25 Years of Poets Online

Closing out 2023 means that Poets Online has been online for 25 years. A significant number for any publication, especially one that features only poetry.

Our January issue will be the 316th prompt and issue of poems. I never referred to them as "issues" at the start back in 1998, but over the years as our audience and contributors expanded that became the label. 

The site started as an e-mail exchange among four poets taking turns at suggesting a prompt and then e-mailing our poems to each other. As more poets joined the group, it became an awkward mailing process, and the website was created. The following year we created a mailing list to remind people to check the latest prompt and read the poems. That list now has hundreds of subscribers.

By 20023, a free hosting website and free domain weren't enough, so I bought the domain poetsonline.org, purchased hosting, and created a new list and email using Google.

We still try to accept the best poems that respond to the current prompt in a serious way. We have always thought of the site as a place where poets of varying ages and experiences could get published. We have plenty of people who read and don't submit and a good number of teachers and students have written us to say that they find the site useful. More than a hundred other sites link to us. If your poem is published and you use it in a book later, Poets Online should be acknowledged as its first appearance. 

Although I never know how many more anniversaries we will have, I am thankful for all the poems I've read and poets I have made contact with over this quarter century. 

Ken Ronkowitz

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Follow this blog for all things poetry.
To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
visit our website at poetsonline.org

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"The Clock" - a prose poem for a lady

I am neither a big fan of the poet Baudelaire nor am I a fan of prose poems, but this one got my attention.

 I'll admit that the opening got my interest and I wanted to know how, But I too often find prose poems to be just prose. Like flash fiction. Poetic language? Perhaps, but many novelists have poetic language but I would call the novel a epic prose poem. 

I'm told that intent is key in making a prose poem a poem. That is a tough one to evaluate.

Feel free to educate me on this with a comment.

"L'Horloge" (The Clock)

a prose poem by Charles Baudelaire [translated by David Lehman]

– for a lady

How do the Chinese tell time? By looking at the eyes of their

cats. Here’s how.

A lost missionary, afoot in a sleepy suburb of Nankin, had

forgotten his watch and asked a little boy what time it was.

After a moment’s hesitation, this street urchin of the celestial

Empire said: ‘‘Wait, I will tell you.’’ A few seconds later, he

reappeared with a very fat cat in his arms, looked into the 

whites of her eyes, and said, ‘‘It is almost but not quite noon.’’ 

Which was the case.

As for me, if I favor my beautiful Feline, so felicitously named –

the honor of her sex, the pride of my heart, and the perfume 

of my spirit, day and night, rain or shine – in the depths of her

 adorable eyes I can always tell what time it is, and it is always

 the same time, an hour vast, solemn, limitless as space undivided

 into minutes and seconds – a lingering hour no clock observes, 

soft as a sigh, swift as a glance.

And if an intruder came to disturb my study of this enchanting dial,

if some malevolent genie, some demon of ill fortune, were to address

me as a vain and idle mortal and say: ‘‘What are you staring at?

What are you looking for in the eyes of that creature? Is time told there,

 and can you tell it?’’ I would reply without hesitation. ‘‘I know what time

it is; it is Eternity.’’

Madame, is not this a most meritorious bagatelle, and as full of vain

self-regard as your high and mighty self? Frankly, my dear, it has given me

so much pleasure embroidering this pretentious piece of puffery that I ask

nothing of you in return.

from the Summer 2019 issue of The Yale Review, in which four other prose poems by Charles Baudelaire appear.

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Blake's Tyger and Lamb

Blake's illustrated version of the poem

William Blake's poem "The Tyger" is his most-read poem. It consists entirely of questions about the nature of God and creation. It asks how the same God that created vulnerable beings like the lamb could also have made the fearsome tiger. 

The tiger becomes a symbol for one of religion's most difficult questions: Why does God allow evil to exist?

I first read the poem in a high school class and my initial question was "Why did he spell tiger wrong?" Not the deepest of literary issues. In writing this essay, I did some digging for an answer since my teacher had no answers other than "It's what they did back then."

 William Blake intentionally spelled "tiger" as "tyger" in his poem that was in his collection titled "Songs of Experience" (1794). It is thought that changing the traditional spelling of "tiger" to "tyger" not only gave the word a unique. mythical and archaic quality. It also allowed Blake to exercise creative freedom about the creature he was describing. The tyger is a literal creature but also a symbolic force.

Blake was also known for his interest in the relationship between sound and meaning in language and tyger captures the phonetic qualities of the word.

"...What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
...Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" 

The lamb refers to Blake's poem, "The Lamb," where God is associated with a gentle and innocent lamb. 

THE TYGER

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,|
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Compare that tiger to the lamb. Blake was clearly a religious person who saw visions of angels, but to me "The Tyger" is a poem that literally questions God. Can God be credited with both the good and evil in the world? I din't think you could give him the credit for creating the "lambs" of this world without also giving him responsibility for the "tygers" of this world.  That was my high school interpretation (which my teacher did not appreciate or agree with) and it remains my interpretation.

THE LAMB

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice! 

         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!

He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.

         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

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To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
visit our website at poetsonline.org

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Robert Frost's Christmas Cards

Our call for submissions for the January 2024 issue is about "personal" holidays which do not get on official calendars and probably don't get you a day off from work or cards and gifts. But I thought of how Robert Frost sent out Christmas poem “cards” from 1929 to 1962.

Each year, Frost would select a poem and often write an original piece for the occasion. he sent them to some friends and loved ones. Later they went out to his publisher’s friends and loved ones. If you were lucky enough to be on that list and still have them, they are collectors’ items.

They began as just his way to honor the winter season with a poem. One poem used was "Christmas Trees." (an excerpt below)

...He proved to be the city come again 
To look for something it had left behind   
And could not do without and keep its Christmas. 
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees; 
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place 
Where houses all are churches and have spires. 
I hadn't thought of them as Christmas trees.   
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment 
To sell them off their feet to go in cars 
And leave the slope behind the house all bare, 
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon... 

Frost, 1929 (by Doris Ulmann, national Portrait Gallery)

Joseph Blumenthal headed Spiral Press during those years. Without Frost's knowledge, while working on an edition of Frost’s poetry in 1929, he printed 250 copies for friends and colleagues of “Christmas Trees.” When the poet saw the publication, his first response was not to sue him but to request a few copies to send out to his own family members. And so, the annual tradition was born.

The last Christmas mailing contained "The Prophets Really Prophesy as Mystics, the Commentators Merely by Statistics” which went out with 16,555 copies. 

The collection would feature other classic poems by Frost, including “Birches,” “A Boy’s Will,” and “The Wood-Pile”

"Christmas Trees" is no Hallmark greeting card, but it ends with this Christmas wish:   

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you here with a Merry Christmas.

More about the cards at poets.org/text/robert-frosts-christmas-cards

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Prompt: Personal Holidays

December is a big month for holidays both religious, pagan and secular. Many people love these holidays and spend a lot of time and money celebrating them. But not everyone is a fan of these "official" holidays.

In the poem "A New Law" by Greg Delanty, he proposes:

Let there be a ban on every holiday.
No ringing in the new year.
No fireworks doodling the warm night air.
No holly on the door. I say
let there be no more.
For many are not here who were here before.

I wouldn't propose that radical of a change in holidays, but I understand the sentiment.

For this December call for submissions in the 25th year of Poets Online, we are looking for poems about personal holidays. These are the holidays that perhaps only you celebrate. They are not on official calendars but they might be on your personal calendar. Not birthdays, anniversaries, national holidays, or religious holy days, not even Festivus.

In Galway Kinnell's poem "The 26th of December" he marks the day after Christmas not as being connected to that holiday but as" A Tuesday, day of Tiw, / god of war." Not exactly what most people would connect to the day after Christmas.

He celebrates the short day by

"talking by the fire,
floating on snowshoes among
ancient self-pollarded maples,
visiting, being visited, giving
a rain gauge, receiving red socks,
watching snow buntings nearly over
their heads in snow stab at spirtled bits
of sunflower seeds the chickadees
hold with their feet to a bough
and hack apart, scattering debris
like sloppy butchers"

It is a short holiday, one day and in a season of short days. And when it is over, " Irregular life begins" again, as with many holidays.

"Telephone calls,
Google searches, evasive letters,
complicated arrangements, faxes,
second thoughts, consultations,
e-mails, solemnly given kisses."

Give us a poem about your personal holiday. Why do you mark the day(s) and how do you celebrate? (If celebrate is even what you do.) 

Submission Deadline: December 31, 2023   Happy New Year!

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Galway Kinnell was an award-winning poet best known for poetry that connects the experiences of daily life to much larger poetic, spiritual, and cultural forces. Kinnell was born in 1927 in Providence, Rhode Island and grew up in Pawtucket. A self-described introvert as a child, he grew up reading reclusive American writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. After two years of service in the U.S. Navy, he earned a BA in 1948 from Princeton University where he was classmates with poet W.S. Merwin. He earned an MA from the University of Rochester a year later.

Of his first books, What a Kingdom it Was (1960), Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1964) and Body Rags(1968) which contains the bulk of Kinnell’s most praised and anthologized poems. Selected Poems (1982), for which Kinnell won the Pulitzer Prize and was co-winner of the National Book Award in 1983, contains works from every period in the poet’s career and was released just shortly before he won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation grant. Kinnell released the retrospective collection, A New Selected Poems (2001), focusing on poetry of the 1960s and 1970s, and his Collected Poems was published in 2017.
Kinnell lived in Vermont for many years. He died in 2014 at the age of 87.

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Follow this blog for all things poetry.
To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
visit our website at poetsonline.org

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