Poetry Friday - Summer Tunes

Liz Steinglass hosts this Poetry Friday, celebrating and sharing some poems in the process of the writing of her poetry book, out very soon. It's SoccerVerse! Congratulations, Liz, and thanks for hosting!







        I enjoy every April when poets come together to write for Irene Latham's Progressive Poem. You can see the latest and those of past years here. And this April, Donna Smith beautifully set the poem to music, sang and played it for us on her ukelele. And I loved the latest poem because I love summer, too, and enjoyed everyone's words of summer as intros to the lines.
         And then came SUMMER! I try hard not to take home very many books from the used bookstore where I volunteer. I help with donations on Thursday and sometimes a book appears that feels like one that's meant for me. This is one, nearly thirty years old, filled with essays and poems of summer memories, attitudes, even regrets. It is divided into three sections: The Door to Summer, When Time Was Here and Between Wild and Sheltered. Calvin Trillin writes about chiggers; Daniel Okrent shares his baseball passions in the summer at Cooley Lake (a summer retreat), and Louise Erdrich tells how her family begins summer in the winter. Each entry makes me want summer more, my beach trip, a trip to visit my brother and other relations, lazier days outside. 

        Among other poems in the book, I'm sharing this Summer Morning by Charles Simic. You can listen to him reading it here. 

I love to stay in bed
All morning,
Covers thrown off, naked,
Eyes closed, listening.

Outside they are opening
Their primers
In the little school
Of the cornfield.

There’s a smell of damp hay,
Of horses, laziness,
Summer sky and eternal life.

I know all the dark places
Where the sun hasn’t reached yet,

And see all the poem here.

       There is much to love and to choose from. Early in the book, Elizabeth Hardwick writes "The congratulation of summer is that it can make the homely and humble if not exactly beautiful, beautifully acceptable. Such brightness at midday and then the benign pastels, blues and lavenders of the summer sky. Much may wither and exhaust, but so great is the glow and greater the freedom of the season that every extreme will be accommodated."

She ends with "Summer, the season of crops. The concreteness of it. Not as perfumed and delicate and sudden as spring and not as triste as autumn. Yet, for the enjoyment of summer's pleasures, for the beach, the crowded airplane to Venice, most of us consent to work all year long."

         Summer's coming. . .

        I do love Liz's challenge last week at Michelle's Today's Little Ditty and had a poem I wrote to it, shared Thursday. So, I couldn't resist one more, Liz and Michelle, about summer!

Instructions for Summer

Blast me with your beautiful extremes:

daylight till near bedtime,

frightening thunderstorms,

a cold Independence Day.

I’ll still love you.

Paste memories in my mind:

carny tilt-a-whirls,

State Fair lambs and blue ribbons,

ice cream truck melodies.

I will remember.

Grow grand gardens for cellar jars:

tomatoes and green beans,

cucumbers and carrots,

but avoid too much zucchini.

I will love them and share.

Prepare me for autumn:

turn pumpkins orange,

drop a leaf or two,

plan with the birds.

Even ending, I’ll love you.

Linda Baie ©