Category: Poetry

Fire and Ice

Poetry / Teaching

Poetry Video Project Using Chromebooks, Librivox, and WeVideo

When school starts up again this week, one of my Tech classes is going to begin learning about video editing with a free online tool called WeVideo. Students will browse through public domain poetry at Librivox.org and find a narrated poem they like. They’ll download the mp3 narration of the poem to their Google Drives and then search for accompanying images. I’ll be showing them how to use Google’s image search to find images that have been labeled for “reuse with modification,” so that they use the images...

Italian Landscape at Sunset

Poetry

When St. Francis of Assisi Returned from Rome: A Poem

I don’t read nearly as much poetry as I’d like to, but I recently read this lovely poem by St. Francis of Assisi and wanted to share it: When I Returned from Rome A bird took flight. And a flower in a field whistled at me as I passed. I drank from a stream of clear water. And at night the sky untied her hair and I fell asleep clutching a tress of God’s. When I returned from Rome, all said “Tell us the great news,” and with...

books

Books and Reading / Humor / Poetry

When I Loaned This Book I Deemed It as Lost

The Book-Lender’s Soliloquy by Nick Senger (with apologies to Shakespeare) To lend or not to lend, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of a book lost forever, Or to hoard books against a sea of troubles, And by keeping them hide them? To read: to lend; No more. And by hoarding to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That the librarian is heir to, ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To read, to...

Mount Doom

Books and Reading / Music / Poetry

What if Tolkien Wrote Stairway to Heaven?

I was purging some computer files the other day when I ran across these song lyrics I wrote a few years ago after Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring had just been released. It was something I did just for fun to show to my eighth grade students when we were studying The Hobbit. I forgot about until I found it the other day. I thought some of you might find it amusing. The song is about Aragorn and his role in the Fellowship and Middle-earth. It’s meant...

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Books and Reading / Poetry

In Honor of Lord Byron

On this day in 1824 George Gordon, Lord Byron, passed away. Byron is one of my favorite poets and in his honor I offer you this breathtaking poem of his: So, We’ll Go No More a Roving So, we’ll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears the sheath, And the soul outwears the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And Love itself have rest. Though...

Ezra Pound

Books and Reading / Poetry

The Lazy Person’s Guide to Memorizing Poetry

You can memorize a poem in five minutes. Really. You just have to have the right poem. Don’t believe me? Try these: On His Seventy-fifth Birthday by Walter Savage Landor I strove with none; for none was worth my strife, Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of life, It sinks, and I am ready to depart. Too long? Try this one: In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals...

Books and Reading / Poetry

April Is National Poetry Month

In 1996, The Academy of American Poets established April as National Poetry Month. They’ve suggested thirty ways to celebrate, one for each day of the month. Today’s suggestion is to read a book of poetry. Here are some great places to start: Anthologies: Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize edited by John Hollander – One of the greatest selections of poetry ever. Divided into Sonnets, Songs, Counsels, Tales, and Meditations. Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor – A diverse collection of almost 300 poems read by...

Sailing

Books and Reading / Poetry

An Irish Poem for St. Patrick’s Day

A beautiful poem from an Irish poet for this St. Patrick’s Day: Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats THAT is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick,...

Flanders Field

Books and Reading / Poetry / Technology

In Flanders Field

I’m experimenting with Windows Movie Maker and have created this video illustrating John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.” The audio comes from Librivox.org and the photos come from the Wikimedia Commons Project. Let me know what you think.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Books and Reading / Poetry

A Thing of Beauty Is a Joy Forever

Today is the anniversary of the death of John Keats, one of the major poets of the Romantic era. He died of tuberculosis on this day in 1821 at the age of 25. In his brief life he wrote several poems that are considered major works in English literature such as “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to Psyche,” and “Endymion.” Here is one of my favorites: On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer Much have I travel’d in the realms of gold, And...

Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse

Books and Reading / Catholic Education / Poetry / Teaching

The Best Thing I Read Today

The best thing I read today was “The Lady of Shalott” with my eighth grade literature class. One of my favorite stanzas: She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look’d down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side; “The curse is come upon me,” cried The Lady of Shalott.