A Prayer in Spring (by Robert Frost)

A Prayer in Spring
by Robert Frost
[from A Boy’s Will (1913)]

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.



   

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To the Thawing Wind (by Robert Frost)

To the Thawing Wind
by Robert Frost
[from A Boy’s Will (1913)]

Come with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snow-bank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate’er you do to-night,
Bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit’s crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o’er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.



   

Open Mic, Part 2: J.E. Stanley at Deep Cleveland 3/8/2013

Video permalink: http://youtu.be/I0DYfvhKPic

J.E. Stanley reads “The Sad Gravity of the Moon” from his newly released chapbook Selected Regions of the Moon [NightBallet Press] on 8 March 2013 during the open mic portion of the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour at MugShotz Coffee in North Royalton, Ohio.

J.E. Stanley is an accountant and on again/off again guitarist from the grayscale suburban wilderness of Northeastern Ohio where he is lucky enough to hang out with the Deep Cleveland Poets and the Cleveland Speculators. His previous books include Rapid Eye Movement (Crisis Chronicles Press), Dark Intervals (vanZeno Press), Dissonance (Deep Cleveland Press) and, co-authored with Joshua Gage, Intrinsic Night (Sam’s Dot Publishing). His work has appeared in Amaze, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Cinema Spec, the Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle, Paper Crow, The Rhysling Anthology, Scifaikuest, Sein und Werden, Star*Line, Sybil’s Garage and numerous other mainstream and genre publications. He continues to assert that, winged or not, Man was always meant to fly; the moon and stars were just put there as incentives.

Wind and Window Flower (by Robert Frost)

Wind and Window Flower
by Robert Frost
[from A Boy’s Will (1913)]

Lovers, forget your love,
     And list to the love of these,
She a window flower, 
     And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil 
     Was melted down at noon,
And the cagèd yellow bird 
     Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane, 
     He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by, 
     To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind, 
     Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds, 
     And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill, 
     He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within 
     Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed 
     To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass 
     And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside 
     And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze 
     A hundred miles away.

   

Open Mic, Part 3: Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour 3/8/2013

Video permalink: http://youtu.be/AqF1YIqqM2M

Part three (conclusion) of an open mic emceed by Joshua Gage on Friday 8 March 2013 (International Women’s Day) during the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour at MugShotz in North Royalton, Ohio,  this clip includes readings by Mary Turzillo, Dan Smith, Jeff Kosiba, Christopher Franke, Redd, Lacie Clark Semenovich and Leah Mueller.


   

Open Mic, Part 1: Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour 3/8/2013

Video permalink: http://youtu.be/X2Xydi1NxyE
Part one of an open mic emceed by Joshua Gage on Friday 8 March 2013 (International Women’s Day) during the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour at MugShotz in North Royalton, Ohio,  this clip includes readings by Patrick Clark, Azriel Johnson, Skylark Bruce, the poet formerly known as Andrew Line, John Burroughs, Shelley Chernin, Vertigo Xi’an Xavier, and Geoffrey Landis.

Leah Mueller: Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour 3/8/2013

http://youtu.be/nBLamnwH-yw

Leah Mueller reads poetry from her book Queen of Dorksville (2012, Crisis Chronicles Press), during the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour at Mugshotz in North Royalton, Ohio, on 8 March 2013. 

Leah Mueller has been writing poetry for as long as she can remember.  From 1996-2001, she was co-host of the popular open mike “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” in Tacoma, Washington, which was featured numerous times at Tacoma’s annual First Night celebration.  She has appeared at countless open mikes and featured reader gigs, and was the poetry slam winner at the International Women’s Day event in Portland, Oregon, in 2004.  Leah divides her time between Chicago, IL and the Pacific Northwest, having considerable trouble determining which of the two is really home.

Lacie Clark Semenovich: Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour 3/8/2013

Video permalink: http://youtu.be/k6tB7632ZQU


Lacie Clark Semenovich reads poetry, including from her book Legacies (2012, Finishing Line Press), during the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour at Mugshotz in North Royalton, Ohio, on 8 March 2013. 

Born in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio, Lacie Clark Semenovich moved to northern Ohio in 1996 to attend Kent State University where she earned a B.A. in English and a Writing Certificate. She moved to the Cleveland area in 2001, with her husband where they live in a perpetual construction zone of do-it-yourself home renovations. In 2008, Clark earned an M.A. in English Literature from Cleveland State University. Her poetry can be found in Barrelhouse, Autumn Sky Poetry, Zygote in My Coffee, MOBIUS, Kansas City Voices, and other journals.

Imitation of Spenser (by John Keats)

 

Imitation of Spenser
by John Keats

Now Morning from her orient chamber came,
And her first footsteps touch’d a verdant hill;
Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silv’ring the untainted gushes of its rill;
Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill,
And after parting beds of simple flowers,
By many streams a little lake did fill,
Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,
And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.

There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright
Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below;
Whose silken fins, and golden scalès light
Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow:
There saw the swan his neck of arched snow,
And oar’d himself along with majesty;
Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show
Beneath the waves like Afric’s ebony,
And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously.

Ah! could I tell the wonders of an isle
That in that fairest lake had placed been,
I could e’en Dido of her grief beguile;
Or rob from aged Lear his bitter teen:
For sure so fair a place was never seen,
Of all that ever charm’d romantic eye:
It seem’d an emerald in the silver sheen
Of the bright waters; or as when on high,
Through clouds of fleecy white, laughs the cœrulean sky.

And all around it dipp’d luxuriously
Slopings of verdure through the glossy tide,
Which, as it were in gentle amity,
Rippled delighted up the flowery side;
As if to glean the ruddy tears, it tried,
Which fell profusely from the rose-tree stem!
Haply it was the workings of its pride,
In strife to throw upon the shore a gem
Outvieing all the buds in Flora’s diadem.


* * * * * * *

Daedalus (by Shelley Chernin)

Shelley Chernin at the Hessler Street Fair, 2012
photo by John Burroughs

Daedalus

Where to land? His child
drowned. He does not know

the dance, but flaps and flaps
tern-feathered arms. Reflexive
choreography. When the bit

of boy tripped and scraped a shin,
his father nestled him snug

to chest, to rise and fall
of breath. A clever dad,
to make his son a bit of bird,

a chance, a wish, a way
to fly by nets and mazes. At last

unfettered, the young man turned
and turned on phantom wings, danced
a solar tarantella into the sea.

Shoulders molt and still heart
beats and beats in search of home.



* * * * *
Shelley Chernin is a freelance writer and ukulele player. Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, Durable Goods, Big Bridge, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon, the Heights Observer and the 2010 and 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest anthologies. She was awarded 2nd Place in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest, and the Akron Art Museum awarded her Honorable Mentions in their New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. She is the author of The Vigil, published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2012.

“Daedalus” won an Honorable Mention in the Akron Art Museum’s New Words Poetry Contest in 2009, and was previously published at the Akron Art Museum’s website.