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Archive for the ‘poem of the day’ Category

God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 11/06/2012| Leave a Comment »

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Poem of the Day: The Moods

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing, Yeats on 09/25/2012| Leave a Comment »

Time drops in decay
Like a candle burnt out.
And the mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;
But, kindly old rout
Of the fire-born moods,
You pass not away.

-William Butler Yeats

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Poem of the Day: Little Boy, I Miss You

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 09/10/2012| 1 Comment »

Little boy I miss you, with your sudden smile and your ignorance of pain. You walked through life and devoured it with nothing but misty goals to keep you company. You wandered through quiet woods with friends and you where startled by a shuffling porcupine. Your heart beat mightily when you chased frogs and caught one to big for a single hand. There was no time for meaning. A marshmallow gave it on a sharpened stick. A jack knife in your pocket gave you comfort when your friends were gone. A flower hidden in the woods, behind an aging shriveled log. A dog who licked at your fingers and chewed at your jeans. A game of football that you didn’t expect, a glass of cider, a crickets cry.

When did you lose your eyes and ears. When did taste buds cease to tremble? Whence the sullenness, this mounting fear, this quarrel with life, demanding meaning?

That mounting fear is leisure’s bonus and it’s the pain that forbids you to be a boy.

-James Cavanaugh

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Harold Bloom reciting Wallace Stevens’ “Tea at the Palace of Hoon”

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 06/20/2012| Leave a Comment »

 

Tea At The Palaz Of Hoon

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
-Wallace Stevens

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Winner of the 5th-Anniversary Poetry Contest

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 03/08/2012| Leave a Comment »

 I am pleased as punch to introduce you to Martin Bartels, winner of our 5th-Anniversary Poetry Contest.
 
Martin’s poem “At the End of the Day” not only offers a sense of discovery to the reader, but it plucks at that certain string – an air of plenitude maybe – native to so many of the poems collected here. 
 
And it ends with two lines that may be my new favorites.
 
So now, with no further ado, I proudly present our winner…
 

At the End of the Day

 

A simple place to write with a friendly pub nearby.
Land to grow vegetables and herbs for our evening stew.

A landscape of pasture lands, a river nearby for fish,
the cheap cuts of steer or pig, a plucked chicken

(save the parts for stock). A cast iron pan. Good wine.
A quiet place to read where the land stretches its legs,

reminds us that we are humbled eternally by grace and
beauty. To know these moments is our only ambition.

At the end of the day you come home to what you are.
The corporate ladder is climbed primarily to patch walls and

change light bulbs. The serene young blonde at the corner bar
has aspirations. She will either live them or not, both results

equally poignant. The loons defend their twilight, blue-grey
mystics in a perpetual stance of expectation, until their wings

explode in the urgent energy of exploration. Mythic dances
unfold unobserved. These are our first angels. The moon in

daylight pretends to be a cloud. Nimbus or cumulus, I’m unsure.
In daylight the moon is a won ton, cloud-swallowing minister,

the monk who chops wood before and after enlightenment.
Wood chips on the grill smoke white cloud riffs against the sky.

The clouds themselves are thin fish bones; sky soup. The breeze
moves through us at the same pace as clouds. The moon

remains still. The moon is a skull in this light, not threatening but
ponderous. Strange dreams flow out of it that remind you of the

long poem by Harrison. The moon in daylight said this to me:
You are the changing line in the I Ching symbol that suggests

you will be a great man one day. I am buckled by the notion,
having no such pretensions. The old man who told me we are

born with nothing has it wrong. We come into this world
with everything. We leave with everything.

-Martin Bartels

c. 2012, by Martin A. Bartels
Martin A. Bartels is an accomplished writer whose career in journalism and communications spans almost 30 years. His poems have appeared in Poetry24, the Found Poetry Review, and Verse Wisconsin. He has written for more than 100 print and online publications around the world, including AOL CityGuide, the Jerusalem Post, Chicago Sun-Times, and dozens of regional and community newspapers. He has held several leadership positions at national and international nonprofit organizations. Bartels lives in northern Virginia with his wife, two children, a cat, and a golden retriever. You can follow his poetry blog at Difficult River.

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Submit Your Poem for the 5-Year Anniversary of NinaAlvarez.net

Posted in poem, poet, poetry, Write, Writer on 03/06/2012| 1 Comment »

I honestly cannot believe it. In 2007, two days before my 29th birthday, I wrote this post, welcoming the world to NinaAlvarez.net, my first blog.

Now, with over 130,000 hits and long lists of wonderful readers and thoughtful, engaged commentary, NinaAlvarez.net really lives separately from me.

I feel that the creation of this site and everything that happens here has had very little to do with me and more to do with the spirit of poetry. So much more powerful and intoxicating and healing than our current paradigm can make sense of.

All I know is, the more I stay out of the way, the better.

Therefore, in honor of the Fifth Anniversary, I’d like to share a poem from one of our readers…it could be you. Please submit an original poem about the life of poetry. Submit your poem either as a comment to this post, or email me directly at: nina@dreamyourbook.com.

Winner will be published at the blog.

Submit between now and the end of the day on March 7, 2012.

Good luck!

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Poem of the Day: The Middle Is Twilight

Posted in michael haugh, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 01/31/2012| 3 Comments »

Twilight is a threshold time,
a corridor, a port,
a melting pot, a thing sublime,
where light and dark consort.

It is a grail, a cup,
for dual absolutions.
It softens stark extremes
and beckons toward solutions.

The hero wakes in twilight,
past crushing, clashing rocks.
In his begging bowl is insight,
carried home to feed the flocks.

In days gone by, this hero
was the seer, was the sage.
Now, he’s a twilight poet,
who sings to a twilight age.

Find his middle way,
and its truth that does denote us.
For at twilight’s balance point,
dwells the jewel within the lotus.

-Michael Haugh

I am extraordinarily pleased to share this special poem written recently by one of the most influential teachers in my life, Michael Haugh. At 15 years old, I was sent from public school to private school after nearly failing out my freshman year. Here I met Mr. Haugh, a no-nonsense teacher; a large and imposing man to whom I sensed – and still sense – I must bring my best. He believed in me and being, for the most part, terrifying made that even more effective.

Michael Haugh’s encouragement of my abilities as a writer and thinker changed my life and set me on a course for honors English, then AP English, then a bachelors and master’s in English, and finally into careers as a professor, writer, editor, and publisher.

Michael P. Haugh was born in Brooklyn, NY on October 25, 1945. He graduated from The Aquinas Institute of Rochester, NY in 1963. He matriculated at St. Bonaventure University. He obtained a B.A.in English in 1967 and an M.A. in English Literature in 1969. He, also, acquired an M.A. in Diversified Studies from Brockport State University in 1985. For forty years he taught English, Journalism, Theology, and Creative Writing at Cardinal Mooney H.S. and at The Aquinas Institute, both located in Rochester, NY.

In addition to classroom responsibilities, he also held the administrative positions of Dean of Students and English Departmental Chair, and served several years as Campus Minister and the coach of boys’ varsity golf and freshman basketball. In 2007, the year of his retirement, Michael was a recipient of the Singer Award for Excellence in Secondary Education from The University of Rochester. Michael is married to Stephanie Haugh, is presently retired, and continues residence in Rochester, NY. They have three married sons, seven grandchildren, and two dogs.

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Top 10 Poems of 2011

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/29/2011| Leave a Comment »

1. Ithaca

2. I Walked a Mile with Pleasure

3. The Lost Son

4. Ithaca (video)

5. The Serpent

6. After a While

7. Love Me Like You Never Loved Before

8. Deathless Aphrodite of the Spangled Mind

9. Giving Up

10. The Unicorn

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Poem of the Day: In My Hollow Bones

Posted in Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/27/2011| Leave a Comment »

In my hollow bones
I heard her
Like a bone woman
A lisp

Her eyes were green
And I see now
How I thought I was beautiful
Compared to him
But she was beautiful
Compared to me

And he would chose her

In my head
And in the hall of my roots
Where the dead grow and the old
Plays are memorialized on tapestry

The mold is only slight, there is a
Magic that keeps this terrible truth alive

In all I wanted, in all these years, I thought
I found something to aspire to, that is a line
From a book, I suspect, some bland platitude
But it piques my interest because

I am the tom cat
In the celebrity showcase

I am the one cartooned

She is the plaster goddess, the thing on the wall
She is the face that said no
And now smiles and so
Who could say no to her?

She is the power play, I am merely the one who
Stood next to him

I am the one who has offered
She has asked to be given

And no matter what I do
it is always me
who must be cast out
To the far corners

Me as always
In every one of these stories
In the deep dank room of roots
Untried, unloved, unwon, uncarried
The woman in the background

Fading away already, always light of hair, light of skin

A ghost

-Nina Alvarez

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Poem of the Day: Poem 3

Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/08/2011| 1 Comment »

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think…and think… while you are alive.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten —
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City

of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,

it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

-Kabir

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