January 2023 Challenge - Peace Poems

Allegory on The Blessings of Peace by Peter Paul Rubens
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I didn’t remember how recently I had posted a challenge for peace poems when I decided that would be a good theme for January. But I decided to go ahead with it because the desire for peace is so deep, and the achievement of peace so difficult. My generation was among the first to view acts of war on television.

I was a child during World War II. I remember young men from the neighborhood coming to tell my grandparents goodbye as they went off to war and visiting them when they were home on leave. One young soldier brought my sister and me handkerchiefs from the Philippines. I remember brown outs when we visited an aunt and her family in New York State and playing war games with my cousins. After that, there was the Korean War and the Vietnam War and the Iraq War in each of which the U.S. military was heavily involved. There were wars for independence from colonial powers. The war which split Pakistan from India. Numerous conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. And now, war in Ukraine. I can identify with this poem by Peggy Trojan

 

My Wish

When I was eight,
the world was at war.
I felt sorry for the children,
wished I could save them
from the cold, from hunger,
pain, and fear.
I wished fervently, prayerfully.

That war ended in 1945.
The world continues to fight.
I have been wishing
for over eighty years.

-Peggy Trojan

This poem was used with the permission of the poet. She retains copyright.

 

Several times in December I listened to “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” a musical setting for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “Christmas Bells.” Longfellow wrote this poem during the Civil War when the country was divided as never before. In many cases, brothers were fighting brothers. Longfellow’s son Charley had been seriously injured while fighting with the Union Army and had been sent home to recuperate. Things looked very bleak, but still the church bells were ringing on December 25.

 

Christmas Bells

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This poem is in the public domain.

 

I may be a bit biased as a result of attending Longfellow School in Iowa City as a child, but I have always been moved by this (and several other poems by Longfellow). Another well known peace poem, also associated with Christmas, is by the African American theologian and mystic Howard Thurman:

 

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

 

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.

~ Howard Thurman

I was unable to ascertain if this poem is in the public domain or not, but it is posted all over the Internet so I presume that it is.

 

For more peace poems, click on https://wildamorris.blogspot.com/2022/06/june-2022-winners-peace-poems.html for the winning Peace Poems frum June 2022. Then click on “Older Post” at the lower right hand corner of that post to see the example poems – and a link to the first time the Poetry Challenge called for Peace Poems (in December 2018).

 

The January Challenge:

The challenge for this month is a poem on the theme of peace. Your poem may be literal or metaphoric, serious, or humorous. You might be inspired by Rubens' painting to write about the blessings of peace. Your poem may be for children or for adults. Be creative! Note that the blog format does not accommodate shaped poems or long lines; if a poem with long lines is used, the lines have to be broken in two, with the second part indented (as in the poem “Lilith,” one of the May 2018 winners), or the post has to use small print. Note, too, that poems over 25 lines are at a disadvantage.

Poems could be disqualified if the guidelines are not followed. Submit your poem by January 15.

1-Title your poem unless it is in a form that discourages titles.

2-Single-space.

3-Whether you put your poem in the body of your email or in an attachment, please put your submission in this order:

Your poem

Your name

Publication data if your poem was previously published

A brief third-person bio

Your email address – it saves me a lot of work if you put your email address at the end of your submission.

4-Please keep the poem on the left margin (standard 1” margin). Do not put any part of your submission on a colored background. No colored type. Do not use a fancy font and do not use a header or footer.

5-You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet. Poems already used on this blog are not eligible to win, but the poets may submit a different poem.

6-The deadline is midnight, Central Time Zone, January 15. Poems submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards. Winners are published on this blog.

7-Please don’t stray too from “family-friendly” language (some children and teens read this blog).

8- No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the end of the month whether or not your poem will be published.

9-The poet retains copyright on each poem. If a previously unpublished poem wins and is published elsewhere later, please give credit to this blog. I do not register copyright with the US copyright office, but by US law, the copyright belongs to the writer unless the writer assigns it to someone else.

10-Decision of the judge or judges is final.

11-If the same poet wins three months in a row (which has not happened thus far), he or she will be asked not to submit the following two months.

12-Send one poem only.

How to Submit Your Poem:

1-Send your poem to wildamorris4[at]gmail[dot]com (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). The poem must respond in some way to the specific challenge for the month.

2-Put “January Poetry Challenge Submission” FOLLOWED BY YOUR NAME in the subject line of your email. 

3-Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win at the end of the poem.

4-Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment or both (Doc, Docx, rich text or plain text; no pdf files, please). Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem).  Put everything in the order listed above.

6-Also, please do not use multiple spaces instead of punctuation in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique (I sometimes do it myself). However, I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.

Poems shorter than 40 lines are preferred.

 

Bios:

Peggy Trojan's new release, a collection about her father, titled PA, won second in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Chapbook contest in 2022. It won Honorable Mention for the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for 2022.  Her previous release, River, won second  in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Chapbook contest in 2021. It also won an award of Outstanding Achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. She is the author of two full collections and five chapbooks. Her books are available on Amazon. 

 

© Wilda Morris

 

 

 

 

March 2020 - Reunions

Cousin Reunion 2012 - me and my first cousins with picture of our grandparents

All over the United States—and probably all over the world—people are planning family reunions, high school reunions, college reunions and other reunions of old friends. I am looking forward to a sibling reunion and a cousin reunion. If I can get to Iowa City on the right weekend, there will be a casual, unofficial reunion of my class. I won’t tell you which year reunion comes next year for my college class—the number keeps going up!

There are many jokes about reunions. I can’t remember where I first heard the one about the people greeting classmates by saying, “You haven’t changed a bit,” while peering at their nametags to see who they are speaking to. Reunions have prompted songs, such as the country song, “The Old School,” by Russell Smith and Don Schlitz, made famous by John Conlee). Best-selling author, Jacquelyn Mitchard’s first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, the first book chosen by Oprah for her book club, begins as a woman registers at the hotel where her class reunion is going to be held.

The first high school reunion (5- or 10-year, depending on the school) may be the most fraught, as in Jo David Stockwell’s humerous poem, “The Class Reunion.” What should I wear? Should I even go? Will my ex be there (especially poignant for the couple in the yearbook identified as cutest couple)? Will everyone think I’m a failure, since I didn’t get that promotion? I didn’t go to the ten-year reunion of my high school class because I’d heard my older sister’s report on her 10-year reunion. I learned later that a bunch of the guys drank way too much and threw each other in the pool. And the management of the hotel where the reunion was held said our class could never have another reunion there. By the thirtieth-year reunion, when I finally showed up, the “boys” had grown up a bit!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Meeting,” is about a reunion. It isn’t entirely clear whether it is an extended family getting together to celebrate Christmas or a group of old friends. Whoever it is, the tree of life has been shaken. Some members of the group are no longer living. And all have aged.

The Meeting

After so long an absence
At last we meet again:
Does the meeting give us pleasure,
Or does it give us pain?

The tree of life has been shaken,
And but few of us linger now,
Like the Prophet’s two or three berries
In the top of the uttermost bough.
We cordially greet each other
In the old, familiar tone;
And we think, though we do not say it,
How old and gray he is grown!
We speak of a Merry Christmas
And many a Happy New Year
But each in his heart is thinking
Of those that are not here.
We speak of friends and their fortunes,
And of what they did and said,
Till the dead alone seem living,
And the living alone seem dead.
And at last we hardly distinguish
Between the ghosts and the guests;
And a mist and shadow of sadness
Steals over our merriest jests.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This poem is in the public domain.

Some Links:

Dana Gioia, “Reunion,” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/53824/reunion-56d2337ce5776.

“The Old School,” by Russell Smith and Don Schlitz, made famous by John Conlee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3aaBS07oWs.

Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Deep End of the Ocean, https://jacquelynmitchard.com/books/the-deep-end-of-the-ocean/overview.

Jo David Stockwell, “The Class Reunion,” https://www.ellenbailey.com/poems/ellen_234.htm.

The March Challenge:

Write a poem about a reunion. It could be a class reunion, a family reunion, a church reunion, a reunion of people who attended a workshop together or participated on the same track or ball team, etc. If you aren’t sure the kind of reunion you have in mind is acceptable for this prompt, email and ask.

Your poem may be free verse or formal. If you use a form, please identify the form when you submit your poem.

Title your poem unless it is a form that does not use titles (don’t follow Emily Dickinson’s practice on that!). Single-space. Note that the blog format does not accommodate long lines; if they are used, they have to be broken in two, with the second part indented (as in the poem “Lilith,” one of the March 2018 winners), or the post has to use small print.

You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet. Poems already used on this blog are not eligible to win, but the poets may submit a different poem, unless the poet has been a winner the last three months.

The deadline is March 20, because of the late posting of the prompt. Poems submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however, winners are published on this blog. Please don’t stray too far from “family-friendly” language (some children and teens read this blog). No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the end of the month whether or not your poem will be published. Decision of the judge or judges is final.

The poet retains copyright on each poem. If a previously unpublished poem wins and is published elsewhere later, please give credit to this blog. I do not register copyright with the US copyright office, but by US law, the copyright belongs to the writer unless the writer assigns it to someone else.

If the same poet wins three months in a row (which has not happened thus far), he or she will be asked not to submit the following two months.

How to Submit Your Poem:

Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). Put “March Poetry Challenge Submission” in the subject line of your email. Include a brief bio that can be printed with your poem if you are a winner this month. Please put your name and bio UNDER the poem in your email. If the poem has been published before, please put that information UNDER the poem also. NOTE: If you sent your poem to my other email address, or do not use the correct subject line, the poem may get lost and not be considered for publication. Do not submit poems as PDF files.

Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem.

Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment (Doc, Docx, rich text or plain text; no pdf files, please). or both. Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use multiple spaces instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique (I sometimes do it myself). However I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.

Poems shorter than 40 lines are generally preferred but longer poems will be considered.

Happy New Year. Have a wonderful and poetic new decade.

© Wilda Morris