Poem in Your Pocket Day, 2013


I love this day, a day to fill a pocket up with a little promise in the form of a poem.
Someone thought it up, said, hey, along with those keys and that phone and those coins,
the stick of gum - how about a poem or two for your pocket?

To take out later, over a tuna sandwich or a cup of coffee or a ride on the swings,
a poem to read out loud, mull over
and watch the words dance.

~ ~ ~

I was listening to Krista Tippett’s “On Being” one Sunday morning and she was interviewing Elizabeth Alexander about reading her poem at President Obama’s first inaugural. She spoke about her sound check, when she stood at the lectern, practicing. She couldn’t unveil her own poem just yet so she decided to read “Kitchenette Building,” a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks.

People were walking around the Capitol as she started to read and they stopped. A hush fell over the area as Alexander read the words. She said they recognized the way these words fell together, the cadence, the tone. This was something other than a speech;  this was a poem.  In their quiet they seemed to be saying this piece of art mattered and they wanted to hold on to it a minute before they walked off, along into the day.  It’s a perfect poem for  Poem in Your Pocket Day.

http://www.onbeing.org/program/words-shimmer/feature/kitchenette-building/319

http://www.onbeing.org/program/words-shimmer/246


A few poems for a pocket:

Five haiku by Matsuo Basho, just tiny enough and grand enough for any pocket:

a peasant’s child
husking rice, pauses
to look at the moon

The clouds come and go,
providing a rest for all
the moon viewers

Wrapping dumplings in
bamboo leaves, with one finger
she tidies her hair

I like to wash,
the dust of this world
In the droplets of dew.

The voices of plovers
Invite me to stare into the darkness
Of the Starlit Promontory.

http://thegreenleaf.co.uk/hp/basho/00bashohaiku.htm

http://www.poemhunter.com/matsuo-basho/


And:

“Kitchenette Building” by Gwendolyn Brooks – Can’t get enough of Brooks’ poems.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/kitchenette-building/

“Clary” by Atsuro Riley  - He dares with words and paints such a portrait.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/182107

“Living in Numbers” by Claire Lee – a sly reworking of numbers  to talk about life.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23457


From “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman – Whitman, a walking celebration of a human being who was wowed routinely by a spider, a grain of sand, his own self, the people trundling by, all of it.
http://www.favoritepoem.org/videos.html

“The Diameter of a Bomb” by Yehuda Amichai –  a poem so sadly fitting this week. The destructive force in the poem could be a word or a few sentences or an action that harms or the actual metal force that caused such havoc and hurt there on Boylston Street.
http://allpoetry.com/poem/8513183-The_Diameter_Of_The_Bomb-by-Yehuda_Amichai


 “Hope is a Thing with Feathers” (254) by Emily Dickinson. I seem to go back to it again and again, leaning on it.  “Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops at all.”
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19729