Poet a Day Blog

Allow me to introduce you to Sharon Brogan. No, really - ALLOW me. It is my true pleasure to share her work with you. Versatile, evocative and moving are just a few words that describe Brogan’s poetry - but don’t take my word for it. Click on the link to Watermark - A Poet’s Notebook and fall into the rabbit hole. Don’t just scroll down the front page and read the current posts - you’ll miss all the marvelous twists and turns that have taken years to develop and build. Take a few sideroads from the Watermark sidebar to discover photography, poetry and musings from a brilliant, sensitive poet with a soft spot for cats and a unique voice. Explore the Snapshot Poetry links to find gems like Snapshot Poem 18 March 02009, where a pair of turquoise poems become the centerpiece of a poem about maturing and relationships or wander through the Oratory section to find poems like Fibromyalgia ». And don’t just read the poems - scroll down to read the comments left on them to learn how a poet can make the very personal so very universal.

Are you still here? Why? Go read Brogan’s poetry! Now!

Looking for something a little different? If the Walls Could is a single-poet blog with a difference. Interspersed with his - quite well-done - poetry, David Zen-Kennedy features “a-z poems”, nifty posts where the poem is built by the comments left on the post. The a-z poems are fun - but the real meat in Zen-Kennedy’s blogs is his own poetry - a real, conversational voice that speaks in short moments that hold far more in them than the few lines suggest. Here’s a small sample to whet your appetite:

cat cloud, wish cloud

looking out your kitchen window
we played charades with the clouds
you saw a catCloud, I saw a
wishCloud and you gave me my
first kiss, not the way I imagined it,
it was practically perfect except
for untangling your bracelet when
it got caught in my sweater. I was

… go read it to find out what comes next - then go on and read some more.

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The Miss Rumphius Effect is a delightful blog written and maintained by a teacher and mom from Richmond, Virginia. Her reviews of kid’s literature, discussions of poetry, reading and literacy and her weekly “Monday Poetry Stretch” make this blog well worth reading regularly. In addition to writing poetry and writing about poetry, Miss Rumpious also shares insights on reading, teaching and sharing poetry with children - and maintains a list of links for anyone interested in children, what they like to read and what makes them tick.

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Bird Droppings is a site of very personal poetry, written by one woman with an ear for lyrical language. Ayesha posts in spurts - so it’s worth checking back frequently to catch up on what she’s done recently. I particularly liked her poem “Bead Factory” which reminded me of the poem Jamaican Market - a flowing list of things seen. A very pretty site, as well - and Ayesha has enabled a “Rate This Post” feature that lets you assign a 1-star to 5-stars rating to each of her poems, for those that want to play judge and jury.

Let me just say that I adore Mad Kane. A self-described recovering lawyer, she writes delightful poetic political parodies that always leave me grinning the rest of the day. She is brave enough to sing her own parodies (G.O.P sung to the tune of Frere Jacque is one of my favorites) and darling enough to regularly open her blog to invite others in. Mad regularly posts writing challenges and contests - generally for haiku or limericks (one of the most underappreciated forms of poetry, IMHO) - and publishes the entries over at Mad Kane’s Poetry Blog. She has taken to using the ubiquitous Mister Linky, just another example of why I love love love Mad. It’s so easy to add your links for her meme contests.

And did I mention that they’re always fun? The one she’s running as we speak is the Bad Job Haiku/Limerick meme - and there are already a ton of entries. Drop by - there’s always something fun over at Mad Kane’s. Oh… and don’t stop with the poetry. Mad has more fun stuff on her blog than most anyone else I know - even if you roll them all up together.

I know him best as brokencrust at GotPoetry. He writes thought-provoking poetry that requires you to put on your thinking cap - at least if you want to read beyond the surface. bc’s poems aren’t easy - but whether he’s writing about a nut awaiting his fate at the hands of a squirrel or the enslavement of modern man by television waves, it’s always worth delving into his writing to find the kernels of meaning and nuggets of fun hidden beneath their surface.

Bob Hoeppner is a prolific poet with a wide ranging voice and style. His blog, Write it, Blog it, Move on…, is a wonderful read. I’ve been reading Bob’s poetry in various places for a long while now, and always enjoy it. Finding his myspace blog was a serendipitous accident. If you think that poetry blogs MUST be gussied up and prettied, templated within an inch of their lives and sportin’ all the latest kicks, this is not the blog for you - unless you really want your assumptions challenged. He posts often - several new poems a week and frequent commentary. In addition, Bob writes book and poetry reviews that are thought provoking and insightful. His poetry has been published in a number of places, most notably, at The November 3rd Club journal of political literature, or literary politics, whichever your point of view might be. Bob has the distinction of having at least one poem appear in every issue of November 3rd Club since its birth. Great poetry, check. Interesting commentary, check. Poet picture, check. It’s got everything you really need in a poet’s blog. Read it. Really.

I am a big fan of metrical poetry, as anyone who knows me knows. I especially love sonnet form. I once wrote an entire garland of sonnets, of which I have since lost most of the parts, but that should tell you just how much I love sonnets. I discovered Mike Snider about a year ago when I was blogging for the site that became poetry.jesuslist.com, and fell in love with his ability to write sonnets that didn’t sound like they were written back in ol’ Will’s time. I liked them enough to buy his chapbook 44 Sonnets (just click the Buy Now button on his site. It’s cheap - and worth more than triple the money. Trust me on this.) Mike’s formal blog at the sonnetarium is full of his musings about poetry, the art of creating poetry, why we should create poetry and how poetry can inform our daily lives.. along with a healthy helping of “what I’ve been up to”. From his blog, you can pop over and read his sonnets and other poetry just by clicking in the sidebar, or wander around the net reading other poets and poetry sites that Mike finds worthwhile. He may feel like he’s lost a year, but his blog doesn’t reflect that - and he promises to update more frequently. A definite many thumbs up for Mike and his blog, especially if you want to see how one of the most formal of forms can take on new life when you use everyday language and events to power them.