Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2013

New books poem!

Lots and lots of new books have arrived in the Teen Room -- yippee!  One of our cataloging librarians, the erudite and dedicated Dan, has written a poem based on their titles.  Enjoy!



The Present Addresses the Past

I’ll be openly straight with you,
even after the lives we lost
together are gone forever.

I dare you
to reboot the program, transform
the outsiders into insiders.

Let them be absent no longer in the
unbreakable transparent world
hiding its mojo inside our dreams.

If you find me wild awake, it will be
because the monsters of men have
gathered with the stone demon
to rise up whatever toxic
pandemonium they can stir.

Awakening from our long slumber, will we
still hear the murmuring zombie underground,
smell the rot and ruin from the zombie city, and
be reminded of what happens

when we do not get back before dark?

After we’ve been rescued
from the riptide of our worst nightmares,
some stranger will be
hovering above us when we wake,
singing your praises, but chanting a litany
of all the symptoms of my insanity.

Each of us will have a simultaneous realization that
the time for angel experiments has passed.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Awesomeness!


 

 
1.

 
It wasn’t over a woman that war began, but it’s better
To see it this way, my myth professor loved to say, a man
From the South rumored to extort the bodies of college girls
Into higher grades. My girlfriend of the time told me so —

 
He was a creep, she
Got an A in the class and liked his joke about religion
As self-mutilation, it was Ramadan then and, O Helen,
I was fasting. I lie awake in a desert night east

 
Of the Atlantic on the verge of rain, the catapulted grains
Of sand on hot zinc roof, the rustle of leaves, the flap
Of peeling bark on trees whose names I do not know, and where
Would I find a botany guide here. Water flowed

 
Like a river from the Jabal once.
There were elephant pools, alligator
Streams, and a pond for the devil to speak in human tongues.
All desiccant names now after an earthquake

 
Shuffled the ground decades ago. It will rain soon,
I’m assured, since nothing has stopped
The birds from migration. All the look-alikes
Are already here: the stork, the heron.

 
The white flying flowers, the ibis, and the one
That aesthetizes you more.
 
Pulse: 1
Fady Joudah
 

Monday, April 29, 2013

Today's Poem: Poetry

[this one made me laugh.]


Ladislaw the critic
is five feet six inches high,
which means
that his eyes
are five feet two inches
from the ground,
which means,
if you read him your poem,
and his eyes lift to five feet
and a trifle more than two inches,
what you have done
is Poetry--
should his eyes remain
at five feet two inches,
you have perpetrated prose,
and do his eyes stoop
--which Heaven forbid!--
the least trifle below
five feet two inches,
you
are an unspeakable adjective.
                   


                   -Alfred Kreymborg
Thanks to the Poem-a-Day archive at Poets.org (from the Academy of American Poets).



Is there a poem you'd like to share?  Tomorrow at 3:00 we'll be hosting a Poetry Jam in the Teen Room.  Read a favorite poem, one you've written yourself, a friend's poem -- and come hear other favorites!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Today's Poem: Poem by Langston Hughes

I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends
Soft as it began --
I loved my friend.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Poetry contests and other keen ways to show your stuff


  • Mitali Perkins has a writing contest over at the Fire Escape.  Prose and poetry submissions welcome!  Participants must be an immigrant or internationally adopted teen (or a teen with one immigrant parent) currently living in the United States or Canada.


  • The Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) also has a poetry contest for teens.  Ask a teacher, librarian or other youth advocate to sponsor you and submit your poem.  Please ask us!  :)

Today's Poem: Reading Comics Books in the Rain

The words in small white balloons
slide into each other under an ink mist

as the paper puckers. I strain my eyes
to read the slippery words aloud

to the girl who has mashed her cheek
into my wet shoulder as the world within

the cheap newsprint turns
flimsy and pulpy. Looking back, I realise

we shoud've stayed in that four-color world
a little longer. Escape for as long

as we could. Stave off Topeka, Kansas,
the whole goddamn world, by falling

into another one. The panels may bleed
beyond their borders, but stay contained in our hands.

The world outside bears down
like a freight train. But on that day,

a good day for reading comics,
she presses into my arm, eager to see,

and we indulge in the power
to inhabit a world a page removed from our own.


Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Today's poem: The Wolf Reader by George Szirtes

for Marilyn Hacker

There were the books, and wolves were in the books.
They roamed between words. They snarled and loped
through stories with bedraggled wolfish looks

at which the hackles rose and the world stopped
in horror, and she read them because she knew
the pleasures of reading, the page being rapt

with the magic of the fierce, and she could do
the talk of such creatures. So one day
when teacher asked if there were any who

could read, she rose as if the task were play,
to claim the story where she felt at home.
The tale was Riding Hood, the wolf was grey.

The fierceness was the wood where grey wolves roam.
She read it round, she read it through and through
It was as if the wolf were hers to comb,

like those bedraggled creatures in the zoo
that, trapped behind the bars, would snarl and stride
as you'd expect a page or wolf to do.


Thanks to the Poem-A-Day archive at Poets.org (from the Academy of American Poets).

Friday, April 5, 2013

Today's poem: The Conditional by Ada Limon

Say tomorrow doesn't come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun's a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.


Thanks to the Poem-A-Day archive at Poets.org (from the Academy of American Poets).

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

It's Poetry Month!

The Snail Ideal

When I was just a baby snail, I chose all clothes of blue.
I giggled.  "Goo goo ga ga."  Mama answered, "Coochie coo."

But as I grew, I knew I looked nice in chartreuse and pink.
And Mama never cared a whit 'bout what the neighbors think.

"Be yourself," she said.  "for that's the thing we all do well.
Let no one tell you what to wear when you're in your own shell."

When I was just a baby snail, Dad bought me soldier rattles.
And just before my bedtime I would watch them wage their battles.

But as I grew, he and I brewed pots of rosemary tea,
And perfumed all my dollhouses with passion potpourri.

"Be yourself," my daddy said.  "Don't let others presume
to tell you how you should behave when you're in your own room."

When it was time for dating, I went out to meet my fate.
I eyed the hunks and harlots till I spied the perfect mate.

We belched at all the ball games, and we swooned at the ballets,
Together we attended the hermaphrodite soirees.

"Be yourself," my partner said.  "Someday you'll be my spouse.
No one can tell us who to love when we're in our own house."

Of all God's creatures, mollusks might not be the most evolved,
Though prejudice, I'm proud to say, is one problem that we've solved.

We never try to impede anybody's natural growth,
Whether they are happy being female, male, or both.

Richard Michelson

Thursday, February 7, 2013

More stuff to keep you busy

  • The Moore Youth Center has all sorts of boss activities during February Vacation Week. It's FREE, there's a SHUTTLE and FOOD. We've got the deets here in the Teen Room, or you can call 617-349-6273.
Credit: www.shillpages.com/dw/bakert.shtml

Thursday, November 15, 2012

RELAX

The school year is in full swing. All over the Teen Room you'll see kids buckling down, sharpening their pencils, and getting to work. Homework, college applications, extracurriculars, extra credit. We're so proud of you guys!

But don't forget to relax.

Everyone relaxes in their own way. Some people like to read a good, quick book. Maybe a short poem while you eat your breakfast? Some people swear by yoga. Others by knitting. Some people might like to lay back with their fattest pair of headphones and listen to some good old fashioned classical music.

Whatever you're into, the Teen Room can help you out. Books, DVDs, CDs... we can track them down for you. I also offer a few of my favorite zone-out-and-stare videos from youtube. Watching these videos is worth hours of yoga, I'm telling you.






How do YOU relax?

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Re: Vision Spoken Word Summer Camp




Brought to you by Mass LEAP, who hosted April's poetry slam.  The camp runs all next week: Monday, July 16 through Saturday, July 21.
"Through writing, revision and performance we will inspire critical thinking through a social justice lens and provide the tools for these young people to grow as artistic leaders in their communities."



WHO: Young people ages 13 to 19, or currently enrolled in high school

WHEN: Mon-‐Thurs: 11:00 -‐ 3:00pm.
  • Friday, July 20th: Special non-mandatory field trip.
  • Saturday, July 21: Final performance!
WHERE: Madison Park High School, Boston.

HOW MUCH: Applying is free of charge; the participation fee (once you get in!) is 30.00. Scholarships available.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

To all you graduates headed for college, work and the whole wide world

(For all you have learned, and will learn, live and, of course read.  Congratulations! we are all so proud of you.)



Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Billy Collins

Saturday, March 10, 2012

MassLEAP poetry slam event coming to the Teen Room!

Dust off your rhymes, guys, because a serious display of skills is on its way, and you have the chance to participate!









Thursday, April 5th in the Teen Room:
LOUDER THAN A BOMB
Film Screening: 3:00-3:45 P.M.


Demo Slam: 5:00-6:00 P.M.

Open Mic: 6:00-6:30 P.M.*


This spring, Mass LEAP celebrates the very first Louder Than A Bomb festival in Massachusetts.  Louder Than A Bomb was started in Chicago in 2001 by poets Anna West and Kevin Coval.  It's since grown to be the largest teen poetry festival in the world, and even inspired a full-length feature film.



Teaming with Mass Poetry, Mass LEAP will be hosting the event on the MIT campus in Kresge Hall and will also be hosting the 'Student Day of Poetry' in which all youth, competing in the LTAB festival or otherwise, are welcome.  You can find out more about events leading up to the LTAB finals at massleapcollective.org


*You can stop by the Teen Room and showcase your rhymes for us anytime.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Reflection in Action multimedia art contest

Reflection in Action is an extension of the Harvard Medical School Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership Explorations program.  RIA promotes careers in science and medicine for Boston and Cambridge middle school students, as well as healthy living and the national Let's Move! campaign.

As a part of their spring program RIA is holding a Building Healthy Communities contest.  Eligible participants* may submit a work of visual art, performing art, or written art.  Three winners will receive cash prizes or gift certificates.

*6th, 7th and 8th grade students who live in Boston or Cambridge, or attend Boston or Cambridge schools, organizations, after-school programs, community programs or religious institutions.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest

This contest is sponsored by Hollins University and awards prizes for the best poems submitted by girls who are sophomores or juniors in high school.

First place (one winner): $200, plus free registration, transportation to, and housing for the Lex Allen Literary Festival at Hollins University on March 10, 2012.

Second place (six winners): $25 and publication in Cargoes.  Two copies of Cargoes.

Requirements
  • Students must be sophomores or juniors in high school
  • Poems must be submitted online
  • Students must have a faculty sponsor
  • Each student may submit no more than two poems (Microsoft Word or text document only)
  • Addtional pages must be labelled with the author's name, the title of the poem, and a page number.

Each entry must include:
  • Author's name
  • Author's mailing address
  • Author's phone number and or email address
  • Author's school
  • Address of author's school
  • Phone number of author's school


The deadline for this contest is Tuesday, November 15, 2011.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Awards & Prizes Roundup

Attention poets and friends of young heroes!

The New England Poetry Club is sponsoring three contests for young poets. The deadline for all three is April 30, 2011. For more information, contact contests@nepoetryclub.org.

Submit poems in duplicate with school name, grade, address, email address and contest name.

The John Holmes Award: for a poem by a student enrolled in a New England college. Prize $100.
Send to 2 Farrar Street, Cambridge MA 02138.

Ruth Berrien Fox Award: for a poem by a Massachusetts high school student. Prize $100.
Send to 2 Farrar Street, Cambridge MA 02138.

Longfellow Prize: for poems by Massachusetts students in elementary and middle schools. Prize $100. Funded by Friends of Longfellow House Frank Buda Memorial Fund.
Send to Longfellow National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge MA 02138.

But wait, there's more!

The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, founded by young adult author T.A. Barron, invites nominations for its 2011 awards. The Barron Prize honors young people ages 8 to 18 who have made a significant positive difference to people and our planet.

Each year, ten national winners each receive $2,500 to support their service work or higher education. Annual nomination deadline is April 30.


You can also visit their Facebook page. Grown folks, if you know a likely candidate, please consider nominating them! Young folks who think you might be eligible, curry favor with the grown folks.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Poetry Slam January 13

Organized by Literary Genius, this event is part of a series of slams culminating in a semi-final event on February 11th.

If you would like to sign up and audition at Thursday's slam, please call 617-800-9182 or email literarygeniusboston@gmail.com. But even if you don't have the performance bug, you should still come on by and cheer on the performers, from 3:30 to 5:30.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Storytelling at Riverfest

Are you going to the Riverfest this weekend?  If so, be sure to stop by the StoryStream Storytelling tent.  On Saturday, June 5 from noon to 6 pm, all kinds of storytelling activities will be taking place.  One of the most exciting pieces will be our own Trinidad Ramkissoon performing original poems (it's going to be AWESOME!).

Thursday, April 1, 2010

National Poetry Month starts today!


April is National Poetry Month and we are so freaking excited! Come to the Teen Lounge to check out our window poetry, our poetry display, and our ever changing poem picks.