Blog - Page 14 of 120 - Liz Garton Scanlon

Poetry Project — May 2021

Posted May 28, 2021

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!

I ended up choosing Spider Dress because it begged and embodied a story, even before I discovered it really was designed for the character of Medea in Graham’s performance of Cave of the Heart. Also, feeling like I needed a little more support, I wrote a tritina, a ten-line poem with repeating words that is almost like a mini-sestina. I wished, actually, that I’d chosen other words as my repeating ones but time crept on me so it is what it is. Enjoy.

Medea, Caged
Liz Garton Scanlon

Anchored fast to earth (with tattered wings!)
a mesh of expectations make the cage
from which I watch days set and set and rise

until I warm and come alive, like yeast I rise,
wrench wide my ribs, the fingerlings of wings.
I leave behind this carapace, this cage,

and push from earth to sun, its beams a cage
(another one!) that burns me bare, lets truth arise:
there’s no escape, by foot nor feathered wing –

the wing’s a myth, the heart’s a cage we rise each day within.

You can find my pals’ poems here:
Kelly
Tricia
Sara
Laura
Tanita

And Poetry Friday is at Michelle Kogan’s this week!
Stay well, everyone.

A Beam of Light: In Honor of Mary Lee Hahn

Posted May 21, 2021

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!

Poetry Project — APRIL 2021

Posted April 30, 2021

The Prompt: To write ‘In the Style Of’ Linda Hogan’s Innocence!

That (exquisite!) poem opens like this:
There is nothing more innocent
than…

I started similarly, and ran with it. My poem is far less lovely and much more annoyed than Hogan’s but, to be fair, hers was an awful lot to live up to for us mortals! Anyway, here goes.

BAMBOO
By Liz Garton Scanlon
After Linda Hogan’s Innocence

There is nothing more determined
than the subterranean shoots
of backyard bamboo, rhizomes advancing
like an electric grid, like an army,
disregarding fences and foundations.
There is no compromise, no working it out
or slowing it down, no way to say
what was determined now feels
aggressive to me, I feel
attacked

because as soon as I speak
or take to the soil with hoe or pick axe
another culm emerges, soft as grass
nearly the same green as a caterpillar
and exactly as tender.
I forget, just that quickly,

that culms become stalks, hollow and wooden.
In the face of that windswept tenderness,
I forget, forgive, relax –
a whole determined world beneath my feet.