All Things End

After 78 posts over more than six years, I’ve decided to end this blog.

That’s big news, I suppose, so I’ll let it sit a minute before I continue.

I’ve enjoyed posting to my blog, A Collection of Thoughts and Ideas, over the past several years. But, as the popular saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Wikipedia explains this saying is thought to stem from Geoffrey Chaucer’s epic poem Troilus and Criseyde, written around 1380, where he wrote in book 3, lines 615-616, “But at the laste, as every thing hath ende/She took hir leve….”

If Chaucer could recognize in the 1380s that all things end, certainly I can recognize it now. And, unlike my extended break from blogging back in 2022, I don’t intend this ending to be temporary. Can I guarantee it won’t be temporary? Of course not. I don’t have ESP so can’t predict the future. But as of now, my intention is for this ending to be permanent.

To anyone who has enjoyed reading my blog or who has sent me feedback on my posts, I appreciate you. And if you ever wonder about my latest thoughts or ideas, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you!

“The End” written in cursive script. (OpenClipArt/mpuq)

Poetry and Emotions

Have you ever explored your emotions through the medium of poetry? I do occasionally. I’ve written about this subject before, and when I did, I shared that even though most of my study of poetry has focused on the analysis of other people’s poems (such as an analysis I wrote of Seamus Heaney’s poem “The Rain Stick”), I did once take a poetry writing class. I shared a poem I wrote for that class, and I wrote about how it was the product of vague memories from a time when I lived in Pittsburgh, PA.

Reflecting again on that poem now, I can see in my memory images of walking along the streets of my neighborhood there, which were filled with mid-sized brick apartment houses and single-family homes and which I incorporated into the poem. I can also vividly remember the woman who lived across the hall from me and who I used to help carry groceries up to her third-floor walk-up apartment. Thinking about it now years later, I’m filled with nostalgia and affection for both her and that neighborhood.

Back in March 2020, I shared a few more poems, and these were focused on the theme of St. Patrick’s Day. The poems were mostly lighthearted and experimented with poetic forms I’m not accustomed to writing in. They were an attempt to lighten my and others’ spirits in a time of widespread pandemic lockdowns (which, I confess, I sometimes wish we could go back to rather than facing the fear of this still rapidly spreading disease every time I go out in public).

Today, I’m sharing another poetry writing experience. This poem deals with both uplifting and melancholic emotions as well as the emotions of love and grief. Like the St. Patrick’s Day poems, I again decided to experiment with a poetic form I’m not used to writing in, this time the ode. I’ve modeled my poem roughly on the stanza form and rhyme scheme of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.”

I’ve found that poetry writing can be a great way to express my feelings. The form of the poem doesn’t matter to me. Sometimes I write in free verse, while other times I use a particular poetic form as a heuristic to structure my thinking. Either way, I find myself processing both positive and negative emotions, bringing them to my awareness rather than letting them linger unidentified in my depths. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to do the same.

Gardenia (Flickr/Alabama Extension, Janet Guynn)

Ode to the Gardenia

I
O hedgerow of gardenia flower,
As if from lovely heaven sent,
You trigger my reflective power,

And make me think of things long spent.
I wonder into days gone by,
When once your heady perfumed scent

And bold white blossoms turned an eye
To your unending beauty sweet,
As if the time would not just fly;

In such memories may I meet
And share my love that was so strong,
Glad each other again to greet:

Although I know it won’t last long,
While it does, I’ll burst forth in song.

II
Your smell so floral and heady,
Its deep pungent odor grips me:
I wax nostalgic already

To times when she was young and free,
And though some cares did burden us,
I thought like this we’d always be.

Your bouquet brings bees—buzz and fuss—
Whether potted or in the ground,
Yet their presence brings not a cuss,

For while they scare us with their sound,
They lack the will to cause a sting,
And simply flitter all around:

O gardenia, of thee I sing,
So thankful for the joys you bring.

III
You, gardenia, so true and bright,
With leaves and stems of such dark green
And blossoms of the purest white,

You’re the prettiest bloom I’ve seen
Though others thrive this time of year
Your meaning they could never glean,

For while I see you, some small tear
Aims to make its way down my cheek;
My thoughts of her too deep I fear,

Past joys I strive and strain to seek—
In you, gardenia, I see joy
As some release, week after week:

You are beautiful while not coy
And bring a sweetness not too cloy.

IV
O gardenia, please stop the time,
Your flowers dropping, depressing,
Few buds remain, color of lime,

The hours fleeting, so distressing,
What blooms linger turn dark and brown,
Your delightful form undressing

As if discarding a bright gown,
Littering the soil beneath you
And bringing my happy mood down.

O let’s go back in time anew
To when you first opened your bloom;
My spirit with your life renew

And lead me not to dark and doom
But let me feel her love—kaboom.

V
Amazing how a simple plant
Brings such emotion to the fore,
Imagine it I almost can’t

Except I’ve felt it to my core;
Its effect has moved me so deep
I’ve yearned again for days of yore

When once her love did truly seep
Into the recess of my heart
Those memories I’ll always keep.

It’s a sad truth we all must part,
Leave behind those for whom we care
It leaves a taste too sharp and tart:

O gardenia, do let me bear 

Mem’ries of Grandma, here and there.

In Honor of St. Patrick's Day

With the world currently facing the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Patrick’s Day this year is a little different than most. Many parades are canceled, and a lot of pubs and bars are closed, so people may be feeling out of sorts as they try to figure out alternative ways to celebrate the holiday. Other than drinking a Guinness or eating some corned beef and cabbage in the solitude of your own home, what can you do to recognize the day?

A typical St. Patrick's Day parade. (Personal collection/Karen P. Peirce)

After thinking through some options, I’ve decided to offer up a few original St. Patrick’s Day-themed poems. These poems take a variety of forms, most of which I don’t usually write. As I’ve mentioned before, I sometimes write poetry, but usually my poems are in free verse. Let me know if you can figure out which forms I’ve tried for this special occasion! 

St. Paddy and the Snakes
There once was a boy named Paddy;
To the snakes he was a baddy.
He trudged through the peat,
Bone sore to his feet.
He truly was a great laddie!

Irish Heather
The Irish heather
lying dormant ‘til July—
Sudden purple bloom

St. Patrick’s Tale
Patrick is a saint of yore,
A man like him ne’er come before,
Truly Christian to the core.

Rich and famous he was not,
Instead a slave was his life’s lot,
Called to preach was all he’d got.

Keep the faith, dear Patrick boy! Your future’s bright and brings great joy!

A Prayer for St. Patrick
When he went roaming lone along the heath,
His heart was sad, his thoughts sunk oh so low,
And he was sure no one could fall beneath
His current state of trouble here below.

His mind it drifted to his past so free;
His house, his home, his friendships seemed secure,
And cares were none so he could simply be
A boy whose thoughts and acts could just be pure.

But then life changed and hardships came his way;
With diligence he met them and with faith.
One day again he knew his joy would play
For all to see, and save he would each wraith.

Oh dear St. Patrick, may our God bless thee
With life forever lasting, may it be!

St. Patrick’s Day is Here!
St. Patrick’s Day is here!
Put on green clothes;
Have a hearty drink of beer.
Let the cares of the day slip away!

Put on green clothes!
Don’t be shy;
Let the cares of the day slip away.
Be light and happy once and for all!

Don’t be shy!
Listen to the bagpipes;
Be light and happy once and for all.
Dance a jig to the lilting tune!

Listen to the bagpipes!
St. Patrick’s Day is here;
Dance a jig to the lilting tune.
Have a hearty drink of beer!

On Poetry

In a previous post, I wrote about a talk I attended on the poet Seamus Heaney. I attended the talk because I’ve always enjoyed poetry. One of my favorite books when I was a child was When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne, a book of poetry by the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh series. My mother read these poems to me before I could read for myself. I liked them so much that when I took a public speaking class in high school and had to recite a poem by memory, I chose “Halfway Down” from When We Were Very Young. The poem describes a child sitting on a step halfway down a staircase, one of my favorite places to sit in my house when I was growing up.

When I graduated from middle school, my eighth grade language arts teacher gave everyone in her class a book that she thought we’d like. For me, she chose a collection of Emily Dickinson poetry. Somehow in high school and college I never took a class focused solely on poetry, although poetry was certainly part of the many literature classes I took as an English major in college. I can still remember Roy Starling, one of my professors at Rollins College, leading a class discussion of William Wordworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” in a course about the Romantic Period. This poem is well-known for the narrator’s description of daffodils along the edge of a lake and the way the memory of the flowers is able to provide some cheer later on.

Beautiful Daffodil Flowers. (Pexels/Chad Russell)

Because I focused on the field of rhetoric and composition in graduate school, I didn’t take any creative writing courses as a graduate student, and the few literature courses I took were theoretical rather than poetic. However, I did take a poetry writing class once through a non-credit, continuing education program that Brown University used to offer. The instructor, Nancy Donegan, was a poet who taught at Brown, and she gave assignments focused on strengthening attention to language and detail. I remember sometimes writing in the style of an assigned poet, or other times working from assigned first lines, or other times being assigned a set number of syllables to include in each line, or a set number of adjectives to include. I saved the poems my classmates wrote for that class, and I saved the poems I wrote, too. Here’s one of them:

Two stories up, behind a closed window

reflecting tree branches, lives a woman

alone, with white puffy hair,

a dry complaining voice, and legs not as limber

as once before. Each day she makes the few short steps

out of her blue-carpeted living room,

through the glass sliding door, and onto a brick

balcony adorned with arched pillars and iron-work railing.

There she used to grow geraniums

in hanging pots, but now she’d rather sit

in a rocking chair in the sun, watching leaves

fall off the alley tree—night approaching.

I don’t remember the inspiration for this poem, but given that I wrote it not long after living in Pittsburgh, PA, it was probably an attempt to describe a scene or a person I witnessed there. The woman in the poem reminds me of the woman who lived across the hall from me in the apartment building where I lived. I used to sometimes help her carry her groceries up the stairs to the third floor where our apartments were, and she had the white puffy hair, dry complaining voice, and legs not as limber as once before that I refer to in the poem. As I remember it, though, her apartment did not have a balcony, so perhaps this poem is a melding of memories.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve kept both academic and personal journals on and off throughout my life, and occasionally, poetry appears in the personal journals. Sometimes I find that words come in poetic, rather than prose, form. I'm not sure why, nor am I sure why at other times my writing is more matter-of-fact. I just take the words as they come, and when they don’t come at all, I wait until they do again. There are long stretches of time when my personal journal pages remain blank. Until recently, my personal journal endured a long stretch of blankness, but with the advent of this blog, my personal journal writing is now online instead. I think it will be interesting to see whether new poetry emerges in this medium.