Poetry Pantry #192

Surf's up! at Chestermans Beach in Tofino, B.C.
~the wild West Coast of Vancouver Island

South Chestermans towards evening

Frank's Island can be seen in the background

The waves are especially wild and wonderful in wintertime!

Vista from North Chestermans

This is the scenic Tofino Harbour, with Meares Island in the background

Greetings, Poets!

Glad to see each of you here this week for Poetry Pantry  It is always enjoyable for me to get to know you through your poetry; and I hope you feel the same.  Admittedly, I personally appreciate those with whom there is a feeling of reciprocity, which makes for a feeling of community.  I think we ALL tend to visit (after a while) people with whom we reciprocate.

This week I am sharing photos that Sherry Blue Sky sent me from Tofino, British Columbia.  Beautiful area, isn't it?  

Be sure to visit Poets United tomorrow to see what Sherry Blue Sky  has planned to share.  Will it be a featured poet?  A featured blog?  Or a featured poem?

Glad to see the turnout  for  Mid-Week Motif Wednesday continues to be good.  We hope to see you this coming week for another challenging prompt by Susan Chast!

And on Friday, remember to see who Rosemary Nissen-Wade is featuring on her "I Wish I Had Written This" or "The Living Dead."

I issue an invitation here to those of you who participate in Poetry Pantry.  If YOU have special photos that you would like me to feature some week, let me know what kind of photos you have.  There are participants here from many different cities, many different countries.  I think it is great fun to see different areas featured. I am especially interested in scenic views of your area or an area you have visited.  Send inquiries first to dixibear@aol.com letting me know what you have.  I am interested in city or country views - in your home area or places you have traveled.

Anyway, with no further adieu, this is one of my favorite spaces to post poetry each week.  I hope you look forward to it too.  An older one or a new one, it's your choice.

Link your ONE poem.   Then leave a comment below. Then visit other poets.  And I will too.  (If I miss your poem, visit me, and I will visit you... I am like anyone else, appreciating reciprocity.) We ALL like comments, so if you link please DO spend time visiting others.  That is part of the fun as well.  We really like it if you link back to Poets United too, so we spread the Poetry Pantry word in the blogosphere.

Come back a few times on Sunday and Monday to see what's new.  Visit some strangers, and they will become new friends!  Making new friends and reading new poetry, what more could one want?

Also, don't forget to visit Poets United other days of the week.  For example, every Wednesday (after the new year) Susan Chast posts a new "Mid-Week Motif" prompt.  Hope you will join us there as well!  Sherry Blue Sky does a feature (it varies) on Monday, and Rosemary Nissen-Wade does "I Wish I'd Written This" every Friday!

If you are on Facebook, look for us there as well. Join our site.  It is one more way to stay in touch!

And now...here is the procedure, for those who are new here:  Each Sunday we start a new post with a New Mr. Linky for you. This is so that you can post a link to a poem in your blog. The link will close Monday at 12:00 p.m. (CDT), but you can still visit the links of those who have posted them.

The Living Dead

Honouring our poetic ancestors

Fatherless

By Lesbia Harford

I've had no man

To guard and shelter me,

Guide and instruct me

From mine infancy.

No lord of earth

To show me day by day

What things a girl should do

And what she should say.

I have gone free

Of manly excellence

And hold their wisdom

More than half pretence.

For since no male

Has ruled me or has fed,

I think my own thoughts

In my woman's head.

Lesbia Harford was an Australian poet, novelist, lawyer and political activist. She was born in 1891, had delicate health all her short life and died in 1927. Nevertheless she packed a lot of living into her 36 years. Of the online biographies, the one I like best is at PoemHunter.com, where you will also find her poems.

We are told:  

She was the eldest of four children and was born with defective heart valves which restricted her mobility and caused her to tire easily, a continual problem that was to amplify with age. 

Raised firstly within the middle classes and then with the family bankruptcy and the consequential departure of her father who ran off to the West Australian goldfields, the fact that her mother entered paid work to make sure her children had an education ascribed Harford with a view of society based around both class struggle and feminism. 

She seemed a good pick for this week, with International Women's Day coming up, and of course I've chosen this particular poem for the same reason, as it celebrates her freedom to think her own thoughts without male influence — even if that was because her father abandoned the family. She evidently chose to find some benefit in that!

Searching in the anthologies on my shelves, some inherited from my parents, it was surprisingly hard to find a suitably feminist poem from the past. In fact I was confronted with the awful invisibility of women poets in the older anthologies — which led to the belief, still current when I was growing up, that women didn't make 'great' poets (or artists, musicians, novelists...). Well, at least that belief has been thoroughly discredited by now, when women artists and writers can no longer be ignored or their work hidden.

(Where I did find early women poets from non-English cultures, such as Chinese, the translations were by men, which didn't seem quite suitable to use this week.)

By Lesbia Harford's time, some women — a determined minority — were able to make their mark, and later generations of women writers made sure their work was preserved. Harford's poems were published during her lifetime; also the Australian writers Nettie Palmer (1885-1964), Marjorie Pizer (1920-) and Drusilla Modjeska (1946-) were instrumental in publishing posthumous collections. The Palmer collection (the earlier and smaller, with 74 poems) is available for free download. Although I found this picture of the Modjeska/Pizer collection, I can't find a record of it still being in print and available, though I imagine the major Australian libraries would have copies. Let's be thankful for PoemHunter!

She was a brave woman who, despite poor health, fought against injustice and walked her talk. And she was an interesting poet — an original thinker who used direct language in a striking way to tell her truths. She still speaks to us today with great immediacy.

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Honoring Woman/Women's Achievements

Still-Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums
by Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) 

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” 
― Virginia Woolf

And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.” 
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

Midweek Motif ~ Honoring 

Woman/Women's Achievements

Saturday, March 8th is International Woman's Day.
Is gender equality an issue in your life?  

How have you been influenced by a woman or women?  

(This is an opportunity to write of a specific woman.) 

This week I am inspired by women in my life: Mom, Grandmother, aunts, cousins, friends, teachers, students, actors, directors, journalists, novelists, playwrights, and poets. Also Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman, Sonja Heni, Sojourner Truth, Marian Anderson, Amelia Earhart, Gloria Steinem, Rosa Parks, Maria in West Side Story, Mary Poppins, Queen Elizabeth I, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Lily Tomlin, Katharine Hepburn, Ellen Stewart, Elizabeth Swados, Joni Mitchell, Meg Christian, Laurie Anderson, Oprah Winfrey, Helen Caldicott, Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Simone de Beauvoir and many many others including poets among YOU.  

Here's one by the American Dorothy Parker who delighted to shock her world:

                    Indian Summer 

“In youth, it was a way I had,  

To do my best to please.

And change, with every passing lad

To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know

And do the things I do,

And if you do not like me so,

To hell, my love, with you.”              

                               ― The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

A global hub for sharing International Women's Day news, events and resources

(Our next Midweek Motif will be "The Ides of March" or Prescience)

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