Margarita Engle is the new Young People’s Poet Laureate at the Poetry Foundation. She posts from the official twitter account – you can read here.
I first read Margarita’s wonderful haiku at tinywords, founded by d. f. tweney in 2000.
Her website has more information about her work.
This morning I reread Wendy Brightbill’s post, Nothing Too Precious. Good reflections about art.
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Margarita Engle writes verse books. She tells stories and offers hope to young readers, and all readers.
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Carol Purington’s haiku are featured at Mann Library’s Daily Haiku, edited by Tom Clausen, this September.
Friendship Garden
by Margarita Engle and Ellen Olinger
Friendship Garden
tame peacocks stroll
through wild violets
Margarita
gentle
spring
rain
whispering
my
prayers
Ellen
Kettle Moraine
frogs singing
Easter Day
Ellen
spring morning without books
in the hammock
poetry
Margarita
marsh marigolds
beginning
sunrise
Ellen
Earth Day
winged maple seeds
ready to fly
Margarita
Friendship Garden was published first on Poems From Psalms and Nature, April 16, 2011.
Violets courtesy of wpclipart.com.
MOURNING DOVE
On the eve of my grandmother’s burial,
I remember a story she told me
about her father’s funeral
in a wild part of Cuba, long ago.
When the family returned to the farm,
the scent of incense from church still fresh on their brows,
they found all the cows tied to trees,
cattle rustlers on the run,
alarmed by the return of the mourners.
Now I picture my grandmother’s spirit gliding
through coffin, soil and sea,
back to the farm
of sugarcane and stargrass.
All the cows are still waiting,
while green-fringed palms
sway and soar, everything winged.
“Mourning Dove” was also published in Welcoming Hope: Poems for those in Need (2007, Elin Grace Publishing; with Time of Singing).
ANCIENT WORDS
reading ancient words
stones in a field
left by glaciers
EO
pensamiento*
flor de memoria
mi abuela
pansy
flower of memory
my grandma
ME
silent grace
with friends
magnolias
EO
wishing well
my penny
in sunlight
ME
letting go
daffodils bloom
in the compost pile
EO
camino al monte
un sueño
de paz
mountain road
a dream
of peace
ME
*The Spanish name for “pansy,” which also means “thought.”
“Ancient Words” was published first in Time of Singing (Spring 2010), which is edited by Lora H. Zill. Contributing Editors for this issue: Darlene Moore Berg and H. Edgar Hix.
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Margarita’s biography (July 17, 2010):
Margarita Engle is a botanist and the Cuban-American author of young adult novels in verse, most recently The Firefly Letters.
The Surrender Tree received a Newbery Honor, the Pura Belpré Medal, Jane Addams Award, Américas Award, Claudia Lewis Award, and Lee Bennett Hopkins Honor. The Poet Slave of Cuba received the Pura Belpré Medal, Américas Award, and an International Reading Association Award. Tropical Secrets received the Sydney Taylor Award, Paterson Prize, and an Américas Award Commendation. Engle’s next novel in verse is Hurricane Dancers, the First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck, forthcoming from Henry Holt in March, 2011.
Chapbooks include Word Wings (Elin Grace Publishing).
Engle’s first Henry Holt picture book is Summer Birds, the Butterflies of Maria Merian.
Margarita lives in northern California, where she enjoys hiking and helping her husband with his volunteer work for wilderness search and rescue dog training programs. Her next picture book is about search and rescue dogs.
Here are some of the daffodils from the compost pile.
Photo by Karl.
Poems From Oostburg, Wisconsin 