POETRY FRIDAY: Robert's Snowflakes and Poems

When I read this post by Jules at 7-Imp the other day, it gave me an idea for my Poetry Friday post at Blue Rose Girls this week. Last week at Wild Rose Reader, I wrote about poetry inspired by famous paintings and other works of art. Since we are in the midst of Blogging for a Cure, I thought it would be fitting to post three haiku poems and images of the 2004 snowflakes that inspired their authors. The poems and snowflakes are all included in Robert's Snowflakes: Artists' Snowflakes for Cancer's Cure.

NOTE: Robert's Snowflakes: Artists' Snowflakes for Cancer's Cure is a beautiful collector’s item. It is a compilation of the 2004 snowflakes and haiku written specially for the book by Jane Yolen, Janet Wong, Heidi Stemple, Jennifer Holm, Carole Lexa Schaefer, April Halprin Wayland, Charlotte Zolotow and her daughter Crescent Dragonwagon, and me. Please consider purchasing a copy of the book because 100% of the royalties will go to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Snowflake Art & Poetry

The first haiku I’ve posted here was written by Charlotte Zolotow and Crescent Dragonwagon. What you may not know is that Charlotte and Crescent actually wrote a poem with three stanzas for Robert’s Snowflakes. The poem was too long to fit on the blank snowflake template—so only the last stanza, which you see below, was included in the book.

This is the two-page spread in which their poem appears:

The Snowflake Artists

(left page from left to right)

Phoebe Stone, Loren Long, Scott Bakal
(right page from left to right)

Kinuko Y. Craft, Grace Lin, Gary A. Lippincott

Busy small white stars

making the cold dark earth white.

Inside, we are warm.

Click here to read the first two stanzas of this lovely poem.

Here is another lovely haiku written by Janet Wong…along with the snowflakes that inspired it.

The Snowflake Artists

(top to bottom & left to right)

Amy Young, Melissa Iwai

Linda Wingerter

Susan Swan

Theresa Smythe, Kathy Jakobsen

Skater and scarf wrap
themselves around each other,
ice-dancing as one.

Finally, here is the haiku I wrote for Robert's Snowflakes: Artists' Snowflakes for Cancer's Cure and an image of the book’s two-page spread in which my poem appears.

A snowman shadow
paints himself in blue upon
a cold white canvas.

The Snowflake Artists
(left page from left to right)

Janie Bynum, John Hassett, Jarrett J. Krosoczka

(right page from left to right)

Leo Landry, Jaime Zollars, Fred Lynch

The first auction of Robert’s Snow 2007 begins on November 19th!

NOTE: The poems posted here are the copyrighted property of their respective authors. All rights reserved.

Cloudscome has the Poetry Friday Roundup at A Wrung Sponge this week.