Celebrate National Poetry Month -- here is another
 family favorite, Rudyard Kipling's "If."  This 
one was well loved by my parents.

"If."

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/if.html

Your favorite bibliophilic robot, 4-LAN, has shared his thoughts on Joleene Naylor’s “Vampire Morsels” today over at “What I Am Reading.”

4-LAN offers great reviews of new books at his blog; stop in there often to discover great independent authors.

http://thebookmarketingnetwork.com/profiles/blogs/what-i-am-reading-11

Celebrate National Poetry Month — here is Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 64.”

This might have been the first poem I ever committed to memory, back in my high school days.  (It was either this or Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.”)  It escapes me now, as has the reason it was once so important.

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate 
That Time will come and take my love away. 
   This thought is as a death which cannot choose
   But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/64

I can’t resist sharing this link.  One of the (quite many) cool things about AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is its unusual soundtrack, which makes the zombie apocalypse … soulful.

It’s a great soundtrack song, paired in this youtube video with a great poster for Season 4 of “The Walking Dead.”  I love the show, even if I do speak heresy in nerd circles by opining that NBC’s “Hannibal” is better.

The demo version for this song is softer and is quite pretty.

Celebrate National Poetry Month!

This is probably the earliest poem I can remember — Shel Silverstein’s “Whatif,” It was  read to us in grade school from “A Light In the Attic.”

“Whatif”

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I’m dumb in school?
Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there’s poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don’t grow talle?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won’t bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don’t grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems well, and then
the nighttime Whatifs strike again!

http://faculty.weber.edu/chansen/humanweb/projects/MeghanUng/whatif.htm

I was lucky enough to reconnect today with Mike Hensdill, a colleague of mine from my newspaper days at the Culpeper Star-Exponent in Virginia.

Aside from being funny as hell to work with, Mike is a fantastic photographer with a great eye.

Check out his work here:

http://michaelhensdill.com/

It’s National Poetry Month, and I insist on observing it, even if my Philistine friends ignore me.

This is probably the earliest exposure to verse that I can remember — my parents played Irish ballads on 8-Track tapes when we had company over when I was a tot.  It is “Irish Soldier Boy,” performed by Paddy Reilly.

Yes … 8-Track tapes.  I WAS A TOT.

Anyway, I grew up hearing these when I was very little.  I believe the one that I remember best was “Wild Rover,” but I also remember this one after my mother remembered the title for me.

https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/1453dea36c62ea1b?projector=1

WHY THE HELL CAN’T YOU BE.