Newsflash! My Sonnet, “Wave of Departure,” is Included in the Spring 2022 Issue of THE ROAD NOT TAKEN: A JOURNAL OF FORMAL POETRY

The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry has just published Volume 16, Issue 1. Publishing fine formal poetry since 2007, this journal is a font of adept and interesting poems. Issues are published online, and they offer interested readers an easily accessible archive, chronologically arranged.

I am so pleased that they have included a sonnet, “Wave of Departure,” inspired by the ginkgo tree Tim and I planted almost twenty-three years ago in honor of Julia’s birth. The images below are of this tree.

For all you formalist poets out there, this lovely journal puts out three issues a year. Submission Guidelines are clear and specific, and submission periods are as follows:

Fall Submission Period:                    August 15th – October 15th
Spring Submission Period:                January 15th – March 15th
Summer Submission Period:             April 1st- June 15th      

I am sure you will enjoy looking at the current issue. Poems selected have been collected under the themes of “Safe Spaces,” “Satires,” and “Closures.”

Happy Reading! LESLIE

April 29, 2022: Spotlight on Gerard Manly Hopkins’s Poem, “Spring and Fall”; Background on My Poem, “Harvesting Enshrined Scraps”

Spring and Fall

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

This wise and well known poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins is one I have committed to memory. One of the advantages of growing older for me has not been so much to be colder in the face of triggers for sorrow than to understand them better and to allow them to arise and subside in their season. I don’t feel innured to life’s pain so much as being better fitted to endure it and even sometimes learn from it. What I really love about this poem is its music. Who else could have crafted the line “though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie…”?

Background on My Poem, “Harvesting Enshrined Scraps”:

This month has been a time of looking through family photographs and deciding which to keep and which to release. It is not an easy process for most of us–assigning personal value to paper that carries no intrinsic value. Discoveries range from the delightful to the disconcerting. Perhaps the most valuable aspect for me is recognizing that everything (animate and inanimate) has a lifespan, and with periodic reviews it gets easier for me to recognize this and to act accordingly to release what is no longer alive with meaning for me. A form of telling time unavailable to the young, perhaps.

Wishing you a happy day, and a happy season! LESLIE

April 28, 2022: Spotlight on Adrienne Rich’s Poem, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; Background on My Poem “Looking”

Tiger, Predator, Fur, Dangerous, Big Cat, Animal World
(photo: Alexas_Fotos/Pixabay; used by permission)
Adrienne Rich as a Young Poet

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) is a poet who loomed large for me in college. Her poem about Emily Dickinson, “I am in Danger–Sir–” from her eighth collection of poetry, Diving into the Wreck (1973) helped me to understand the allusive half-rhymes of Dickinson as well as the strictures of her poetic and personal lives. Her earlier poem for poet Denise Levertov, “The Roofwalker,” (1961) helped me understand how it might feel to be a woman who published poetry, “…exposed, larger than life,/ and due to break my neck….”

Despite my admiration for her later work and life, the collection of hers that I keep coming back to is her first one. A Change of World (Yale University Press, 1951) was selected to receive the Yale Younger Poets Prize by W.H. Auden when Rich was in her senior year at Radcliffe College. I find the work astonishing seventy years later, and astonishingly mature for a young woman of twenty-two. Here is one of my perennial favorites:

Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Amur Tiger, Tiger, Predator, Hunter, Nature, Animal
(Photo: TheOtherKev/Pixabay; used by permission)

Background for My Poem, “Looking”:

I have been looking at old family photos this past couple of weeks, and some memories have come back with new clarity. I had forgotten about the incident described in the poem–looking through binoculars at an ocean-going ship as a child, and the startlement of seeing a stranger looking back at me. A more extroverted child might have been thrilled!

(Photo: Pixabay: Used by permission)

Happy Looking! Happy Seeing! LESLIE

April 27, 2022: Spotlight on a Chinese Proverb; Background on My Poem “A Gesture of Peace”

Outside Just Food Coop, Northfield, Minnesota

“Keep a green tree in your heart, and perhaps the singing bird will come.” Chinese proverb

I take this to mean that small ways of taking action, including listening deep within, are very powerful indeed.

Background on My Poem “A Gesture of Peace”:

Newly Folded Cranes

Today’s poem, “A Gesture of Peace,” is about the power of intention to bring healing into the world even in the face of despair and paralysis.

Wishing You Peace in Your Heart and Peace in the World We Share–LESLIE

April 26, 2022: Spotlight on Kay Ryan’s Poem, “Cloud”; Background on My Poem, “Renouncing Kleos”

Kay Ryan has become one of my very favorite poets in the past few years. I go back and back again to her work. Today, I thought of her poem, “Cloud,” as a perfect example of ephemera.

Background to My Poem, “Renouncing Kleos”:

I first encountered the Greek word, “kleos,” when Julia and I studied Homer’s epics during our homeschooling days. Today, with the sky granite grey, it came back to me, and I thought about how humans want to create something that outlasts themselves but that ultimately seems foolish–and maybe particpating imaginatively in the ephemeral nature of things is a better way toward wisdom. And I wonder why it can be so difficult for humans to stay anchored in the present moment.

Still later, I thought how sidewalk pavers are a nice half-way place between making one’s mark in a permanent way and living in the present moment totally. And they are mostly kleos-free, since no name is attached.

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! LESLIE