Wearing purple

Warning: When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple ~ by Jenny Joseph, 2022, poetry, 32 pages, 10/10

In "Warning," written in 1961, the poem's respectable middle-aged woman indulges in her fantasy of the gabby old crone with her outrageous clothes and dotty behavior.  It now appears as an illustrated book with drawings by Pythia Ashton-Jewell specially designed to suit its unique character.

Today, I also let Kate borrow my larger book about this poem.  I've blogged about it several times before.  HERE is one of those times.  During a big event today, I sat down with a couple of my friends, and more than one person came over to mention that all three of us were wearing purple.

"Pass It On" ~ by Henry Burton

Have you had a kindness shown?

Pass it on;

'Twas not given for thee alone,

Pass it on;

Let it travel down the years,

Let it wipe another's tears,

'Till in Heaven the deed appears . . .

Pass it on.

~~~ by Henry Burton

*Note ~ I ran across this first verse in a book, so I'm passing it on for you to ponder, too.

Am I old yet? Maybe I should wear more purple

When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple ~ edited by Sandra Haldeman Martz, 1987, women's studies, 181 pages, 9/10

This book is a collection of writings and photographs that challenge stereotypes of older women in America.  I wrote about it in 2016 (HERE) when I rated it 9/10, saying, "Back to school ~ my life story."

It worked its way to the top of a pile of books during my move, and I've picked it up to read again.  But why isn't the old woman on the cover wearing purple?

I had to memorize this poem as a child in school

The Tyger ~ by William Blake (1757-1827)

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat.

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp.

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears 

And water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Tyger is spelled with a "y" because Blake used the old English spelling.  This poem is found in Songs of Innocence and of Experience, a collection of his illustrated poems.  I think all I memorized was the first verse — or maybe it was the last verse, since they are the same.  No other verses seem at all familiar, and I have no idea why the poem has popped into my head several times recently.

Sunday Salon ~ pink, poetry, and a passel of books

This is how my great-granddaughter "does" Saturday morning cartoons.  See if you can find anything pink in her room.

POETRY

from A Thousand Mornings: Poems, 2012

"After I Fall Down the Stairs at the Golden Temple"

by Mary Oliver

For a while I could not remember some word I was in need of,
and I was bereaved and said:
where are you, beloved friend

CODICES and SCROLLS

This morning, I'll be sharing some of my books with my Sunday school class, which is studying early Christianity.  We are working our way through the book Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, by James D. Tabor (2012), which discusses the biblical books of James and Jude — who were brothers of Jesus — as well as the Nag Hammadi texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Q source (from the German word Quelle, meaning "source").

PAPYRUS CODICES (bound books, not scrolls) were found in 1945,  buried near the city of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt.  The Nag Hammadi texts, often referred to as gnostic texts, include the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene).

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures ~ edited by Marvin Meyer, 2007
The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version ~ ed. by Robert J. Miller, 1994
The Gnostic Gospels ~ by Elaine Pagels, 1979
Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas ~ by Elaine Pagels, 2003
The Gospel of Thomas: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus ~ by John Dart and Ray Riegert, 2000
The Gospel of Thomas ~ translated by Jean-Yves Leloup, 2002
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle ~ by Karen L. King, 2003
The Gospels of Mary: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene, the Companion of Jesus ~ by Marvin Meyer, 2004
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene ~ by Jean-Yves Leloup, 1997 (English translation, 2002)
The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple ~ by James P. Carse, 1997
Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority ~ by Ann Graham Brock, 2003
The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth ~ by Marvin Meyer, 2005
The Other Gospels: Non-Canonical Gospel Texts ~ edited by Ron Cameron, 1982

SCROLLS were found in 1947 in caves near Qumran by the Dead Sea in what is now Israel.  They were rolled up inside earthen jars, like the one below.

The Dead Sea Scrolls ~ by Millar Burrows, 1955
Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls ~ by Harvey Minkoff, 1998

Q (from QUELLE, meaning "source")

The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins ~ by Burton L. Mack, 1993

Bloggers get together in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time zones — to talk about reading.

Sunday Salon ~ haiku

An old silent pond.

Into the pond a frog jumps.

Splash!  Silence again.

— Basho

Frederick Buechner quoted Basho's haiku in Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary (1993), then went on to say under his category of ART on page 15:

It is perhaps the best known of all Japanese haiku.  No subject could be more humdrum.  No language could be more pedestrian.  Basho, the poet, makes no comment on what he is describing.  He implies no meaning, message, or metaphor.  He simply invites our attention to no more and no less than just this:  the old pond in its watery stillness, the kerplunk of the frog, the gradual return of the stillness.

In effect he is putting a frame around the moment, and what the frame does is enable us to see not just something about the moment but the moment itself in all its ineffable ordinariness and particularity.  The chances are that if we had been passing by when the frog jumped, we wouldn't have noticed a thing or, noticing it, wouldn't have given it a second thought.  But the frame sets it off from everything else that distracts usz.  It makes possible a second thought.  That is the nature and purpose of frames.  The frame does not change the moment, but it changes our way of perceiving the moment.  It makes us NOTICE the moment, and that is what Basho wants above all else.  It is what literature in general wants above all else too.

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention.  Pay attention to the frog.  Pay attention to the west wind.  Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train.  In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to ourself and all that dwells therein.

What do you notice when you stop — right now — to pay attention?

The Sunday Salon's Facebook page links to other blogs.

Being honest — for the love of books

Three-and-a-half years ago, the unofficial leader of my Thursday writers group gave us homework:  to write a poem using the rhyming pattern of Robert Frost's

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

It rhymes like this:

A
A
B
A
B
B
C
B
C
C
D
C
D
D
D
D

I'm not a poet, but here's what I wrote.

For the Love of Books

A book arrived in Monday’s mail;
It’s still a manuscript, this tale,
Which comes to me from friend, not foe.
She did not ask me to curtail
My thinking pow’r nor wit, although
I don’t think she’ll be all aglow
To hear the things I must disclose
About the lacks that we both know
It has. Ah, yes, I must compose
With care — or else our friendship goes.
I cannot simply hem and haw.
"Go burn this thing’s what I propose
Because it has a tragic flaw:
It’s made of nothing more than straw.
A publisher would just guffaw.
Yes, publishers would all guffaw."

I had forgotten this until last night, when I ran across the page I had printed out, showing what I posted on this blog.

"The Lanyard" by Billy Collins ~ teaser

Alison at So Many Book, So Little Time recently wrote about Billy Collins, the Poet Laureate of the United States (2001-2003).  Her book group chose his book The Trouble with Poetry, or else she wouldn't likely have read that book.  Alison ended her post:

"The Lanyard" seemed to be a consensus favorite when the group met for lunch. For me, finishing the poem resulted in a gasp for air, so poignant are the final words.

I, of course, went looking for that poem, which I found on his web site.  I want to share it with you, along with photos I found in my memory and by googling until I found what I had visualized.

The Lanyard
by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Since reading Alison's post, I have picked up the book from my library, so now I can tell you this poem is on pages 45-46 of The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins, 2005.  I'm thinking of my mom as I write this.  She was very busy becoming a mother on this day, 71 years ago.  It's a debt I could never repay.

(And now I have a cat who is "as sure as a cat can be" that meowing a happy birthday song not only makes us even, but entitles her to treats.  Thank you for the song, Kiki.)

"Missing the Boat" ~ by Naomi Shihab Nye

It is not so much that the boat passed

and you failed to notice it.

It is more like the boat stopping

directly outside your bedroom window,

the captain blowing the signal-horn,

the band playing a rousing march.
The boat shouted, waving bright flags,

its silver hull blinding in the sunlight.
But you had this idea you were going by train.
You kept checking the time-table,

digging for tracks.
And the boat got tired of you,

so tired it pulled up the anchor

and raised the ramp.
The boat bobbed into the distance,

shrinking like a toy --
at which point you probably realized

you had always loved the sea.

"Missing the Boat," a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, is from Different Ways to Pray (Breitenbush Publications, 1980)

(Discovered on pages 107-108 in Putting Away Childish Things: A Tale of Modern Faith, a novel by Marcus Borg.)

It's an allusion!

Resolve the paradox of this poem by identifying the allusion.

IN THE GARDEN
by Anonymous

In the garden there strayed
A beautiful maid
As fair as the flowers of the morn;
The first hour of her life
She was made a man's wife,
And was buried before she was born.

Do you recognize the allusion?  Oh, you want me to define allusion?  Okay, an allusion is a reference to a literary work, person, place, or event.  Allusion is a means of suggesting far more than it actually says.  This picture is a visual allusion to another part of the same story.

I ran across my old copy of Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, Second Edition, by Laurence Perrine, 1963.  My notes in the book show that we discussed this poem in my college English class on March 28, 1966.

For the Love of Books

The unofficial leader of my Thursday writers group has assigned us homework ... to write a poem using the rhyming pattern of Robert Frost's

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

It rhymes like this:

A
A
B
A
B
B
C
B
C
C
D
C
D
D
D
D

I don't consider myself a poet, so feel free to have at it and beat my writer friends to the punch (don't punch TOO hard, though). They won't tell me their opinions until Thursday, so you get to go first.

For the Love of Books

A book arrived in Monday’s mail;
It’s still a manuscript, this tale,
Which comes to me from friend, not foe.
She did not ask me to curtail
My thinking pow’r nor wit, although
I don’t think she’ll be all aglow
To hear the things I must disclose
About the lacks that we both know
It has. Ah, yes, I must compose
With care – or else our friendship goes.
I cannot simply hem and haw.
"Go burn this thing’s what I propose
Because it has a tragic flaw:
It’s made of nothing more than straw.
A publisher would just guffaw.
Yes, publishers would all guffaw."

THE CALF-PATH by Sam Walter Foss

This poem appeared in The Writer's Almanac on June 12, but I found it by reading Mary's Library blog. This is the kind of thing I tend to do, thinking about all the creatures who followed the calf who first walked that way; however, I have never said it so well or even thought it so well.


The Calf-Path

One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell–wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell–wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed – do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf,
And though this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed this zigzag calf about
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way.
And lost one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.

Viewpoint

white clouds bleach the sky
earthen path leads over hill
glorious vision

2
white clouds bleach the sky
beaten path runs through the grass
cat in sunny spot

3
white clouds bleach the sky
beaten path runs through the grass
sleepy cat purring

Okay, I'm satisfied with the third and final version of this haiku ... lol ... I'll stop tweaking it now. To read other haikus, visit One Deep Breath.

e. e. cummings ~ a poem

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more

minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth-beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)

one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow

deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.
All lose,whole find

XAIPE (Greek for rejoice) by e. e. cummings, 1950

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

The Princess of Black Poetry

Professor Nikki Giovanni stood before the students and faculty of Virginia Tech during a memorial service for those slain during Monday's massacre. The 63-year-old poet with the close-cropped hair is a University Distinguished Professor at VT and has been on the faculty since 1987, teaching English. Have you ever heard of her?

Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Over the past thirty years, her outspokenness, in her writing and in lectures, has brought the eyes of the world upon her. One of the most widely-read American poets, she prides herself on being "a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English." Early in her career she was dubbed the "Princess of Black Poetry," and over the course of more than three decades of publishing and lecturing she has come to be called both a "National Treasure" and, most recently, one of Oprah Winfrey's twenty-five "Living Legends."

Her bio goes on to say that her book Blues: For All the Changes reached #4 on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list, a rare achievement for a book of poems. Most recently, her children's picture book Rosa, about the civil rights legend Rosa Parks, became a Caldecott Honors Book, and Bryan Collier, the illustrator, was given the Coretta Scott King award for best illustration. Rosa also reached #3 on The New York Times Bestseller list.

Let me share one of her poems that I like:

CHOICES

if i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do

it's not the same thing
but it's the best i can
do

if i can't have
what i want . . . then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want

since i can't go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral

when i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry