Poetry Notes and a Call for Submissions

"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician..."
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Duluth Poet Laureate Project seeks poems from regional writers for a poetry/dance collaborative event to take place in May 2018. Send a poem on any theme and the dancers will choose a poem and create a dance in response. The poets who inspired the dance will be invited to read at the event and will receive a $50 honorarium. Send ONE poem and contact information to: elliesch@cpinternet.com or to Ellie Schoenfeld, 530 E. Skyline Parkway, Duluth, MN 55805 by January 10th, 2018.

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An appreciation for poetry is not something tacked onto my life like hand-scrawled announcements on a bulletin board. I come by it honestly; it is in my blood. My grandmother wrote poetry, influenced in that direction by her uncle John S. Hall. John Hall, the youngest of five boys, was left blind after the Civil War, whereupon he pursued a life of writing, founding two newspapers, the St. Mary's Observer and the Oracle, before retiring to private life. His book of poems, Musings of a Quiet Hour, was published in 1907. I have been told that through this lineage flows the blood of Robert Burns, the famed Scot Highlander and literary luminary.

None of this means that the poems I have written are any good, or will have historical merit. It is simply an acknowledgement of my roots.

"Poetry is the mother tongue of mankind."
--J.G.Hamann, 1762

I have a number of favorite poets whom I return to from time to time for inspiration, among these Rilke, Pessoa, Dylan and Billy Collins, whose poem Introduction To Poetry always brings a smile and a lift.

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

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If you be a poet, write on. If a reader only... Thank You.