Poetry Friday

...my definition of magic in the human personality, in fiction and in poetry, is the ultimate level of attentiveness.

~ Jim Harrison ~

The Great War

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride.

~ Bertrand Russell ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Dating

Portraits

The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson ~

He's Got the Right Attitude!

...if we failed, we failed together and to me that's not failing at all.

~ Kermit the Frog ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Kittens will meow to their mothers, but as they mature, they typically quit using this sound to communicate with other cats. Often, adult domestic cats that meow do so only in the presence of humans. This is likely an extension of the way kittens use their plaintive meows as a signal.

~ Laura Moss ~
In other words, a cat owner is being played for a fool! --KK

Photo by dasu_.

The Big Question

Listen, even if 97% of scientists turned out to be wrong, where is the harm in cleaning up our environment? What could it hurt to conserve energy? This shouldn’t have ever become an issue between right/left, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican.

~ T. Steelman ~
Map courtesy U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Poetry Friday

In a funny way, poems are suited to modern life. They're short, they're intense. Nobody has time to read a 700-page book. People read magazines, and a poem takes less time than an article.

~ Caroline Kennedy ~

Plod Along

...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

~ Harper Lee ~

In Art

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

~ Michelangelo ~

Presidents

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Lick your whiskers,
Smooth your fur,
Prick up your ears
And purr, purr, purr.

~ Eve Merriam from "Cat's Tongue" ~

Go Out and Play!

The point of play is that it has no point.

~ Alfie Kohn ~

Poetry Friday

...I just sit there under the floor lamp early in the morning and work and see what happens. Nine days out of 10, nothing good comes of it at all. Maybe on the tenth day, if I'm lucky, some little thing will start a poem.

~ Ted Kooser ~


Image courtesy openclipart.

Celebrate Black History Month!

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

~ Maya Angelou ~

Sparkle On, Shirley!

A NH Farm

The countryside and the farm itself are so important to me; I can't even visualize being a poet without living here, even though I was a poet before.

~ Maxine Kumin ~

Ice

Ice is the one thing in our world that went from an agricultural product to being manufactured.

~ Alton Brown ~
Photo by Social_Stratification.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Our cat treads my bed,
Pushing my spread to a heap for his sleep,
Punching sheets, stretching his tailbone up tall--
That it's me underneath doesn't matter at all--

~ X. J. Kennedy from "Catsnest" ~

Photo by jordansmall.

A Part of Life

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

Poetry Friday

Then drive to-day’s sorrow away till to-morrow,
And then put it off till the next one.

~ Charles Dickens from "Squire Norton’s Song" ~

[I love this! --KK]

Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

So Easy!

There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure--it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.

~ Susanna Clarke from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell ~

A Rare Book

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

~ John Green from The Fault in Our Stars ~

So Sad...

I think you should be serious about what you do because this is it. This is the only life you've got.

~ Philip Seymour Hoffman ~

Start Planning Now!

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

~ George Eliot ~
Photo by audreyjm529.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

...sometimes a drastic accident is required...

~ Henri Le Chat Noir ~

It's Saturday!

Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson ~

Poetry Friday

They ask me why I live in the green mountains.
I smile and don't reply; my heart's at ease.

~ Li Bai from "Question and Answer in the Mountains" (tr. Vikram Seth) ~


[Not really a poetry quote, but it is from a poem, and I think poets need to recognize their green mountains. --KK]

Portion of a scroll painting by Huang Guangwang, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Learning

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

~ Confucius ~
Photo by Elmer B. Domingo.

Remembering Pete Seeger

I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life. I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.

~ Pete Seeger ~

Agreed!

To me, the smell of fresh-made coffee is one of the greatest inventions.

~ Hugh Jackman ~

Skiing!

Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.

~ Dave Barry ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

We’d attribute the NRA’s favorite rock ‘n’ roller’s most recent rant to a bad case of Cat Scratch Fever, but that would be an insult to cats.

~ Janet Allon ~



Photo of Skippy having thoughts of scratching someone © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Door

The door of success is marked "push" and "pull."

~ Yiddish proverb ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

It's not for me--religion. It seems like a redundancy for a poet.

~ May Swenson ~

Calories

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart, who looks at her watch.

~ James Beard ~


Photo courtesy Oregon Blue Book.

Art

In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say--it's revealed to you as you say it.

~ Aaron Siskind ~

The Oscar

The Oscar sits on some shelf above my desk. If there was an earthquake, I could actually be killed by my own Academy Award.

~ Helen Hunt ~

Martin Luther King Day

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~





LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto, courtesy LBJ Presidential Library.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The bird-watching bandit
on needle-point paws

~ J. Patrick Lewis from "A Tomcat Is" ~

Photo by A. Davey.

Be Alert

The world is a thing of wonder that requires no faith, but only alert senses, to appreciate.

~ Jeffrey Tayler ~
Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Poetry Friday

Maybe I should write a poem
about all the people who think
they know what I should be writing poems about.

~ Billy Collins from "The Suggestion Box" ~

Graphic Novels

Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.

~ Marjane Satrapi ~

Liberate Your Soul! (Yes, That Is a Command)

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

~ W. Somerset Maugham ~
"Lake Squam from Red Hill" by William Trost Richards (1874), courtesy The Athenaeum.

Ideas and Rabbits

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

~ John Steinbeck ~

Filling in Spaces

I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.

~ Charlie Kaufman ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Posted on George Takei's Facebook page.

Another Type of Fog Today

Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

~ Daniel J. Boorstin ~



Smudge in a fog of kitty love. The image on the screen is by Patrick Girouard, one of his "Unofficial Talk Like a [fill in the blank] Day" series.

Poetry Friday

Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.

~ Amiri Baraka ~
Rest in peace, Amiri Baraka.

Photo courtesy AmiriBaraka.com.

From a Cartoon Master

I actually find a lot of parallels in jazz and cartooning.

~ Gary Larson ~

The Snow!

January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow.

~ Sara Coleridge ~

Nice to Know!

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own?

~ P.L. Travers from Mary Poppins ~

Flamingos

With their pink and crimson plumage, long legs and necks, and strongly hooked bills, flamingos cannot be mistaken for any other type of bird.

~ San Diego Zoo ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
   And we take him in.

~ Thomas Hardy from "Snow in the Suburbs" ~
Photo by Thiophene Guy.

Cold

If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.

~ Lucy Larcom ~
KK: it is very cold, today--at least in the NH part of the world!

Poetry Friday

Haiku is short and small, but is really like a deep pond.

~ Kuniharu Shimizu ~
I took the photo in Derry, NH, on a walk along the rail trail. I doubt if the pond is deep, but it sure is pretty!

Snow!

You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?

~ J. B. Priestley ~
Photo by blmiers2.

Happy New Year!

Postcard courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

Good Question!

What might we be doing, thinking, feeling about if we didn't think about body image, ever?

~ Caroline Knapp ~



Image courtesy openclipart.

Endangered Species Act, 40 Years Old

Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is a many-faceted treasure, of value to scholars, scientists, and nature lovers alike, and it forms a vital part of the heritage we all share as Americans.

~ Richard Nixon ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

CISCIS afflicts one in three cats.

~ Paul Klusman ~

Reading Is a Sport

Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.

~ George V. Higgins ~

Poetry Friday

An artwork must challenge us with questions not soothe us with simple answers. Public art must be more than mere decorative embellishment, it must have poetry.

~ Douglas Kornfeld ~
Photo courtesy Douglas Kornfeld's Google+ page.

She Spoke the Truth

Friendship with one's self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~
Photo courtesy National Archives.