DO YOU KNOW that today is Poem in Your Pocket Day? Celebrate verse and its authors today by carrying and sharing a poem you especially treasure. Maybe you’ll choose one of our faves, like Lucille Clifton’s “Sisters”, or any of those we gathered a while back when we were compiling our very own commonplace books. For more inspiration, be sure to check out the website of the American Academy of Poets, the fine folks who organize this special day, every year. In honor of the day, another sister poem, this one by Rainer Marie Rilke:

The Sisters

Look how the same possibilities
unfold in their opposite demeanors,
as though one saw different ages
passing through two identical rooms.

Each thinks that she props up the other,
while resting wearily on her support;
and they can’t make use of one another,
for they cause blood to rest on blood,

when as in the former times they softly touch
and try, along the tree-lined walks,
to feel themselves conducted and to lead;
ah, the ways they go are not the same.

Me? It’s nearly impossible to choose, but I’m taking a bit of  Emily with me today. How about you, sisters?

Special thanks to The Unquiet Librarian for the image above!

Click here to view the embedded video.

POET LUCILLE CLIFTON, I’m ashamed to say, was unknown to me until a recent afternoon spent soaking in literature procrastinating at the incredible Academy of American Poets website, poets.org.

She’s an American treasure, a prolific poet and author, a recipient of just about every major poetry award or fellowship you could think of (if you were thinking of such things) and her poem “sisters” is one that just made me want to cry, dance and sing. Sometimes, poetry just does that to me.

sisters

me and you be sisters.
we be the same.

me and you
coming from the same place.

me and you
be greasing our legs
touching up our edges.

me and you
be scared of rats
be stepping on roaches.

me and you
come running high down purdy street one time
and mama laugh and shake her head at
me and you.

me and you
got babies
got thirty-five
got black
let our hair go back
be loving ourselves
be loving ourselves
be sisters.

only where you sing,
I poet.

Enjoy, and to learn more, read this biography, and treasure this list of favorite Clifton poems selected by Clifton’s longtime editor. Also, be sure to check out our recent poetry show, curated by Anna Clarke, read about commonplacing, and most all, reemember–poetry has power.

(Thanks to BOA Editions for the image of Lucille Clifton, and PoemHunter for the text of “sisters.”)

A knitted poem project contribution, from London knit shop Prick Your Finger

FROM THE “OH, HOW WE WISH we’d thought of that” files comes this project, both inspired and oddly moving: the knitted poem. Yes, a poem. Rendered letter by fastidious letter in knitted squares.

Hundreds of knitters around the world are taking part, and the whole project is the brainchild of England’s Poetry Society. Director Judith Palmer was quoted in the UK newspaper The Guardian as saying, “A poem is often a small thing that packs a larger punch than its scale suggests–it’s not big and shouty.”

We couldn’t agree more; as you probably know by now, we love poetry precisely for its ability to make enormous connections in a few carefully-chosen words. We also love knitting (though summer is a slow time for me, at least, on the needles), and Margaret, well…Margaret doesn’t knit at all. (But that’s another story.) We think Palmer said it perfectly: “With poetry and with knitting, you work line by line, and if something goes wrong you have to unravel it.”

The poem that will be spelled out from the knitted alphabet is a secret, known only to a select few. If you were going to have a poem, writ large, in the craft of your own hand, what would you choose? Let us know, and don’t forget to check back–as soon as the secret is revealed, we’ll be sure to report it.

A 17th Century Commonplace Book

O NE OF MY SISTER-FRIENDS is going through a rough, tough time. Wisely, I think, she’s remembered to put out the call to her sisters both real (lucky girl, she has two of them) and virtual for support. I was particularly struck by a brilliant request she made a couple of weeks ago. What did she ask for to get her through? You’ll never guess.

She’d started keeping a journal, on the advice of several, and it was helping. But she wanted more than her own words. She asked us to send her the words of others that had meant something to us, inspired us, helped us process through our own dark storms. My sweet friend asked us for poetry.

What she is creating to carry her through hard times is a centuries-old tradition, the commonplace book. Commonplacing is “the practice of entering literary excerpts and personal comments into a private journal, that is, into a commonplace book or, to use a 17th century synonym, a silva rerum (“a forest of things”). Typically the excerpts were regarded as exceptionally insightful or beautiful or as applicable to a variety of situations, and so as such they are often especially quotable. . . . The practice of commonplacing can be traced back in the European tradition to the 5th century B.C.E. and the Sophist, Protagoras.” (This is from library scholar Norman Anderson, who’s got an entire bibliography on commonplacing, here. Another great resource is Professor Lucia Knoles.)

I am too disorganized to have my own commonplace book, but I am a lover of poetry from the time I was a tiny girl. My mother likes to remember how she read Emily Dickinson to baby me while I (messily) ate my lunch. She got to hear beautiful words, so did I, and she didn’t have to watch me smear peas all over my face and plate. As I’ve grown older, I still love Emily, but I’ve got other picks, too. I sent them on to my friend, and others responded as well. Little is more inspiring than suddenly receiving flashes of beautiful brilliance from an entire network of people, connected by the love of a friend.

I loved this quote, from Thoreau: “Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life…. know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw at it still.”  Chew on that, and be sure to read some of the wonderful poems friends suggested:

• Sharon Olds, The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb

• Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

• Robert Hass, Meditations at Lagunitas

• Richard Brautigan, Your Catfish Friend

What would you recommend?