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JUST A REMINDER: Tomorrow is “A Poem In Your Pocket Day”

533px-Smile_pocket_with_pipingAs part of our celebrations of interNational Poetry Month at The Bardo Group blog we are sponsoring an event in unofficial concert with the American Academy of Poets. The event, A Poem in Your Pocket Day, is all about sharing our love of poetry and the poems we love most and find most meaningful.

Corina Ravenscraft (Dragon’s Dreams) has come up with several charming ways to share poems and has also invited us to share our favorites online. Check out her post on The Bardo Group blog HERE tomorrow. Her post will publish at 12:01 a.m. PST. See you there …

483px-Emily_Dickinson_daguerreotypeMeanwhile, I think that many Emily Dickinson poems have great portability. Short, clever, profound … Here’s one of my faves, Time and Eternity.

LOOK back on time with kindly eyes,
He doubtless did his best;
How softly sinks his trembling sun
In human nature’s west!

…………– Emily Dickinson

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Le Fée Verte, Absinthe

A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world, what difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset.” Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish writer and poet

in the wilderness of those green hours
gliding with the faerie muse along café
walls virescent, sighing jonquil wings of
poetry, inventing tales in the sooty red
mystery of elusive beauty, beguiled by an
opalescent brew, tangible for the poet and
the pedestrian, the same shared illusions
breaching the rosy ramparts of heaven

Note: This poem is posted for Victoria Slotto’s Writers’ Fourth Wednesday prompt on The Bardo Group blog HERE. We invite you to join us. The prompt is about using color in our writing. 

© 2011, poem Jamie Dedes,  all rights reserved

Albert Maignan’s painting of “Green Muse” (1895) shows a poet succumbing to the green fairy (absinthe). Musée de Picardie, Amiens.
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The Orchid Flower

img_0839Just as I wonder
whether it’s going to die,
the orchid blossoms
and I can’t explain why it
moves my heart, why such pleasure

The Orchid Flower by Sam Hamill (b. 1942), Poet and Founding Editor of Copper Canyon Press, from his book Dumb Luck

Inspired today, I decided to make the short trip from the contemplative solitude of my room to the busy, bustling, sometimes even boisterous-with-conviviality Trader Joe’s not too far from here. The purpose: to buy some orchids.  I thought I remembered that Trader’s had orchids for sale at reasonable prices. They do indeed. And how lovely they are. I bought two (the picture doesn’t do them justice) and two tea roses to light my room and softly complement and complete the green leafy plants that have been my companions for some years now.  With their complex formation and color variation, the orchids have a natural poetry that blends with the book-lined shelves. They make me smile as I spin my own soul’s poetry, which has to be worked for and which I can only hope will be as fully organic as the naked beauty of an orchid.

© 2014, words and photo, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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The Burden of a Shared Name

As part of celebrating interNational Poetry Month, Blaga Todorova (Between the Shadows and the Soul) has written an essay about the Bulgarian poet, Blaga Dimitrova, which is posted today on The Bardo Group blog. Dimitrova was – in addition to being a poet – a writer and the former Vice President of Bulgaria. She was the inspiration for John Updike’s short story “The Bulgarian Poetess” … so read on and link through to the complete post. Two of Blaga Dimitrova’s poems are included there …

The Bardo Group Beguines's avatarThe BeZine

571px-Blaga_Dimitrova_Youn I used to hate her, foolish, a teenager’s hate that can only be explained in a parallel universe where logic doesn’t exist. I was a sixteen-year-old girl in a class with additional studies of mathematics. I was supposed to have the sharp brain, the emotion-free behavior required for someone who was a shining star in solving mathematical problems. Then suddenly there it was: the literature lesson about her and one of her poems I don’t even remember. The teacher decided that I was the one who should talk about her that day because of the first name we shared. 41GHNKWJ10L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_

It was a disaster! I hadn’t read a word from what was written in the school books about her and her poetry. When I was asked the question ‘What do you think Blaga Dimitrova’s poem symbolizes?’ all I could think about to answer was, “The only person who really knows what the words…

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