Literacy Speaks Volumes

Ireland is the land where everyone seems to have "the gift of gab." For a wordsmith like me, it was the perfect place. One of the sites that we visited was the Thoor Ballylee Yeats Centre.  Yeats was a famous poet who was born in 1865 (the end of our American Civil War) and died in 1934. He was/is one of Ireland's most famous poets. He is one of the poets who helped create the Irish Literary Revival (think of it as similar to the Harlem Renaissance). He was also one of the poets who created the Abbey Theatre (National Theatre of Ireland) in Dublin. Yeats loved Irish folklore and occult. His poems are full of allusive imagery and symbolic structures. The photos in the slideshow were taken in Gort, Ireland at his last home in Ireland. The following lines are from "The Second Coming": Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, T...

I posted this three years ago when I first began blogging. I have had many ups and downs as a writer. My goal three years ago was to read and write a poem everyday. It did make me appreciate poetry so much more. This poem is pretty basic in its format. It is a classic couplet. Read through the poem several times and write down what you are thinking. Have a personal conversation with the poem. Say something to the poem. Ask the poet a question. New Year's Day means a new beginning and a time to make some promises to myself. This year I promise to read at least one poem a day and to write at least one poem a day. Tall order? I'll probably have to get up at least an hour earlier if I'm going to meet that order. Well, in that vein, here is a poem that I read today~ The Year What can be said in New Year rhymes, That's not been said a thousand times? The new years come, the old years go, We know the dream, we dream we know. We rise u...

e.e. cummings's innovative style provoked comment and expanded artistic boundaries in the literary world. Students will be fascinated by the appearance of his poems and his unconventional treatment of words, punctuation, and form. maggie and milly and molly and may maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach (to play one day) and maggie discovered a shell that sang  so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were; and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone. For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea. who are you, little i who are you,little i (five or six years old) peering from some high window;at the gold of November sunset (and feeling:that if day ...