Author Archives: Chip Cain

What would you like to have happen by the end of the day?

By Chip Cain | Published December 4, 2009

I continue to be fascinated with these short 1 question 50 people videos: this one is no exception. Here is another one for your enjoyment and please leave your answer to the question by posting a comment to this post.

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The Portraits: Wild Africa

By Chip Cain | Published May 10, 2009

Recently I found a photographer who’s photos of African animasl are more like portraits than the usual pictures you see. The photographer is Nick Brandt and he says of his “. . . images are unashamedly idyllic and romantic, a kind of enchanted Africa. You can see a very nice collection of his photos at [...]

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The List

By Chip Cain | Published April 30, 2009

By Naomi Shihab Nye A man told me he had calculated the exact number of books he would be able to read before he died by figuring the average number of books he read per month and his probable earth span, (averaging how long his dad and grandpa had lived, adding on a few years [...]

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Poverty

By Chip Cain | Published April 29, 2009

By Pablo Neruda Ah you don’t want to, you’re scared of poverty, you don’t want to go to the market with worn-out shoes and come back with the same old dress. My love, we are not fond as the rich would like us to be, of misery. We shall extract it like an evil tooth [...]

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I Shall Be Released

By Chip Cain | Published April 28, 2009

by Kevin Young What we love will leave us or is it we leave what we love, I forget— Today, belly full enough to walk the block after all week too cold outside to smile— I think of you, warm in your underground room reading the book of bone. It’s hard going— your body a [...]

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Amaryllis

By Chip Cain | Published April 27, 2009

by Ted Kooser A flower needs to be this size to conceal the winter window, and this color, the red of a Fiat with the top down, to impress us, dull as we’ve grown. Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb half above the soil stuck out its green tongue and slowly, day by [...]

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Love In Black And White

By Chip Cain | Published April 24, 2009

by Bianca Rossini with photographs by Michael Kenna

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Children in a Field

By Chip Cain | Published April 23, 2009

by Angela Shaw They don’t wade in so much as they are taken. Deep in the day, in the deep of the field, every current in the grasses whispers hurry hurry, every yellow spreads its perfume like a rumor, impelling them further on. It is the way of girls. It is the sway of their [...]

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Silent Music

By Chip Cain | Published April 22, 2009

by Floyd Skloot My wife wears headphones as she plays Chopin etudes in the winter light. Singing random notes, she sways in and out of shadow while night settles. The keys she presses make a soft clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts, golden cotton fabric ripples across her shoulders, and the sustain pedal [...]

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New Water

By Chip Cain | Published April 21, 2009

by Sharon Chmielarz All those years–almost a hundred– the farm had hard water. Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange. Sink and tub and toilet, too, once they got running water. And now, in less than a lifetime, just by changing the well’s location, in the same yard, mind you, the water’s soft, clear, delicious to [...]

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They Sit Together on the Porch

By Chip Cain | Published April 20, 2009

by Wendell Berry They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He [...]

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Fifty People, One Question

By Chip Cain | Published April 19, 2009

It’s a simple question in London… httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQk30nYUOAw It’s a simple question in Brooklyn… httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJAUGg4081Q It’s a simple, but different question in New York… httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e53VeQ-pmc Now go ahead and ask your self these same questions: they’re not always so simple… Share your answers by leaving your answers in the comments.

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A Body Distant Brought Near

By Chip Cain | Published April 17, 2009

by Kathleen Adcock Sitting on the moon’s rim all that can be seen is her mountains, flatland, a pale asphalt. Tonight you pull me from my poems. We view a new crescent from our roof. You tweak the lens of your telescope, steer me into the ocular where in the black velvet void, the moon’s [...]

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Tell Yourself

By Chip Cain | Published April 17, 2009

by Mark Strand; read by Mary Louise Parker. And when you done watching and listening take some time to browse all the nooks and crannys of PBS’s Poetry Everywhere.

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Flirtation

By Chip Cain | Published April 16, 2009

By Rita Dove – The first African-American woman to be named Poet Laureate of the United States After all, there’s no need to say anything at first. An orange, peeled and quartered, flares like a tulip on a wedgewood plate Anything can happen. Outside the sun has rolled up her rugs and night strewn salt [...]

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"Since why to love I can allege no cause"

By Chip Cain | Published April 15, 2009

by Roger Mitchell “Since why to love I can allege no cause,” I will love instead, leaving reasons to better minds than mine, those for whom laws create allowance for the seasons of feeling. I cannot create what creates me, unless in loving, love begets love, though in begetting that, what first mates with love [...]

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A SONNET FOR NAPALM

By Chip Cain | Published April 14, 2009

by H. PALMER HALL “Tell me something,” she says.  “Do any flowers look just like that, those blossoms of black, orange, red?” She points at the screen, napalm flowering in the dawn. “Some strange beauty from far enough not to feel or smell, riots of deep embers glowing like fierce clouds?” He nods, cannot find [...]

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Word

By Chip Cain | Published April 13, 2009

by Madeleine L’Engle‏ I, who live by words, am wordless when I try my words in prayer. All language turns To Silence. Prayer will take my words and then Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns To hold its peace, listen with the heart To silence that is joy, is adoration. The self is shattered, [...]

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Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

By Chip Cain | Published April 10, 2009

by John Donne Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is, And as the other Spheares, by being growne Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne, And being by others hurried every day, Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey: Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules [...]

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Find Work

By Chip Cain | Published April 9, 2009

By Rhina P. Espaillat I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl— Life’s little duties do—precisely As the very least Were infinite—to me— —Emily Dickinson, #443 My mother’s mother, widowed very young of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit, moved through her father’s farm, her country tongue and country heart anaesthetized and mute [...]

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e. e. cummings . . . now I know why!

By Chip Cain | Published April 9, 2009
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Poetry Out Loud

By Chip Cain | Published April 9, 2009

Worth the watch!  Poetry Out Loud

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Ox Cart Man

By Chip Cain | Published April 8, 2009

by Donald Hall In October of the year, he counts potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, counting the cellar’s portion out, and bags the rest on the cart’s floor. He packs wool sheared in April, honey in combs, linen, leather tanned from deerhide, and vinegar in a barrel hoped by hand at [...]

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Three Poems by Jane Kenyon

By Chip Cain | Published April 7, 2009

Jane Kenyon is another favorite poet of mine. Her poems are usually short often touching someplace personal within the reader’s own psyche: or at least this readers psyche. I love all three of these poems but the third poem presented here, titled Otherwise, strikes a melancholic tone that always resonates with me no mater how [...]

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My Sister, Who Died Young, Takes Up The Task

By Chip Cain | Published April 6, 2009

by Jon Pineda A basket of apples brown in our kitchen, their warm scent is the scent of ripening, and my sister, entering the room quietly, takes a seat at the table, takes up the task of peeling slowly away the blemished skins, even half-rotten ones are salvaged carefully. She makes sure to carve out [...]

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Forgetfulness – Billy Collins Animated Poetry

By Chip Cain | Published April 5, 2009

Poetry  has always had an oral side to it’s history, now with video added we have a third way of receiving poetry.This poem by Billy Collins incorporates the written text, the spoken word and the visual images for a different way to take in poetry. Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America’s [...]

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White Winter Hymnal

By Chip Cain | Published April 4, 2009

This song by Fleet Foxes is all but old news yet there is something about this song and video that keeps me coming back. The video doesn’t follow the lyrics but that’s not uncommon so what is it about this that has caught my attention once again? It’s how perfectly the video matches with the [...]

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Prayer On Leaving The Body

By Chip Cain | Published April 3, 2009

by James Deahl O taste and see that the Lord is good. –Psalm 34: 8 These feet that have carried me over switchback trails in Appalachian darkness I give up; they are left in tall grass by the Baltimore and Ohio right of way where steel rails cut close to the orange creek. And these [...]

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Jennifer Maestre's Pencil Sculptures

By Chip Cain | Published April 3, 2009

It is not hard to see that I am always interested in art created using the expected things; those things we expect to see or use everyday, used unexpectedly.  Jennifer Maestre’s sculptures fall into this category. I use pencils everyday, yes even in this day and age of keyboards, but never have I done anything [...]

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Visualizing Poetry

By Chip Cain | Published April 2, 2009

Here are two very different ways of visualizing poetry. Click on the pictures to be taken to the websites to find out how they were created.

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Keep Trying to Tell Him

By Chip Cain | Published April 2, 2009

by Hiram Larew Pretend for a minute That you’re a duck In muddy water And that whatever’s teasing your legs Is starting to make you nervous Pretend that you’re around sixty And you’re not so sure if you want to know What’s in the message Even though someone who’s skipping And smiling Just handed it [...]

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Poetry for Cowboys and Poetry for Cows

By Chip Cain | Published April 2, 2009

Er yep, there is such a thing as poetry for cowboys. And even better, poetry for cows. Gary Larson, you gotta love him . . . and them thar cows of his.

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KINDLY

By Chip Cain | Published April 1, 2009

by WILLIAM AARNES Like you, both the man and the woman who soon followed have sorted through and rejected the dated magazines that somehow got puffed with paging.  And, like yours, their eyes keep roaming around the waiting room as if it’s not comforting exactly but more like reassuring to know others suffer. You exchange [...]

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National Poetry Month 2009

By Chip Cain | Published April 1, 2009

April 1st begins this blogs most active time of the year. April is National Poetry Month and as always it’s my excuse to encourage the reading of poetry by the masses. This is my chance to prove that poetry isn’t as painful as what your teachers made it out to be. Here is a very [...]

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White As Diamonds

By Chip Cain | Published January 19, 2009

Alela Diane is a home brewed artist and by that I mean that she is not derivative of any other artist: at least none I know. Her music is Folk/Americana and often reflects the mood of homespun cloth and lonesome wolves at night. I realize that is a strange description for someone’s music so let [...]

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