Yearly Archives: 2020

To Put the Soul Right – A Poem (plus two others) by Caitlin Maude, With Thanks to Ilya Kaminsky for Sharing It

March 31, 2020 – 5:42 pm

I Long For the Rhyme of Health I long for the rhyme of health a small fresh syllable a poultice of words to put the soul right and make the body strong. I long for a rhyme to put the soul right. Caitlín Maude, trans. from the Gaelic by Pearse Hutchinson from a Facebook post […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , Comments (0)

These Days I Can’t Seem To Get Enough of Greg Orr, His Latest Book – Two More Wisdom Poems for Hard Times

March 29, 2020 – 12:23 pm

It’s narrow . . . It’s narrow, and no room For error—I zig And zag through The treacherous channel. What fool said joy Is less risky than grief? My ship could wreck On either shore. Needing to navigate By contradiction: What I want to grip, I need to release. When despair says “Let go,” I […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged Comments (0)

A Found Poem – By Italian Novelist Francesca Melandri from The Guardian on March 27th – When All of This Is Over the World Won’t Be the Same

March 28, 2020 – 10:59 pm

From The Guardian: The acclaimed Italian novelist Francesca Melandri, who has been under lockdown in Rome for almost three weeks due to the Covid-19 outbreak, has written a letter to fellow Europeans “from your future”, laying out the range of emotions people are likely to go through over the coming weeks. And what a letter […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Comments (0)

In a Strange Time, A Familiar Voice in These Pages- A Poem from Today, March 28th, by Francesca Bell from Rattle’s Poets Respond

March 28, 2020 – 10:22 pm

LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 for my husband, 21 years my senior There are so many times I could have killed you. After 28 years of marriage— the only contact sport I’ve ever stuck with— I found myself crying this morning, after a trip outside, singing Happy Birthday three times through, just to be […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged Comments (0)

The Answer to the Question “Yes” – The Whimsy and the Wise Words for a Time of Shatter – Four Poems by American Poet Gregory Orr

March 26, 2020 – 3:58 pm

The last love poem I will ever write…. Will contain an invention for turning ant’s tears Into hummingbird wings. It will hold every Elegy the night sky ever wrote for the moon. It will reveal the answer to the question “Yes.” It will feature a rosebush that grew naturally Into the shape of a woman, […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , Comments (0)

After All of This is Over – For the Pandemic, a Perfect Poem By Ada Limón, Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award

March 22, 2020 – 7:36 pm

DEAD STARS Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing. Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us. Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels so mute it’s almost in another year. I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying. We point out […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged Comments (0)

Singing in Dark Times – #9 in a series – Where Does the World Hurt – Everywhere. A Poem by Warsan Shire. And One More for Good Measure!

March 19, 2020 – 8:32 pm

what they did yesterday afternoon they set my aunts house on fire i cried the way women on tv do folding at the middle like a five pound note. i called the boy who use to love me tried to ‘okay’ my voice i said hello he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened? i’ve been praying, and […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , Comments (0)

Singing in Dark Times – #8 in a Series – Kitty O’Meara’s Gone-Viral Poem! In This Case How “It Went Viral” Means a Cure not a Disease. A Vaccine that Sings!

March 19, 2020 – 6:01 pm

Epigraph from Motto In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing About the dark times. Bertolt Brecht from Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, Eyre Methuen, 1976 Back in 2017 I started this series. After seven posts it petered out. But with the Covid-19 […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , Comments (0)

Hope Matters – A Poem for Today’s Pandemic Crisis and Much More: A Celebration of Poems by a Acclaimed Indigenous Canadian Poet and Mum, Lee Maracle, and her Daughters, Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter

March 17, 2020 – 10:15 pm

HOPE MATTERS Hope lives inside the artist: instrument, brush voice, pen, sculpture, body. Hope breathes life inside those shadowy crevices where doubt waits to feast on our weakened and dimmed inner light. Hope gives us strength to trudge through the muck and the mire to find solid ground. Hope is the home of curiosity, imagination, […]

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An Ongoing Honouring of International Women’s Day – # 3 in a Series – A Consoling Echo Poem by Margaret Noodin

March 15, 2020 – 7:40 pm

Navendamowin Mitigaakiing Apii dibikong gaashkendamyaan miinawaa goshkoziyaan endigwenh waa ezhichigewag bagoji Anishinaabensag odenang, mitigwaakiing izhaayaan miinawaa anweshinyaan. Nimawadishaag zhingwaakwag miinawaa okikaandagoog Nibizindaawaag zhashagiwag miinawaa ajiijaakwag. Nimaatookinaag zaagaa’igan ogaawag miinawaa apakweshkwayag. Niwaabaandaanan wesiinhyag-miikanan miinawaa nakwejinaanig Miidash apii bidaaban niswi giosewag miinawaa niizhwaaswi nimisenhyag dibiki-giizhigong gaazhad baabimoseyaan nikeye naawakweg zoongide’eyaan. Margaret Noodin from Native Voices, ed.CMarie Furman […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , Comments (0)