But-Does-it-Rhyme>
About Us     Favorites    Archive    Contact        
 

You Are Here

Welcome to But Does it Rhyme?
We're a small, but hopefully growing, band of poets who like to talk about our craft and share what we've written. We'll highlight favorite poets, review new books, and explore the process of writing poetry from inspiration to conclusion. (We might venture into essays and short fiction, too.) We hope you'll like our blog — and contribute your own thought and poems.

Sally Zakariya, Poetry Editor
Richer Resources Publications

Charan Sue Wollard (LivermoreLit)
Kevin Taylor (Poet-ch'i)
Sherry Weaver Smith
(SherrysKnowledgeQuest)

books
Richer Resources Publications

INVITE US TO YOUR INBOX!

Would you like to receive our monthly newsletter? Sign up here.

ARCHIVES

 
   

The Missing Couplet

It’s exciting to have a piece accepted for publication, so I was delighted when Boston Literary Magazine published my poem “What I Know about Chemistry” in its Winter 2013-14 issue. But alas, the final couplet didn’t make it into print. Not their fault! Turns out it didn’t make it into my submission either. So, to correct the little chemical spill, here‘s the whole poem:

What I Know about Chemistry
Sally Zakariya

Grandfather was a chemist but the science
gene died with him in the Maine woods.

Hiker, archer, fisherman, consummate
outdoorsman, but still always a chemist

pursuing the central science. I see
him white coated with his test tubes

exploring the essential secrets
of the universe, matter’s mysteries

how atoms meet and dance and bond
in shapely mathematical precision.

I can’t fathom such formidable beauty
can’t grasp the fundamental knowledge

he held so easily. Did he see molecules
in dreams, devise arcane reactions as he

walked from home to lab, from lab to home?
Samuel Stockton Voorhees—I look in vain

for some suggestion of his sibilant name
in the periodic table. But never mind.

When he was young, I’m told, he saved a man
from drowning in the Johnstown Flood

no doubt analyzing the murky mixture
of flood water and debris as he dove in.

Lesson learned: when you cut and paste, double check!

....................................................................................................................................

Kudos for Haiku Book

Land Shapes     

In the well-earned praise department, Sherry Weaver Smith's Land Shapes: Selected Haiku Poems has won an honorable mention in the prestigious R.H. Blyth Award for books of haiku in English. The award is presented annually by the World Haiku Club, based in Oxford, England, and was judged by esteemed Japanese poet and artist Susumu Takiguchi. Smith's haiku poems "are like the first scene of a drama, development of a story or change in the narrative," says the World Haiku Club's review of Land Shapes, "and how desperately we want to know the drama, story or narrative themselves!"

The review is online at World Haiku Review.

...................................................................................................................................

What Are You Writing?

Why should we get all the bylines? Submit your latest poem—just one for now—and we’ll publish the poems we like best in an upcoming blog post. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if the poem is accepted or published elsewhere. Send your poem, plus a few lines about yourself, in the body of an e-mail message to:

            poetryeditor@RicherResourcesPublications.com