Friends, Poets, Netizens,
Welcome to the Poetry Friday Roundup!
Fall is my favorite season, and October is my favorite month. I have so many very strong memories latched to October that most other months can’t really compete. The fiery changing of the seasons, the promise of Halloween and whiff of Thanksgiving around the corner, the apple-crisp air, the renewed promise of a school year that hasn’t yet gone off track, the annual brush fires that send ash into the sky and turn the sunsets orange… oops, I guess that’s more of an LA thing.
Halloween, even today, still inspires me to want to dress in an awesome costume, though I rarely get the opportunity. This year, however, it looks like I have two costume events back-to-back and preparations are underway to pull together something a step above thrown-together. And in thinking about the future I am reminded of the past, when I was a kid and we were both too poor and too creative to buy a costume from a store.
sigma nine
cardboard box
spray-painted silver
rectangular spy hole
between two large mag reels
which served as eyes
for the sigma nineold stove
knob-for-a-nose
and a tilt-out tray
fashioned from the flaps
cut from the cardboard box
of the sigma ninelimited vision
no ventilation
awkward mechanics
sigma ninecan’t hold flashlight
can’t ring doorbells
can’t store candy
sigma nineTRICK. OR. TREAT
in flat monotone
are you a robot?
I. AM. NOT.
I. AM. A. COMPUTER.
SIGMA. NINE.door after door
no one understood
a washing machine?
a tape recorder?
a robot from space?
no! i am the future!
sigma nine!sweating and dizzy
after only one block
the box was replaced
by a mask and a cape
the future could wait
for sigma nine
Looking back, it’s funny that my most elaborate costume was totally impractical in terms of trick-or-treating. And why would anyone give a computer candy anyway? I did much better dressed as a masked thief in the night and I don’t think I ever made myself as elaborate a costume as that since.
The Midday Gather-round
- Blythe finds a Dorothea Mackellar poem in a 1920s school reader.
- Myra brings to light a Gemino H. Abad poem.
- jama celebrates e.e. cummings birthday with a poem (and a recipe) and black bean soup.
- Tabatha has a pair by Michael Simms that reveal the secret lives of poems.
- Heidi tickles with a bit of overheard conversation from her universe.
- Mary Lee presents Meredith Holmes’ praise to her beloved bed.
- Ben digs (up) some of Phillip Levine’s portraits of Detroit.
- What’s Amy doing with that rake? Three guesses.
- Inspired by an herb planter, and a proverb, Sara serves up some garlic.
- Karissa has a poem by Naomi Shibab Nye that maps two countries. Or are they people?
- Doraine, in a moment of quiet, finds a Jeffery McDaniel poem to echo that silence.
- Diane sings the praise of Noel Coward’s serious poetic side.
- Diane also shares a Poetry & Politics event taking place in New Hampshire, and features a poem by Jane Kenyon.
- And on the home front during WWII a boy imagines how life will change when he’s a general in Diane’s original poem.
- Kurious Kitty introduces us to a collection by Sara Holbrook and includes a poem as well. She also has a quote from Holbrook as well.
- Irene has a link to Walt Whitman who asks the big questions.
- Katie shares a review of A Little Bitty Man by Halfdan Rasmussen. (Am I the only one amused that a person named Halfdan wrote about a little man?)
- Father Goose himself shares a Halloween poem about cats.
- Kerry shares a pair of Halloween-themed titles that’ll get your ghost.
- jone found a poem. No, wait. jone wrote a found poem about her writing space.
- Linda thanks Paul Zimmer publicly for a moment in a poem of his she discovered.
- Mandy shares a poem that tackles the tricky business of capturing sounds.
- Karen has a Rilke sonnet, and some links to different translations to prove it takes a poet’s ear to catch a poet’s meaning.
- MotherReader reviews and shares from Marilyn Singer’s A Full Moon Rising.
- Elaine has a virtual farm full of original acrostics this week.
- Andromeda shares a haiku of regret over not having a camera, but she still can paint the picture!
- Happiness is like a train, as Ruth explains in her original poem.
Whew! Well, that’s everyone up until noon. I think. If I’m missing anyone, give me a shout in the comments. I’ll try to check in with further updates tonight but things are looking to get hectic. I’ll also check back in over the weekend, and you can always click Mister Linky link below and click-through to everyone else without any obligation on your part!
The Saturday Eye-Opener
- Sally shares her appreciation for one of my favorite books in verse, Love That Dog.
- Julie introduces us (well, me at least) to the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer.
- Lorie Ann reveals her inner light via an original haiku.
- JoAnn has a poem full of advice about revising a poem. Not too meta.
- Laura shares another poem from Marilyn Singer’s collection A Full Moon is Rising. She also has this week’s collection of 15-words-or-less poems.
- Nicole takes us to Thoreau’s (recreated) cabin and shares his reflection on life and poetry.
Things seem to be slowing down, but perhaps there will be some weekend additions? I’ll check back in tomorrow for a final update.
Your turn. Click the Mister Linky link below and be sure to fill in your name (and the title in parens). Oh, and leave a comment as well!
We regularly have to explain our kids’ costumes: “He’s a zebra warrior.” “He’s an alien robot drum instrument.” I tend to always go as a witch. And I look more realistic every passing year.
i once saw a kid with a pirate costume and a gorilla mask and asked what he was. “a gorilla pirate” in a tone as heavy as if followed by the word “duh!” there is logic, and then there’s kid logic.
David, I think you should write that book – The Gorilla Pirates.
Hello! Thank you so much for hosting Poetry Friday this week. Love your poem – very apt for the season.
At any rate, let me leave my link here as well:
http://gatheringbooks.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/poetry-friday-care-of-light-by-gemino-h-abad/
Enjoy your weekend!
“a discipline of mind sometimes terrorized
by the haps and hazards of thieving time.”
loved that!
[…] Today’s Poetry Friday Roundup is being hosted by the dashing and debonair lower cased david elzey at FOMAGRAMS. He may or may not be wearing baggy trousers. I, for one, am wearing my birthday suit and still […]
Celebrating E.E. Cummings’s birthday today at alphabet soup:
Love your poem. Your costume was well ahead of its time :) !
Thanks for hosting today.
how could i have (again!!) missed cumming’s birthday? eh, i guess it’s par for the course for me this week.
Great poem!
Will you be a mad poet for Halloween this year?
Thanks for hosting!
actually, i have my heart set on a classic venetian bauta for a masquerade party. what does a mad poet costume consist of? does it look anything alan ginsberg, walking the angry halloween streets looking for a candy fix?
That sounds right. Or you could go with disheveled hair, moustache, and a raven.
But a classic venetian bauta sounds terrific!
Good. Morning. Sigma. Nine.
Thank. you. for. channeling. some. of. my. October. memories. also.
I’m taking time this weekend to catch up on others’ blogs, so I’ve left the link for my now regular Tuesday feature, the “Overheard In Kindergarten” Tickle. I post a bon mot from the mouths of my kindergarten languagemeisters, and anyone who wants to play bounces a poem off it. Check out the responses to last week’s by Kate Coombs and Jeanne Poland!
i had a tickle of my own, overheard just yesterday as a a storytime was ending at my library. i left it over at your post (so all of you reading this who haven’t should go check out heidi’s post)
I haven’t decided what to be for Halloween this year…pinning on die-cut stars in the appropriate spots and going as Orion is my fall-back, but I hate it when people ask me if I’m the Big Dipper…
orion’s belt! what a great idea. how can people not get that? do you hold a sword with stars on it as well?
Thanks for hosting and for sharing a great poem. Better late than never, I’m celebrating native Detroiter Philip Levine’s appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate today! http://thesmallnouns.blogspot.com/2011/10/poetry-friday-poet-laureate-philip.html
ah detroit, where you can swim with the car parts!
hey, levine said it, not me!
This poem made me smile and sing! For I was a box costume every year for years: oven, washing machine, tv, table (with head on platter)… Dad and I would work on the box for a month before Halloween, and I’d be so proud. This past year our eldest daughter Hope was an outhouse…and that too brought back memories. So, thank you. I love these lines especially:
can’t hold flashlight
can’t ring doorbells
can’t store candy
sigma nine
Today at The Poem Farm, I have a little poem about raking.
A.
sadly, the sound of raking these days has been replaced by chainsaw-like grinding of leaf blowers.
wait, your daughter was an outhouse? like an old fashioned one with a moon on the door? that’s brilliant!
Ah, Sigma Nine. You would’ve fit right in at my college sci-fi parties.
I’m in today with a poem inspired by my pot of herbs and this great quote: “Garlic is as good as ten mothers.”
but would sigma nine have gotten as much candy at those college sci-fi parties?
I loved the days when kids showed up in homemade costumes. Nowadays a lot of the costumes look like something produced in a Hollywood costume department! Have a great round-up!
two years ago my younger daughter decided to be a hobo for halloween, a total old-skool hobo with a felt hat, patched clothes, and a bindle on a stick. we even burned a cork so she could give herself a “hobo joe” five o’clock shadow.
sadly, the digital camera erased those photos before they could be saved. it was a fantastic costume, the last time she made her own from scratch, and it makes me sad i don’t have pictures.
(after that was when we began to take pix with more than one camera, as insurance.)
Yay for homemade costumes, even (especially?) the impractical ones. Those are the ones to remember, as you did here. I’m sorta sad my kids are too old now for me to break out the silver spray paint. Happy Poetry Friday!
to be honest, i suspect part of my discomfort with the costume was that the spray paint still kinda stank inside that unventilated box. still, it looked great!
Oh, poor sigma nine. I bet the world is ready for you now! What a great poem for Halloween…
i fully expect to see some modern version of the box costume this year: an iPad in honor of steve jobs, or perhaps a kindle…
The “limited vision, no ventilation” reminds me of a ghost costume I once created for my son. He meandered, like a ghost, with such small eye holes he truly looked like a wandering ghost (but it was scary for him!). Your poem brings back many memories of costumes that looked great in photos, but didn’t move so well for trick-or-treating. Thanks! My post today is a little tribute to Paul Zimmer.
one of my brothers once did the ghost thing and kept stepping on the edge of their costume and tumbling over. i think an ill-fitting, slightly dangerous costume is truly part of the halloween spirit.
Thanks for hosting.
My selection is “Cobwebs, chatters, and chills : a collection of scary poems” collected by Patricia M. Stockland and illustrated by Sara Rojo Perez.
Alas, poor Sigma Nine. He deserves another chance.
I have a teen who will be dressing as Coraline’s Other Mother to walk with a friend on a paper route on Halloween. Her button eyes are to die for.
Autumn is my favorite season, too, and October my favorite month. I’m in this week with Rilke’s A Day in Autumn.
i hope she can see though those button eyes. but *shudder* what a costume!
Good morning, Sigma Nine. One of my coworkers’ kids went as a railroad signal last year, one arm striped as the lowering gate. Ding ding ding! I love your poem, and October’s my favorite month, too. In fact, when I was 11, for about three weeks I told everyone my real name was October.
I just read a funny easy reader about washing machine costumes, and an ant and I think a bumblebee. If I can find the title, I’ll add it.
Happy Poetry Friday!
“Witch Cats” are prowling around the FATHER GOOSE Blog!
Love that Sigma Nine poem, kinda reminded me of the robot song from The Flight of the Conchords … anyway, Sally here from PaperTigers. Do check out my post on Sharon Creech’s Love that Dog book on poetry.
“this is the future. the year 2000.”
yeah.
what few people knew then (or now for that matter) was that the sigma nine was a real computer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDS_Sigma_series
and just to give you a sense of how big that computer was: i was able to stand inside it and walk around, because it had it’s own floor in the building where my dad worked. that same computing power could now fit inside an apple nano.
Oh boy. David, this is your novel in verse, or your collection, or something. Maybe it’s already out there, but I think the world needs a poetry collection on the development of digital technology and all its influences, including on Halloween costumes. I’m quite serious: the “stand inside it and walk around” poem would come first, and give middle-grade readers a whole new sense of where their calculators came from.
I think I may go this year not as an iPad, but as the ghost of Steve Jobs. I have a lot of black turtlenecks, and I can still use silver spray paint on the shoes….
Thanks for hosting! Here’s my post for today: here.
Today I have a review of “A Full Moon is Rising,” a Cybils-nominated poetry book – and a lovely one at that!
Thanks for hosting!
David,
Thanks for doing the Poetry Friday Roundup!
I’m with you. I love October and autumn is my favorite season too. My daughter absolutely LOVED Halloween when she was a kid. She’d start decorating the house early in October. She’s an adult now and a new mother–and she decorates her own house now for the holiday.
Over at Wild Rose Reader, I have a “mini collection” of my original animal acrostics.
http://wildrosereader.blogspot.com/2011/10/poetry-friday-original-animal-acrostics.html
i truly wish i had nothing to do but decorate the house inside and out. i always love the neighborhoods where that one house goes all out. we have one where every year the house becomes a pirate ship. the police now have to close it down to traffic and patrol!
Your poem made me laugh. Our grandchildren still make costumes with boxes and silver paint! Thanks for hosting. Today I posted a fall poem at Musings. I’m looking forward to meandering through the gathering of posts!
i’m glad to hear the mighty cardboard box is still part of the halloween tradition!
Love that poem! It brings to mind a costume I made for my son when he was about six. I made a train locomotive out of cardboard boxes. Spray painted it on my parent’s driveway and stained the drive with paint. It was a great costume but he could neither walk nor see while wearing it. That’s part of the adventure I guess!
I have an original haiku and photo today. Thanks for doing the roundup!
the year after the sigma nine this kid i knew, who was kinda competitive, made a car-and-driver costume from a box — where the costume hung off his shoulders by straps and he “sat” behind the wheel — and he was boasting that it would have a REAL steering wheel and REAL tires.
it did. the steering wheel was from an old car and the tires were from a small bike. and they were so heavy that it hurt his shoulders to walk around and eventually everything tore off the cardboard.
so many good times of old…
David, I love your poem! My sister and I dressed up as a pair of dice once (huge cardboard boxes, painted white w/ black dots) and had exactly the same problem with not being able to knock/push the doorbell. We also only got about half the candy because we couldn’t run as fast from door to door that year. Never again.
I put a link to my Poetry Friday note about TomasTranstromer winning the Nobel Prize (and a short poem of his called “April and Silence”) over at The Drift Record
only a few years after the sigma nine, and the diminished returns on candy, my friend marc and i devised a halloween plot that garnered the largest candy haul in history. i’m mulling that story over for next week.
bad costumes, live and learn…
Thanks for the roundup! Happy Poetry Friday!
To clarify, the poem shared by Mandy (me) was written by Mandy, not by Mary Oliver.
i stand corrected, as does the link!
i hope you don’t mind that i mistook your work for mary oliver’s! apologies nonetheless.
I’ve posted a Thankyu, a form Esther Hershenhorn just invented, at TeachingAuthors.com. Thanks for hosting!
David, Joyce from Musings here. Somehow my link didn’t get included with my comment. Maybe I haven’t figured out Mister Linksey yet! Musings is at http://joyceray.blogspot.com
Thanks for rounding up!
alright, i’ll catch you in the next round-up.
Can’t believe I forgot to drop by this morning and leave my links. Oops. Oh well. Love your poem–sounds like a fabulous costume! And Octobe is my favorite month, too. Minus any brush fires.
I’m in with a poem from Marilyn Singer’s lovely new collection and 15 Words or Less poems. Thanks for rounding up!
ah, but growing up in LA, we didn’t really have seasonal changes and only knew halloween was on the way when the hills caught fire!
Thanks for hosting, David. Love your poem!
Today I have “Ode to Sunglasses” (an original in an old Irish verse form).
http://cracklesofspeech.blogspot.com/2011/10/poetry-friday-ode-to-sunglasses.html
Also, don’t forgot to join Poetry Advocates for Children & Young Adults:
http://poetryadvocates.wordpress.com/
Steven Withrow
HI. My first time posting. Wasn’t sure what to put up, did a poem describing mama. Hope that’s OK.