The Wilmingtonian Poetry Journal

SONNET: NUMBERING LAPS

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Mon, 14 Sep 09 09:11:00 UT

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19722344/SONNET-NUMBERING-LAPS

CRAZY MARY: A TALE OF MY FATHER'S STALKER

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Thu, 27 Aug 09 10:26:00 UT

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19094767/CRAZY-MARY-A-TALE-OF-MY-FATHERS-STALKER

A WAR IS THAT WAY (ROUNDEL: SAN SALVADOR, 1982)

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Mon, 17 Aug 09 16:13:00 UT

A WAR THAT WAY (ROUNDEL: SAN SALVADOR, 1982)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18731250/A-WARS-THAT-WAY-ROUNDEL-SAN-SALVADOR-1982

APULIAN BOY (RAGAZZO PUGLIESE)

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Wed, 5 Aug 09 18:30:00 UT

See my translation of the poem by Emilai Cattani of Italy

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18172322/APULIAN-BOY-RAGAZZO-PUGLIESE

See my writings at http://www.scribd.com/DLGuerra

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 28 Jul 09 18:33:00 UT

http://www.scribd.com/DLGuerra

SONNET: URSULINE SCHOOL RISES OVER THE CITYSCAPE

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 30 Jun 09 18:48:00 UT

Recently in Wilmington, Delaware, I engaged in a pilgrimage about the city, noting what had changed, was lost, or preserved. Ursuline Academy, founded in 1893, remains vibrant, welcoming, and striking despite a century sea change underpinned by anxiety and turbulence. Perhaps I am optimistic; a fellow alumna now presides over the school in the 21st century. Even more hopeful: the philosophy and charism of Ursuline founder St. Angela Merici has outlasted centuries of turbulence and remains proven to this very day.

SONNET: URSULINE SCHOOL RISES OVER THE CITYSCAPE

By D. Lewandowski Guerra

Â©2009 All Rights Reserved

At brick-edged stucco convent they enroll,
New girls converging on its vintage site.
Though timeâs dereliction unfolds fresh blight,
This malachite parcel evades such toll.

Lineaments, books, places preserve the soul,
Gothic monuments generous with light,
Not verdigrisy vaults scorched by quickening night
To gray leaden decrepitude â the goal

Of dismissals more stupid than studied --
Wearing mottled pavers, howlite green grass,
And chipped coral bricks to their brittlest rim.

Stride crumbling streetscapes, once pastures muddied.
Force gaze opaque to massed concrete and glass,
Repository trumps each interim.

SONNET: "DEAR MAMMA" (1933)

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 2 Mar 04 17:49:00 UT

(I recently purchased a vintage postcard at an antique show. Exactly what it said and what it showed are included in the following Shakespearean sonnet.)

SONNET: "DEAR MAMMA" (1933)

(copyright Donata Lewandowski Guerra 2004)

"What thou doest, do quickly. Love from Allen"
Ends backward slant on a Wilmington card
Postmarked from Middletown to Margaret Virdin.
In linen, city's sturdy boulevard

Thrusts up Delaware Trust. Minute adults
Disperse over broad pavements anchoring
A Post-Depression's mercantile results.
He begins "Warning! Everything in full swing!

Dining room table is piled up - no place
To put hat - and other sure signs." Bizarre,
Confounding, his neat scrawl on back's half-space
Serves riddles to us yearning from afar

Unable to breech distance, years, blood ties
To Philadelphia and mother's eyes.

VILLANELLE: THE BACK OF THE CARD

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 24 Feb 04 16:26:00 UT

As I continue to collect vintage postcards of Wilmington, Delaware -- my sites are available on the links above -- I find intriguing the messages written between strangers, family, and friends. While the writing on postcards does not seem to impact their monetary value, I am always struck by the sheer historical value of the exchanges on such cards. These messages serve as windows into the minds of their writers -- each a product of time, place, and all factors that make one a unique person in time.

VILLANELLE: THE BACK OF THE CARD

(Copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra, do not reproduce without permission)

These strangers' words not meant to last
Pressed out in pen or scrawled with lead
Still speak on postcards from the past

That fill a shoebox with a vast
Visual inventory. Unread,
These strangers' words not meant to last

Harbor scant value in contrast
To scarce imagery; once read
Still speak on postcards from the past

But little count (if one's amassed
A century's worth of sites instead).
These strangers' words not meant to last

Remain invisible, surpassed
By landmarks. Places travels led
Still speak on postcards from the past.

Unmarked by card enthusiast
Are treasures hidden in the said.
These strangers' words not meant to last
Still speak on postcards from the past.

SONNET: DELAWARE TRUST

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 10 Feb 04 20:08:00 UT

A fascinating reminiscence of Wilmington landmarks in 1886 occurred in 1933 when a reporter for the Wilmington Sunday Journal recreated the streets of his youth for the paper's readers. Now, in 2004, I look back on his creation of that recreation.

DELAWARE TRUST

(copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

The Old Timer in nineteen thirty-three
Strolled, composing Market Street from his head
In 'eight-six: Yellow-buttoned shoes tread
On a route long shaped in his memory.

At Tenth an uprooted cemetery
Raised stones once more "in this man's town. The red
Brick village that was Wilmington." Block shed
Delaware Trust, he, a soliloquy:

"Chester A. Arthur's full burn-sided stare
Tracked me to Fourth where a drove of cattle
Stalled. Eyeing a factory for the bee hive

Up Sixth at Shipley, I deemed it rare
To improve on nature", 'til trolley's rattle
Jarred him to breathing. He was yet alive.

SONNET: PUTTING LIFE INTO A GRAVEYARD, A 1920 DELAWARE STATE MAGAZINE FE

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Mon, 26 Jan 04 14:26:00 UT

Last year I stumbled across a January, 1920 article in the short-lived Delaware State Magazine about the ground under the present-day Wilmington Institute Free Library on Rodney Square. Part of the building stands over a playground that, itself, had displaced the First Presbyterian Church cemetery on Market Street. The story featured photographs of young boys playing on the old cemetery grounds. The church had already been moved to the Brandywine River bank where it stands today as the headquarters of the Colonial Dames. Eventually, this play area gave way to the library we see today. My ruminations take shape in this Petrarchan sonnet.

PUTTING LIFE INTO A GRAVEYARD: DELAWARE STATE MAGAZINE FEATURE, 1920

(copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

Around opaque headstones and thin trees brown
As dried grass trampled underfoot, they mill,
"The Gang" -- baptized in print -- on Market's hill,
1920s teams, all boys, it seems. The town

Sees burial ground give way (with Church set down
Anew on the Brandywine's banks) but still
Its emptying plots won't cede to masons' skill
Until a firm of national renown

Two years hence lifts pilasters to pages.
"The war has changed all things." cite accolades,
Coy captioning "From the Grave to the Gay".

They have asked, are rot already, sages
Matured in the intervening eight decades,
If living souls remember tombs or play.

THE WILMINGTONIAN JOURNAL" PLEIN AIR:CITY RESERVOIR AND URSULINE SCHOOL"

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Sun, 18 Jan 04 19:18:00 UT

The Wilmington, Delaware City Reservoir along Franklin Street has adjoined the collegial Gothic architectural complex that is Ursuline Academy -- High School, convent, and Junior School -- for a little less than a century. My other websites feature photographs and postcards of the Reservoir, but none can capture the beauty one sees while actually standing and taking in the vista, and this Petrarchan sonnet is an attempt to recreate that effect.

PLEIN AIR: CITY RESERVOIR AND URSULINE SCHOOL

(copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra, do not reproduce without permission)

Cupped inside a low-rising gradient,
Secured with fence, bordered by gray stone wall,
The City Reservoir guards drink for all
Strolling past the mutual abutment

Of Ursuline School and water allotment.
Under Romanesque arch at evenfall
Step out from the porte-cochere. Recall
A glimpse of dark lapping, and contentment.

On days when shards of sun had pierced our eyes,
London blue, the aqueous aggregation
Would not cede self-contained serenity,

And we, dismissing pain, suppressing cries,
Framed the pool with massed Gothic formation
In a gallery of eternity.

THE WILMINGTONIAN JOURNAL: SONNET: POLISH SPEAKERS AT AN AMERICAN WAKE, CIRCA 1970

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Sun, 11 Jan 04 17:26:00 UT

SONNET: POLISH SPEAKERS AT AN AMERICAN WAKE, CIRCA 1970

Copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra

Commotion at the chairs along the wall
Liberated us from studied grief,
Daughters of sons and daughters. Amnesiacs all,
We failed to know the words they bandied for relief.

The eldest aunt and all her aging cronies
Gossiped, hushed and murmured. No translation.
The Polish tongue was natural for these
First-born of sacrificial generation.

The talk was, no doubt, personal, exchange --
When one knew, had heard,what felt, and where --
Selective lowered tones in their interchange
Made us smile, savoring the risque air.

The century mark has born away distraction
For those who mourn and claim Polish extraction.

THE WILMINGTONIAN JOURNAL: POEM: ROUNDEL ON RODNEY SQUARE

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Fri, 9 Jan 04 19:57:00 UT

Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware took years to achieve its present appearance. An old postcard on one of my websites shows the Court House building that stands -- along with the Wilmington Institute Free Library, Hotel DuPont, and Post Office on each of its sides -- even lacking the statue of Cesar Rodney galloping to sign the Declaration of Independence. The irony of this poem is that though its form, the Roundel, is taken from a type of dance, the narrator is left standing in place.

ROUNDEL ON RODNEY SQUARE

(copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

I feel myself still standing there
While memory unveils each side:
Four portals to the past and pride
Of those whose vision raised this Square.

First, books stacked high in warm dark air
And "DuPont" pushed "Biltmore" aside.
I feel myself still standing there
While memory unveils each side:

Third, Court, porticoed lawyers' lair,
Then Post Office massed in brick to hide
Mundane business, while astride,
Rodney rears in perpetual tear,
I feel myself still standing there.

THE WILMINGTONIAN JOURNAL: Poem, The Ursuline Academy Drama Closet

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Fri, 12 Dec 03 22:55:00 UT

As a drama student at Ursuline Academy, I often visited the drama closet high on its third floor. When our Drama Club participated in the University of Delaware's play festival for area high schools one year, I found myself entranced by this room. Over the years, this sacred space appears in my dreams; I recognize it as a place that has come to represent a precious portion of my past experience.

THE URSULINE ACADEMY DRAMA CLOSET

(copyright Donata Lewandowski Guerra, 2003)

I sometimes dream of Ursuline
Where Gothic corridor
Leads to a large dark closet hid
Up on its attic floor.

Tucked underneath the mansard roof
Range clothes of olden date.
My hand takes from the colored rows
A gown for Shakespeare's Kate.

The fit is apt,gold satin threads,
Apparel for our show.
I will emerge as Henry's bride
Down in the world below.

My fingers open leather tomes
Obscured by vintage dress,
French prayers books, geometries
From Nineteenth Century press.

The nuns who stored away these words
Set up our drama nook,
Were loathe to discard precious gear --
Not verse, nor cloth, nor book.

Though fashions changed in garb or phrase
To such they still held fast
And taught how many needed things
Inhabited our past.

This reverie is not a wish,
It happened, yes, a fact.
Dream fragments help my memory
Forever call it back.

The play performed, the dress rehung,
No image left behind,
The volumes in that sacred space
Still open in my mind.

Wilmingtonian Journal Poem: NO POETRY ON THE BRANDYWINE

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Sun, 30 Nov 03 23:46:00 UT

On my website "Wilmington, Delaware, Then and Now, A City in Vintage and Modern Views" (available on the link above) an antique postcard image of the Brandywine River is juxtaposed with a digital image and my words "the surging Brandywine, source of power for flour and textile mills, has not inspired many poets." This poem examines the reasons for such a lack of verse in the Delaware literary world (if one can even imagine such a place exists!). I am aware of three women poets in the vicinity of this river -- two living, and one deceased. I cannot say if this river has been a source of their poetry, but I can say that these amazing creators have worked against the tide. Perhaps they are the subject of a later essay. Readers should bear in mind that the great Nineteenth and Twentieth Century illustrators who studied at Howard Pyle's school were equivalent to today's filmmakers, and their profession led to great financial success as well as lionization.

NO POETRY ON THE BRANDYWINE

(copyright 2003 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

I claim the olden Brandywine had rarely watered verse.
In growing Schoonover and Pyle it spawned a writers' curse.
The school that raised the Wyeth clan, and gathered painters in,
Had little care for versifiers, less for poets' din.

These illustrators limned the tales outsiders first would write
For eyes that read and then took in an image with delight.
Such commerce-ship of word and art, an enterprise done well,
Sailed strong out from the Brandywine, with business nonpareil.

Perhaps its parlance well-distilled, the Quaker mode of speech
Lent little stock to lyricism. What virtue could it teach?
The simple and the practical, not gaudy nor too proud,
Let voices die before they swelled. What if one sung too loud?

The city on the Brandywine is rich and rich men made,
But poverty now marks her speech for poets are not paid.