The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science & Poetry

Poetry Friday,

This new book is wonder-smitten, a term I'm borrowing from poet-author-anthologist Maria Popova. I highly recommend requesting your local public library purchase a copy so that you and your community can check it out. 

Storey Publishing. October 2024

After listening to an interview of Maria Popova on NPR (I believe it was with Krista Tippet on, On Being, but I cannot find what I heard as I write this post), I asked my local library to purchase this book and checked yes to the question: Would you like to be the first to check it out?

As I perused the poems and pages I kept an eye out for my 2024 OLW. I found WORLD in lots of paragraphs and lines.  I found WORLD in, The Octopus and the Unknown, by Maria Papova who is the brain child and anthologist of Universe in Verse.

Popova begins her piece, "To live wonder-smitten." I found striking lines all through her prose and poem. These words from, Impossible Blue, (64) grew into this golden shovel in my journal:

Impossible/this blue world
Maria Popova

Acorns tell us this;

Sky is its bluest blue above trees giving up ghosts of this world.

Linda Mitchell 11/22/24

Thank you, Ruth, for hosting this week's poetry round-up at There's No Such Thing as a God Forsaken Town. Every time I hear news of Haiti I think of you, am thankful that you are safe where you are. I pray for mercy for those still suffering there.

Butternut Sun

Hello Friday, Hello Poets,

I am back from a wonderful conference of School Librarians. We met in Williamsburg, one of my favorite places to be in autumn.

Lit by a butternut sun. Photo by Linda Mitchell 2024

Haibun and Aubade

At the end of our conference we heard that route 64 was shut down. There would be no happy winding east and north toward home for for a couple of hours. My friend bought a book of Williamsburg Ghost Stories and we strolled from asphalt to cobblestones of the old capitol. 

Though a November day, it was warm for walking. The autumn sun down-sliding and friendly as I huh-ed! to readings of ghost sightings and hauntings in the taverns and houses of Duke of Gloucester Street. 

Shops began closing for the day. A milliner took in ribboned bergeres from an outside display, The fife and drum corps lined up to play taps. Shadows stretched into long stockings. 

At the backdoor of a blacksmith I watched a modern family listen to the smithy holding a red hot piece of iron with his tongs on the anvil. A smith assistant listened too. Was she taking a fresh breath of air? Cleaning tools? She glowed beside a window open to eighteenth century life caught by my iphone as I traveled time.

butternut evening
just thirty in november

save up for winter

Linda Mitchell--draft

My dear World...I worry for you. There's a new poem on World's padlet.

Thank you poet and poem curator extraordinaire, Karen Edminsten, for hosting our round up this week.