Poetic Saturdays: Spelling List

I hope everyone is having a cozy Saturday morning. Here in Duluth, Georgia, we're having one of our few "cold" days of winter this year. As a person who grew up in Southwestern Ohio, it still feels nice for February. My offering this week is actually a found poem. Reese, who's in second grade, does these spelling-related homework assignments every week, and one of them is to put his spelling words in alphabetical order. While I was checking his work earlier this week, I saw a poem emerge.

Spelling List, by Robert Lee Brewer

about
are
away,
because
different.
find
help
here
only.
put
there.
think
too.
use
way.
why?

*****

Newer Book:

Pitch: Poems
by Todd Boss (Norton)

Last year, I learned about Motionpoems and tried to get Boss involved with Poet's Market. Unfortunately, it didn't work out, but it did lead me to learn more about his writing. Pitch is an interesting collection, because some of these poems look like they shouldn't appeal to me, but as I get caught in them, there's a music to nearly all of them that swings me through the poems--and causes me to want to read more. But they also beg to be considered--each one--through a second and third reading and then always wondering if the poem doesn't mean something else. That's the real pleasure of reading poetry--being swept up by the music and then left puzzling--and Todd Boss delivers in Pitch.

*****

Poems Found Online:

• The Mail Order Bride Attempts a Letter Home, by Molly Spencer from Linebreak
• Best Wishes for a Perfect World, by Jamie Bruno from Stirring
• Gone, Gone, All the Stones I've Thrown Out to Sea, by Michael Mlekoday from Juked
• from Sorrow Arrow, by Emily Kendal Frey from Pax Americana
• Sorry Was in the Woods, by Michelle Taransky from jubilat

*****

Older Book:

View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems
by Wislawa Szymborska (Harcourt Brace)

Earlier this month, the poetry world lost an amazing voice when the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska died of lung cancer at 88. Winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, Szymborska's poetry is both very readable and also penetrating. For instance, one of my favorite poems from this collection is "Going Home," in which a man comes home and curls up in his bed. There is something very basic about these poems and raw and still magical. As with most great collections, this book is filled with sorrow, doubt, but also an unrelenting joy.

*****

Note: Links in this post to books are affiliate links. However, I do not mention these books to make a profit. They are either books I'm connected to or ones I truly love. All other links in this post are not affiliate links.

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Check out previous Poetic Saturdays posts:

• Now This Is How We Roll.
• The Kids Must Know Something.
• Until Further Notice.