Memorizing Poems

Posted on May 9, 2011 by literarylee

How it all Started

In August 2008, my wife watched Out of Africa one weekend I was out of town.  Near the end of the movie, Karen walks into the men’s club bar and offers the toast: “Rose lipt maidens, lightfoot boys.”  We’ve watched that movie a dozen times and wondered where those words were from, so she looked it up and discovered it was a reference to an A.E. Housman poem, With Rue My Heart is Laden.  While researching this, she read something by someone who spent long hours of business travel memorizing poetry.  When she told me, it hit like a ton of bricks:  I could do the same thing.  Continue reading →

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Mother’s Day Poem

Posted on May 8, 2011 by literarylee

Happy Mother’s Day to my own sweetie
A momma I helped you become,
As a wife and a mother
You’re surpassed by no other,
In fact, dear, you are quite the plum!

I wish we could go to Tahiti
A vacation in line with your worth
But the costs are so high
Such a distance to fly!
Instead, then, I bought you a purth.

I’d scribble it bold in graffiti
What a wonderful mother you is
Our kids are so lucky,
To have you, dear ducky,
You’re great! (let me give you a kiss.)

I ordered a handbag (a purth) online as a Mother’s Day gift and checked the Is-this-a-gift? box which gave me 160 characters to use for a greeting to be included with the package.  I tried to insert the first two stanzas but only the first fit, so that’s all she’ll get with the package.  I added a third stanza so I could post a more complete poem here as a cyber-card to my dear from her word-crazy husband.

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Duck 6

Posted on May 8, 2011 by literarylee

Looking for the cheese and quackers

(Duck Series Gallery)

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Tree Seed Season: A Million Bursts of Life

Posted on May 7, 2011 by literarylee

Life muscles on, fights to propagate, to reproduce itself.  It won’t take no for an answer, even when that no is the pavement and asphalt and more people than the city hardly knows what to do with.  Life’s insistent shout echoes in mid-spring’s hallways, its signature written time and again on sidewalks and along gutters, its produce hanging heavily from trees.

A new tree in every bundle

Continue reading →

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Mombardment

Posted on May 7, 2011 by literarylee

I made this one up.  Actually, I discovered it by accident because of a fortuitous typo.  It means an excessive amount of mothering, a lotta mom, a lotta maternal attention.  There’s no value judgment in the word; it can be both positive and negative.

Positive – All that mombardment when I was sick on Monday really helped me get back on my feet by Tuesday.

Negative – “Did you finish your homework, your piano practicing, your chores?”  So much mombardment is stifling.

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Captions. Twitter. Brevity.

Posted on May 6, 2011 by literarylee

The Life Literary’s mission, my mission, is to give people ideas for how to add words to life.  Here’s one: Write snippets.  Don’t aim for a book.  Don’t shoot for an essay.  Forget paragraphs.  Avoid even simple sentences if that is more than you want to tackle at the moment.  Write captions.  Tweet.  Be brief.

Captions

Draft descriptions of pictures.  What’s needed?  A few words only.  I post pictures (pretty, yes) but only to serve words, my main squeeze.  What’s needed for a caption?  A few words only.  I aim for pithy, punchy, profound.  Often funny.  I post two captions per picture (you, too, could write two or even three or four, but that defeats the purpose of only writing a spoonful at a time).  One is visible directly beneath and the other hidden, visible only if you hover the cursor over the picture.  For example:

Virgin Peony

The point: go find some photos, prints or cyber, and write a caption for each.  Or take a walk and look for a scene you’d like to add words to, then snap it and caption away!

Twitter Continue reading →

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Cucumber Day

Posted on May 5, 2011 by literarylee

On March fourth, I explained why it’s my favorite day of the year.  It’s the only one in which the date itself makes a sentence.  March forth!  I commented that it was a day for bold and decisive action based on the date’s pun.  Imagine my delight to discover that May 2 is an informal holiday in South Korea some call Cucumber Day.  Why?  Because when you say Five, Two (as in the actual date, 5/2) in Korean, it sounds exactly like the Korean word for cucumber (which is also the word for pickle; so why not Pickle Day?).  I confirmed this with a friend who speaks that language.  Continue reading →

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Naked Tulips

Posted on May 5, 2011 by literarylee

I waxed eloquent recently about how even when blossoms fall, the beauty of the plant is still there.  True for cherry trees, but not for tulips.  On the walk to work over the past few weeks, I enjoyed watching a couple of tulip plantings emerge and burst forth into colorful displays of joy.  How sad to see the ravages of time as they passed their peak.  Stripped of the flower, there’s nothing attractive about a nude tulip.  You have the urge, when you see a shivering crowd of these poor souls, to put a blanket or maybe a little screen around them, preserving what dignity remains, saving them from prying, pitying eyes.

These first tulips lived on the corner of Constitution and 14th.

The show begins

Continue reading →

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Flagging Spring

Posted on May 4, 2011 by literarylee

High Standards

  Continue reading →

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Garden Notes: the Lorelei After Work

Posted on May 4, 2011 by literarylee

There aren’t enough hours in a day.  Can’t I get paid to garden?  To write?

7:00 p.m. –  Stepped out to the Lorelei.  This evening’s goal: renovate the herb garden and set in the many herb plants now languishing in small pots.  Started by forking whatever soil is empty, working around the parsley, chives, thyme, lemon balm, oregano and mint growing there now.  Laid down and turned in two inches of well rotted horse manure and a couple inches more of leaf mold.  Raised the level of the garden a few inches, always a good thing.

7:17 p.m. –  Gathered the new herb garden residents.  Planted seven stunning, stocky cilantro plants (last year’s never took off) I started from seed, enough for salsa even now though there wouldn’t be much left.  These transplants are more than I got all season last year.  Also parsley I started from seed, plus scarlet runner beans to adorn the two trellises I erected last year for sweet peas that never amounted to a hill o’ beans (all that work getting them going for what?).  Continue reading →

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