Poetry Friday--George Swede

I have been reading the haiku of George Swede for many years. I've corresponded (as in sending submissions) with him in his capacity as editor of the Haiku Society of America's journal, frogpond. Somehow I missed the fact that he was also accomplished in other forms of poetry!

Browsing through Songs of Myself: An Anthology of Poems and Art compiled by Georgia Heard [Mondo Publishing, 2000] I came across the following poem by Swede:

Every Morning

Every morning
I awake
full of dust
and odors

As if
no one has
lived in me
for years

And
every morning
I throw open
all my windows
and doors

Clean
and fumigate
myself

As if
I were just
moving in

Nice, isn't it! The poem is paired well with Running House/#4862 by artist Nicholas Wilton.

A funky animated version of a haiku by George Swede is available here.

To read more of Swede's haiku, find a copy of Cor van den Heuvel's The Haiku Anthology: Haiku and Senryu in English [W.W. Norton, 1999], the best all-around collection of English language haiku.

This week's Poetry Friday Round-Up is being held at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, and next week it will be right here at Random Noodling, so plan to stop by.

Photo from the Brooks Books Haiku website

Haiku Sticky #70

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved

Happy Haiga Day!

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Sketchbook

The latest edition of the online journal, Sketchbook: A Journal for Eastern and Western Short Forms, is now available. Click here.

This issue contains several of my haiga I'm proud to say! Enjoy.

Poetry Friday--A Poem a Day

Maria Horvath is an avid library user at the George Hail Free Library in Warren, Rhode Island. She also maintains the blog, A Poem a Day from the George Hail Library. The poems are accompanied by a work of art, which runs the gamut from sheet music covers to photos of installation art to paintings by the masters. Each day is different and unexpected.

For the entire month of October, Horvath featured poems written specifically about the individual works of art--ekphrastic poetry. I urge you to read through some of last month's entries.

This month A Poem a Day is celebrating

the "old drama" that takes place every November. At times, we will take note of specific dates on the calendar.

We begin with reminders of our membership in the community of those who have gone before us. Later, we honor the memory of those who died for our liberty and freedom, and we offer our thanksgiving for all we have received.

The poem "November" by Linda Pastan, provides the inspiration for the month:

NOVEMBER

It is an old drama
this disappearance of the leaves,
this seeming death

of the landscape.
In a later scene,
or earlier,
the trees like gnarled magicians
produce handkerchiefs
of leaves
out of empty branches.

And we watch.
We are like children
at this spectacle
of leaves,
as if one day we too
will open the wooden doors
of our coffins
and come out smiling
and bowing
all over again.

The Poetry Friday Round-Up is being held at Teaching Authors. See you there!

On the Day After the Elections...

I read this piece by a teacher, Risha Mullin, who has faced the issue of censorship in the Kentucky high school where she taught literature.

I'm proud to say that Jo Knowles, the writer of a book that started the hubbub at the school, hails from New Hampshire--her mother is a fellow librarian!

Writers: forewarned is forearmed...tea partiers have made inroads in this election year. They are feeling empowered. I have no doubt there will be more stories like this in the coming year.

Haiku Sticky #69

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved