Say What?? New Spoken Word Site!!

Ah Google. It's pretty darn awesome what you can find by simply typing "spoken word" into your search engine :) This week, I discovered Poetryspeaks.com. This one stop shop let's you check out poet bios, videos, and order mp3s of poets reading their work!!

The site's search capability lets you find what you need by searching the poet's name or the name of the piece. If you create your own account (which I did, pronto!!), you can customize your page, show love to your fav poets, and post why you think poetry rocks, as part of their "Why Poetry" project.

An all around awesome place to explore!

Discover new poems and old favorites on PS·Voices.
Experience slam and spoken word poetry on SpokenWord.
Want an audience for your poetry? Upload now to YourMic.

Hymns are Poetry Too!

So many songs have the smooth and beautiful quality of a poem. This is for sure one of those. The lovely piece "Come thy Fount" was written in 1757 by Robert Robinson, when he was only 22 years old!

Whether read or sung, the words have an undeniable quality that always makes me feel God's presence.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

Say Yes!

BY Andrea Gibson

when two violins are placed in a room
if a chord on one violin is struck
the other violin will sound the note
if this is your definition of hope

this is for you
the ones who know how powerful we are
who know we can sound the music in the people around us
simply by playing our own strings

for the ones who sing life into broken wings
open their chests and offer their breath
as wind on a still day when nothing seems to be moving

spare those intent on proving God is dead
for you when your fingers are red
from clutching your heart
so it will beat faster
for the time you mastered the art of giving yourself for the sake of someone else
for the ones who have felt what it is to crush the lies
and lift truth so high the steeples bow to the sky
this is for you

this is also for the people who wake early to watch flowers bloom
who notice the moon at noon on a day when the world
has slapped them in the face with its lack of light
for the mothers who feed their children first
and thirst for nothing when they’re full...

Happy Birthday (Haiku) to You!

In the spirit of being haiku-literate, by boo and I wrote this fantastic poem inside a friend's birthday card. Ok...maybe fantastic is a bit overboard. lol...but it is a poem...by the loosest definition possible.

These haikus are not as easy as you think..

:)

Birthday Greetings
BY SB and MD

Hey, pretty lady
It's your birthday, O-M-G
Hoping your day rocks!

Haiku for Dummies

I have been seriously slacking on my poetry game. Besides the fact that I haven't really written in a month, I feel like my style has gotten more than a little stale. This month, I'm going to challenge myself by trying a few different poetic techniques. First haiku, then tankas :) Haven't written these since elementary school, at least, so I decided to google "haiku's for dummies"...and look what I found!!

From Dummies.com

Traditional Forms of Poetry: Tankas and Haiku
The Japanese tanka is a verse form from classical Japanese poetry. Even older than its better-known poetic cousin the haiku, the tanka is a quiet, meditative form that focuses on the natural world and the poet's emotions. A tanka is essentially a haiku (three lines consisting of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each), except it has two additional lines of 7 syllables each.

Traditionally, the tanka begins with an observation of a natural scene:

Invisible hands
caress my face; have I walked
through a spider's web
woven this morning to catch
flies writhing with my surprise

Many poets find that the tanka falls naturally into a haiku followed by a couplet. The haiku tends to focus more on observation, the couplet on reflection. But you don't have to observe this movement in your own writing. The tanka is a syllabic form, so just follow these simple rules:

•Avoid end-rhyming the lines.

•Vary the rhythms from line to line.

•Use enjambment to keep sentences and clauses twisting around the ends of the lines.

•Avoid ending too many lines in a row with a one-syllable word.

Pink is the New Black. Mantra's are the New Resolution

My 2011 Mantra...in case you were curious :) found this on Tumblr and decided to adopt it as my own. Love it!! Hope this provides a little bit of inspiration this week!

Oh yeah...Happy Black History Month!

Am I the only one who totally forgot that this was Black History Month? Do kids even still learn about it in school? I haven't heard a peep about it from my 7th grade brother and I sure as heck haven't heard much of anything in the news. Oh well, black people rock!! AND our contributions in government, science, arts, sports, etc. have made America what it is today.

You're welcome. Feel free to write your thank you check directly to me:)

In honor of the awesomeness that is black America, check out the HuffPost's list of Great Poems for Black History Month. The list includes some of my absolute favs like Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Paul Laurence Dunbar and many more!!

Enjoy!

ps...Happy Birthday Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)

Origami

Origami
BY Sarah McKinstry-Brown

They say you’ve got a thing for heroin.
They tell me things have changed,
that I wouldn’t recognize you.

They say you’re an origami girl,
guided by men’s strange hands.
Yesterday you were a fish,
today you resemble a rose. Tomorrow
your mother will knock on the bathroom door
to find you blue
in the face.
With your legs askew,
your arms outstretched,
your clothes not on,

the medic will mistake you for a swan.
Though you’re swimming in some ocean

I don’t want to know,
I won’t tell you to pull yourself together.
I remember our small chests rising and falling
as we chased each other around the yard,
in girl-time,

I hold you
and unfold your lungs,
untie your tongue,
take the needle out of your arm,
pick your dreams up off the ground,
dust them off on my jeans,
and pin them back on your dress.

I'm back :)

I know I said I would be back in January, but meh...February is practically January...if you move around a few letters :) I hope you're all having a fabtabulous new year! Excited to see where this year takes us.