Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.
Blog Posts by Tag
In the past 7 days
Blog Posts by Date
Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: heavenly sword, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 6 of 6
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: heavenly sword in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
Thanks for some Jane Kenyon on a cloudy Friday morning. I like her poetry. I'm going to read and savor this when I get back home in a while here. I'm glad to know Jane'll be waiting.
I love this poem; it describes such an ephemeral thing so beautifully.
Isn't it just the nature of the human psyche that we expect happiness to be gone, and the unmerciful bleakness to sort of be the family with whom we live?!
I'm trying to think of a time when happiness really left me. Up and gone. Nowhere to be found. Those times are rare. Like the time the previous cat snuck into the upstairs closet that connected our half of the double to our neighbors', fell through their kitchen ceiling panels, and hid under their bed.
No, I think happiness is more like the current cat, who has a plethora of fur between his toes, which allows him to be right there in the room with you one minute and gone the next without a sound. Not gone-gone, but quite disappeared from view, and back as soon as he's ready but not a minute sooner.
I pretty much love everything Jane Kenyon ever wrote, but this one especially keenly. I think it's so poignant when paired with Kenyon's own truth as a depressive. Still, even then, happiness just shows up...
"There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The first cup moistens my lips and throat; The second cup breaks my loneliness; The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs; The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration -- all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores; At the fifth cup I am purified; The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup -- ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.
~ Lu T'ung, T'ang Dynasty 620-907
Did you enjoy sipping this poem, line by line?
I thought it was the perfect way to launch Tea Party Month here at alphabet soup. After all, tea and poetry are sisters. Both should be savored slowly for full appreciation. Both heighten the senses, invite conversation, and prompt reflection.
When you drink a cup of tea or read a poem, you are participating in a ritual that dates back thousands of years. Interestingly enough, the origin of tea is much like the origin of a poem.
In 2737 B.C., as the legend goes, the Chinese Emperor Chen Nung, a scholar and herbalist, was sitting beneath a tree while his servant was boiling a pot of water. A few leaves from a tea plant dropped into the water, and a wonderful aroma emanated. The drink enthralled and enchanted him. His writings touted the medicinal benefits of tea -- a drink that healed, uplifted, refreshed and quenched a thirst like no other.
A poem can heal, uplift, refresh, and quench a thirst like no other. Often, quite by accident, an idea floating on a gentle breeze will enter the mind. If allowed to steep, it may find its fragrance and substance amongst the "thousand volumes of odd ideographs" that each of us carries within. Just as a drifting cloud marks the path of invisible air, the words of a poem authenticate human emotion -- making the abstract more tangible, giving voice to some of the more ethereal, capricious, and unwieldy textures of experience.
We all yearn for a magic potion, much like we yearn to find part of ourselves in a poem. So we are not unlike the ancients. Tea and poems connect us all, through time and space.
Now, will you have a second cup?
BRIEFLY IT ENTERS, AND BRIEFLY SPEAKS by Jane Kenyon (from Boat of the Quiet Hours, Graywolf Press, 1986)
I am the blossom pressed in a book, found again after two hundred years . . .
I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper . . .
When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside me . . .
Post your favorite tea time recipes, tea reflections or memories, or favorite tea scenes from books or film, then leave the link in the comments. Or, you may email the recipes to me at readermail (at) jamakimrattigan (dot com). The party will last all through April, so don your bonnets and white gloves, and sashay on over!
“Yeah! It’s got a girl with red hair and she’s got a super powerful sword and then you know what?”
“What.”
“She can fly around when she’s fighting too! And her sister is named Kai and there’s this really fat guy that she beats up in the game and it’s soooo pretty all the places you get to go.”
“Well, that about covers the review. What do you think, Space girl?”
“We’ll take it.”
“Affirmative. Review transferred to core circuits for priority transmission to the Hana.”
“There you go, Cici. You’re an official Gamepowa.com reviewer.”
.jpg?picon=848)
.jpg?picon=910)
Thanks for some Jane Kenyon on a cloudy Friday morning. I like her poetry. I'm going to read and savor this when I get back home in a while here. I'm glad to know Jane'll be waiting.
I love this poem; it describes such an ephemeral thing so beautifully.
Isn't it just the nature of the human psyche that we expect happiness to be gone, and the unmerciful bleakness to sort of be the family with whom we live?!
What strange creatures we are.
Happy Friday.
What a gorgeous poem. I'm going to savor it all day.
That Jane Kenyon really knew her way around a poem. Lovely.
I'm trying to think of a time when happiness really left me. Up and gone. Nowhere to be found. Those times are rare. Like the time the previous cat snuck into the upstairs closet that connected our half of the double to our neighbors', fell through their kitchen ceiling panels, and hid under their bed.
No, I think happiness is more like the current cat, who has a plethora of fur between his toes, which allows him to be right there in the room with you one minute and gone the next without a sound. Not gone-gone, but quite disappeared from view, and back as soon as he's ready but not a minute sooner.
I love this poem. And I just LOVE what Mary Lee has to say in response. I sure hope she's right: I need to catch the happiness cat!
I pretty much love everything Jane Kenyon ever wrote, but this one especially keenly. I think it's so poignant when paired with Kenyon's own truth as a depressive. Still, even then, happiness just shows up...