Twas the Night Before Christmas Clement Clark Moore
In 1823, the New York Sentinel published an anonymous poem that was to become one of the most famous Christmas poems of all times, and redefine the way that jolly old Saint Nick was seen. The poem was an immediate hit, and Twas the Night Before Christmas is a traditional Christmas Eve reading in millions of homes around the world.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas Dr. Seuss
Theodore Seuss Geisel, the man known to millions of children and their parents as Dr. Seuss, first published How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1957. It became an instant classic, and its subsequent translation into a television Christmas special featuring the voice of Boris Karloff introduced it to a whole new generation of children. This year, read the poem aloud to your kids BEFORE you watch the show and watch their faces light up with the spirit of Christmas.

Dominic, The Italian Christmas Donkey
So it”s not a classic poem – but I grew up hearing about Dominic, the little donkey that pulls Santa”s sleigh in Italy because the reindeer can”t climb the hills of Italy. Enjoy!

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Robert May
We all know and love the tale of plucky Rudolph who saved Christmas one foggy Christmas Eve, but there”s more to the story. Read about how the character of Rudolph was created, and the man who created him. There”s actually a bit of the Christmas spirit in the idea of a huge department store giving back the right to publish Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to the man who created it to help him through a time of desperate need.

A Wish for Wings That Work Berkely Breathed
Opus, the adorable, practical penguin from Bloom County has one Christmas wish – wings that work so he can fly on Christmas morning. The book was made into a Christmas special in 1991 and airs every year, but share it with your special little ones in book form. The pictures are pure magic, as are the delightful words.

Technorati Tags: poetry, poems, christmas, read-aloud-poems, christmas-poems

Then come back here and watch the PBS New Mexico”s piece about the National Poetry Slam.

Apparently, several months back, Adams lost his voice after severe allergies strained his vocal muscles. This resulted in a condition called Spasmodic Dysphoria, a rather rare and exotic condition where there”s a “disconnect” between the part of the brain that controls speech and the part of the brain that wants to make it. The result – the inability to frame words and speak aloud. For Adams, who is a public speaker in addition to a comic strip creator, the loss of his voice was difficult, but could have been worse. He found that he could still speak in some situations – that the process of public speaking was different enough from the normal use of speech in day to day communications that his brain could still process it. Now, I”m sure you”re wondering what this has to do with poetry… here”s Scott”s description of what happened the other day…

My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That”s consistent with any expert”s best guess of what”s happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It”s somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar – but still different enough – from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. But I”m no brain surgeon.

My speech returned.

Amazing… and nearly as amazing, Adams ended his post with an invitation to readers to share their own happiest moments. On a blog that usually has 25,000 readers a day, Adams logged over 180,00 views – and well over 100 readers moved to comment and share their own stories of happy moments. Poetry really does heal. Words really do have power. Whatever you”re doing today, stop for five minutes and go read Scott”s blog and all the wonderful, happy moments people shared. Then.. take five more minutes and read a poem. Out loud. It”s good for you.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky gave us a peek at the relentless poetic stream that flows through his head, just waiting for him to open the spigot. Read his poem and find out how it can possibly be that “James Mason sounds just like Mel Brooks.”
Read Robert”s piece here (http://tinyurl.com/ymtg6m)

From the far side of the pond, Glyn Maxwell gives us a poetic highwire act. Many false starts and blind alleys (and one ephemeral Spongebob joke) culminating in a terrific turn of phrase in the last half minute. You can feel the sweat through your monitor.
Read Glyn”s piece here (http://tinyurl.com/ycqmbo)

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Contribute!

You can compete. We know you can. Show us: here (http://tinyurl.com/ykpkzc).

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New Goodies!

As promised, QuickBlog (http://tinyurl.com/ydjz58) is now live. We”ve gotten contributions so far from Thylias Moss, Julianna Baggott, and Rudresh Mahanthappa. In six weeks this will be the premiere blog on the subject of improvisation. Don”t let them say you weren”t there from the beginning.

You might note also that we”ve undertaken a major site redesign (on the interior pages — the home page is still the same old same old). We feel it offers greater flexibility and more possibilities for future use. We hope you like it.

Coming Soon:

Holy cow! The first ever humor agon, with Neal Pollack (http://www.nealpollack.com/) and Roy Blount Jr. (http://www.royblountjr.com/) Did we just say Neal Pollack and Roy Blount Jr.? Yes, yes we did. Tune in November 7. And on November 15, we”ve got Paul Hoover (http://tinyurl.com/y9nbkw) and Brad Leithauser (http://tinyurl.com/ykhpu3). These are good times for in-the-moment writing. Don”t miss a drop!

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I”m not sure why I have this reluctance to write about that day, or what came after it. The notion of trying to put so much emotion into words humbles me, makes me wonder what hubris would allow me to imagine I could shape a poem to convey even the tiniest bit of it. That, however, isn”t the case for many others – and that is a good thing. Poetry has always offered people a way to seek solace and comfort and begin healing. In recognition that tomorrow should be a day of commemoration and healing, I”m offering something a little different – a list of as many sites devoted to poetry surrounding 9/11 as I can find. Read, share, take comfort, heal.

september11victims.com
The site was online at 11 AM the morning of the attacks, and posted the names of victims as they were confirmed. In the five years since, the site owner has added photos, profiles and information about those that died that day, and opened it to comments. There are a few dozen poems posted here for the victims and their families. The one that brought tears to my eyes was this one.

Robert Pinsky reading his poem 9/11. Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky was commissioned by the Washington Post to write a poem commemorating 9/11. He read it September 12, 2002 on the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour for PBS.

About.com poetry guides, Bob Holman and Margery Shaw, solicited poetry for 9/11 after the attacks. The anthology is collected here, along with a sidebar of links to other collections of 9/11 poetry on the web.

Poetry for 9/11 at www.coping.org. Along with the poetry are videos, links to virtual memorials, slide shows and more.

A tribute from the UK in the form of a poem to be read by Simon Armitage, widely believed to be in line to become the next Poet Laureate of the UK. He”ll read the poem tomorrow evening on a national show, on the anniversary of the tower attacks.

Ten poems from poemsforfree.com that are free for any personal or non-commercial use.

The Internet Remembrance Campaign at worldatwar.org collected – and still collects – poetry and artwork inspired by the events of 9/11.

A memorial Syrnu posted at Authorsden.com, a moving combined work by over a dozen poets.

— Be open to everyday things. Some of the most poignant, lasting poetry has its roots in the mundane – the taste of an orange, the feeling of a knife slicing into a tomator, the soft float of a dandelion seed on a stray breeze. Says Peseroff in Steinbaum”s article:

`I try to keep alert for images, sounds, rhythms, something that feels like it has potential. It has to have some kind of emotional engagement for me, something that brings a lump to the throat.”

— Write about things that are “emotionally engaging”. If it brought a smile to your face, made you see red or sent a quiver of sheer awe through you, then you have something to write about. Work with emotion – because more than anything else, poetry is distilled emotion. It is that emotional engagement that comes through in your work, the hook that tugs at your reader and makes them feel what you felt.

— Mull it over. Some images just tug at you. You feel that there is a poem in them, or that they fit into a poem. It may be the perfect phrase that jumped to your lips. It may be the way the sun filters through a child”s bright curls or the smell of turned earth – or something far less pleasnt. But the poem just won”t come. Tuck it away and wait. It will, when it”s ready. Or, to give credit to the poet rather than to anthropomorphize the poem itself, when you”ve processed and are ready to write about it, you will.

— Write it down. Pen and paper, computer keyboard, tape recorder mic – it doesn”t matter. When you actually start to shape a poem, you become engaged with it. It takes on a concrete form that you can push around and manipulate, moving line breaks, erasing words, sculpting it into a rough or finished piece.

— Open yourself to criticism. Some poets have flourished in near isolation – we all know Emily Dickinson, after all. But there is a magic in engaging yourself with other poets and writers and sharing your work with them that transcends laboring away in your lonely garrett. Exposing yourself and your work to other voices and eyes is an inspiration in and of itself. Whether it be a writers” group that meets around a table in a coffee shop or your living room, or an email list of poets whose work you trust and admire, the input of others words both in their own poems and in response to yours is one of the most energizing, inspiring influences of which you can avail yourself.

Joyce Peseroff”s latest book, Eastern Mountain Time, was published in January 2006 by Carnegie-Mellon Press. The publisher says, “Peseroff speculates with a clear-headed, wry look at the world”s catalogues and almanacs of largesse lilies, Jerry Garcia, men in fog, animal joy as well as its sorrow. In startling, original poems full of leaps and digressions that reveal the mind in action, readers will encounter life through a person made raw by observation, a mind processing loss and mortality in a petal, a poet alert to how syntax and language can reconfigure the experience of grief.”

You remember Quickmuse, right? That”s the cool website where two well-known poets are handed a passage of literature and get a set amount of time to come up with a poem based on it. The coolest part of Quickmuse – according to some – is that you get to watch the poets in the process of composing their thoughts, and then their poems. And the program that Quickmuse uses (Poematic, with appropriate kudos to Fletcher (Fletch) Moore, who wrote the thing) records the keystrokes and plays them back on demand, so if you can”t be online to watch the agon while it”s happening, you can watch it in exact replay later on the site. The latest update on Quickmuse landed in my mailbox this morning, to wit:

This week, from the frigid and barren wastes of New England, we bring you two fine poets…

David Rivard: What can we say about David Rivard? He won the 1996 James Laughlin award for Wise Poison, as well as two Pushcart Prizes, a couple National Endowment for the Arts grants, and the Celia B. Wagner Award from the Poetry Society of America. A lecturer at Tufts and the poetry editor of the Harvard Review, Rivard is also the first person to use the word “noctilucent” on QuickMuse. Read David”s poem here.

Adrian Blevins: Then there”s Adiran Blevins. Her book, The Brass Girl Brouhaha, made Tony Hoagland yelp, “Poetry lovers, this is the dirty, trash-talking, highly edified real thang. When you open this book, you should hear the ballistic explosion of a cork jumping out of a bottle, or the starter”s gun, which signals that the wild race has begun.” She”s a proud owner of a Rona Jaffe Writers” Foundation Award and an assistant professor at Colby College. Read her poem here.

Being the sort of good girl who follows instructions, I did as instructed and clicked the links to read the poems inspired by this bit of writing:

Advice from the Experts

By Bill Knott

I lay down in the empty street and parked
My feet against the gutter”s curb while from
The building above a bunch of gawkers perched
Along its ledges urged me don”t, don”t jump.

I liked both poems – to an extent. I liked the Blevins poem a little more in some ways – it”s more immediate, more in the moment. She talks about jumping ”

like a
girl in a field, flat out,
unencumbered as rice”

about leaping in feet first without taking the time to look at what others would tell you and advise you. The poem may have a few rough edges, but it shows her professional polish – a pleasure to read.

Rivard”s poem takes just the opposite tack – he talks about the way that society advises us to take the bull by the horns and make that leap of faith, grab for the gusto and flow with the moment – and how much he doesn”t like it. His language is both more formal and less structured than Blevins:

I don”t know about you

but the chance to leap has never interested me

actually

he says, and then goes on to list a dizzying series of images and ends with… well, let”s just say, I give the poet points for managing to use two $10 words in one sentence – noctilucent and ranunculus. Don”t get me wrong – I love words, from the humblest of penny words to the most grandiose terms that ever graced the pages of a dictionary. I have, at times, been tempted to compose a poem with no meaning – just the sounds of those delicious, roll-off-your-tongue-and-melt-in-your-mouth words. But I like the poems I read to be “accessible” on a basic level. I want words that don”t send readers scrambling for the dictionary so they can understand the poem. I”d far rather have my readers picking through threads of images to relate them to each other than stubbing their toes against words that stop the images dead while you figure out the definition.

Perhaps it”s unfair to judge a poet harshly for a poem written under the constraints imposed by Quickmuse – but there it is. Part of me, reading Rivard”s poem, is sitting there wondering just how the thought process went when he decided to write “noctilucent” instead of “night-lit”. But those are the choices that make us poets, no?

Whitman absorbs and reflects the time around him. He is not an Ivory Tower poet writing in the halls of academe for an audience of academics. Rather, his poetry speaks to everyone. He took his inspiration from the streets around him, from the popular culture of the day. His poetry is about opera, about music, about the people around him and about his growing awareness of man as part of the world. His major work, Leaves of Grass, was published in as many as five different editions, each with more poems than the last, each showing a growth toward the poet he became.

Celebrate Whitman”s birthday by listening to Whitman”s poetry read by the likes of Jeffrey Wright, Joao de Souza and Paul Giametti in a show that aired on NYPR (New York Public Radio) on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass.

While most think of Emerson as a philosopher, Emerson considered himself a poet. In a letter written in 1835, he wrote:

I am born a poet, of a low class without doubt, yet a poet. That is my nature and vocation.

Of poets in general, Emerson stated:

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. …

You can celebrate Emerson”s birthday by visiting the home of the Emerson Society, formed in 1989 to foster appreciation of the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, where you”ll find links to his collected writings, including all of Emerson”s published poetry. Enjoy.

Though his critical reputation has risen and fallen, especially in academia,during the years since his death, Emerson continues to be a national icon as a representative American voice. Called the Sage of Concord and the “wisest American” by admirers, he inspired Thoreau, Alcott, Whitman, and many later writers with his challenge to be self-reliant and with his innovative style, and countless readers from other walks of life have turned to him for consolation, reassurance, and uplift. Hawthorne and Melville, however, in their fiction quarreled with his vision, and many critics have reviled what they consider his easy optimism and blindness to social and cosmic evil. To this day, readers are drawn to Emerson,whether to find inspiration or to quarrel, as a benchmark of personal and national character, and his reputation has never been higher. Emerson Society

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
who am I to be
brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God;
your playing small
doesn”t serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking s
o that other people won”t feel
insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.
It”s not just in some of us;
it”s in everyone.

And as we let our light shine,
we unconsciously
give other people permission
to do the same. As we are liberated
from our own fear, our presence
automatically liberates others.

-Nelson Mandela, May 10, 1994