Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Reading Fiction

"Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt even just a teensy bit guilty for carving precious time out of your busy, full life to dive into a book and relish a made-up story."  — Holly Parker, Ph.D, in Psychology Today

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Illustrationen: John Tenniel

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

 — James Baldwin

"Fiction that adds up, that suggests a ‘logical consistency,’ or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.” 

— Joyce Carol Oates

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.” 
— Gustave Flaubert

Captivated by Adolphe Alexandre Lesrel 

Midweek Motif ~ Reading Fiction

What happens when you read fiction?  Does it seem more a physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual engagement?

Or don't you read it? 

Some say it distracts us from a true path, but others believe with Ralph Waldo Emerson that "Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures." 

Your challenge:  Write a new poem with "reading fiction" as topic and/or motif.

The Novel Reader by Vincent van Gogh (1888)

The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm 

BY WALLACE STEVENS

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

How Reading Fiction Books Can Change You

The Land of Story-books

by Robert Louis Stevenson

At evening when the lamp is lit,

Around the fire my parents sit;

They sit at home and talk and sing,

And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl

Away behind the sofa back.

All in the dark along the wall,

And follow round the forest track

And play at books that I have read

There, in the night, where none can spy,

All in my hunter’s camp I lie,

The roaring lions come to drink.

Till it is time to go to bed. 

These are the hills, these are the woods,

These are my starry solitudes;

I see the others far away

And there the river by whose brink 

Home I return across the sea,

As if in firelit camp they lay,

And I, like to an Indian scout,

Around their party prowled about.

So, when my nurse comes in for me,

At my dear land of Story-books.

And go to bed with backward looks

There is no frigate like a book (1263)

by Emily Dickinson

There is no Frigate like a Book 

To take us Lands away, 

Nor any Coursers like a Page 

Of prancing Poetry – 

This Traverse may the poorest take 

Without oppress of Toll – 

How frugal is the Chariot

That bears a Human soul.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.   
 (Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Ode to Age.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Charity

"When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.” 

― Maya Angelou

“Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens 
those who dispense it.” 
― George Sand

https://nationaltoday.com/international-day-charity/

"The International Day of Charity was originally a Hungarian civil society initiative. . . . [I]nstituted on September 5 to commemorate the anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death. . . . [E]mphasis is placed on enhancing visibility, organizing special events, and increasing solidarity, social responsibility, and public support. "

Mother Theresa in Calcutta
UN Photo/O. Monsen

Midweek Motif ~ Charity

We may debate the politics of charity elsewhere, here let's describe charity instead: How does it feel to give?  to receive?  to be pressured to give or receive?  to refuse?  How do you know?

Your challenge: Write one new poem about giving and/or receiving some type of charity. Use a favorite quote about charity if you wish.

Depiction of Guan Yin in Vietnam 
The Bodhisattva of Compassion and Kindness

The giver (for Berdis)

BY JAMES BALDWIN

If the hope of giving

is to love the living,

the giver risks madness

in the act of giving.

Some such lesson I seemed to see

in the faces that surrounded me.

Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted,

what gift would give them the gift to be gifted?

          The giver is no less adrift

          than those who are clamouring for the gift.

If they cannot claim it, if it is not there,

if their empty fingers beat the empty air

and the giver goes down on his knees in prayer

knows that all of his giving has been for naught

and that nothing was ever what he thought

and turns in his guilty bed to stare

at the starving multitudes standing there

and rises from bed to curse at heaven,

he must yet understand that to whom much is given

much will be taken, and justly so:

I cannot tell how much I owe.

quaking conversation

BY LENELLE MOÏSE

i want to talk about haiti.

how the earth had to break

the island’s spine to wake

the world up to her screaming.

how this post-earthquake crisis

is not natural

or supernatural.

i want to talk about disasters.

. . . .  

i want to talk about our irreversible dead.

the artists, the activists, the spiritual leaders,

the family members, the friends, the merchants

the outcasts, the cons.

all of them, my newest ancestors,

all of them, hovering now,

watching our collective response,

keeping score, making bets.

i want to talk about money.

how one man's recession might be

another man's unachievable reality.

how unfair that is.

how i see a haitian woman’s face

every time i look down at a hot meal,

slip into my bed, take a sip of water,

show mercy to a mirror.

 . . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

New Stanzas for Amazing Grace

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place

Where I was lost alone

Folk looked right through me into space

And passed with eyes of stone

O homeless hand on many a street

Accept this change from me

A friendly smile or word is sweet

As fearless charity

Woe workingman who hears the cry

And cannot spare a dime

Nor look into a homeless eye

Afraid to give the time

So rich or poor no gold to talk

A smile on your face

The homeless ones where you may walk

Receive amazing grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place

Where I was lost alone

Folk looked right through me into space

And passed with eyes of stone 

(See the International Day of Charity Facebook Page)

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Sunset.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Equinox, Equator

Seasons are opposite on either side of the Equator, 
so the equinox in September is also known as the
Autumnal (fall) equinox in the northern hemisphere. 
In the Southern Hemisphere, it's known as the Spring (vernal) equinox. 
*  *  * 

September ~ New Year

by Susan Chast

Best cool of night and warmth of day
Be spring or fall your hemisphere
To sleep and wake to self in play
Best cool of night and warmth of day
To know the God to whom we pray
In Nature’s arms and atmosphere
Best cool of night and warmth of day
Be spring or fall your hemisphere.

* * *

"With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere."

― C. S. Lewis

“The summer ended. Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish, voices became fewer, the music sparse. Daily, blocks and blocks of children were spirited away. Grownups retreated from the streets, into the houses. Adolescents moved from the sidewalk to the stoop to the hallway to the stairs . . .” 
― James Baldwin

“She turned to the sunlight
    And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
    "Winter is dead.” 
― A.A. Milne

* * * 

Midweek Motif ~ Equinox, Equator

Here we are again when Fall and Spring begin on opposite sides of the Equator.  

These are my favorite seasons as North and South spin away from each other.  And for only a minute, Light and Dark stand evenly and gaze at each other with neither envy nor fear.  

Your challenge: In a new poem, show us the Equinox or the Equator as you experience it. 

There will be Stars by Sara Teasdale

There will be stars over the place forever; After the house and the street we loved are lost, Every time the earth circles her orbit On the night the autumn equinox is crossed Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep -- There will be stars over the place forever, There will be stars forever, while we sleep.

Said a Blade of Grass

Related Poem Content Details

BY KAHLIL GIBRAN

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling!  You scatter all my winter dreams.”

Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling!  Songless, peevish thing!  You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”

Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept.  And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
 
And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves!  They make such noise!  They scatter all my winter dreams.”

The Gardener 85

Related Poem Content Details

BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? 

I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. 

Open your doors and look abroad. 

From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. 

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.

* * * 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community

 Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ 

Two Souls: Caged and Free