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Poetry Friday round-up is with Catherine at Reading to the Core.
Catherine Flynn is rounding up Poetry Friday with an invitation to write poems that honor women. A few years ago Georgia Heard published an anthology of poetry entitled The Woman in this Poem. For International Women’s Day, I wanted to honor all the women poets who have influenced and inspired me. In the end pages of the book, Georgia lists all the first lines. I used these lines to write an ode to women poets.
Ode to Women Poets
All the women in this poem
have written first linesto draw me into their lives
offering me wafers of wordstranscending deserts of time and place:
I don’t remember how it began
I must’ve looked like I’m confidant,a reader all our life,
Woman to woman, poems lie
in our hands in crystals.me and you be sisters listening
Who says a woman’s work isn’t high art?We all sing the same song.
We know all the words.We’ve sung them while rocking
As the divine sea rocks.So much do we love.
We love and love and love.Sometimes I hear the wind in the trees
and feel your presenceThe people I love the best.
–Margaret Simon
First lines from these poets: Dorianne Laux, Patricia Kirkpatrick, Lisel Mueller, Lucille Clifton, Kate Farrell, Georgia Heard, Gabriela Mistral, Marge Piercy, Bronwen Wallace, Julia Alvarez, and Ruth Moose.
In searching for an image, I found this link to a lesson on women poets from Edutopia.
Reflections on the Teche 