Poetry Happy List

Hello, friends! It’s time for a short little lighthearted post. I’ve seen happy lists on other blogs, and I thought it would be fun to do on mine! Going from A to Z, 26 poetry-related things that make me happy.

1.       Alliteration (alackaday!—alliteration’s always amazing)

2.       Beauty (there’s so much beauty to be found in poetry!)

3.       Christ-focused poems (e.g., George Herbert’s poems)

4.       Death poems with good metaphors (e.g., Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”)

5.       Elegant language (click https://allpoetry.com/contest/2868674-Twisted-Tuesdays--But-in-poetry--we-say...-by-Larson-Langston-/ for examples)

6.       Favorite words (shard, fragment, rhythm, melodious...I have a lot of favorite words)

7.       Green (i.e. descriptions of woods and plains and plants--and let's go ahead and extend it and say nature in general; Maya Pawley in As the Frost Melts has written cheerful, evocative poems about nature)

8.       Honesty (poetry is a place to express rawness, dive into pain, dance for joy--Summer Analynn Mohr does this beautifully in her poems in As the Frost Melts)

9.    Imagination (every poem needs a healthy dash of imagination! This word comes to mind when reading Skylar Rivers beautifully unique poems in--you guessed it--As the Frost Melts)

10.   Joy (there are so many poems out there throbbing with joy--Ruby Miner's As the Frost Melts poems are an example)

11.   Kathryn Peterson (she’s a good friend of mine and a wonderful poet)

12.   Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (especially his Hiawatha)

13.   Malcolm Guite (my favorite poet, as I daresay you already know)

14.   Noyes, Alfred (never heard of him? Go read his poetry)

15.   Onomatopoeia (no, I did not spell that word right on the first try)

16.   Pope, Mercy (another good friend of mine and a brilliant poet, As the Frost Melts team member)

17.   Quietness (some of my favorite poetry is quiet poetry that gives you space to breathe and think and feel in silence)

18.   Rattin, Ana (a very good friend of mine and a writer of beautiful, beautiful poetry-also an As the Frost Melts team member)

19.   Sanders, Beatrice (another good friend and As the Frost Melts team member! master of free verse)

20.   Team (yes, I mean the As the Frost Melts team; I'm proud of all of them for the way we worked together and published a book! They all write beautiful and moving poetry, so here's a tribute to Elestren Hawke, Decker J. Martin, Skylar Rivers, Ruby Miner, Summer Analynn Mohr, Maya Pawley, Analea Pennell, Mercy Pope, Ana Rattin, and Beatrice Sanders!)

21.   Understanding (I mean that in multiple ways--and Elestren Hawke's poetry in As the Frost Melts embodies multiple of them)

22.   Vividness (poetry needs to be evocative; Analea Pennell's poems in As the Frost Melts are vivid examples)

23.   Whimsy (take, for example, Decker J. Martin’s “Diamonds and Pitch” in As the Frost Melts)

24.   eXuberance (I didn’t have many options there...)

25.    Yore (as in ideas drawn from ages of yore)

26.   Zazz (define that how you will)

And there you go, my alphabetized poetry happy list! What are some things that make YOU happy in poetry?

(Photo credit to Glenns Carsten-Peters on Unsplash)