LBI Poet's Studio

Accomplished and emerging poets alike can find inspiration in our Zoom workshop. To attend this virtual event contact Sue Cummings via email scummings817@comcast.net to receive the Zoom link.

This group meets the 1st Thursday of every month from 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm. You may either join the Zoom event at the LBI Library in the meeting room using our laptops, or you can join from home using your own computer/laptop.

The next meeting of the LBI Poets' Studio is Thursday, July 2nd, 1-3PM ET via Zoom at Home or the LBI Library.

Our Prompt for July is to write a  poem using a word, a phrase, or line from Mary Oliver's poem The Summer Day.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

As a Bonus Challenge use three or more of the following words chosen at random from Harriet Beecher Stowe's masterpiece, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

chilly, wine, circumstances, opulent, intervals, species, coarse, Kentucky, parlor, vest, watch-chain, pretension, swagger, jingling, clean, whooping, overcoat, kick, naturally, grief, rudely, occasion, drudgery, white gloves, maternal, misery, spite, humble, dreadful, flesh, dirtiest, burning, contentment, entwisting, petunias, frizzling, beams, turban, eggs, slapping, privileges, sunny, drops, painted, bonnet, parrot, wardrobe, slumbering, tote, heap, trundle-bed, collapsed, thousand, gossip, kinder, sob, spur, dusty, tour, summation, alteration, shop, fetters, sugar, trimming, bedtime, nerves, cake, dart, tea-kettle, coachman, chamber,

ribbon, Ophelia, laws, veranda, murmur, radiance, cloak, blast, yearning, hissing, deluge, superb

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