Sometimes we really like to out-do ourselves. This month, for example, we decided to do an exquisite corpse poem — a collaboration wherein each person adds a line without seeing anything more than the line immediately preceding it! It’s a throw-caution-to-the-wind kind of activity. We’ve done one before. It’s fun. Why not?

THEN we thought we’d add — along with our own, brand new lines — some of Linda Mitchell’s incredible (beautiful) (whimsical) (poetic) (non-clunky) clunkers from the past few years! Why not?

And THEN we got together over zoom, shared the complete draft, and gave each other permission to do with it what we may — cut, rearrange, add to, edit.

It should be noted that all of this fit perfectly into our 2023 theme of transformation — each line inspiring the next and transforming the previous ones, and then each of us transforming the shared draft into something all our own. And as for my additional challenge — focusing on a singular scientific process — well, I’m using Refraction this time around because it’s about light and sound and perspective and changing direction.

So, oof. That’s what we did, process-wise. Now here is the kind of remarkable complete draft we came up with first, each of us unawares of everything but the previous line and clunker. (And I say remarkable because, honestly, it kind of holds together, don’t you think?)

Tanita: They say the mind is garden-like, with thoughts as sprouting seeds
CLUNKER: but I’m left holding cuttings I’m not sure where to plant
Sara: Weedy-thick, the prickly buds of odd logic bloom:
CLUNKER: You don’t cry anymore, but you sing all the words.
Liz: Each line in a different language as the light shifts,
CLUNKER: trees turned so orange the road looked blue.
Mary Lee: Words tangle, colors muddy in the palette.
CLUNKER: I am no longer winsome to the sun.
CLUNKER: a whole sun’s rise to share
Tricia: there goes the one that got away
CLUNKER: found a bit of sunflower
Laura: and plucked every petal (by the way, he loves me)
Kelly: and then I remembered
CLUNKER: that’s what you wrote about the green beans
Tanita: Stockpile, then, that snap and sass to sweeten your September.

And here’s what I did with it. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or my work that my primary activity was trimming and boiling down. The poem, not the beans…

Refraction, This Morning

my mind goes garden-like
and weedy-thick,
buds of odd logic
bloom

Then I remember
what you said
and I snap
green beans,
stockpile them
to sweeten
September

By Liz Garton Scanlon

Here are the others so you can see how differently the drafts fared in our various hands:

Tricia
Kelly
Sara
Tanita
Mary Lee
Laura

And you can find lots more to read at the Poetry Friday post at Teacher Dance!

FYI, next month we’re trying Diminishing Verse, and you’re welcome to join us!!

This month’s prompt was to write a monotetra — a form made up of rhymed and metrical quatrains, and closing with a line of two identical phrases. (I cheated on that last part slightly. I love formal constraints and I also love cheating. Sorry.)

Also, our overarching theme this year is TRANSFORMATION and I made the additional promise to look at a particular scientific process each time! Oy.

Anyway, I spent a month in the midwest this summer, with family, at a lakey, cottagey place I’ve gone to since I was a child. A lakey, cottagey place my dad’s gone to since he was a child. This poem came from the funny, lovely luck of that place and those people… and although it’s a bit of a stretch, scientifically speaking, I’m calling the process this month STABILITY.

Stability: A Monotetra
Liz Garton Scanlon

And like a game of kick the can
my memories run home again –
sunburns and screen doors, old sedans,
a grilled cheese in the frying pan

as sharp as grandma’s lemon drops
or off-the-high dive belly flops
alive again with all the props,
oh please don’t stop, don’t ever stop

Now, read more monotetras here:
From Tanita
From Mary Lee
From Tricia
From Laura
From Sara

And more poems of all sorts and stripes at Poetry Friday, being hosted by Jan at BookSeedStudio!

Next month, we’re creating an Exquisite Corpse poem. These collaborative poems necessarily involve yourself and at least one other poet, passing lines or stanzas forward, so now’s the time to choose poetry compatriots. Are you in? Good! The Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION – and we’re going to also sneak in a few of Linda Mitchell’s clunkers to give us more to play with. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on August 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

The end of June snuck up on me but I was able to quick find my way into an etheree based on a quote. (That was this month’s agreed-upon prompt — to write from a quote.) Mine’s from Sarah Polley, whose book Run Towards the Danger I absolutely adored and highly recommend. Here goes:

“I hate stories in which people can’t get to where they’re going.” – Sarah Polley

Seeds
planted
should take root,
guns must go off,
and each rabbit hole
best lead to a warren
of reason, not red herrings.
Folks should get to where they’re going.
No matter the story, it should lead
to some certain kind of satisfaction.

Irene Latham is hosting Poetry Friday and you’ll find links to Laura’s, Tricia’s, Tanita’s and more over there!

Happy July, friends!

As a reminder, this year’s theme is transformation.
Narrowing that down, I’ve been focused on particular scientific processes.
And this month, the prompt is to write a ghazal — a traditional Persian form made up of couplets and both end rhyme and internal rhyme that ends up feeling, to me at least, fussy.
But who am I to argue? Here goes…

ORBIT/orbit/verb
A Ghazal
Liz Garton Scanlon

Oh, it’s you again, is it? Arising all bright full?
All beamy and pulsey, magnetic, exciteful?

Stop mooning, I say to my starstrucky self,
because even a sliver is plenty delightful.

To read more, go here:
Laura
Tanita
Mary Lee
Kelly
Tricia
Sara

And Patricia at Reverie is hosting Poetry Friday! Enjoy!

I’ve been thinking lately about the cyclical nature of things (days, seasons, birthdays, wheels, traditions (like our April haiku), the endlessly reiterative process of revision) and, also, about the inevitability of change.

For me, rotation — pivoting around an axis, always returning to the original orientation and yet, not quite the same — is the perfect image for the intersection of these ideas. And there’s an extra nice echo to it today, this last day of April, this last day of poeming together.

Keep on rolling, friends, and I’ll see you back here next spring. Same-same, but different.

Rotation
Haiku 30

Return to yourself:
what goes around comes back changed
but the center holds

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

We’re in New York City for a very rainy spring weekend.
It’s okay. I love it in all kinds of weather…

Purification
Haiku 29

Walk the wet city
with petrichor in our veins,
each step a fresh start

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#NationalPoetryMonth

It’s the last day of my scientific procedures week, friends.
And nearly the end of April (weep).
Gosh, it’s been fun again, huh?

Interpretation
Haiku 28

Me being alive
basing everything I do
on muddled data

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

Several times over the past several years, we’ve worked with the idea of writing “In the Style of…” The one I’m remembering right now is “In the Style of E.E. Cummings.” Writing like E.E. Cummings is far from easy but there is something so wildly distinct that it felt possible. It felt like we could pick up what he’d put down. Y’know?

This month, though, we’re writing “In the Style of Pablo Neruda.” Ummmm. Wow. OK, let’s see. We talked about it as a group — what were some recognizable characteristics, patterns, watchwords? What exactly was this style in which we were supposed to write? We threw some good fodder on the table — sonnets, odes, lush and considered language, the natural world, love, love and more love. And then, we went for it.

Here’s what I decided to do. I took his Book of Questions (an excerpted and illustrated version of which is here) and decided to turn the tables on Neruda and ask questions of or about him. Most everything in here has a taproot into his work or biography, and I genuinely tried to think about his ‘style,’ slippery though it may be.

Anyway, here goes…

If You Were…
After Neruda’s Book of Questions

If you were to pick your own name
like a lemon, what would it be?
When you said it aloud, would it echo?
Would it leave ripples
on the water like a stone?

What direction would you face
when you turned toward home?

To read everyone else’s take on Neruda, go here:
Tricia
Mary Lee
Tanita
Sara
Kelly
Laura

And Ruth is hosting Poetry Friday at There is No Such Thing as a God-forsaken Town.

As for next month, we’ll be writing ghazals! Join us?

Experimentation
Haiku 27

It’s all well and good
until you’re a teenager.
Then they say, Wait! Stop!

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

It’s the classic If, Then scenario today!

Prediction
Haiku 26

You say If (pause), Then
as if you were just that sure.
I hope you are right

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth