A Live Tweetspeak Poetry Party with Sara Teasdale, Part 2

She didn’t live here her entire life, but St. Louis claims poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) as one of its own. 

The Teasdale family was well-to-do. Their first home was on Lindell Boulevard, in the area we call “midtown,” the intersection of Grand and Lindell boulevards. Today, the Grand Entertainment District is on the north side of Lindell and St Louis University is on the south. The Teasdale home was located on land that is now occupied by university buildings.

The family moved farther west to Kingsbury Place, a few blocks north of Forest Park. This area was being developed as an enclave of private streets before, during, and after the St. Louis World’s Fair. Teasdale’s house still stands; Kingsbury Place is still a beautiful street with large, well-maintained homes. (Not long ago, it was sold for $1.1 million.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Flame and Shadow: A Live Tweetspeak Poetry Party with Sara Teasdale, Part 1

In her lifetime, poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was popular with the public and critics alike. Her third poetry collection, Rivers to the Sea (1915) was a bestseller; her fourth, Love Songs (1917), won what eventually was named the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her final collection, Strange Victory (1933), was published after her death and was well-received by critics. 

Her poetry gradually fell out of critical favor. I read her poems in English literature textbooks in high school and college, but her work was fast disappearing by the 1980s. (Critics and scholars often get suspicious if something is popular with the public.) Recently, her work has begun to make something of a comeback, and rightfully so. 

And just in time for a live Tweetspeak Twitter party, but without Twitter. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Tweetspeak Poetry Jam, Part 2: Skywoman Braids Sweetgrass

Tweetspeak Poetry’s jam on Twitter on Jan. 15 used prompts from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by botanist and Native American Robin Wall Kimmerer. As might be expected, the prompts contained numerous references to nature – to trees, plants, flowers, and fruits.

The lines on Twitter don’t flow chronologically, because people see a prompt, consider a response, and then tweet the line or lines they’ve created. Some people tweet quickly; others take their time. The result is a series of tweets like overlapping arcs. When you look at the entire list, it appears formidable: how do you fashion poems from what looks like a disjointed incoherence?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Tweetspeak Poetry Jam: Skywoman Braids Sweetgrass

Tweetspeak Poetry was born on Twitter. Even before a web site existed, poetry jams were being hosted, participated in, and then edited into a kind of official record of the jams. The prompts to spark the jam came from a wide variety of sources – poetry collections, Greek myths, non-fiction works, memoirs, and other works. About the only thing each jam had in common was the length – always kept to one hour.

On Tuesday, January 15, Tweetspeak hosted another poetry jam on Twitter. This time, the prompts were taken from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by botanist and Native American Robin Wall Kimmerer. The book fuses Kimmerer’s scientific training as well as the stories told by flowers, fruit, vegetables, grasses, and other plants. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Tweetspeak Twitter Party: The Odyssey and The Wooded Isle, Part 2

Over the centuries, the epic poems The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer have been translated scores of times. The English translators have included George Chapman, Thomas Hobbes, Alexander Pope, William Cowper, William Cullen Bryant, William Morris, Samuel Butler, Padraic Colum, T.E. Lawrence, W.H.D. Rouse, Robert Fitzgerald, Richmond Lattimore (the translation I first read), and Allen Mandelbaum, among many others. The most recent English translation was published by Oxford University Press in 2014.

In other words, Homer has lasted. And with good reason. The story of the siege and fall of the pf the city Troy and the (mostly) seagoing wanderings of Odysseus still captivates and enchants. And amid the sounds of battle before Troy and encounters with witches, sirens, and various monsters are several very different love stories, including Menelaus and Helen and Odysseus (or the Roman Ulysses) and Penelope.

Top continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Illustration: Odysseus and Calypso, from The Odyssey.

Tweetspeak Twitter Party: The Odyssey and The Wooded Isle, Part 1

The Odyssey by Homer is the second oldest book in the Western literary canon; Homer’s The Iliad wins the prize for the oldest. The works are believed to have been written sometime about the end of the 8^th century B.C. (or B.C.E., if you prefer). They describe the fall of the great city of Troy and its aftermath, which occurred about 400 years earlier. (Two scholarly camps argue about the identity of Homer; one says he is a single individual and the other says he is actually a group of individuals.)

The two works give us innumerable images and metaphors. The face that launched a thousand ships. The Trojan horse. Achilles’ heel. The judgment of Paris. The sirens’ song. The Cyclops. Circe the witch. Scylla and Charybdis.

The Odyssey (Robert Fitzgerald translation)was the source for the prompts for Tweetspeak Poetry’s most recent poetry party on Twitter, held Dec. 10, where 10 would-be Homers wrote their own epic poem.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: A Hellenized version of what Homer may have looked like.

Twitter Party: The Poetry Home Repair Manual 2

At our recent Twitter party, things took a decided turn toward the planet Saturn, silver ribbons down the back stairs, or perhaps the front stairs, and lemon custard (don’t shoot me, I’m only the piano player). A digression into dirty dishes (likely latent guilt for tweeting poetic lines while filled sinks remained, well, filled) was soon left behind.

The prompts were taken from The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets by Ted Kooser, the former U.S. poet laureate. I’m not sure if he ever imagined his book would be pressed into service for a poetry jam on Twitter, but something tells me he would likely be pleased.

What’s rather fascinating for an editor of poetic tweets is to see how the thoughts and inspirations flow and play off each other. It’s hard to follow that when you’re in the thick of rapid-fire tweeting, but once the tweets are brought together and, in a sense, stop moving, the underlying inspiration can be seen.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Twitter Party: The Poetry Home Repair Manual

I have a theory about poets and poetry, and it is this: there are only four poets in the United States who make a living by writing poetry. One of them is Billy Collins. I’m not sure who the other three are. But I know they must be out there. Somewhere.

At our recent poetry jam on Twitter, the very first prompt spoke to my theory: “You’ll never be able to make a living writing poems.” It’s a line from The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets by Ted Kooser, former U.S. Poet Laureate and author of some wonderful collections of poetry. (And if you wonder if he is one of the other three poets making a living from writing poems, you should know he retired from an insurance company in Nebraska, where he spent most of his adult working life.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Peter Griffin via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Twitter Poetry: Spinning for Tickets for a Prayer Wheel 3

The next groups of poems from our recent poetry jam on Twitter is posted today at Tweetspeak Poetry. The poems take a turn toward swans and petals, green skies and blue music, gourds and story-weaving. The prompts for the jam were taken from Annie Dillard’s volume of poetry Tickets for a Prayer Wheel: Poems.

To continue reading (and see the poems), please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Petr Kratockvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Twitter Poetry: Spinning for Tickets for a Prayer Wheel 2

It takes time to sift through the contributions to our Tweetspeak Poetry jams on Twitter, time to make sure all of the lines are, first, grouped together, and then, second, arranged for editing. People think and respond to the prompts (and each other) very differently, and that diversity is one of the strengths of these poetry jams. It also requires some careful editing.

For our most recent jam, all of the prompts were taken from Tickets for a Prayer Wheel: Poems by Annie Dillard. To see the next six poems in the series, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry. 

Photograph by Petr Kratockvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.