Sharing a poem

As many of you know, April is National Poetry Month, and I wanted to share a couple of poems before the month is over. This one is by Kathleen Norris, award-winning poet, writer, and author of The New York Times bestsellers The Cloister Walk, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, and The Virgin of Bennington. "Luke 14, a Commentary" - Kathleen Norris (Luke 14:7-24) He is there like Clouseau at the odd moment, just right: when he climbs out of the fish pond into which he has spectacularly fallen, and says condescendingly to his hosts, the owners of the estate: "I fail where others succeed." You know this is truth. You know he'll solve the mystery. Unprepossessing as he is, the last of the great detectives. He'll blend again into the scenery, and more than once he'll be taken for the gardener. "Come now," he says, taking us for all we're worth, "Sit in the low place." ...
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Review: Cloud of Ink by L. S. Klatt

I think I've learned my lesson. I truly enjoy poetry even though I don't read it often, and I was looking forward to reading this collection, but I got it as an e-galley. Apparently I need to stick with actual, physical books when reading poetry. I think I would have read slower, appreciated it more if I had had the printed version. And the formatting didn't help the situation. This the description from Goodreads, since to be honest I missed the meaning on most of the poems. The imagery was interesting, the writing eloquent, but they just went past me. I think I may give it a try again, but pick up the paperback first. On the surface, L. S. Klatt’s poems are airy and humorous—with their tales of chickens wandering the highways of Ohio and Winnebago trailers rolling up to heaven and whales bumping like watermelons in a bathtub—but just under the surface they turn disconcertingly serious...
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Where the Steps Were by Andrea Cheng

Where the Steps Were by Andrea Cheng (The suggested age range this is marketed to is grades 2-4, but I'm not sure if they would really get it or connect with the format. I read it by myself, so this review is from my point of view as an adult with a child in elementary school.) I found this book of free verse poems through the eyes of five third-graders touching, revealing, beautiful. Cheng truly captures the thoughts, dreams, fears and worries of a group of third graders spending their last year at Pleasant Hill Elementary. The five students, Dawn, Kayla, Jonathan, Anthony, and Carmen, are all in Miss D.'s class and they adore here. She teaches lessons about the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Harriet Tubman, and the kids relate, witnessing racism and oppression in their own lives. Each of the children are individuals dealing with issues common to all third graders, like friendships, family relationships and the...
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Game Night Poem

"Monopoly" by Connie Wanek We used to play, long before we bought real houses. A roll of the dice could send a girl to jail. The money was pink, blue, gold as well as green, and we could own a whole railroad or speculate in hotels where others dreaded staying: the cost was extortionary. At last one person would own everything, every teaspoon in the dining car, every spike driven into the planks by immigrants, every crooked mayor. But then, with only the clothes on our backs, we ran outside, laughing. "Monopoly" by Connie Wanek, from On Speaking Terms. Copper Canyon Press, 2010. I am an Amazon associate....
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