Information about Home School Legal Defense Association’s poetry contest for homeschooled young people.
Archives
Robert Frost, b. March 26, 1874
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.–Robert Frost
Last year on Frost’s birthday: A Prayer in Spring
And for this year:
A Time to Talk
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
Ah, yes, I can always stop whatever for a visit with a friend–for better or for worse.
March 21st Birthday
Phyllis McGinley, poet and author, b. 1905. She won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for her poetry.
The thing to remember about fathers is, they’re men.
A girl has to keep it in mind:
They are dragon-seekers, bent on improbable rescues.
Scratch any father, you find
Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors,
Believing change is a threat-
Like your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle
It took such months to get.
The other thing to remember, of course, is that fathers are often right. Change is often a threat. Daughters are sometimes not ready for high heels or for their first bicycle. Sometimes fathers see the sign: “Here be dragons.” And sometimes daughters are blind.
St. Patrick’s Breastplate, or The Lorica
This powerful poem/prayer of blessing and invocation is supposed to have been composed by St. Patrick himself both in Latin and in Gaelic. This version is one translation that I found here.
I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
I arise today through the strength of Christ with His Baptism,
through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.
I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim
in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels,
in hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets,
in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors,
in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.
I arise today, through the strength of Heaven:
light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire,
speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,
stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.
I arise today, through God’s strength to pilot me: God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s way to lie before me, God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to secure me:
against snares of devils, against temptations of vices, against inclinations of nature, against everyone who shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.
I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):
against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and my soul,
against incantations of false prophets,
against black laws of heathenry,
against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry,
against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
against every knowledge that endangers man’s body and soul.
Christ to protect me today against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so that there may come abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.
February 27th Birthdays
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet, b. 1807. He wrote The Song of Hiawatha, Paul Revere’s Ride, The Wreck of the Hesperus, and Evangeline. I still remember reading Evangeline in the ninth grade. I thought it was terribly romantic.
John Steinbeck, American author of depressing novels, b. 1902. I also remember reading Cannery Row sometime when I was in high school. It is not a pleasant memory. I prefer Longfellow to Steinbeck any day, and if that preference makes me a Philistine sobeit.
February 22nd: Leetla Giorgio Washeenton
My mom used to read/quote this poem to us every February 22nd. I know it’s tomorrow, but I thought some of you might want to read it today on President’s Day. You have to do your best Eyetalian accent for the full effect.
Leetla Giorgio Washeenton
By Thomas Augustine Daly
You know w’at for ees school keep out
Dees holiday, my son?
Wal, den, I gona tal you ’bout
Dees Giorgio Washeenton.
Wal, Giorgio was leetla keed
Ees leeve long time ago,
An’ he gon’ school for learn to read
An’ write hees nam’, you know.
He moocha like for gona school
An’ learna hard all day,
Baycause he no gat time for fool
Weeth bada keeds an’ play.
Wal, wan cold day w’en Giorgio
Ees steell so vera small,
He start from home, but he ees no
Show up een school at all!
Oh, my! hees Pop ees gatta mad
An’ so he tal hees wife:
“Som’ leetla boy ees gon’ feel bad
Today, you bat my life!”
An’ den he grab a bigga steeck
An’ gon’ out een da snow
An’ lookin’ all aroun’ for seek
Da leetla Giorgio.
Ha! w’at you theenk? Firs’ theeng he see
Where leetla boy he stan’,
All tangla up een cherry tree,
Weeth hatchet een hees han’.
“Ha! w’at you do?” hees Pop he say,
“W’at for you busta rule
An’ stay away like dees for play
Eenstead for gon’ to school?”
Da boy ees say: “I no can lie,
An’ so I speaka true.
I stay away from school for try
An’ gat som’ wood for you.
I theenka deesa cherry tree
Ees goodda size for chop,
An’ so I cut heem down, you see,
For justa help my Pop.”
Hees Pop he no can gatta mad,
But looka please’ an’ say:
“My leetla boy, I am so glad
You taka holiday.”
Ees good for leetla boy, you see,
For be so bright an’ try
For help hees Pop; so den he be.
A granda man bimeby.
So now you gotta holiday
An’ eet ees good, you know,
For you gon’ do da sama way
Like leetla Giorgio.
Don’t play so mooch, but justa stop,
Eef you want be som’ good,
An’ try for help your poor old Pop
By carry home som’ wood;
An’ mebbe so like Giorgio
You grow for be so great
You gona be da Presidant
Of dese Unita State’!
February 14 Birthdays
Richard Owen Cambridge, poet, b. 1717. This article says he had “a penchant for writing verse and building boats.”
George Henry Kingsley, physician and world traveller, b. 1827. He wrote about his travels and also educated his daughter, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, at home and allowed her to help him in his scientific studies until his death in 1892. After her father’s death, Mary Henrietta became a world traveller in her own right, especially making several trips to Africa. She wrote Travels in West Africa about the animals, plants and people she encountered in her travels. She died in Africa nursing soldiers during the Boer War.
Graham Hough, literary critic and scholar, b. 1908. “The fact that poetry is not of the slightest economic or political importance, that it has no attachment to any of the powers that control the modern world, may set it free to do the only thing that in this age it can do -to keep the neglected parts of the human experience alive until the weather changes; as in some unforeseeable way it may do.”
George Washington Gale Ferris, engineer and inventor, b. 1859. He developed the Ferris wheel for the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Robert Lawson wrote a children’s fiction book called Ferris Wheel that tells the story of this event .
Paul O. Zelinsky, Caldecott award winner and creator of the book The Wheels on the Bus. b. 1953. He’s illustrated some beautiful fairy tale books. Rapunzel is the one he won the Caldecott for, and he’s also done versions of Rumplestilskin and Hansel and Gretel.
Subversive Poetry from Christian Poets
“Most of the Christian poetry I have read in the past ten years is pretty safe; no danger of anyone being alienated or offended, or any strongholds raised up against the knowledge of God being brought down, by the kind of verse that appears in Christian periodicals. But if the poets ever came to embrace a vision of their own role in the present conflict of worldviews, we might see more poetry of subversion flowing from their pens.”
.To read more, try this Breakpoint article by TM Moore.
Explaining Away the Poetry
One of the students in my American Literature discussion group says he doesn’t understand most poetry, especially modern poetry. It seems meaningless to him, words strung together with little or nothing that makes sense. This complaint is not uncommon, and some of the problem is laziness, I’m sure. I find myself trying to explain the particular poem we are studying and what it means. But to some extent this explanation process leaves some of the meaning out of the poem. There is so much more there than I am able to explain in my own prose. So the student comes away with a poem partially explained and no experience of the poetry itself. Suggestions?
Edgar Allan Poe
Last year on Poe’s birthday, I posted my favorite poem of all poems, Annabel Lee. This year my Poe birthday gift to you is the first verse of The Bells, which uses one of my very favorite words: tintinnabulation. Isn’t that a wonderful word? What are some of your favorite words? Don’t you have some that you just like the sound of?
Hear the sledges with the bells
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Note: You must read this poem out loud. Most poems are meant to be read aloud, but this one is especially meaningless unless you read the sounds in full voice.
More favorite words: rhubarb, melancholy, ragamuffin, ubiquitous, felicitous, cacophony, nemesis, ornery, burgundy, joy, bellicose, pickaninny, cantankerous, delicious . . .