Happy Haiga Day!

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

autumn leaves

Nature clears
her palette in readiness

for rendering
the world in black and white
and gray

Poetry Friday--Autumn Rainbow

I am once again participating in a Spark postcard exchange. The period of time for creating and mailing a postcard is the entire month of October. I won't be posting the three cards I created for the exchange until after October 31 to allow for my postcards to arrive.

My self-imposed theme is "autumn rainbow." I've created three Spark postcards using the colors red, orange, yellow. I wrote three more for today to complete the rainbow--green, blue, and violet (I'll ignore indigo, the poor stepchild of rainbow colors).

Green

I guess I got a little away from the color with this one:

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

Evergreens

Carpets of needles
around evergreens
stand proof
that ever is not
the same as forever.

Blue

This one is a photo of a fantastic NH autumn sky. The geese were taken from a old Japanese illustration.

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

through the clouds
geese call and respond
...blue blue sky

Violet

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

the last to bloom

asters are a fitting end
to the seasonal parade

a final burst of color
when all around is
browning or dead

Kay will be hosting the Round-Up today at A Journey through the Pages!

Haiku Sticky #476

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

she empties the box
of one thousand pieces
she'll never complete

Happy Haiga Day!

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

fall 2018

measured steps
toward progression

momentarily forestalled
by colorful performances
of a poseur

Poetry Friday--A Visit to the Currier

The Currier Museum of Art, in Manchester, NH is a gem of a museum. It is small, but it has grown considerably in the past two decades. One of the reasons I like it is because it is do-able in an afternoon, unlike the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which, with it size, and its crowds, I find to be overwhelming.

Last Saturday I attended a symposium that opened the current exhibit, "Myth and Faith in Renaissance Florence: The Sculpture of Giovan Angelo Montorsoli and His Circle." The exhibit is built around Montosoli's "John the Baptist," a terracotta statue of the saint.

I'll share a few more photos I took at the museum--indoors and out, and, ekphrastic cherita to go along with two of them.

Outside, despite the rain, it was colorful due to "The Blue Trees."

The Currier Museum of Art commissioned artist Konstantin Dimopoulos to create an environmental community art installation, The Blue Trees. With the help of community volunteers, artist Konstantin Dimopoulos temporarily transformed nearly 100 trees at the Currier and in nearby Manchester parks by coloring them with an environmentally safe pigment in a beautiful shade of blue. The Blue Trees installation helps to promote awareness of global deforestation, while enlivening the city with this dynamic community-wide art work. The Blue Trees will slowly return to their natural color over several months.

By time I left the museum, the sun had come out and I was able to snap these:

Cherita © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved. "Dancers" by Fernando Botero.

Text:

weekend away

inhibitions forgotten
she danced barefoot

it was as if the earth
had sucked the blues
right out her soles


Another featured exhibit is "Ethan Murrow: Hauling."

"Woman Seated in a Chair" by Pablo Picasso and "Spindrift" by Andrew Wyeth:

Now here's a practical piece of art: "Nude Looking Back" by Dan Dailey. It's just a wee bit large for my bedside table, but I wouldn't turn it down if someone offered it to me!

Cherita © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

pile of books to be read

all the scary ones
remain at the bottom

she'll readily admit
that her funky art piece
is really a nightlight


I will probably revisit the Currier soon. I'm looking forward to being inspired!

Please stop by Friendly Fair Tales where Brenda is hosting today's Round-Up.

Haiku Sticky #475

Not a haiku! The elections are three weeks from today. We HAVE TO turn out and vote if we ever hope to see our country restored to sanity. We need to change this culture of ignorance and white male privilege. VOTE!

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

Blue Wave

Imagine a wave
of informed voters.
The power of justice
and equality and fact.
Unstoppable. Imagine.

Happy Haiga Day!

An illustrated poem for today. "Praying Hands" is a sketch by Albrecht Dürer (1508) and is frequently used in religious organizations' marketing efforts.

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

After October 6, 2018

She opens the post office box--
an insurance bill and a mass mailing
from a foreign mission proffering
spiritual enrollment. For a small fee,
coming her way, will be masses, novenas,
a full year's worth of spiritual ejaculations.
More orgasmic intercessions of men?
No thanks, she thinks, we have Congress.

Poetry Friday--Library Discards

For those interested in poetry, one of the best places to discover poets and anthologies is, of course, at a public library. But, I'm sure most librarians will tell you that the poetry section is one of the least used sections in the building.

Libraries have morphed into community centers as opposed to lending libraries and this change has made it imperative that libraries present themselves as attractive. The practice of deaccessioning, a.k.a. weeding--updating the collection by removing books--has become more important. As a public librarian, it is my least favorite thing to do.

If a book of poetry looks old, and, worst of all, if it looks perfectly fine, but no one borrows it, then it goes. Shelf space is valuable--so out with the old, in with the new. We are a consumer society and the new and shiny is what we look for.

With any luck, your public library's discards are put on an ongoing sale table or end up at an annual book sale. Here's where you'll find some wonderful volumes of poetry waiting for you to scoop up and take home--sometimes for pennies.

It is also possible that libraries will sell or give their weeded books and donations to used book stores--real or virtual, and here, too, you'll find poetry winners for little money. I prefer the words inside to the physical form of a book, so I've purchased many used library copies with all their identifying stamps, book pockets, and plastic covers. An old library book may have a story of its own to tell you if you want to take the time to find it!

tucked in the book
receipt from a hotel
I've not visited

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

An old library discard I return to periodically is The Sparrow Bush: Rhymes by Elizabeth Coatsworth with wood engravings by Stefan Martin (© 1966). I snagged it from the "discards-heading-to-the-trash" pile!

Here's a poem from that volume:

Text:

Mud in the road and wind in my hair,
Mud in the road and I don't care,
Snow in the shadows, but the fields are all
                    bare,
And a big black crow is cawing.

Pussy willows close to the bough,
Catkins swinging and greening now,
Chickens feeling perky and kicking up a
                    row,
And a big black crow is cawing.

Sap buckets hanging on our sugar maple tree,
Wild things stirring where no one can see,
I'm waiting for what's going to happen to
                    me--
And a big black crow is cawing.

Laura at Writing the World for Kids is this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up hostess. Stop by, you'll be glad you did!

Haiku Sticky #474

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

bit by bit
maple leaves cover the ground
...a new rose opens

Happy Haiga Day!

An octaiku for today.

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved. Image courtesy NYPL Digital Collections.

Text:

autumn...
sweeping maple's
red leaves before realizing
the act
is pure prayer

Poetry Friday--Happy Octopus Month!

Earlier this week Poetry Friday regular, Irene Latham, published a new book titled Love, Agnes: Postcards from an Octopus. On her blog, Irene declared October to be Octopus month and she solicited octopus poems and art from her readers. I sent Irene an illustrated cherita, which may make an appearance at Live Your Poem sometime soon.

I found that writing an octopus poem was fun, so I wrote two more!

Last Friday, Margaret at Reflections on the Teche celebrated the publication of Irene's new book by having her students write octopus poems. One student, Madison, even created a new form, the Octaiku. Madison explains:

"An Octopus form, or, as I like to call it, a Octaiku (A combination of Octopus and Haiku.) The form is 2, 4, 8, 2, 4 because 2 and 4 can go evenly into 8."

I tried my hand at an Octaiku and here is the result:

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved. Original image from The World Book: Organized Knowledge in Story and Picture (1917).

Text:

she dwells
in the deep this
creature of agility and
mistress
of disguises

I took the liberty of disguising my octopus in rather funky camouflage!

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved. Original image from "Guide leaflet" (1901) of the American Museum of Natural History (1917).

Text:

Deep Sea Plural

Our language is a puzzle,
this I can't deny.
Is more than one cephalopod
octopuses or octopi?

I'm a big fan of a book by Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness. In it, she tells us the plural of octopus is octopuses, and that's good enough for me. My online Merriam-Webster, though, lists octopuses as well as octopi AND octopodes.

Head over to The Opposite of Indifference where Tabatha is holding the Round-Up today.

Haiku Sticky #473

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

late September
...bearing witness to
all their stories