This is (I think?) my 13th year of writing daily haiku during the month of April, and I couldn’t be gladder that it’s swung back around to this time of year again. (Also immensely grateful that you’re here, either reading along or writing your own poems!)
As you probably know, haiku is a traditional Japanese form that has been evolved and played with and differently understood over time and across space. I follow the (westernized) 5/7/5 syllabic pattern because I like working within a defined form. There are also other trademarks of the haiku, including the kigo (a word that names, points to, or suggests a season) and the kireji (the turn or surprise part way through the poem). I try to stay mindful but not bound by the rules.
This year, instead of going free-form like I’ve done in the past, I’ve given myself prompts for each day of the month. You’re welcome to them, too, if they feel helpful or fun. The first nine days will be the planets (plus that lowly dwarf planet Pluto), starting closest to the sun. So, without further ado, here’s Mercury.
Mercury
Your dark, cratered crust
writing an oblong orbit
in and out of light
Note: Besides being the closest planet to the sun, one of the things that is cool and unique about Mercury is that scientists believe it’s partly made of graphite. Yep, like pencils! Mercury — forever writing ovals in the notebook of the sky!
Dodoitsu: A four-line form from Japan with a defined syllabic structure (7/7/7/5) and a focus on work or love. Often funny.
Ekphrasis: Originating from the Greek word for description, ekphrastic poetry engages with or is inspired by a piece of visual art.
This month my pals and I challenged ourselves to write one or more ekphrastic dodoitsu, based on photos we offered up to each other. I really had fun with this prompt, although I left quite a few, well, we’ll call them dodos, on the cutting room floor. Here are the few left standing:
(Photo Credit: Laura Purdie Salas)
APPLE LOVE
Your rootstock grafted to mine
promised sweetness and pink shine
till love turned to vinegar.
You’re just plain rotten.
(Photo Credit: Tanita Davis)
TWO DOLLAR BILL
Oh, look – Thomas Jefferson!
You have been discontinued!
Not up for a hard day’s work,
what is your value?
(Photo Credit: Mary Lee Hahn)
BRICK BY BRICK
The writer stacks word by word,
building beauty out of bricks,
mortar made of metaphor.
And then, she re-reads.
There is something so energizing and inspiring about collaboration.
Having chosen an art form that is so often solitary, I love and appreciate any chance I get to work with others. The picture books I’ve co-authored with my pal Audrey Vernick have been some of my most fun to make. And the decade of shared prompts with my friends (here) have kept my fingers in poetry pie and a steadiness beneath my feet.
This month, we took our usual playful collaborative efforts a bit further by trying an exquisite corpse poem, wherein we each contributed a line to make a whole. There are lots of ways to play this sometime-parlor game, and ours went like this:
I started by penning a single line. There were no rules for mine, although I anchored it in February, this funny little slip of a month that is asked to do such heavy lifting.
I sent my line to Tanita, and she wrote a second line to follow mine. She then sent her line to Kelly, but didn’t include mine. When Kelly was done, she sent her line (without mine or Tanita’s) to Sara. And it went on like this, from Sara to Andi to Laura to Tricia to Mary Lee, with each new writer only seeing the line immediately preceding their turn. Nobody ever had a grasp on the big picture.
Nerve-wracking! Mysterious! Thrilling!
Finally, we came together via Zoom and put our lines together as an exquisite corpse first draft. It looked like this:
This month, odd one out, running short on days and sleep,
this month, past meets pride, roots ripped from native soil still somehow grow.
The once-bright future dims. Shadows grow
but there, near canyon rim, in broken light
the yearling hawk shrieked in futile fury
and the steel-edged clouds looked away.
Trees bow and bend on a blustery day
that rattles old oak leaves down the street.
We were surprised how imagistic it was! And how in many ways, it already kind of… worked. BUT, the fun had just begun, because then we granted each other permission to do with the draft whatever felt right, to cut and paste, to alter, to re-vision. Thus the eight very different poems we’re posting today.
Mine is quite transformed — lines edited and cut and moved about — but it’s still about February, about winter passing to spring, maybe, or a mother passing to a daughter, or the old, dark ways passing to the new. Your guess is as good as mine. Enough said, here goes:
Passing the Torch
Liz Garton Scanlon
This month (so short on days)
trees bow and bend,
the young hawk shrieks,
a once-bright future dims.
This month (as shadows grow)
when past meets pride,
uprooted lives branch out
in fury and in hymn.
This month (all bluster still)
dry leaves and steel-edged clouds
rattle and release themselves
into the light upon the canyon’s rim.
And Poetry Friday is at our own dear Tricia’s this week!
OH — and if you’d like to join us next month, try writing an ekphrastic dodoitsu! Say what? Well, a dodoitsu inspired by an image — a painting, sculpture, photograph. And when you do, let us know about it with the tag #PoetryPals! Have fun!
I really ran out of steam at the end of last year, but I sure am glad to be back amongst you all. This month, my Poetry Sisters and I decided to try Overheard Poems — a kind of found poem built on the snippets of conversations we’d stumbled upon.
Eavesdropping — like so many other things — took a hit during the pandemic, what with us all holed up at home talking mostly to our dogs. So I was a bit worried. I needn’t have been.
Just yesterday, I walked up to my favorite outdoor coffee counter, and while I waited for my drink, I listened to two young women having a conversation at the table right behind me. One of the women was particularly insistent, and as soon as I heard her speak, I knew I had my poem.
Overheard, An Etheree
Liz Garton Scanlon
I
really
like to know
what to expect.
She shrugged. She meant it.
Nobody spoke. Or laughed.
Each breath stilled, doubt sat like stone.
Mercury has no atmosphere,
and this was like that – hope suspended –
but we wanted it to be possible.
***As for next month, we’re going to try one or more Exquisite Corpse poems. We’re not sure exactly how we’re going to do them, and there’s a lot of wiggle room. Read about them, and then figure out how YOU’d like to use or be inspired by the game. We’ll share our poems on Feb. 25th, and you can, too! If you share on social media, use the hashtag #PoetryPals. We can’t wait to see what you (and we?) do with this! Be brave, have fun!
I missed our monthly write-in due to travel but my pals tossed a few words my way just in the nick of time! Here goes…
MEMORY
By Liz Garton Scanlon
Memory is a fickle word,
a slippery promise
disappearing
through closed lips
like a hum, like a quiet,
reedy, accidental hum
that you don’t notice has come
and gone until someone says
do you remember that song?
and you think yes!
and you reach for it but
all that’s left is a silver shiver
of breath like a fish, like a glint
of scaled light.
SILENCE
By Liz Garton Scanlon
Silence is a patient word
like a cat without a bell
like a monk, like a child
with a secret closely kept
Silence is a word with room
a word with high ceilings
and the door ajar,
a welcoming word
that makes some people
uncomfortable
An Invitation
You’re invited to join our challenge for the month of November! We’re writing an Ode to Autumn. An ode is a lyrical poem, a way of marking an occasion with a song. Whether you choose an irregular ode with no set pattern or rhyme, or the ten-line, three-to-five stanza famed by Homer himself, we hope you’ll join us in singing in the season of leaf-fall and pie, and sharing on November 26th in a blog post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.
This month’s prompt is a call and response of sorts.
We were to take one of our pal’s poems and write a tanka in answer or reflection.
As tankas (five line, 31 syllable poems) are haiku adjacent,
I chose a haiku as my jumping off point.
Here is Tanita’s classified ad haiku from our prompt of August 7, 2015:
BUY/SELL/TRADE
for sale: one wardrobe
once owned by True Believer
oak. no secret door.
Would you like to join us for our next challenge? In October we’re trying Wordplay Poems, as invented by Nikki Grimes. You can read Nikki’s description at Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’ blog in a post entitled Spotlight on Nikki Grimes and DMC Challenge. Feel free to share your poem on October 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!
Well, this was my kind of prompt. Some miracle combination of playfulness and empathy. One part “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” and another part “what if”. I could’ve written a hundred of these if I’d had a less nutty week and if we hadn’t been going on two weeks without air conditioning (which kind of sucks the playfulness out of a gal in Texas in the summer).
I didn’t write a hundred poems, but I did write a handful of ’em and I’m going to share two of them here:
THE PENNY
By Liz Garton Scanlon
What does the penny know?
The bottom of a pocket, the drier’s metal bell
The crack between the cushions, the sewer’s eggy smell
And the finger-crossing splash into a magic wishing well
What does the penny know?
That one’s a lonely number, never near enough
That even when you’re shiny-proud, you still might be rebuffed
But wishes, when you mean them, can deliver mighty stuff
THE PEACH
By Liz Garton Scanlon
What does the peach know?
The morning orchard, sunbeam-lit
The rows like dancers, fruit befit
The farmer’s secrets, whispered, writ
What does the peach know?
The branch and blossom, perfect fit
The fresh-faced fuzz, the heavy pit
The beetle eating, bit by bit…
If you liked these, check out my pals’ poems here: Mary Lee Tanita
Tricia Sara Kelly
Andi
Laura
As for next month, we’ll be writing tankas. Tankas were originally take-offs on other poets haiku, so we invite you to dig into the Poetry Friday archive, find a poem you admire (haiku or not) and compose a tanka based on it or inspired by it or in conversation with it (obviously given credit where credit’s due). Fun, right?
Now, go enjoy the rest of Poetry Friday at Unexpected Intersections and have a great weekend, y’all.
Wow, I feel like I haven’t seen y’all forever. I had to miss the June prompt thanks to life, but I’m showing up this month, brave and fumbling.
Our assignment for July was to write a villanelle (and for more on this gorgeous, French, fixed form, see here) to the theme of dichotomy. Well. I brainstormed opposites. I considered conflicts. I thought the flip side of the same coin, comparing apples and oranges, things as different as chalk and cheese.
But then I remembered this therapeutic modality — Dialectical Behavior Therapy — that asks patients to cultivate habits like mindfulness and distress tolerance, in part via a willingness to hold more than one truth, to accept seemingly contradictory ideas or circumstances. This is, it’s fair to say, not easy. But ok, then. Neither is writing a villanelle! Here goes, anyway. (*A note: I cheat a little at the very end, changing one of the fixed lines. But I figure since Dialectical Behavior Therapy aims for both acceptance and change, it’s meta-acceptable!)
Two Truths
(for my child at 20)
Liz Garton Scanlon
I hold two truths, brand new and grown,
as you stretch further from your source,
inscrutable and so well known,
loose like water, set as stone –
no law in place to be enforced.
I hold two truths, brand new and grown.
I would not ask you to postpone
but might you want a change of course?
(Inscrutable and so well known.)
In loving you, do I condone
both this and that, both cart and horse?
I hold two truths – brand new and grown,
each preconception now, dethroned,
my hopeful heart filled with remorse,
inscrutable and so well known.
But I am just your chaperone –
you are your own – a vital force,
remaking truths – brand new and grown,
inscrutable and so well known.
We are beyond tickled to welcome the amazing and eloquent Mary Lee Hahn to our ranks this month! Her retirement from teaching freed up a little space in her life, and here she is!
It’s been awhile since we’ve done an ekphrastic poem — a poem based on or inspired by a piece of art — so here we go. We had two images to choose from — the first being El Hombre Grande (a mixed-media piece by Roy de Forest, 1989, photo by Tanita Davis) and the second, Spider Dress (a brass wire sculpture designed by Isamu Noguchi in 1946 for Martha Graham dance productions, photo by Sara Lewis Holmes). As you can see, they’re both quite evocative!
This week is all about celebrating Mary Lee, retiring from teaching after 37 years, after so many lives inspired and touched. Here’s to the days ahead, friend — the days of poetry on the page and on the river. Knowing that the ripple effects of all the good you’ve done will last forever.
This Beam of Light
for Mary Lee Hahn – Poet, Teacher, Flycaster, Friend
Laying the long line upon the water
with such quiet care
it might as well be a beam
of light, a bit of a poetry (just
a few words, just the right ones)
landing as if they’d always been there,
waiting to be plucked up
by a thousand children, hungry
for what’s right in front of them –
the whole world in a drop
of water, barely
making a ripple
on the surface,
but patiently
steadily
faithfully
dropping
way
down
deep.
(Art by Marcus Cline)
#MarvelousMaryLee
#PoemsforMaryLee
Poetry Friday is at Wondering and Wondering today — and you’ll find lots more love for Mary Lee there!
