Sticks are Dangerous for Girls at Noel even if we all are Dusting.

   I'm back! Not from the dead, but from a long week of no time for poetry. Here goes the list.
   1) Dusting, by Marilyn Nelson. A lovely little poem centered around her gratitude for being alive and, well, here. I liked the images this poem conjured in my mind, of us all truly being little pieces of dust doing dusty things in such a large universe.
   2) Sticks, by Thomas Sayers Ellis. This is a sad poem, I think it was about a child who was abused by his father, and felt like he was sinking. But then he discovered writing, and that became what he took his frustration out on. So say his dad hit him- He'd write it down.
   3) Dangerous for Girls, by Connie Voisine. This poem was kinda freaky, but at the same time, it was like a safety lesson for girls and women everywhere. It was centered around a girl, any girl, seeing all the things happening around her, bloody Jane Does being found in refrigerators, women going missing without a trace, etc. Basically though, the girl in the poem doesn't think anything bad will happen to her, that it's always some one else. Unfortunately, she gets drunk one night, and meets a stranger, and in the morning, you can infer she was "that other girl" who disappeared.
   4) Noel, by Anne Porter. Yes, I am perfectly well aware that this poem is very out-of-season, as a matter of fact, it's about Christmas, and explaining it to kids. I liked how the poem sounded, since I could relate to it really well. Christmas is, after all, a magical time of year. December, actually, is a magical time of year. I really adore Christmas (if you haven't figured that out yet).
   Have a good week, and enjoy killing some chocolate bunnies.

Poetry for the Week

    First off, there's this amazing poem, The Rose of Battle, by W.B. Yeats. Fantastic poem, I love it. If you've ever read The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, it's actually featured in the beginning of The Sweet Far Thing, the final installment in the series. Problem is, it's not featured on the poetry website, which is too bad. I was really looking forward to adding it to my notebook. However, there were several other poems of his that I liked too.
   1) A Prayer For My Daughter, a very sweet, very sentimental poem about a parent wishing the best for their daughter throughout her life.
   2) The Player Queen, which is a song that's from an unfinished (and unnamed) play. It's about a mother who, I think, is imagining her son growing up to be a wonderful person, a king of sorts.
   3) Easter 1916, I think this is about describing the poet's emotions concerning the Easter Rising  in Ireland against British rule on Easter, 1916. On a side note, the uprising was apperantly unsuccessful, and most of the Irish republican leaders involved were executed for treason.
    There were some other poems I found on the website as well.
    1) Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost. It's about how you have to cherish life, but yet we sometimes just take it for granted. Also referenced in The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton.
   2) Famous, by Naomi Shihab Nye. This was the first time I've read this poem, and I liked it a lot. There's just something about her poetry that makes you think.
   3) Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen. A poem about what fighting in WW2 was really like, mostly centered around the hideous mustard gas used on enemies, and how dying for your fatherland isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Spring Break

   Hello to all,
   First off, I'd like to state that I sadly just signed up at poets.org for the daily poems. Therefore, I've been shifting through a bunch of different poetry topics to find different poems that sound interesting. So far, I've found four I really liked.
   1) Red Slippers, by Amy Lowell. I really liked this poem because you see it so much in everyday life. Maybe you actually are shopping, maybe you aren't, but you see something that you can't or won't have. So you're stuck wishing for it, sometimes even after you walk away.
   2) The Land of Nod, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Unsurprisingly, this particular piece of poetry is centered around dreams. It tells of how you go into a different world when you dream, how how it can be scary and wonderful. However, you can't quite ever go back (at least not to the same dream), which can be both a good thing and a bad thing.
   3) To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell. First off, whoever put this poem into the "love" section of the site was a complete moron. They likely didn't take the time to bother figuring out what it really meant. Kinda like being told a certain word means "Hello" in a foreign language and then accidentally swearing at the person from that country without meaning to, cause you think that word means hello. Basically, don't ever give the poem as a lovey-dovey thing. Anyway, I'll post the poem here. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16076
   4) The Sandman, by Margaret Thomson Janvier. The poem is basically just about going to sleep, and about the Sandman who makes it happen. He closes people's eyes at night. It's sweet.
   As for books I've read over break, I've been trying to work my way through two German travel guides on some old castles. I've been feeling like my German has been getting rusty lately, so I thought the books (which are in German) would be a good challenge. I also read a story in poetry, The Sign of the Seahorse, by Graeme Base. It's about sea creatures living in a coral reef that's becoming polluted, and they must follow the seahorses to a new reef. I also am re-reading The Hobbit by Tolkien, since I haven't read it in a good amount of time.