Because E is for Eletelephony, one of my favorite poems as a kid and an adult.
The photo is a page from a Childcraft book circa 1957. You’ll notice the illustration is by Walt Disney. Way before the Disney mega-entity is what is today.
Please excuse this indulgent piece of my past. It makes me feel old to write it, but I am grateful. Not everyone in my high school class had made it this far.
Source: imgarcade
Back In the Day (on the occasion of my 58th birthday)
Party line
Single ring for the other party, double ring for us.
Or was it the other way around?
I didn’t know who the other party was but I think I answered
Her phone for her once or twice.
Not much of a party, really.
Record players. (And records.)
Small—move the switch to 45
Medium—move the switch to 78
Large—move the switch to 33.
Little Toot gave way to American Pie.
The nuns called the record player a school the Victrola. Seriously.
The TV livedin a piece of furniture.
Black and white, sometimes snowy.
Get up and change the channel for your dad, wouldja?
Turn the knob on the antenna box, wouldja?
You make a better door than a window.
Humph! The neighbors have a color TV.
Going to the movies was an event!
Driving downtown in the afternoon.
The red velvet ropes and red velvet seats—
Like Hollywood itself.
Snow White. The Jungle Book. The Sound of Music.
Larger than life stories I imagined myself in for weeks.
Flip up the lid of the brown box camera to view the scene.
Press a button and the flash kills your eyes.
Turn the knob to advance the film
Replace the flashbulb, but not until it cooled down.
Send the film away and wait and wait and wait.
Now, I take out my phone out of my pocket
And make a call
Listen to music
Watch a TV show
Watch a movie
Make a movie
Take a picture
Send it to someone
Send a message
Find out where I am and how to get there
Read a book
Write a book.
Look up when all this stuff was invented and what was the number one song on the day I was born. (Perry Como was my mom’s favorite crooner.)
I think this is something I’m going to be messing around with throughout the month because this is not the tone I want.
Suffer the Little Children
Jesus loves me this I know
For God so loved the world he sent his only begotten son
For the Bible tells me so.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness
Red brown yellow black and white
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
They are precious in his sight
Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not
This is similar to a counted cross stitch piece I made when my daughter was a baby. Notice all the white kids. Someone didn’t get the red brown yellow black and white memo.
I started my “writing career” with NaNoWriMo in 2008. NaNoWriMo is an international event where people accept the challenge to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. I’ve written a rough draft of a novel every year since then.
Deciding I should experience different forms of writing instead of only multi-book sagas, I will endeavor to write one poem every day in April. There are various websites supporting this idea, but I think I’m going with NaPoWriMo.
I am not guaranteeing any type of quality. I’m not even going to be upset if I don’t get a poem out every day. And they sure as heck won’t rhyme of have any kind of standard form.
Here’s #1
#1 T.A. Munroe 4/1/15
My challenge–expressive adjectives.
And I think I’ll have to use screen shots taken from Word because I can’t seem to get rid of the space between paragraph on WordPress, if that’s even possible.
Without intending to, I gave birth to a poet or two. Of course, I wouldn’t have known how to go about creating a poet if I intended to.
Sarah is earning her MFA in Creative Writing and West Virginia University while working as a teaching assistant.
In honor of World Poetry Day, here are a few of Sarah’s poems I have access to online.
By Sarah Munroe. All rights reserved.
By Sarah Munroe. All rights reserved.
By Sarah Munroe All rights reserved.
These from the former 3rd grader who rebelled against homeschool and wouldn’t write one paragraph about dolphins but as a 4th grader wrote a 16-page story for her public school teacher.
Sarah’s Tumblr blog is here. I think she gave up updating it when she met the love of her life and had other things to do. Plus, she’s not a huge fan of social media.
My son, Pete, is also a poet in the songwriting sense, even though he recently switched over to stand up comedy of the sort he doesn’t really want his parents to experience. Here’s his former band, Quatro Dedos for which he wrote most of the lyrics and did most of the lead vocals. Loud fast punk, not for the faint of heart.
Quatro Dedos CD cover by Pete Munroe
My so-far unappreciated novels are not my only contribution to the literary world and the overall art production of the planet.
For things like World Caber Tossing day, however, I have nothing.
meanderings 