The greatest Mother’s Day poem in the world is without question the one you get from your kid, and that’s what’s up.

Here’s my Mother Day poem from my daughter:

The important thing about my mother is she’s always there
She also knows everything and even if she doesn’t,
She knows how to find out!
She can sew and iron, and make websites.
She can draw, knows about art and she knows French,
She knows a million songs and poems
She’s clever and resourceful and that ain’t all –
She’s a great cook. Her stuffed peppers are to die for.
She’s practical, she’s logical, she’s sensible,
She’s a beautiful woman.
But the most important thing about my mother is she’s always there.

I hope all you Moms had a great day and if you got a great poem, please share it.

Tags: holidays

Oh, I love this sonnet!

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

More sonnet pages:
Sonnet 1 - From fairest creatures we desire increase …
Sonnet 18 - Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day …
Sonnet 116 - Let me not to the marriage of true minds …

Tags: English, Shakespeare, sonnets

Isn’t it funny how a poet can be pretty popular in their own day and then a century or so later, they’re mostly known by their association with another poet who wasn’t much appreciated in his own lifetime? Such seems to be the situation with Frances Sargent Osgood — Poe himself gave her good reviews — and now she is known more for her friendship with him than her own work since his post-mortem popularity has certainly eclipsed hers. At the time, such a scandalous scandal brewed around their friendship, that Poe was even rumored to be her youngest baby’s daddy! Mrs. Osgood was a couple of years younger than Poe and she passed away not even a year after Poe.

I found a poem by Mrs. Osgood that was in a 4th grade reader in 1869. It’s called Labor and I can’t imagine 4th graders liking this poem, then or now, but here it is, the way it appears in that book:

LABOR

1. Labor is rest — from the sorrows that greet us;
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us,
Rest from the sin-promptings that ever entreat us,
Rest from world-sirens that lure us to ill.

Work — and pure slumbers shall wait on the pillow,
Work — thou shalt ride over Care’s coming billow;
Lie not down wearied ‘neath Woe’s weeping willow!
Work with a stout heart and resolute’ will!

2. Labor is health! Lo the husbandman reaping,
How through his veins goes the life-current leaping;
How his strong arm, in its stalwart pride sweeping,
Free as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides.
Labor is wealth — in the sea the pearl groweth,
Rich the queen’s robe from the frail cocoon floweth,
From the fine acorn the strong forest bloweth,
Temple and statue the marble block hides.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: American, poe

In the process of adding more Spanish poetry to Reely’s Poetry Pages, I came across the mystery of the poem Instantes:

Admittedly, I don’t know a whole lot of Spanish so I must rely on my browser’s translation to whatever extent I can make sense of it. So, forgive me for any mistakes or misconceptions, but from what I’ve been able to glean from this Spanish article: Jorge Luis Borges, Autor del Poema Instantes, there are 2 main claims to authorship for the poem Instantes when it is attributed to Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges.

Pick More Daisies is a very similar prose piece, the author of which was Don Herold. This piece was published in the Readers Digest in 1953.

Then there is the contention that a woman in Kentucky named Nadine Stair wrote it and the title was “If I Had My Life to Live Over.” The first known publication appears to have been March 27, 1978. (The translated page says it was in Family Circus, which I am guessing is Family Circle magazine since the only Family Circus I know about is a cartoon). But, tellingly perhaps, the Stair piece ends with “I’d pick more daisies.”

The article also details an investigation into the existence of Nadine Stair, the results of which apparently showed she never existed, but that the woman who was credited with the poem was really named Nadine Strain. It is concluded that both the piece attributed to Borges and the one credited to Stair / Strain are adapted (putting it charitably) from the Herold piece, although it is speculated that Mr. Herold may have gotten his own inspiration from an earlier writing himself, since there appears to be some quote marks after the title around the first line.

Here’s yet another one online “I’d Pick More Daisies” credited to an ‘anonymous’ friar in Nebraska, Brother Jeremiah.

There are many versions online simply attributed to ‘anonymous.’

Confused? Me, too. All the same, the whole affair leaves me with these questions:

If it was an English piece to begin with, who really translated it into Spanish?

If it was in Spanish first, why didn’t whoever translated it into English make the title “Moments”? The browser translation does and methinks that kinda sounds better. Oh, wait … Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: daisies, instantes, moments, spanish