Poetry Friday - Looking Back & Forward

Carol Wilcox, my Denver friend, hosts today, our greeting to a new year, 2020! You can find her Poetry Friday post at Carol's Corner! Thanks for starting us off so wonderfully with a poem by Maya Angelou, Carol! I especially noted that line about gratitude: "To let gratitude be the pillow. . ."    

         Happy New Year to everyone! Wishing you lots of goodness in your year, "full of things that have never been" according to Rilke. 
          Today, I'm celebrating some goodness received in the poetry swap in December. Thanks always to Tabatha Yeatts for starting this wonderful tradition for us!
         I was fortunate to have my name given to Robyn Hood Black, blogging at Life on the Deckle Edge, lover of haiku and all things from far in the past! She wrote a poem comparing me to a tree (Yes, I love trees!) and added some lovely chocolate, also tree-related plus some extra goodies like that map bookmark from her Etsy shop, ArtsyLetters! I'm not so sure I am quite like that lady swooning on the tree today, but perhaps in another life, long ago. The title is included, "The Fair Dreamer" and indeed, I am still that. In the poem's note, Robyn shares that the picture is from Crown Jewels or Gems of Literature, Art and Music, Kansas City, MO, 1888. What fun that it was printed in KC where most of my growing up years occurred.
                      Thank you, Robyn, for the special gifts!

                               

        Yes, Robyn, I do love trees! Here's a tribute to them and a thank you for you!

Summer Goodbye Swap - from Robyn!

              Poetry Friday is hosted today by a lovely substitute, Irene Latham of Live Your Poem. Her new book Dear Wandering Wildebeast and Other Poems From The Water Hole will be out September 1st, so it's time to begin celebrating.  Robyn Hood Black, of Life On The Deckle Edge, our 'supposed-to-be' host, is taking some time off with a hurt shoulder, but lucky for us, she's here at my blog because I was fortunate enough to receive my final swap poem from her this past week. It couldn't have been more appropriate. She saw my post a few weeks ago about the light changing, and wrote a poem about August for me. I just returned to work officially this week, and it's a wonderful poem for a school year's beginning. Thank you Robyn! And of course, thanks to Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference one more time for her sensational swapping idea.

Poetry Gifts

         Mid-August, summer is still twirling along this Poetry Friday with Heidi Mordhurst at My Juicy Little Universe.   (I had to add this in. Just noticed, it's my seven hundred seventy-seventh post! Three sevens have to be lucky, right?)

                Thanks Heidi!  

         Thanks also to Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference, many of us have had the summer pleasure of swapping poetry. I've received such marvelous surprises in my mailbox, and thank everyone for taking the time to create and send. This time, my next to last package, I had a huge surprise, poems from Tabatha, the swapping guru! She certainly stretched my vocabulary with her creations, but thankfully also included glossaries. Here they are in wonderful tongue-in-cheek fashion. Laughter is ever so nice when opening the mail. Thank you again, Tabatha!

Poetry Friday - A Poem Gift

Poetry Friday is celebrated today at Linda Kulp's WriteTime.

      For several years, Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference has given many of us the gift of a poem swap, where she matches different poets who join the group, and each sends a personal poem to the name given. This has been one of the loveliest ideas I've seen someone create. It is a wonderful thing to open the mail and find a special poem, and also a joy to write for someone, to prepare the package filled with a gift of words. 

A quote for Tabatha's gift to so many: "The only gift is a portion of thyself." Ralph Waldo Emerson  

Poem Swapping - a summer delight

               Join everyone who shares about poetry on Poetry Friday this July 5th, hosted by Keri at Keri Recommends.  Thanks Keri!

     Thanks to Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference, some of us are again enjoying the pleasure of swapping poems this summer.  In the first week of summer, I was surprised by a summer solstice welcome poem from Anastasia Suen.  See her blog here!  I suppose there are lists and lists of things we think of when we hear the word summer.  Yet the one that may be first on the list is sun.  Here is Anastasia’s lovely haiku:

Anastasia Suen, all rights reserved

A Thank You & Some Praise

               Violet Nesdoly at VioletNesdoly/Poems is our lovely host today for Poetry Friday.  She says she is trying to organize, an admirable New Year's Resolution.  Violet's poems are quite organized and always clever, so I'm not quite sure she needs that goal.  Thanks for hosting, Violet!

     This is a simple post today, a thank you with praise.  I've never really met Tabatha Yeatts, but I feel I know her through her wonderfully eclectic posts, see TabathaYeatts: The Opposite of Indifference, that teach me something every week.  She tells of music and art, and, of course, poetry.  She is full of energy and ideas, and Tabatha follows through with those ideas.  Last summer, she facilitated a poetry swap where we were paired and shared three poems throughout the summer with our 'buddies'.  For the Christmas season, we again were paired, if we chose to sign up, and sent a gift and a poem to the person Tabatha had so intuitively paired us with.  I posted about my lovely surprises from Laura Shovan at Author Amok last week.