ON POETRY: WITH FIREBLOSSOM AND MAMA ZEN

We have a special feature today, friends. Fireblossom (aka Shay Simmons) and Mama Zen (aka Kelli Simpson) are weighing in on poetry and blogging. Pour yourself something tall and cool (or stubby and hot) and draw your chairs in close. These poets know how to Use Their Words, and we don't want to miss a single one.

Proof For The Postulation Of An Old Poet

The generosity of madmen
--whether born or made so--
is like a pitcher overturned, 
sweetness wasted in the sharing.

I'm not about to mistake straitjackets for haute couture;
I am as hard and closed as a policeman's nightstick.

Still, you can lay naked in the spring grass,
holding a hymnal and a caramel.
Pretend yourself a parrot, all colors.
I will still be the crow from whom the night borrows its darkness.

When you have gone, I will play ancient games
with dying cicadas.
The years will fold themselves into pastries
the crumbs of which I horde and never drop.

Go, parrot. And this time
do not leave open my coat of poems
with sleeves like shaded roads, and wool like forgotten noons.
But if you do, I will have been right in my manic certainty

that you would make me cry in the end.



Sherry: Oh my goodness! The "coat of poems"! "Wool like forgotten noons!" I don't know how you do it. I am just so very glad you do, and that we get to read you. Tell us, Poet, your thoughts on poetry.

Shay: Poetry to me means being fearlessly honest, including and especially about difficult subjects. It means passion and energy and brevity. By that last I mean saying what you have to say in a succinct and powerful way, not losing or diffusing your point with meandering fluff. (I re-read my first solo book and think, oy, where was an editor when I needed one?) 

I get ideas from almost anything. It's like....I'll be watching a movie and something will send my imagination into a big long tangential invention of my own and by the time I blink and come back, I have to rewind because I daydreamed through the last 15 minutes of the movie. A word, an image, a song, anything can send me off to the races. 

When I know I've gotten it just right--which isn't that often--it's a fantastic feeling. This will sound horribly immodest, but when that happens, I think, "Damn, I'm good!" It's a great feeling. And that confidence, that ego, are what make me feel like I can say something difficult well the next time. Fear paralyzes writers. I have become fearless in my old age. (I also realize that there are a thousand things I am NOT good at. But I am good at this one thing.) 

Sherry: To your followers, it seems like you get it just right every time, and we are astonished by that fact. And so impressed!

What is your take on blogging? Has the online poetry world impacted your work?

Shay: Blogging has been wonderful for my love of poetry and for writing my own. Poets like Hedgewitch and Mama Zen push me and always have. I read something fantastic that they have written and I am 1) thrilled for them and 2) eager to try to match it. I'm not competitive with the writers I admire most. I love their successes as much as my own. I'm just saying they spur me to greater efforts. Also, blogging has made me friends who I never would have met otherwise. I don't think poetry blogging has the same energy as it once did, though. I am not as into it as I used to be, but I do keep my hand in. 

Sherry: I don't think blogging has the energy it once did either - but we are ten years more tired too........I loved those heady days! I will always look back on those years with gratitude, when the world of online poetry opened its doors to me.

I like what you say about not feeling competitive with the poets whose work you admire most. I feel the same way (about your work, for example.) It would be like trying to compete with a star, rather than enjoying its beauty and perfection in the sky. I just glory in their (and your) talent. 

Thank you for this chat, Shay. Online poetry, as you say, introduced me to friends all over the world I never would have met otherwise. My life has been so much richer for it.

Let's see what Mama Zen has to say, shall we?

Snoopy - who cracks me up!

The Buck

The buck, throat cut,

bleeds out about six.

Half-hidden in nightfall,

I redden a stick

and dampen the doorway -

a Sunday school lesson

pass over

pass over

pass over.

Sherry: Yes, may bad things pass over our homes and our lives, though it feels like the whole planet is in peril these days.

Would you share your thoughts about poetry with us? Your poem definitely shows the power words have to impact our minds and hearts.

Kelli: Have you ever heard of the Supreme Court obscenity test? In a ruling in the '60s, Judge Potter Stewart wasn't able to define obscenity, but claimed to know it when he saw it.  That's kind of how I feel about poetry.  I can't really tell you what it is, or what makes it what it is, but I know it when I see it and, more importantly, when I feel it.

Sherry: And the reader, too, knows it when she sees (and feels) it. As in your poem, shared here. Great explanation, Kelli.

  

Kelli: Without the online poetry world, I'm not sure that I would be writing poetry now.  I had written poems and songs in my teens and twenties, but I had given it up to pursue other things.  It was the wonderful poets that I met online who inspired and encouraged me to pick up the pen again.

At the moment, I'm taking a break from blogging.  I'm homeschooling and doing some political activism, so I don't really have the time to interact the way I would want to if I were posting.  I'm still writing, though, so I hope to be able to return soon.  And, I miss you guys!

Sherry: Homeschooling and political activism are important, Kelli. We are glad you are still writing, and it is wonderful to know we can look forward to your return. Thank you for saying yes to this short visit. We are so happy to hear from you! We miss you!

Kelli: Thank you, Sherry.  And thank you, everyone, for all of your kindnesses over the years.

We hope you enjoyed this exchange, friends. Next week, Marian Kent and Susie Clevenger will similarly share their thoughts on poetry and blogging. Be sure not to miss it!

BLOG OF THE WEEK ~ FIREBLOSSOM

The end of April marks the end of an era at our sister site, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Another founding member, Shay Simmons, is retiring from the Garden, though thankfully she will still be around, and writing her amazing poems. I thought, this week, that it is fitting to feature her, and to thank her for her work in the Garden, as well as for her amazing poetry, which is like no one else's. Shay shows us the sky's the limit, when it comes to poetry. She demonstrates how sky-high and far-reaching a poem can be. Let's read one of her recent works; this poem took my breath away.

BLUE HORSES

Blue horses came out of the sea last night.

Their hooves made shapes in the sand which spoke 

in Arabian symbols and scents.

They wandered into town on the

cobbled streets and stood

under lanterns lit by nuns made of fog.

You came close, then,

having approached for a million years.

You came close enough to dance

and we danced

like mayflies caught in a globe of disappearing dreams.

Blue horses came out of the sea last night,

muscular and graceful, uncaring

whether I loved you, though I did.

I have a refracted vase

where I saved what I saw in your eyes

that made me love you,

that made the sea roll sleepily

and the stars play wooden flutes, then go silent.

Blue horses came out of the sea last night, and though

it has happened often before,

we made them forget their way,

become lost,

and cry for the pastures they carry in their minds.

Forever now, we will follow their symbols and scents,

each of us separately,

blindly, carrying bridles we made from sand.

source

Sherry: No one writes love poems like you do, Shay. This is gorgeous! Those blue horses, coming out of the sea, crying for the pastures they carry in their minds. Sigh. That actually hurts my heart with its beauty. 

Shay: I had been listening to Leonard Cohen's second album, and particularly a song called "It Seems So Long Ago, Nancy". It made me want to stop what I was doing and write something, though "Blue Horses" owes more to Lorca than to Cohen. Someday I may develop my own style;-)

Sherry: Right. You need to work on that! LOL. When did you begin writing, Shay?

Shay: I started writing as a child, little short stories. I started with poetry in high school and had my first glossy publication at eighteen. But I went twenty years and never wrote any poetry, before coming back to it in 2006.

Sherry: We are so glad you came back to it! What do you love about poetry?

Shay: I love that it takes me where I couldn't otherwise go. I also love the sheer beauty of the words, and the sort of sideways way that poetry approaches its subject. Poetry is so much richer than prose -- that's why I am always barking about what is poetry and what isn't. Poetry is images, word ballet, emotion, truth. I love it.

Sherry: So well said. I love it, too. Another recent poem I'd like us to take a look at is "Triolet on Parting". Let's check it out.

source

TRIOLET ON PARTING

The earth in motion, turns sun high, turns sun west.

We love, we leave, the blackbird and the marshland reed.

What is stone, what is wind? What is burned, what is blessed?

The earth in motion, turns sun high, turns sun west.

The bed and window, street and station, all our palimpsest.

Each in skin, each in summer; each in plenty, each in need.

The earth in motion, turns sun high, turns sun west.

We love, we leave, the blackbird and the marshland reed. 

Sherry: Sigh. "We love, we leave......" It hurts! 

Shay: With "Triolet on Parting", I wanted to write something really special, because it was my last time hosting at Toads. Someone else had posted a triolet, a form I love, and so I did also. I wanted to write something both global and personal. When I was done, I was unusually satisfied with it. In fact, I love it. Put it on my gravestone. It contains all I have learned about anything.

Sherry: Wow. How wonderful is that?! When you posted it on facebook, you said "I don't think I know how to write any better than this." As one who reads you daily and finds every poem of yours written at the top of your game, what is it about a poem like this that tells you it is one of your best?

Shay: I usually know. I get in a zone when I write, and when I snap out of it - OR, after I've made 50,000 revisions - I kind of go, Woww, did I just write that? I know when it's unusually good. And also when I haven't quite gotten it. Though there are a few times when I don't know, and I have to see what people think.

Shay with a young friend

Sherry: Thank you, Shay, for this visit, and for the almost-decade of all you have given to Real Toads, to the online poetry community, and to your readers, since 2010. I am glad you will still be around, and writing. We will still be reading. You can run, but you can't hide. We will find you!

Do come back, friends, and see who we talk to next. Next Monday will be Telling Tales with Magaly. After that, we have some special poems and poets lined up for you.
_

POEMS OF THE WEEK ~ BY BRENDAN, SHAY AND SUSIE

Friends, today we have poems penned by three maestros of online poetry: Brendan MacOdrum, of Oran's Well, Shay Simmons, known to us as Fireblossom, of Shay's Word Garden  and Black Mamba, and Susie Clevenger, who blogs at Confessions of a Laundry Goddess and Black Ink Howl. You will be familiar with them from this site, as well as from their regular participation at our sister site, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Today's poems demonstrate just how much impact a poem can have. Each of these poems stayed with me for days after reading them, and I knew I wanted to share them with you. Let's jump right in.

Prayer For the Whales

Vanishing gods, with you

go our heat and heart,

the tamp of descents

no lamp can reach.

But that is not prayer.

May your extinction

ring the long bell of the sea;

May the crash and bellow

of your diving thrash

make our hearing of it

a halving beyond night.

Make vast this foundering

into the unfound,

church without vicarage,

cry without cross.

We have taken your last child.

May our oil burn that low.

Wrap this prayer

around your ghost rib

that we may harrow

what only death

now can whale.

Your lost song

deepens our sorrow

into abyss—:

The lonely sanctus

of tomorrows upending,

your much amiss.

Tomb Jonah and Ahab

in your mouth’s scrimshaw.

Drown our amen

in your whalefall.

***

Sherry: "Your lost song deepens our sorrow", indeed, Brendan. I am thinking of Talequah, carrying her dead calf on her nose for seventeen days, grieving. What a sorrowful world we have made for the creatures.

Brendan: Whales--perhaps all cetaceans--are a totem animal for me. On my father's family crest, a naked man rides a sea-beast; my avatar St. Brendan celebrated Easter for seven years on the back of the whale Jasconius, Moby Dick is a dark Bible in my reading. Search "whale" or "seal" or "dolphin" on my blog and you'll see.

But the oceans are changing faster than the land due to human activity, we just don't notice it (the surface of the sea is the same every day). We may be the last generation to see whales in oceans.

I had been reading about a nunnery in Japan where two elderly nuns continue to pray for the souls of whales killed by their fishing village--even a century after the traditional practice came to an end. As the Anthropocene brings about the Sixth Extnction event, I wondered what on Earth we, the complicit, could pray for the last vanishing whales.

Sherry: I wonder, too. We don't deserve forgiveness. I am glad of the nuns praying, though. And for your poem, which speaks to our shared plight so eloquently. Thank you, Brendan.

Shay's poem struck my heart so forcefully, I am still thinking about it. Let's dive in.

THE WHALES OF DETROIT

Ask anybody at a bus stop or down by the river--

there aren't any whales in Detroit.

It's lies.

I hear them all the time.

On Woodward Avenue, whales.

At John King books, whales down every row of shelves.

At the Old Mariners' Church, whales in the bells.

You are so thin, so sad.

I look at the great scarred heads of the whales and think of you.

In the aging overhanging trees beside the crack houses, whales. 

Under the 8 Mile Road overpass, whole pods of whales.

In your eyes, the sea

and the coiled rope of our pasts which holds the harpoon. 

There are whales in Detroit.

There is me, with my long hair tucked inside the collar of my pea coat.

From my hair I hear the waves.

There is you, outside a pawn shop between Hubbell and Greenfield,

giving the monkey a Nantucket sleigh ride. 

There is salt spray on my face,

and you, far out on the horizon, spyhopping,

then nodding for the deeps like all the rest--the whales of Detroit.

_______


Sherry: That coiled rope of the past, with its harpoon. The whale, spyhopping, looking for a safe place to be. The thought of their ancient wildness, as we walk grey city streets, a wildness we miss and long for, that is fast disappearing. This poem hurts to read. And I am so glad you wrote it!

Shay: I was feeling distressed when I wrote "Whales of Detroit". About the whole political situation, and also i wanted to write something about my poor city, which has undergone such hard times. While the poem has nothing to do with the Kavanaugh hearings per se, it IS about the elephant --or whale-- in the room; that is to say, the thing that is too big to not be seen. And what i see is at once sad and brave and criminal and heartbreaking. And so i wrote that poem. I cried when I wrote it, so it really came from the heart.

May I say how happy I am to appear with two such marvelous poets. Thanks for thinking of me.

Sherry: Thanks for sharing your heartrending poem, Shay.

I knew I needed a third poem that would match the power of these two, so when Susie posted the following poem, I lost no time asking her if I might include it.

MATCH TO WATER

I hear the water cry,
“I am your safety”,
but drowning sings
its dirge across my chest.

Hope urges faith
can walk across the sea…
My wounds burn in brine’s no
as I bleed another tear into the tempest.

Memory’s mutiny has unleashed suppressed,
and I feel the anchor of ghosts freed
from Davy Jones’ locker.

I am a fish forced to once again
swim a dead sea I thought I’d conquered.
I pray the demon’s spear will pierce the last revelation
so I will no longer fear a shadow will come to snuff my candle.

__________

Sherry: I feel like that fish, forced to swim a dead sea she thought she had conquered, as we watch fifty years of hard-won human rights and protections being rolled back or tossed out. We are indeed bleeding tears into the tempest.

Susie: My poem Match to Water was written from hearing the news and reading social media comments relating to why women won’t report sexual violence, and if they do, why it takes years for them to speak about it. It is a very personal topic for me. I am a childhood sexual abuse survivor. It took me fifteen years to tell anyone about it. Because of the current conversations new details I had suppressed in my own horror have begun to surface.

I have often gone to sit along the water to find peace and comfort, but having lived through several hurricanes I also know the terror of it. Just like those massive, destructive storms form in heated water my mind began to churn with current events and opinions from those who have never lived the nightmare of sexual trauma. The poem became the vehicle that made me realize I needed help. I am currently seeing a therapist to guide me through revelations I can’t manage alone.

Sherry: Thank you for the impact of this poem, and for speaking about it. The issues raised in these three poems are  made so much worse by recognising that those in power care nothing about their constituents, women or the environment.

I imagine millions of women have been distressed by the message of recent weeks. I’m glad you have sought support. I sought help myself over the grief I carry for what is happening to the planet I love so much, and for Pup, who has always represented wilderness to me. But the grief is so raw I couldn’t even speak, only cry. It hurts too much to talk about.

Thank you, Brendan, Shay and Susie, for this exceptional trio of powerful poems. You put voice so well to the bleak lens we are looking through these days. 

These poems certainly show us the impact a poem can have, do they not, my friends? Do come back and see who we talk to next. Who knows? It might be you!

I Wish I'd Written This

For Young Poets

First, stop banging away at silence 

like you would with a snow shovel against the ice.

A poem is not a dancing dog,

summoned to perform on its tiptoes at parties.

Put away all spirituous beverages.

Those who write while pitching in a sea of booze

do so in spite of such idiocy, not because of it.

If you haven't the imagination to see things differently without such props,

then become a mail carrier or a bus driver.

Read.

Read Lorca and rip your hair out til you're bald.

Read Neruda and flail, little fledgling on the cliff-side!

Read Plath, tuck your children safely in their room and then

to the kitchen with you to contemplate why cowards can't be poets;

at least not for long.

All you wild spastics shouting at the coffee bar,

waving pages and thinking volume and auctioneer-speak make poetry?

Sit down. Have someone duct tape your cake hole shut.

Think about what you haven't done, until you're ready to join us.

Now, to purge.

Write several great long hunks of unreadable shit,

staggering along on broken syntax,

with words strung together willy-nilly like last year's holiday lights,

all the similar-colored ones in a row, and half of them burned out.

Write haiku about a yew tree or a cherry blossom.

Get your paper plate-eyed friends to declare it all "brilliant!"

Then throw it away and we can get started.

Light candles.

They won't help you to write, but I like them.

Lock the door and don't answer it;

your husband will find his favorite golf shirt on his own,

and your children are already ruined anyway.

Let's do this thing.

The hard part is already done!

The lonely rejections and upheavals of childhood,

the sexual confusions and self-destructive rebellions of youth,

they're over with.

The burials, the pointless treks, the lovers who laughed and left,

the beetle of doubt and otherness digging its burrow behind your heart--

all of this is long complete.

Now, just stare out of the window at the sorrowful blue of the sky,

and the silver beauty of the impossibly distant moon.

Bite your knuckle if you have to, but stillness is best,

even to the point of drooling and apparent catatonia.

"What are you doing?" you'll be asked.

Working. Slaving. Making art.

Understand this, give yourself permission for this,

even as the dishes fester in the sink and the baby cries;

The seeds of greatness will germinate inside the still soil of you, The Poet.

It's not an easy road,

but there is soul and pride to it.

Your poems will be your own particular inverse garments to wear,

heart and guts to the world.

You have joined the cabal of those who possess a true talent:

unicycle riders have their uncanny balance,

lesbians their tongues,

demons their blackness;

now you have your poetry and people to admire you and say,

"It's nice",

"This is what you were doing?"

and "Huh." 

Or,

you could still apply to Beauty College.

It's up to you.

– Shay Caroline Simmons

No apologies if you've read this one already very recently, because I know you'll love reading it again. And if you haven't, oh what a treat I've just given you! Shay recently posted it to her blog and linked it to The Tuesday Platform at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

It blew all her readers away, and several said they wished they had written it. I wished that too, and rapidly secured her permission to say so publicly here. Some people said it should be disseminated in schools, blazoned on college walls, and so on. Well, I'm doing my bit!

I have featured Shay here before, and so has Sherry. If you'd like to know more about her, this link will take you to my article, which also links to Sherry's feature as well as to Shay's Amazon page. If you don't already follow her blog, it is Shay's Word Garden where she posts as Fireblossom. All her poetry is wonderful, and I think it all deserves to be read as widely as possible.

Material shared in 'I Wish I'd Written This' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.

POEMS OF THE WEEK BY THREE REAL TOADS

Today, my friends,  we have poems written by, in my humble opinion,  three of the most electrifying poets writing in the blogosphere today, Shay Simmons of Shay's Word Garden, Kelli Simpson, of another damn poetry blog, and Joy  Jones, of Verse Escape. I am sure most of you are familiar with these dynamic women from either Poets United or our sister site, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Draw up a chair and enjoy these poems, which just might leave you as breathless as they did me.

Train

The train that I took out of London seven years ago
appeared in my dream last night.
It had dinner plate wheels and hung on a chain that hoisted it up to a mailbox
where letters spread their wings to dry.

The train that I took out of London seven years ago 
only moves in one direction: away, and yet there it was,
undeparted, filling like a lung.
I have sung everything into the parish poor box--

those things I loved most, first to go.
I have sung until I am mute, and as unsentimental as an oxygen tank.
The priest cut off his ears and put them in my pocket
like coins. I told him his wish is dust, and he turned into Jericho's wall.

The train that I took out of London seven years ago
took off its clothes and reported my movements from memory.
The tracks only go in one direction: away, and yet there I was;
I woke up in love, a stone in flight, a letter with no address,

a dove that left its light down a well, yet sings in the dark when I'm gone. 

Shay Simmons, August 18, 2016

Sherry: Where to start, with how much I love this poem. I can feel it, the having-given-it-everything-I've got, that which "only moves in one direction, away", the "things I loved most, the first to go." I love the letters spreading their wings to dry.

Your closing lines leave me with tight chest, no air to breathe. I have so been there, and perhaps am there still. Sigh.

Shay: The poem is about a dream I had, but it had nothing to do with the train, which was something that actually happened. it represents giving up on love, and then i dreamed i was in love with someone, and when i woke up I was thinking, wow, I had forgotten ever feeling that way.

Sherry: Love is glorious, but when we lose it, it hurts. We are not always up for risking that much pain again. I  know the feeling of giving up on love.

Shay: Except for doggy love!

Sherry: Of course! Doggy love is the truest kind; it never fails us.

Shay: I had the Fleetwood Mac song "Sara" going through my head. Also, the person I was in love with in the dream was not anyone i know in waking life. 

Sherry: Thanks, Shay, for sharing this poem with us. That "dove with its light down the well, yet sings in the dark when I'm gone" will stay with me a long time. 

Now let's hear from Kelli, with a beautiful poem called  "Stars", written by someone who clearly still feels the full breadth and flight of loving.

STARS

I will write my love in stars;

let every letter burn and fall

bright - my wishes where you are.

My want is strong enough by far

to shrink the world between us small.

I will write my love in stars.

Need is wild within my heart,

beating thunder at the walls

tonight - my wishes where you are.

I love with every piece and part;

my skin, my cells - you have it all.

I will write my love in stars.

So let a longing for me start.

A want, a need, a love; call -

don't fight - my wishes where you are.

I'll split the earth that keeps us apart

if you give me any hope at all.

I will write my love in stars -

light - my wishes where you are.

Kelli Simpson, August 3, 2016

Sherry: This is so beautiful, Kelli. I adore "I will write my love in stars." Tell us about this poem.

Kelli: "Stars" is a villanelle, a form that should probably have died with Dylan Thomas. Oh, I'm kidding! Well, mostly. I find the villanelle an almost impossibly difficult form, and I generally avoid it like the plague. But in this case it felt right, and I'm actually not completely embarrassed by the result.

Sherry: I should hope not! I, too, find the villanelle very difficult. It is odd, as I love the pantoum, but somehow the leap from pantoum to villanelle just floors me. You employed it to perfection though. You inspire me to try again.

In closing,  let us enjoy a wonderful poem of Joy's, about one of my favourite creatures, the wise old elephant. Let's take a look.

THUNDER IN MOURNING

Thunder mumbled all night,
thunder subdued, a cello played
by a sobbing storm,
or the beat of a drum: an elephant's steps
on the following walk, trunk to tail through
the wrong end of the kaleidoscope
up the curved wall and
down down again toward the moving end.

As the stained-glass lights blind,
she shows me the way
to balance my bulk
up on a ball, on one oak-like foot,
small eyes sunk and kind
too old for my mind.

She's a thing born for trust
despite what we've seen
from killers and users,
pale abusers who'll never hold
the blowing rose that drops away
as they push close.
She knows
all our possum secrets,

our summer fades,
how we murder our minutes
to buy our day.
She sways, a grey
forest that grows wild and wide;
she blocks the dead light

that increases night.
She'll let my feet slide
down the dodger's paradigm
towards the planet that struggles
to be a star, to the music
womb-warm but
played from so far. She bends
down her great head

to let me ride, for going there
might take a fall, and all
that's left of our lives, drums in the rain,
footsteps patient--cello gone soft
thunder subdued,
thunder in mourning.

Joy Jones August 21, 2016

source

Sherry: Where to start, for it is all wonderful! The cello, the "small eyes, sunk and kind / too old for my mind", and the drums in the rain - such beautiful images. One feels the slow, plodding steps of the elephant.

Joy: Most of my poems start as a thought or a phrase. I scrawl them out and put them in a file to mature till hopefully something comes of them. This one had nothing to do with elephants when it first came to me, but it did have a spirit in it, a somnolent, wise and suffering one, so that when Shay asked us to write about elephants for a prompt, something just clicked and I began to rewrite it. The painting I found to illustrate it added the cello music in the opening. The elephant became part of the soul of the world, and of our own souls in that world, a mirror for both our best and worst selves, and for whatever is greater than each. And in the end, a force to give us strength and comfort.

Sherry: I love the concept of the elephant as part of the soul of the world. We need such mirrors of our best and worst selves, and the treatment of animals on this planet is perhaps one of the most disturbing. Thank you, Joy, for this wonderful poem. 

Kids, these three talented women collaborated on two amazing books : Three Note Howl: The Wild Hunt, and Gemini / Scorpio / Capricorn, both available by clicking on the links. I proudly own both and they are excellent reading.

Thank you, Shay, Kelli and Joy, for stopping by to share these beauties, and your love of poetry, with us. We appreciate it.

Wasn't this wonderful, kids? Three wonderful poems and poets. Do come back and see who we talk to next. Who knows? It might be you!