Poetry Friday

Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry.

~ Rita Dove ~


Photo by Fred Viebahn, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Mothers

Men are what their mothers made them.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Children's Book Week

"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing."

~ E. B. White from Charlotte's Web ~

Twenty-First Century Angst

Making lists of favorite things is, for me, a task ridden with anxiety. What if I've accidentally excluded something I love? What if I discover something new tomorrow that I love even more?

~ Sara Zarr ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Poetry Friday

What is undeniable is that manner and matter, the theme and the way in which it is expressed, the meaning and the structure, cannot be separated without vital injury to the poem.

~ Babette Deutsch ~

War

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

~ William Tecumseh Sherman ~






Image courtesy NYPL Digital Collections.

Just Walk!

I have always loved to sit in ferry and railroad stations and watch the people, to walk on crowded streets, just walk along among the people, and see their faces, to be among people on street cars and trains and boats.

~ Ella R. Bloor ~

A Big Question!

Ask yourself in the quietest hour of the night: must I write? Dig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be in the affirmative, if you may meet this solemn question with a strong and simple, I must, then build your life according to this necessity.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~




Sketch by Leonid Pasternak, courtesy Wikimedia.

Endure the Caterpillars

Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The bone that has no marrow;
    What ultimate for that?
It is not fit for table,
    For beggar, or for cat.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Photo by swyngarden.

Tell Us How You Really Feel

I am in earnest. I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD.

~ William Lloyd Garrison ~






Found in The Suffrage Cook Book, 1915.

Poetry Friday

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

~ Czeslaw Milosz from "Ars Poetica" ~
Postage stamp courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Spoken Like a True Member of the Lost Generation

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Happy Earth Day!

Banner courtesy NASA.

Grave Danger

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

~ Gerald Durrell ~



Photo courtesy www.durrell.org.

Spring People

People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

There will be other days,
there will be other voices.
You will smile alone.
The cats will know.

~ Cesare Pavese from "The Cats Will Know" ~
"Girl With Cat" by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Promises

April is a promise that May is bound to keep.

~ Hal Borland ~

Poetry Friday

Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.

~ James Huneker ~







[Hanging poems on a cherry tree]. Woodcut print courtesy Library of Congress.

Privileged

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~






[Note: the sad part is, in the 2010s, those challenged privileged groups are now claiming they're the ones being mistreated! --KK]

1962 photo by O. Fernandez, courtesy Library of Congress.

Sign Language

Poster courtesy Action Deafness.

Adapt!

In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival.

~ Cary Fowler ~




Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Nature-Deficit Disorder

The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need.

~ Richard Louv ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

the cat's bell tinkling
in the peonies
here and there

~ Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue.

Photo by cwgreeny.

Amen to That!

If you don't like gay people, take it up with the manufacturer, because God keeps creating them around the world!

~ John Fugelsang ~

Poetry Friday

...a poem is a chunk of language to be used for purposes seen as important by government-hired experts. It’s irrelevant whether these have anything to do with what poets try to do, but then who cares if this test runs counter to what poets think?

~ Michael Rosen ~

Don't Stop!

When you stop having dreams and ideals--well, you might as well stop altogether.

~ Marian Anderson ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Rethinking Wall Treatments

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.

~ Ellen DeGeneres ~
Photo by Curtis Cobb, courtesy Wikimedia.

Cross-Stitch Wisdom

Courtesy crossstitch.com.

Keep Moving!

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

~ Walt Disney ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Happy Easter!

How True Is This?

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

~ Mark Twain ~
Photo by amseaman.

Poetry Friday

I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art--we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.

~ Howard Nemerov ~



Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Love a Book!

When I was 10 years old, I loved--I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

~ Jane Goodall ~

It's April Fools' Day!

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

~ William Shakespeare ~
Illustration courtesy openclipart.

The Wish Remains...

I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.

~ Mary Shelley ~

So Obvious!

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

~ Albert Einstein ~







Photo by F. Schmutzer, courtesy Wikipedia.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Her head is under the cat and
like the cat, she sleeps.

~ Susan Griffin from "The Perfect Mother" ~

Photo by Daveybot.

It's Probably Harder Today!

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

~ Isaac Newton ~

Poetry Friday

Who will guard over the fragile blossom of haiku poetry? Who will protect it in our own time against all that threatens it: societal indifference to poetry in general, materialism, a blindness to nature and our absolute inclusion in it, and, structurally, the heresy that "haiku" can be any utterance written in 5-7-5 syllables, or the recent disturbing trend of defining as haiku short, obtuse, experimental language games that only seem to proclaim the poet's cleverness for cleverness's sake? Who, indeed, will guard over haiku?

~ David Lanoue ~

Losing My Mind

I must be losing my mind. I forgot yesterday, and nearly forgot to post today! --KK

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

~ Buddha ~

Houdini

Houdini connected to people on an emotional level so that when he would escape that straight jacket it wasn't about the straight jacket. It was about people looking at it and escaping poverty. When you have that it's the truest form of magic.

~ Criss Angel ~

Sage Advice

My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn't prevent you doing well, and don't regret the things it interferes with. Don't be disabled in spirit as well as physically.

~ Stephen Hawking ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The black kitten cries at her bowl
meek meek and the gray one glowers
from the windowsill. My hand on the can
to serve them. First day of spring.

~ Gail Mazur from "I Wish I Want I Need" ~

Photo by jambox998.

Communication

A writer writes not because he is educated, but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

~ Leo Rosten ~

Poetry Friday

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

~ Wallace Stevens ~




Photo from The Wallace Stevens Society website.

Do You Hear Yourself Living?

I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent--and working at a pace so slow--that I would be able to hear myself living.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert from The Signature of All Things ~

Landscaping

All gardening is landscape painting.

~ William Kent ~
Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Series Books

The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different, even if there's a risk of it going wrong.

~ Mark Haddon ~

Writers Learn From Their Own Books!

With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.

~ John Irving ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

We

The single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word "we." We the People. We shall overcome. Yes we can. That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.

~ Barack Obama ~

Poetry Friday

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

~ Plato ~

Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac!

Something that you feel will find its own form.

~ Jack Kerouac ~
Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Books

My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories.

~ Sarah Addison Allen ~

Indeed!

Courtesy PBS.

Maybe His Next Book Will Be a Cookbook

I have a lot of fans who are in the prison system, where ramen noodles are a kind of staple. Prisoners are always sending me recipes.

~ Chuck Palahniuk ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

There is one thing that cats don't like any better than men and women do, and that is to make fools of themselves.

~ Helen Hunt Jackson ~

You Go, Girl!

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

~ Georgia O'Keeffe ~
Photo by Alfred Stieglitz, courtesy Wikipedia.

Poetry Friday

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

~ Wallace Stevens ~
"Love" by Gustav Klimt, courtesy The Athenaeum.

A Little of This, A Little of That

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer ~

Records Broken

The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880. The December combined global land and ocean average surface temperature was also the highest on record.

~ NOAA ~

Spring!

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"

~ Robin Williams ~

Don't Mess With Crows!

Given that crows have impressive memories, people who ruffle the feathers of these birds could experience years of retribution.

~ Jennifer Viegas ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

It is unclear which is larger, the number of dog lovers or the number of cat fanciers. There are as many great literary works about cats as there are about dogs, both Japanese and foreign.

As for haiku, however, my feeling is that cats are more popular than dogs as the themes of these short Japanese poems will show. Is that because the gestures and appearances of cats strongly stimulate the poetic sentiments of haiku composers?


~ From "Vox Populi, Vox Dei," The Asahi Shimbun ~



Print by Hiroshige Ando, courtesy Library of Congress.