Monday, March 25th is Holi, the vibrant Indian festival of colors! And World Color Day as well as World Poetry Day just passed by us this past week. So why not devote this Poetics Sunday to celebrating the wondrous colors of life and poetry!

This post contains Amazon and other affiliate links, that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support. Please see the full disclosure for more information. I only recommend products I definitely would (or have already) use myself

Poetic Sundays: Celebrating the Wondrous Colors of Life & Poetry

Like I mentioned at the start of the post, with World Color Day and World Poetry Day just behind us, and Indians around the world celebrating Holi, the festival of colors, I decided to celebrate the colors of life and of poetry for this week’s Poetics.

Of the Wondrous Colors of Life

Color is a big part of life. Not only is it everywhere around us, it impacts us in myriad ways – seen and unseen, known and unknown, familiar and strange (got you there, right? You thought I was going to say unfamiliar!).

We see certain colors and they make us happy. We even feel or are certain colors, like green with envy, or are hopefully in the pink of health right now and enjoying spring (if it is spring where you are).

Color weaves its threads through the tapestry of our emotions and experiences. It’s not just what we see but a language in itself, that helps us communicate in ways beyond words (just like other art forms do).

The World Around Us

Think about the calming impact of a serene blue sky on a peaceful day or the joy we experience from the golden hues of sunset (my favorite time of the day). These colors evoke emotions that transcend language barriers, speaking directly to our souls.

And Within

But it’s not just about the external world. As I mentioned earlier, colors have an intimate relationship with our inner selves as well. In addition to being green with envy, you must be familiar with feeling blue, seeing red with anger, or being in a sunny disposition, right?

Color Culture

Moreover, colors have cultural significance, varying widely across different societies. What may symbolize purity in one culture could signify mourning in another. Understanding these cultural nuances adds layers of depth to our perception of color and enriches our understanding of human expression.

Do you know of instances like this? I know that both black and white are used for very different reasons across cultures, and that gifting things of certain

It’s Science!

Colors play a vital role in science as well, and thus in everyday lives. They influence our perception of taste, with studies showing that the color of food affects how we perceive its flavor. From the vibrant red of a ripe strawberry to the deep green of fresh spinach, colors impact and enhance our dishes and our experiences with food.

We know it impacts our moods as well, not just our taste buds. So painting your rooms in certain colors will ensure you use each area most effectively.

Of course, then we have colors in optics, the rainbow, in all the digital worlds we consume every minute, in traffic lights, and so much more.

To Summarize

Colors invite us to explore, to feel, and to connect with the world around us in ways both profound and sublime. So, the next time you gaze upon a rainbow or marvel at the changing leaves of autumn, remember that you’re not just witnessing colors; you’re experiencing the very essence of life itself.

How to Write Vibrant Poetry to Celebrate the Colors of Life!

There are a few ways we can do this.

• You could write a synesthesia poem like Joyce Sidman suggests, and don’t forget to read her brilliant colorful book Red Sings from Treetops. Here Sidman focuses on the five senses and this could be a fun exercise for young poets (and old).
• Or pick any color and write an acrostic poem. Simple yet fun.
• Choose a color or two (or more). Free write a list of words that you associate with these colors (things, places, feelings, anything and even anyone at all). Now use imagery, employ metaphors, expand of those initial words any way you can, and write your poem! Maybe put yourself in the shoes of that color! What color do you think you are/would be and what would you do?
• Or you could simply about something in that color – like that red apple, or that purple chair, or the yellow sunflower!

Additional Tips and Ideas

• You could challenge yourselves by inviting yourselves to make each line (for that acrostic poem idea)a stanza, or use the most unique things about the color and /or use unusual words in that acrostic poem.
• Choose colors that clash normally and weave them together in a poem.
• Write a poem with the favorite (or not) colors of family members/friends/any group of people you are with.
• Describe a color in every other way except naming the color – make it a color riddle! Like sunshine for yellow, or say Granny Smith apple for green, the color of blood for red, and so on.

My Attempts to Celebrate the Colors of Life

I don’t really have one right now that celebrates these colors of life (it is a work in progress though I do celebrate life’s colors everyday in every way!). But I do have a few from earlier posts which mention color (like this orange one and this yellow one).

Here is another below (check this post for more on the what and why of this poem):

Those Hazy Days
Orange skies
Weird and nice!
Wow! Surprise!
More such cries!
Something flies?

Two or three
Crows maybe,
By that tree?
Hard to see.
Mystery…
-Vidya Tiru

h/t, References, and Further Reading

• Read Dorothea Lasky’s brilliant essay What Is Color in Poetry at PoetryFoundation (I believe it is just a part of it, but there is so much within it!)
• This cool exploration of color in Emily Dickinson’s poetry
• Get inspired by ‘colorful’ poems
  • Matt Donovan’s Green Means Literally a Thousand Things or More (at Poets.org)
  • Which Donovan says inspired by the motifs in Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill (Poets.org)
  • Robert Burns’ A Red, Red Rose
  • Evie Shockley’s color bleeding
  • No mode of excitement is absolutely colorless by Monica de la Torre
  • Dunya Mikhails’ powerful The War in Colors
  • Edgar Albert Guest’s beautiful Down the Lanes of August
  • This joyous, vibrant poem by Arden Davidson – Color Me Happy
  • Colors passing through us by Marge Piercy (PoetryFoundation.org)

Recently

On My Blog & at Home

My recent posts since and including my last Sunday Scribblings:

• 3 2 1 Go.. Counting Down to Many Important Events
• The Joy of Telling & Reading Stories: Happy and More
• Sunday Scribblings #181: Spring Wit(h) Joy: Jumping Rhymes and More

The weather is yet to make up its mind(s)!! While I do welcome the additional rain (though very light showers), I don’t care much for that combination of the really warm sun and the really chill wind. How do we dress up then?!

Upcoming

On My Blog & Homefront

This week is kind of a repeat of last year’s.. so I am copy-pasting it (with minor edits)

My son is home for his spring break, and having been sick for part of this last quarter means I do want to ensure he returns to college hale and hearty! It will be DH’s birthday this week and though he is traveling for a couple of days including on his birthday (on work), we cut some cake tonight and enjoyed it!

As for the blog, hope to get in a couple of posts this coming week, and I want to plan a little for April’s various blogging challenges. Also, since the fourth Sunday in March begins National Cleaning Week, hope I can get some cleaning done (and I do have my son home all the time so I have some help!)

This Week’s Celebrations

Literary Celebrations (close-to-it also!)

• Literary birthdays this week of March include: Flannery O’Connor, Linda Sue Park, Kate DiCamillo on 25th March; Erica Jong, Robert Frost, Tennessee Williams, and Viktor Frankl on the 26th of March; Julia Alvarez on March 27th; Maxim Gorky and Russell Banks on March 28; Amy Sedaris, Ranjit Hoskote on March 29th; Anna Sewell, Thi. Ka. Sivasankaran, and Tobias Hill on the 30th of March; Nikolai Gogol and René Descartes on March 31st
• March 25th is Tolkien Reading Day!!
• It is World Theatre Day on the 27th of March and also Scribble Day. Scribbles are how we start to write, right? And kind of literary too, it is also Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day
• Then it is National Pencil Day on March 30th followed by
• National Crayon Day on the 31st of March, which of course, belongs here too!

Foodie Celebrations

• It is International Waffle Day on the 25th.
• Followed by National Spinach Day and National Nougat Day on the 26th of March.
• Then, 27th brings with it National Spanish Paella Day
• And I know many will love National Black Forest Cake Day, which is on March 28th
• More sweetness follows on the 29th for it is National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day
• End the week with some saltiness for your taste buds on the 31st with National Tater Day 

Other Celebrations

• Time to ponder, reflect, look back, and more! For it is World Retrospective Day on the 25th. And it is Holi – the festival of colors. National OmazingYou Day is on March 25.
• Quirkiness squared (or more) with National Today is Make Up Your Own Holiday Day on March 26th. For us in our family, we are celebrating a birthday for sure! But will still make up something else to celebrate too.
• The 26th also happens to be Solitude Day, to take time for yourself if you so wish and is Epilepsy Awareness Day – Purple Day
• The last Wednesday in March celebrates Manatee Appreciation Day  and National Little Red Wagon Day  (which is March 27th this year)
• It is World Piano Day on the 88th day of the year, that is, March 28th!
• March 29th is Mermaid Day and World Marbles Day.
• The 30th of March happens to be National Doctors Day, National I Am in Control Day, National Take a Walk in the Park Day, and National Virtual Vacation Day
• March 31st is World Backup Day reminding us all to backup our digital (and even ensure our physical). It is also National Bunsen Burner Day

Related Reads and More

• Color by Christina Rossetti with art by Laetitia Devernay (5 – 8 years, and up). Beautiful!!
• Vivid: Poems & Notes About Color written and illustrated by Julie Paschkis (4 – 8 years, and up). Delightfully vibrant!
• Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Poetry and Color by Mary O’Neill with art by John Wallner (3 – 8 years, and up). Colorfully unique!
• I am loving Emily Thornton Calvo’s Lending Color to the Otherwise Absurd. Beautiful, poignant, humorous, and so much else that captures how creativity and color can help us deal with the many aspects of life.
• Check out these beautiful Cezanne pencils for all your coloring needs. You can find multicolor sets Cezanne Premium Colored Pencils MultiColor Set of 72 for your coloring needs. You can also pick up sets of specific colors (for those you color often and run out of soon!!) from Cezanne. Maybe you are like me and use up a lot of yellow. They even have “colorless” pencils for blending colors in!!!
• If you are looking for some oil-based pencils to lend a different look to your drawings, then this set of oil-based color pencils from Art-n-Fly is for you.

Wrapping up my Colors of Life Sunday Scribblings

So dear reader, you have reached the end of this Sunday Scribblings! As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and suggestions about this post. And do let me know if you plan to celebrate any of these mentioned celebrations this coming week/month? Or if you write a few colorful poems, do share them with me!

Linking this to the Sunday Post over at the Caffeinated Reviewer and the Sunday Salon