Laughing Song, Poem by William Blake

LAUGHING SONG

by William Blake

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,

And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;

When the air does laugh with our merry wit,

And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

 

When the meadows laugh with lively green,

And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,

When Mary and Susan and Emily

With their sweet round mouths sing “Ha, ha he!”

 

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,

Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:

Come live, and be merry, and join with me,

To sing the sweet chorus of “Ha, ha, he!”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. For the most part unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered one of the greatest poets of all time in any language. As a visual artist, he has been lauded by one art critic as “far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Photo: Zsaj, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Heart’s Green Bough, Chinese Proverb

“If I keep a green bough in my heart, then the singing bird will come.”

CHINESE PROVERB

Painting: Vintage Chinese silk painting for sale on Etsy.

Port of Saint-Cast, Painting by Paul Signac, Poem by Gerald Locklin

PAUL SIGNAC: PORT OF SAINT-CAST, 1890

Poem by Gerald Locklin

Isn’t it amazing how an artist
Can learn to see 
The coast of France
As that of Japan

And teach us to see it
That way also?

###

“Paul Signac: Port of Saint-Cast, 1890,” © 2013 by Gerald Locklin, reprinted by permission of author. The poem is found in the January 2013 release DEEP MEANINGS: Selected Poems, 2008-2013 by Gerald Locklin, available from Presa Press.

Painting: “Port of Saint-Cast,” 1890, oil on canvas by Paul Signac (Museum of Fine Art, Boston)

Invitation to Poetry, Poem by Shel Silverstein

This invitation — from Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends — serves as introduction to the charming book and, for kids and adults alike, an invitation to the world of poetry.

A big thank you to visitors who “liked” and commented on our recent post of “Writer Waiting,” a poem and illustration from Falling Up by Shel Silverstein. This was the biggest all-time response to a post in the seven-month history of the Silver Birch Press blog. Thank you to Ivon Prefontaine for reblogging the post at his site (Teacher as Transformer), where he has over 1,000 followers.

Happy Birthday, Joan Jobe Smith

HOW YOU TASTE THE APPLES

by Joan Jobe Smith

The winter of Yolo County Fair’s 1989
First Prize for Apple Pies showed me
how to keep my pie flute golden while
it baked by simply making an aluminum
foil collar for the pie pan like you might
for the TIn Man’s whiplashed neck.
While she showed me how to weave
a lattice top for my cherry pie she
told me her apple pie won because of
the Gravensteins, those large, yellow
red-striped apples she drove 40 miles
to Sebastopol to buy that are only ripe
two weeks in July, the same time her
husband’s parents came from Pittsburgh
to discuss her bad marriage getting worse.
While her husband and his parents
drank Wild Turkey in the living room
in her kitchen she rolled our the pie crust
dough made of lard and butter for a nutty
flavor and then she arranged inside the pie
the Gravenstein slices, apple halfmoons
halfmoons, a perfect swirl ad infinitum so that
when the apples baked down in their juice
the top crust would not go hard and fill
with stale air and many bourbon highballs
later, after her husband’d told His Side of
the story, his parents came to the decision
that their son’s obligations to his baby and wife
should not interfere with his personal happiness
or life and the last place her husband took her
before he went away was to the Yolo County
Fair and when she saw her First Place blue
ribbon, she covered her face to hide her tears,
asked him to leave her alone with her pie for
awhile so he carried their baby away to see
the clown. The main reason, though, she told me
she won was simply because those Gravenstein
apples are the perfect sweet-tartness for pies.
You don’t have to add lemon or cinnamon
or sugar or any other spice. That way
all you taste are the apples.

###

A happy birthday and a huge slab of apple pie à la mode to Joan Jobe Smith, author of the recent Silver Birch Press release Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis: His Art, His Women (& me), available at Amazon.com. Joan shares her January 25th birthday with writing legends Virginia Woolf, Robert Burns, and W. Somerset Maugham. 

###

“How You Taste the Apples” by Joan Jobe Smith won the 1996 Mary Scheirman Award for poetry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan Jobe Smith, founding editor of PEARL and Bukowski    Review, worked for seven years as a go-go dancer before receiving her BA from CSULB and MFA from University of California, Irvine. A Pushcart Honoree, her award-winning work has appeared internationally in more than five hundred publications, including Outlaw Bible, Ambit, Beat Scene, Wormwood Review, and Nerve Cowboy—and she has published twenty collections, including Jehovah Jukebox (Event Horizon Press, US) and The Pow Wow Cafe (The Poetry Business, UK), a finalist for the UK 1999 Forward Prize. In July 2012, with her husband, poet Fred Voss, she did her sixth reading tour of England (debuting at the 1991 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival), featured at the Humber Mouth Literature Festival in Hull. In November 2012, Silver Birch Press published her literary profile entitled Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis: His Art & His Women (& me). In 2013, World Parade Books will release her memoir Tales of an Ancient Go-Go Girl. Her literary magazine PEARL will release its 50^th edition in 2013—find out more at pearlmag.com.

Fog, Poem by Carl Sandburg

FOG

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Photo: “Golden Gate Bridge in the Fog” by Justin William

Under the Thinning Fog, Quote by Raymond Chandler

“Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.” RAYMOND CHANDLER, The Big Sleep

Photo: “Fog, Sunset, Ocean — California” by Mike Behnken, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Dreams, Poem by Kathy Dahms Rogers

DREAMS

by Kathy Dahms Rogers

The streetlight shines so brightly

on the ocean, each wave has a silver lip.

That’s when I realize how real

my Dreams are.  Each day I awaken

to unbelievable news from unimaginable places

whose ghostly characters crowd out my thoughts.

I try to pin them down but they fade away

as Memory frees them to float over the bluff.

Each night I eagerly await my escape,

a better life, another dream.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kathy Dahms Rogers was born in Iowa, lives in Long Beach, California, and loves to travel with her husband Jack.  She calls herself an “accidental poet” because she began writing poetry during the 1990s in a workshop she thought was going to focus on memoir and travel writing. She continues to attend these weekly workshops with poet Donna Hilbert. Now a retired college reading instructor, Kathy’s poems have been published in PEARL, a literary journal, and Voices, an anthology.

“Dreams” and other poetry by Kathy Dahms Rogers is featured in the Silver Birch Press Silver Anthology, a collection of poetry and prose by authors from the U.S. and U.K. — available in paperback and Kindle versions at Amazon.com.

Photo: “Streetlights on the Beach, Monterey, California” by Bikini Sleepshirt, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Woman with a Green Olive, Floating: Poem by Lori McGinn

WOMAN WITH A GREEN OLIVE, FLOATING

by Lori McGinn

Mom,

Do you remember?

There was that time

You were all fashion savvy,

With your martini,

your fancy cigarette holder?

Pall Mall cigarette poised.

There was a pool, a party,

Me, at the bottom of the pool

looking up, wondering when to breathe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lori McGinn is a mom, grandma, baker of cookies, visual artist, and writer of poems. A native of Whittier, California, her work has appeared in several anthologies and her chapbook, Waiting, was published as a part of the Laguna Poets Series.

###

“Woman with a Green Olive, Floating” and other poetry by Lori McGinn will appear in the Silver Birch Press Green Anthology — a collection of poetry and prose from more than 50 authors around the world — available March 15, 2013.

Photo: “Classic Martini” by Ken Johnson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Make Every Word Tell, Advice from Strunk & White