This month’s prompt was to write an ekphrastic poem — a poem based on an image or a piece of art.

I chose to write from an image Tricia offered up, from an exhibit at the Montclair Art Museum called Transformed. Perfect for our year of transformation! Anyway, this particular piece, called Urban Flora, is by Denice Bizot and is the metal from a hood of a truck, transformed!

Somehow, Bizot’s work — and the story behind the work — suggested to me a “this is the house that Jack built”-type of poem, so that’s what I’ve got to offer. I imagine Lucinda Williams playing on the radio….

OXIDIZE/oxidize/verb
Liz Garton Scanlon

This is the road (the red, red road) that Dad drove
This is the truck on the red, red road that Dad drove
This is the truck that lurched and went clunk
And this is the hood of that clunky truck
the hood that Dad popped
on the side of the road
the red, red road
that Dad kicked
with his boot
as he spit
and he swore
on the life of that truck
Oh, this is the road
(the red, red road)
that Dad drove

To read more, visit:
Laura
Tanita
Tricia
Mary Lee
Sara

And you can find the Poetry Friday round-up at Tabatha’s The Opposite of Indifference.

As for next month, we’re writing etherees. This ten-line form begins with a single syllable, and each line expands by one syllable until the tenth line has ten. We’re continuing with our 2023 theme of transformation, but how you interpret that topically is up to you. You have a month to craft your creation and share it on March 31st (hosted by Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading) in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. Join us!

Happy 2023, friends.

It’s a brand new year or, at least, that’s what we always root and hope for, us faithful, foolish start-again optimists. But so many of our most recent years have felt relentless rather than new, so it’s no wonder we (and by we I mean my Poetry Sisters and I) have decided to explore the idea of transformation in 2023.

To start with, we chose Cascade Poems, which transform the first stanza into additional lines throughout the poem. You’ll find a more detailed explanation and examples of the form here but honestly, I think you’ll get the gist.

Meanwhile, I’ve decided that I need a little something extra to help shape my work this year, something concrete or tangible to lean on, some proveable, explainable version of transformation. So, you’ll notice that my poems will all touch on, in some way, a scientific process. This first one, MELT, went somewhere I didn’t expect it to at all — my childhood fevers. This is the magic of a prompt or exercise, I think. The transformation (ha!) of one idea into another. Here goes…

MELT /melt/ verb
Liz Garton Scanlon

make or become liquified
make or become more tender
leave or vanish or disappear

says my fever to the ice
pressed to my temples
make or become liquified

says delirium to all reason
says the record playing spinning
make or become more tender

says each blurry softening
each terrifying letting-go
leave or vanish or disappear

(*all lines in itals taken or amended from various dictionary definitions)

And for more Cascade poems, please visit:
Tanita
Tricia
Laura
Sara
Kelly
Mary Lee

And Poetry Friday is at Bookseed Studio.

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

And Poetry Friday is at Patricia Franz’s Reverie! (Thanks, Patricia…)

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

Make yourself at home here
But do not disturb

My pals’ poems are here:

Tricia

Sara

Kelly

Laura

Tanita

Mary Lee 

And Ruth hosted Poetry Friday here!

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

You can read others here:
Sara
Tricia
Tanita
Mary Lee
Kelly
Laura

And Jone is hosting Poetry Friday — thanks Jone!

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!):

Broken

Pieces of sidewalk chalk

My monkey-bar arm

Grampa’s voice

when he says goodbye

Mom’s car-in-the-shop

and the vacuum cleaner

and the little window

over the kitchen sink

Things that are in pieces,

like my heart or my family

all broken

Promise

Something sure

Something lasting

Something hopeful

Something spoken

Something wobbly

forgotten

left behind

and broken

A word that means something

(everything) until

it just plain doesn’t:

promise

Now, go find the other Definitos here:

Laura

Sara

Kelly

Tricia

Mary Lee

Tanita

Andi

And here’s all the rest of Poetry Friday, at The Opposite of Indifference!

As for next month, we’re writing rhyming Occitan verse poems called Dansas. We’d love for you to join us!

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. 

So. Shall we?

Kick That Can

LGS 8/22

Deadlines and appointments,

insomnia and overwhelm,

a rolling scroll of obligations…

each item in this magpie’s nest

mocking me – a pointed finger,

a dusty mirror.

Let’s kick that can down the road…

It’s not that I don’t know

what to do (lists and agendas,

schedules and sticky notes,

fresh air and meditation)

but rather that the doing

undoes me, that the nest itself

is a messy comfort,

is a fragile cup.

Let’s kick that can down the road…

I collect things to do

and places to be and promises

to keep, let’s call it mindful

miscellany, let’s call it

gathering, let’s call it

life. And

let’s kick that can down the road

Go read these now, too!

Tricia

Mary Lee

Tanita

Laura

Sara

Kelly

Andi

Oh — and look who’s hosting Poetry Friday today! Helllloooo, Tanita!!

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

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

With each teaspoon and tincture, I dissolve

your advantage, your

bitter bearing, I unknot your

twisted bombast and your

lies.

With each drop and dollop, you forget

your(self), you swallow

bitter(ness) like soup, your tongue is

twisted, your

lies double back, eat their own tails.

With medicine like mine,

your world withers, then rises as

bitter(root), blooms petaled and bright,

twisted up from stone. Hope

lies at our feet reborn.

Now, here are the others:

Tanita

Mary Lee

Sara

Tricia

Laura

And Poetry Friday is at Marcie Atkin’s blog this time around!

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!

A Scanlon Byr a Thoddaid

Liz Garton Scanlon

Your name feels right at home, right here

– the rolling hill of it so clear –

each syllable a song, each note a green

the ground repeats by rote.

I recognize this dry-stacked stone,

the moss, the gorse – I’m not alone.

You’re here, reflected in the cold, deep loch,

a key that’s mine to hold.

To read the others, go here:

Sarah

Tanita

Mary Lee

Tricia

Laura

And Catherine is hosting Poetry Friday at Reading to the Core.

Stay safe and well, friends.

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!

So, here goes, in the style of Nikki Giovanni’s Winter Poem and Taylor Mali’s This All Once Was Field. You might want to go here to read those first.

(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

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#NationalPoetryMonth
#PoetryPals

To read the other Mali-inspired poems, go here:
Laura
Tanita
Mary Lee
Tricia
Sara
Kelly
Andi

Thanks to Jone for hosting Poetry Friday this week!

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!