We are wrapping up the year, friends, with a simple prompt — the word (idea) (object) (form) “box.”
I chose to write about an empty one, using Denise Kreb’s 4×4 Form (for obvious, boxy reasons).
Here goes…
The Stuff of Dreams
Liz Garton Scanlon
An empty box is no burden till you fill it, till it’s carried.
The weight borne by an empty box is handed down — inheritance
or treasure or obligation. An empty box, though, can be made
into our own. Flattened! Transformed! The stuff of dreams, this empty box!
To read about the others’ boxes, go here:
Kelly Tricia
Tanita Mary Lee Laura
Sara
Better late than never, I’m chiming in with my recipe poem.
(I have an excused absence. My whole sweet and wonderful family came for the holiday week and togetherness was on the menu.) BUT. Here I am with my recipe for… a habitat!
The Making of a Habitat
By Liz Garton Scanlon
Find
food such as thimbleberries or hickory nuts
(you may substitute anything
from ants to antelope
depending on appetite
and inclination)
Also, water, plentiful and preferably unpolluted
Air as filtered through the trees
and shelter
(may use aforementioned trees
or nearly any cave
or crook
or cranny)
Don’t leave out space to roam, range, recreate
and procreate
as necessary
… or desired
Jump to recipe!
Gather and weigh all ingredients
Aim for balance
Do not rush, do not miss steps, do not leave anything out
Over time, this recipe becomes self-sustaining
Beautiful, even
a certain, fragile, souffle-like kind of perfect
n December we are letting box inspire us. Your poem can be about a box, in the form of a box, about Boxing day, a boxing match, etc. Let your imagination run wild! We hope you’ll join us. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on December 30th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!
So, this month we committed to writing dansas — a poetic form with prescribed stanza lengths, a rhyme scheme and a refrain that’s meant to resemble dance of sort (thanks to the French for the name…) I think the rules will be obvious to you, so I won’t go into detail but I’ll offer up a few links here and here.
I had so much fun getting into character last month for our definito challenge that I decided to lean on that crutch a little longer. So, without further ado, my dansas — inelegant but fun!
The Middle School Dance: Three Dansas
Liz Garton Scanlon
1. Shall I ask him to dance? Can I screw up the nerve? (I prefer to observe through my bangs, at a glance!) Shall I ask him to dance
or stay put and reserved? Will I throw him a curve if I make my advance? Yes, I’ll ask him to dance,
like it’s what I deserve! Deep breath now and… swerve toward a budding romance if I ask – I am asking! – that boy there to dance.
2. I’m regretting everything, questioning the clothes I wore, keeping eyes glued to the floor. I crack my knuckles, twist and wring I’m just regretting everything!
I inch a little toward the door I’ve seen enough and need no more. But wait – my heart – a little zing – am I still regretting everything?
Lights are pulsing, music roars I see her coming, know what for. She asks, I answer, my heart sings – I’m not regretting anything!
3. One step forward, hand meets hand shivers rolling down the spine (obviously that’s a sign… and not exactly what they’d planned) one step forward, hand meets hand
swaying, breathing, looking fine music rushes, lights all shine the space at once grows close, expands one step forward, hand meets hand
gym floor shuffle, quite divine and then it ends, that’s it, it’s time the music stops but they still stand take one step forward, hand in hand
Finally, if you feel like joining us next month,we’re creating recipe poems! Your choice of form, length, meter, or topic, but each poem will be an assemblage of elements, using recipe text/cooking instructions to create …something. From a recipe for disaster, to your favorite aperitif, you have a month to craft your creation and serve it forth on November 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.
This month’s challenge was to write a Definito — a term coined (and form defined) by the brilliant Heidi Mordhorst! (Yikes — our poems aren’t usually read by the inventor of the form!) The basic parameters of the Definito are to write an 8-12 line poem geared toward 8-12 year-olds that “demonstrates the meaning” of a word, which serves as both the title and the ending of the poem.
For me, there was something about writing for this particular audience that suggested a narrative right away, so I’ve written two related poems that could lead me to even more. Here goes (and with apologies to Ms. Mordhorst!):
This month, a bop poem — three stanzas, with no proscribed rhyme or meter, 6/8/6 lines respectively. And those stanzas are meant to set up an argument, elaborate upon that argument, and… well… resolve it. PLUS, there’s a refrain in between each one. We agreed, as a group, to use the refrain: Let’s kick that can down the road.
We tried something new this month — a phrase acrostic, wherein you run every word in a line or phrase down the left side of a poem, just the way you would with letters in a standard acrostic. (It could be considered, as our pal Laura suggested, a flipped Golden Shovel.) Our source material was to be Maya Angelou’s iconic Still I Rise and, in my case, the line “With your bitter, twisted lies.” (I actually used it three times, for good measure.)
The cool thing about a form like this is it gives you a map to follow and you don’t really know where you’re going until you get there. What a surprise, for me, to end up researching the perennial herb bitterroot, and now I know stuff I didn’t. Yay, poetry!
Rises As Bitterroot
A Phrase-Acrostic After Maya Angelou’s STILL I RISE
Now, if you’d like to join us in August, we’re writing Bop poems (read about them here) so why not give it a whirl! Be safe and well, friends. Happy Friday.
This month, straight from Wales, Byr a Thoddaid poems. Just a quatrain or two. No big deal, right?
But wow, there are some odd, sort of dissonant rules about syllabics and rhyme and link words. A tricky proposition! (To read more about them, click here. Or here. The basic rules are that each quatrain has a rhymed couplet with 8 syllables in each line, and another couplet with a 10 syllable line and a 6 syllable line with both ‘linked’ words and internal rhyme.)
Since the form is British Isles-born, I was inspired to write about my recent trip to Scotland and how absolutely right my husband’s name sounded when I heard it spoken with a brogue, how comforting it was seeing it (and one of my daughter’s names too) on headstones and shop shingles, how at home these names (that are technically Irish, not Scottish, but close) were in this green, green place. So, here goes. Enjoy!
Our Poetry Sisters Prompt this month was to write “In the Style of…” Taylor Mali. Originally (mostly, I think) a spoken word poet, Mali tends toward longer form stuff, which (after a full month of haiku) felt a little daunting.
But then I found the section of his website where he offers prompts of his own, and in one of them, he appears to have written “In the Style of …” Nikki Giovanni! And I thought, how very meta! Plus, nice and short!
(Oh, also, I’ve based today’s haiku on this slightly longer poem because, two birds, etc. etc. And interestingly, both poem-versions are about a really big, dramatic experience in our family’s lives that happened more than 20 years ago but that I’ve never really dug into in writing. So, no time like the present, right?)
The Flood
In the Style of Nikki Giovanni and Taylor Mali
Once, the creek rose,
slipped inside like a shadow,
changed the shape of everything
and stretched out time till it just stood still.
I held up my hands and couldn’t see them
except for what they did, lifting the baby,
holding her above what was lapping at our ankles,
and I was a tree then, these were our roots
and we grew from there.
The Flood, As Haiku
The creek came inside
and my arms became branches,
lifting baby high
And, in case you’re interested in joining us next month, we will be writing poems around the words string, thread, rope, or chain. You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on May 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!
Y’know how once you see something, you can’t unsee it?
This morning, on a run with a friend, we came upon a night heron hunkering near a kind of half-full swimming hole on our drought-thirsty greenbelt. And y’all, I swear to you, he looked EXACTLY like Statler from the Muppets.
Night Heron
Hunched as a Muppet
night heron looks skeptical,
demands the last word
