One Page Poetry Circle Archive

Welcome to the Virtual One Page Poetry Circle!

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Theme: Poetry and Voting

Find a poem! Send a poem by email!

We're back for the thirteenth fall 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 1250 poems and have read countless others in pursuit of poetry that speaks to them.

This fall we will gather virtually, by email. We ask you to send us the poems you have selected on the subject of Poetry and Voting, with a comment on why you chose them. We'll share the poems with you through our blog and by email.

Our theme for November is Voting. We don't know what this election will bring forth, but we will all participate in different ways.

Eve Shockley recently published "women's voting rights at one hundred (but who's counting?)" which contains this verse, reminiscent of Abigail's earliest memories of voting:

• one vote begets another
• if you make a habit of it.
• my mother started taking me
• to the polls with her when i
• was seven :: small, thrilled
• to step in the booth, pull
• the drab curtain hush-shut
• behind us, & flip the levers
• beside each name she pointed
• to, the xs clicking into view.
• there, she called shots.

In considering her vote in the upcoming election, AnnaLee thought of "A New National Anthem," by Ada Limón. The following segment of Limón's poem, reminds us about a relatively unknown and unsung third stanza of "The Star Spangled Banner":

• Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
• even the tenacious high school band off key.
• But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
• to the field, something to get through before
• the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
• we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
• could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps
• the truth is that every song of this country
• has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
• snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
• the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
• hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
• like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
• like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
• brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
• has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,

Whether a poem speaks of politics, election day, voting by ballot, in a voting booth, or with your feet, choose a poem that has meaning to you. Then email it to one of us by November 10th, with a brief comment of why you chose it. Can't locate a poem you want to send? Check out Poetry Foundation or poets.org.

In the meantime, please blog with us at onepagepoetrycircle.wordpress.com.

As one member wrote, "May we all have the strength to deal with these overwhelming times."

Fall 2020 Schedule<br> November 10: Voting
December 8: Future

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