Tuesday Poem: Planet Earth, by P K Page

I was cleaning up the desk top on my computer, and came across a poem I had saved, and forgotten about, Planet Earth by Canadian poet P K Page. I hope you will find it worthwhile to click on the link, which I have included, lacking permission to post the poem here.

Page's poem is in a traditional form, the glosa, which takes a quatrain from another poet, and uses each of the four lines as the last line of each of four successive stanzas. The quatrain used is from Neruda's ode In Praise of Ironing

It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,
has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness;
and the hands keep on moving,
smoothing the holy surfaces.

I loved the way in which she expanded - or glossed on - this quatrain, with detailed descriptions of the earth as cloth, as embroidery, a sort of folk art with flowers and birds and two joined hearts upon it, along with slightly archaic language pertaining to laundry, such as pleated and goffered.

I also found an interesting online article on Page and the glosa form: How to Honour Dead Poets.

If those links are not sufficient to satisfy your poetry appetite, more Tuesday Poems can be found at the main hub site, and in the links on the sidebar there.