It's National Poetry Month

So I thought maybe a poem or two would be a good thing to post. My muse hasn't been too active recently, so I will post some from my backlog. Some of my poems have been published as chapbooks, and two or three were published in literary journals. That was years ago, though. I haven't submitted any poems anywhere for years, so have no idea whether I am still "publishable." But the chapbooks are fun to do, and I get a few dollars out of it.

I am fond of puns, like most of my family, and so tend to title my chapbooks with names like "Classical Illusions" (poems based on things I learned from the Ancient Greeks). Here's a poem from that chapbook"

To Ixion

I thought I was satisfied

to watch you whirl upon a wheel

stretched immortally in Tartarus

for loving me....

(So many times I heard them say

you were proud when they loved you

and in disdain you looked past.)

But here, now, seeing you so racked

despairing of release

I wish I had done differently....

(Indeed, I might have been magnanimous

had I not loved you.)

Ixion, if you cast your mind back, was the fellow bold enough to profess his love for Hera, Zeus' consort. She took an exception to his interest, apparently, and so he was condemned to be stuck on a wheel in the place where the absolute worst things happened to those who offended the gods.

Fun with Stencils

This next one was inspired by my long-time love of Odysseus, begun when I was ten and my Aunt Quail read me Padriac Colum's The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy, a wonderful children's book illustrated by Willy Pogany.

If I had to choose

for the love of Odysseus

either to be mysterious Circe

or faithful Penelope

weighing a year of magic

in the balance against

a daily dream unraveled nightly

for twenty years

even knowing he must go

eventually to his own hearth

being bound to Penelope

I would cast my lot

for Circe. One magic year

spent in the company of such a man

surely equals twenty spent

without him.

More Fun with Stencils

One day, for lack of anything better to do, I consulted my word finder, letting it flop open where it would. and, with my eyes closed. I poked my finger on a word. This was the result:

Song for Sendak

When the fuzzy creatures come

to the circle bound in blue

they link their lanky, hairy arms

they sway from side to side

Pileous and round they are

and crinite are their legs

they dance a hispidulous reel

in the circle bound in blue

Their teeth are long and glistening

their eyes are always green

and in between their dances

they juggle orbs of joy

Their hirsute heads thrown back in song

their music howls against the moon

and crashes stiff and bounces back

exactly to the stars

If you will listen closely

when the fuzzy creatures come

you'll hear the shattered strains of song

fall slowly in the night

And if you're very careful

and concentrate your thoughts

you'll see them heel-and-toe-and-heel

in the circle bound in blue

The word, of course, was "hair."

Yet More Stencil Fun

The poems and the art are copyrighted 2014 by Anne Lou Robkin.

That's all for now, Nan