April is Poetry Month - Poem a Day

Thursday, April 02, 2009

My first order of business is to thank Avon Books, which is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers for the free book. They began a new Avon Reading Group and I love reading so I joined.:) The contest was if you commented you might get a free book. You know when I hear anything free I'm there!:) So I commented on the excerpt I'd read from the first guest author, Jenna Petersen's Her Notorious Viscount. Of course, with my life, I completely forgot about the whole thing. So I was surprised to find an email from Wendy Ho, Assistant Publicist, who told me I was getting a free book. Today I received it and I'm thrilled, because it means I'll be able to read the whole book and even review it too.:) So I told Wendy I would be putting Avon Reading Group into my blog and I urge anyone who loves romance novels to go there too. For years they have been my guilty pleasure and when we went to BEA I collected a lot of signed ones from the authors.

Next I want to let everyone who doesn't know, that April is Poetry Month. What this means is you are urged to write or read a poem a day. I'll do both, because I get the newsletter from Poets.org and I am going to post my poem every day both on the PAD website and here in my blog. I've included the link so you can read the poems posted on this website and maybe join the group and write your own. So even if I don't write anything else for my post, you will be able to see the poem I wrote that day! I hope this will encourage my readers to try writing their own and please put them in the comments here. It gives me such a kick to be in the month of April, because it forces me to write poetry which I love and love to write, but which I give up to write prose.:)

I started writing with poetry so it will always have a soft spot in my writing heart.:) Even if you don't write or read a poem a day, you can still participate. There is a day in April known as Poem in Your Pocket Day when you are encouraged to bring your poem for the day with you and put it in someone else's pocket. It can be an original or a found poem. Either way you are giving someone a poem. You can be creative about it too. Slip it into your child's lunch box or put it in your husband's pants pocket. Sometime during the day they'll find it and it should at least give them a smile.:) The goal, of course, is to further the art of poetry and give people a deeper appreciation of it.

The PAD website gives you a prompt each day and you can use that or do your own thing. Here is today's prompt and my poem:

Origin -"It can be the origin of a word, person, plant, idea, etc. Have fun with it." (taken from the website Poetic Asides with Robert Lee Brewer)

My origin

by Barbara Ehrentreu

They came together

He from a town now long

buried under the polished

boots of Nazi soldiers

who sent the inhabitants

to slaughter as if they were cattle

Grodnah, a name on a map

devoid of its humdrum bustle

erased as he is now gone

She from the middle class

second and third generation

American, young eager,

her mother’s sharp retorts

ringing in her ears reminding

her she was not like others

too willful, too fat.

He embracing her youth, her family,

the life he had yearned to achieve

to escape from the oppression of

his own.His father’s disdain at

the lifestyle he had chosen

forsaking the long black coat and felt hat

traditions never for him

She finding a comfort

an ease - no demands.

He rejoicing in the folds of her love

She damaged early

the sting of her mother’s words

burned into her flesh

He unable to cure with his

gentle ways and boisterous manner

She punishing her body with endless diets

ignoring her talent for needle and thread.

He the amateur neighborhood showman

the salesman, the artist, the shnook

She always pushing

He content to sit and dream

Her sewing, his drawing

untapped fruits

Both unaware of their abilities

Passing fears, inhibitions, boisterousness,

as they sleepwalked through their lives

pretending they had chosen the right path.

copywrite 2009 by Barbara Ehrentreu

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So I hope you are inspired to either write or read a poem or do both each day of April.:) Also, if you decide to write one please share it with me in the comments or join in at the PAD blog.:)

Until the next time thank you to my readers and please madcapmaggie, contact me so I can get your free book to you.:)

4 comments

Jan VerhoeffApril 2, 2009 at 8:29 AM
What a sad and yet inspiring tribute to lives well lived. I know the stories we see in our grandparents can be shockingly focused, but often I believe they are repeated for generations. In different ways perhaps, but various portions of their stories come to life. You've inspired me.

Thank you,
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BlackswanApril 2, 2009 at 10:00 AM
I don't do poems but I'm impressed. Great work!
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Barbara EhrentreuApril 2, 2009 at 5:15 PM
Jan,
So where is your poem?:) Thank you. Origin for me meant my own origin and this is what came out when I thought about it. They did have sad lives, because they seemed happy, but each of them never did what they should have been doing. He was a salesman almost all of my life, but he was a great mechanic and carpenter. Also, he wasn't trained as an artist, but had natural ability.She was also selling in the store they had and then did bookkeeping. She was an excellent seamstress and designed her own clothes and mine! She also did needlepoint and did her own designs. I always felt each had a sadness they never expressed.
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Barbara EhrentreuApril 2, 2009 at 5:16 PM
Shirley,
You can share a poem you love here too! Thank you!!
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