled Lake,
Whose very murmur does of it partake
And low and close the broad smooth mountain
Is more a thing of Heaven than when
Distinct by one dim shade and yet undivided from the universal cloud
In which it towers, finite in height.

Blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton

Happy Saturday. Saturdays usually find me and Jake having a whole free day figuring out what to do. Some days, we stay in with bad and cold weather. Other days, find us out and about. Life is always an adventure with a four year old.

Today, I took time out to post on Saturday. I rarely post on Saturdays, I don't know why. Like a blog is 9-5, weekday thing. Heck, I don't even work a traditional nine to five anymore.



I'm sharing this Saturday with you via this lovely poem by Lucille Clifton

Blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Sonnet by Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Happy Monday, my friends. Here is a wonderful poem by poet, diarist, and essayist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. After reading a few of her poems, I was intrigued enough by Alice to get a book on her diaries. I am looking forward to reading it. I will let you all know my thoughts on it.



Sonnet by Alice Dunbar-Nelson
I had not thought of violets late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists' shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,—
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now—unwittingly, you've made me dream
Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.

Happy Poetry Month

Happy Friday, my friends. It is April 1st. I love when April comes along because Spring is starting in earnest now. It's also Poetry Month! Because who doesn't love Poetry? If you hate poetry, then join me this month. I am going to share all kinds of poetry: formal, blank verse, free verse,haiku.

To kick off Poetry Month is Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American woman, to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Her poetry is full of powerful imagery. I love how she tells stories through her poetry.

A great example is one of her famous poems: Sadie and Maud. Enjoy.

Sadie and Maud by Gwendolyn Brooks

Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine toothed comb.

She didn't leave a tangle in
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chicks
In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie left as heritage
Her fine-toothed comb.)

Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.

Happy Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, my friends. I know I have been gone for a minute now. Jake got sick with the flu and an ear virus. Guess who got sick too? Yes, yours truly. I am now better and able to fully enjoy the that Spring is here. I hope you all had a great Full Moon and Easter Sunday. I think this is the first Full Moon post I missed in over a year or more.

So what is happening in your world? I love to hear? March is almost done, April is coming in soon. April is Poetry Month. I'll be back again to share a few favorite poems and perhaps one of my own.

I also want to share with all of you in an upcoming post a few makeup items I brought. If there is anything you like to see here on Swan of Dreamers, drop me a line.

Thank you

Hello, my friends. Thank you for coming and celebrating Poetry Month with me this April. I hope you all continue reading and writing poetry.

Here is our last poem of month. It has a melancholy feel which fits my mood for the day. Enjoy.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.




I will see you tomorrow for May Day.

All the letters I can write by Emily Dickinson

All the letters I can write
Are not fair as this --
Syllables of Velvet --
Sentences of Plush,
Depths of Ruby, undrained,
Hid, Lip, for Thee --
Play it were a Humming Bird --
And just sipped -- me --
- Emily Dickinson

Rondeau by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Rondeau

When April's here and meadows wide
Once more with spring's sweet growths are pied
I close each book, drop each pursuit,
And past the brook, no longer mute,
I joyous roam the countryside.

Look, here the violets shy abide
And there the mating robins hide-
How keen my sense, how acute,
When April's here!


And list! down where the shimmering tide
Hard by that farthest hill doth glide,
Rise faint strains from shepherd's flute,
Pan's pipes and Berecyntian lute.
Each sight, each sound fresh joys provide
When April's here.

- Jessie Redmon Fauset

A Summer Love Poem by Nikki Giovanni

A Summer Love Poem
Clouds float by on a summer sky
I hop scotch over to you
Rainbows arch from ground to gold
I climb over to you
Thunder grumbles, lightning tumbles
And I bounce over to you
Sun beams back and catches me
Smiling over at you

- Nikki Giovanni

Happy Shakespeare Day

Happy Thursday, my friends. I hope you are enjoying Poetry month here. It has been a treat to share poems that I love and new ones that delighted me. Today is also Shakespeare Day aka Shakespeare's Birthday.

I have talked about good old Will before here. And how I adore his sonnets. Today, I'm going to share not one of poems, one of his pieces from one of his most famous plays: Romeo and Juliet. I love Juliet's speech .

It is a beautiful piece full of longing, desire and love. This is from Act 3, scene 2. Here is Juliet's speech read by me. I know some of Juliet's speech, not all of it. I did this spontaneously, I hope you all enjoy it.



Here is the text below to follow along.


Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus’ lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway’s eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy’d: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks
But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.

PS. I know some people are having trouble hearing the audio, click on the word Juliet here. This should work hopefully

Like the Sweet Apple by Sappho

Like the sweet apple that reddens
At end of the bough--
Far end of the bough--
Left by the gatherer's swaying,
Forgotten, so thou.
Nay, not forgotten, ungotten,
Ungathered (till now).

Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman

From the ‘Song of the Open Road’




From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

The Pool by HD (Hilda Doolittle)

The Pool by HD (Hilda Doolittle)



Are you alive?
I touch you.
You quiver like a sea-fish.
I cover you with my net.
What are you - banded one?

Canary Poem by Rita Dove

Billie Holiday's burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you're cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)
Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.
If you can't be free, be a mystery.
- Rita Dove

Dream Variations by Langston Hughes

Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

- Langston Hughes

Afternoon on a Hill by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Afternoon on a Hill

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
- Edna St.Vincent Millay

April Rain Song by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.
- Langston Hughes

Happy Poetry Month

Happy April, my friends. It is National Poetry Month here in America. I'm going to share favorite poems of mine including one or two I wrote myself! If you like poetry and/or write poems, please let me know. I can feature it right here on Swan of Dreamers. Let me know in the comments below or email me at Jettswan@gmail.com.

Here is one of my free form poems to kick of the month.



Bliss is this
Feeling glowly
Mind Free
Hair Free
Watching blue sky...