Sherry Chandler

Three women singing close harmony is one of life’s sweetest consolations. Like the Andrews Sisters, Patty, Maxine, and LaVerne. Somehow I always think of them in uniform, entertaining the troops. Maybe it’s because their very best known song is “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” but they were known as the “Sweethearts of the Armed Forces Radio Service.” However, their careers spanned from about 1925 (Patty was 7 when they started) to the 1970s. “Rum and Coca Cola” was at the top of the charts on the day I was born. I found this toy at Blue Girl in a Red State.

The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.
— Portia’s speech from Act IV, Scene I of The Merchant of Venice, text from Project Gutenberg.

It is Poem in your Pocket Day and I thank Margo Berdeshevsky for reminding me of this passage in her Poet’s Pick last week.

Garrison Keillor threw a sonnet contest. Results, winner and 32 finalists, here. Or you can listen to a streaming broadcast of the show Sonnet in your Bonnet? in which members of the cast read the poems.

And also, in my list of local events this week, I, rather stupidly, forgot to mention that Lynnell Edwards will be reading from her new book The Highwayman’s Wife tonight at 6:30 at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington. The reading is free. The workshop afterwards is $25. Tonight’s event is, I think, the last of the CCLL’s New Books by Great Writers Series for this season.

Which reminds me, in turn, of Alfred Noyes’s poem “The Highwayman”. I submit this link to you as your bonus poem.