One Page Poetry Circle Archive

Welcome to the One Page Poetry Circle!

Date: November 17, 2026
Theme: Poetry and the Home
Time: 5:30 – 6:30 pm
Place: St. Agnes Branch Library, 444 Amsterdam Ave, 3rd fl. Or by email (see addresses below)

Find a poem! Show up! Or send a poem by email!

We're back for the 19th 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 1866 poems and have read countless others in pursuit of poetry that speaks to them.

GOOD NEWS:
The One Page Poetry Circle has returned to the St. Agnes Library.
In addition, for those who are unable to attend, you will still be able to participate by email.

Our topic for November is Poetry and the Home.

Home can often evoke a nostalgic feeling as when Anne Brontë compares her home to an elegant dwelling in her poem, "Home," and concludes, "Restore to me that little spot/With gray walls compassed round,/Where knotted grass neglected lies,/And weeds usurp the ground."

Home can evoke a longing to reclaim, as in Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes' "Let American be America Again": "We, the people, must redeem/The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers./The mountains and the endless plain—/All, all the stretch of these great green states—/And make America again!"

We met on October 20th to discuss Poetry and Repair.

AnnaLee opened the One Page Poetry Circle with the poet Derek Walcott's "Love After Love" in which the poet gives the reader a prescription for healing after a broken relationship:

• The time will come
• when, with elation,
• you will greet yourself arriving
• At your own door, in your own mirror,
• And each will smile at the other's welcome,

Benita gave a wonderful reading of "Mending Wall" a poem in which poet Robert Frost ponders the yearly rebuilding of a wall between his neighbor and himself. To his neighbor's comment "Good fences make good neighbors" the poet muses:

• 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
• Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
• Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
• What I was walling in or walling out'

Daria brought a funny rhyming poem by children's book author Penny Parker Klostermann. It was pointed out that "Robot Repair" is written in the way a robot might talk, syllable by syllable in monotone. Try the first two stanzas: "I.took.a.fall./need.o.ver.haul./a.nut./a.bolt./that.glue.will.do."

Christiana selected "Restoration" by Mary Cornish, which speaks of the time in Florence when the Arno flooded damaging many sacred artworks:

• This is what I know of restoration:
• In a small room near San Marco,
• Alone on a wooden stool
• Nearly every day for a year,
• I painted squares of blue on gessoed boards—

Laura selected "What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade" by Brad Aaron Modlin, in which the teacher turns the mundane into lessons for fulfillment:

• Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
• to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

• how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
• questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

Diane chose "I Will Keep Broken Things" by Alice Walker, in which the poet intones that there is beauty in the broken and we must cherish it as we must cherish ourselves: "I will keep broken things:/the big clay pot/with raised Iguanas/chasing their/tails; two/of their wise/heads sheared off."

Don brought Shakespeare's beloved Sonnet 29, which begins with these famous lines:
"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." The poem offers a message of love as the repairer of all. We talked about the three repetitions of the word "state" and each of its meanings as the poem progresses from a feeling of darkness, to soaring emotion, to beyond kingly. Don also brought us Sonnet 73.

Ethan read Edgar Albert Guest's "Father." Known as the People's Poet, Guest wrote for the Detroit Free Press. His poems were syndicated in 300 newspapers across the country. We laughed at its predictable rhymes—a poem for our times:

• My father knows the proper way
• The nation should be run;
• He tells us children every day
• Just what should now be done.

Gail brought the circle around with "Repairs" by Neal Bowers. The poem begins with the image of a jet plane that pierces the sky like a darning needle. "Her jet appears from nowhere,/a needle punched through blue linen,/making a looping stitch/above the rough horizon." The author, who died this year, wrote a widely read memoir, Words for the Taking, about his search for the person who had plagiarized his poems.

Abigail found Christina Rossetti's "A Better Resurrection": "My life is like a broken bowl,/A broken bowl that cannot hold/One drop of water for my soul/Or cordial in the searching cold." Despite her spiritual despair, the poet looks for spring and resurrection.

June chose "The Mower" by Philip Larkin: "The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found/A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,/Killed. It had been in the long grass." "I think it's so moving because it's so surprising: The connection between grief and the humble, kind of goofy, hedgehog is one surprise, and the other is that the lovely conclusion couldn't be less Larkinesque."

Karen was unable to attend but dropped off "Wild Geese," by Mary Oliver. The poet's lines remind us to find solace and connection in nature: "the world offers itself to your imagination,/calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—/over and over announcing your place/in the family of things."

Kai chose "Stories in the Night," a prose poem by Gary Snyder, "a free association of philosophical musings on modern life and religion inspired by repairing the aging equipment the poet needs for his life": "(I try to remember machinery can always be fixed—but be ready to give up the plans that were made for the day—go back to the manual—call up friends who know more—make some tea—relax with your tools and your problems, start enjoying the day.)" Snyder recognizes that "even his off-the-grid lifestyle requires repairs and attention and can be simplified further by leaning into what nature provides."

Whether a poem concerns the home, reminds you of home, or describes a place to return to, bring or send a poem that has meaning to you. If you are unable to attend in person, email the poem you have chosen to one of us by November 17th, with a brief comment on 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.

Fall 2026 Schedule
November 17: Poetry and the Home
December 15: Poetry and an Ending

Abigail Burnham Bloom, abigailburnhambloom(at)gmail(dot)com
AnnaLee Wilson, annalee(at)kaeserwilson(dot)com

The One Page Poetry Circle is sponsored by the New York Public Library and is open to all. St. Agnes Branch Library is handicap accessible.