Next One Page Poetry Circle, May 10, 2022—Poetry and Clouds

Welcome to the Virtual One Page Poetry Circle!

Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Theme: Poetry and Clouds

Find a poem! Send a poem by email!

We’re back for the fourteenth spring season of the One Page Poetry Circle where people examine the works of established poets. While there is no instructor and this is not a workshop for personal writing, once a month OPPC gives everyone a place to become teachers and learners to explore the form, content, language and meaning of poetry. Since the circle began, participants have selected and discussed 1374 poems and have read countless others in pursuit of poetry that speaks to them.

This spring we will gather virtually, by email. We ask you to send one of us the poems you have selected on the subject of Poetry and Clouds (addresses below), with a comment on why you chose them. We’ll share the poems with you through this blog and by email.

Our theme for May is Clouds. Clouds vary from fierce and menacing to fluffy and white, and are often seen as harbingers of our moods. Joni Mitchell’s popular song, “Both Sides Now,” presents clouds as “Rows and floes of angel hair” that can also “block the sun”:

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.

Clouds can also show us the ethereal. The Scottish Neo-Romantic poet W. S. Graham explores the nature of “real” in his three-part poem “Enter a Cloud.” The poem begins:

Gently disintegrate me
Said nothing at all.

Is there still time to say
Said I myself lying
In a bower of bramble
Into which I have fallen.

Look through my eyes up
At blue with not anything
We could have ever arranged
Slowly taking place.

Can’t locate a poem about clouds you want to send? Check out Poetry Foundation or poets.org.
In the meantime, please blog with us here about Poetry and Clouds (or any other poetry theme) onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com.

2022 Schedule
May 10: Clouds

Abigail Burnham Bloom, abigailburnhambloom@gmail.com
AnnaLee Wilson, annalee@kaeserwilson.com